Wow. Thank you. I'm honored that you feel this warrants archiving - it was just a general impression of the season I'd kind of cobbled together at the time without much intent for real intensive character analysis.
But... I kind of wonder, if this might seem a little out of place on an Angel-based site? I'm not horribly eager to get a lot of angry mail from serious Angel fans on this, especially since it was not really intended to be a hard look at Angel's overall character, but just kind of a temperature-taking of the S5 arc... I'd have covered a lot more ground if I'd meant to tackle Angel's heroism in general, starting with my list of the main reasons for why I thought Angel's last stand came across to less heroic that it could have been (mostly about the shoddiness of setup for the Black Thorn menace, which hardly came off as throw-our-lives-away-worthy, and various dodgy political points). So I don't know if this essay is really strong enough as a standalone to really sum up Angel's decisons there.
Funny thing is, I do agree, most definitely, that Angel is heroic in those last episodes for going forward even though he's passed beyond all hope of his own redemption (in his own eyes, that is). I could even argue that there's a parallel between Angel in "Not Fade Away" and Spike in "Chosen" - in both cases, the last fight is the one they don't expect to survive winning. Which can't help but be tragic.
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But... I kind of wonder, if this might seem a little out of place on an Angel-based site? I'm not horribly eager to get a lot of angry mail from serious Angel fans on this, especially since it was not really intended to be a hard look at Angel's overall character, but just kind of a temperature-taking of the S5 arc... I'd have covered a lot more ground if I'd meant to tackle Angel's heroism in general, starting with my list of the main reasons for why I thought Angel's last stand came across to less heroic that it could have been (mostly about the shoddiness of setup for the Black Thorn menace, which hardly came off as throw-our-lives-away-worthy, and various dodgy political points). So I don't know if this essay is really strong enough as a standalone to really sum up Angel's decisons there.
Funny thing is, I do agree, most definitely, that Angel is heroic in those last episodes for going forward even though he's passed beyond all hope of his own redemption (in his own eyes, that is). I could even argue that there's a parallel between Angel in "Not Fade Away" and Spike in "Chosen" - in both cases, the last fight is the one they don't expect to survive winning. Which can't help but be tragic.