Cordelia (played by Charisma Carpenter) was inherited by Angel from the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Cordelia was introduced as a shallow, vain and rather ditzy teenager who had no particular skillset suited for battling the forces of evil; Cordelia's greatest contribution to Buffy's struggle was that she both owned and drove a car.
Yet despite that, even in the first three seasons Cordelia demonstrated certain hidden depths. She could be quite loyal to the others and willing to help, even when she had precious little to contribute. Once she joined the cast of Angel, however, her character altered significantly - and for the better.
When Cordelia went to work for Angel in "City of" (1x1) she insisted she was only taking the secretarial job "until my inevitable stardom takes effect." She came to Los Angeles hoping to become an actress and that remained a part of her background up until "Birthday" (3x11). But even by the end of the first season, she was quite a different person.
It was a gradual shift; Cordelia commented on it herself in "Bachelor Party" (1x7) when she realized how Angel and Doyle's heroism had affected how she felt about men: "All of a sudden rich and handsome isn't enough for me; now I expect a guy to be all brave and interesting! And it's your fault! Both of you!" Soon after, she inherited Doyle's visions in "Parting Gifts" (1x10), which made her indispensable to Angel's mission as she would guide him against the forces of evil. "You can't fire me, I'm vision girl," Cordelia taunted him in "Untouched" (2x4).
The visions were a terrific way to transform Cordelia into a more selfless, heroic person. She retained her blunt manner of speech, love of fine clothes and dreams of stardom, but she was no longer working for Angel just to collect a paycheck; all of this was made clear in "To Shanshu in L.A." (1x22), when Cordelia loses control of the visions and is exposed an endless series of images where people are in pain. After long hours of suffering, unable to do more than scream or cry, Cordelia is saved by Angel and Wesley; her first words when she revives? "Angel? I saw them all. There's so much pain. ...We have to help them."
During season 2 when Angel turned away from his path to pursue vengeance on Wolfram & Hart, Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn continued to do his work. When Angel finally returned to the group in "Epiphany" (2x16), Wesley put Angel in his place, explaining how much Cordelia had changed. "You don't know her at all. For months now you haven't cared to, otherwise you might have realized that our Cordelia has become a very solitary girl. She's not the vain, carefree creature she once was... Well, certainly not carefree. It's the visions, you see. The visions that were meant to guide you. You could turn away from them - she doesn't have that luxury. She knows and experiences the pain in this city, and because of who she is, she feels compelled to do something about it. It's left her little time for anything else. You'd have known that - if you hadn't had you head firmly up your... place that isn't on top of your neck."
It also helped that Cordelia's visions were increasingly causing her great pain. The visions had been painful from the first episode of the series, but it became a plot point late in season 2 that Cordelia was finding it harder to keep receiving the visions; she was not only suffering more mental trauma from the terrifying images she saw, but also developing health problems.
This brings us to season 3, where Cordelia's character began to slowly derail - but it was only clear in retrospect that the problems began there. Certainly Angel fandom was up in arms about Cordelia that year and not in a positive way. From the outset, it became clear that Cordelia was being set up as a love interest for Angel. Some fans liked that idea; some fans didn't. But a very vocal segment of fandom was upset because of how drastically Cordelia was changing.
Cordelia had a wonderful ability to deliver sarcastic put-downs without becoming unlikable herself. But this aspect of her character started to ebb away, along with her interests in money and stardom; then to, her relationship with the Grosalugg in the latter half of season 3 was brought up mainly to write the Grosalugg out for good - to put Cordelia past admiring men for their good looks. Cordelia was now Angel's greatest confidante, the one who would share perhaps one heartwarming/inspirational speech with Angel each episode. Fans dubbed this change, "Saint Cordelia."
"Saint Cordelia" became such a meme in fandom that even the creators got wind of it and referenced it in "Calvary" (4x12). Fans used the nickname principally to display their displeasure with Cordelia's personality change, but many also disliked the attempt to pair her up with Angel - mainly because the changes seemed to have occurred in order to correct any 'imperfections' in Cordelia, to render her 'worthy' of being the lead character's love interest.
And yes, season 3 laid it on pretty thick; in "That Vision Thing" (3x2), Cordelia is so noble she refuses to give up the visions even as Wolfram & Hart are using them to inflict physical damage on her. In "Birthday" she's given the chance to alter her past to remove the visions from her and become a famous star, but decides she'd rather keep the visions and help Angel. In the latter part of season 3, while she's dating the Groosalugg, nearly every romantic moment with Groo is undermined by a bit where she worries about Angel or says something which indicates to Groo that she cares more about Angel than him.
The circle the characters of Angel inhabited became significantly smaller in season 3. Fred had no life outside of helping Angel Investigations, to the point where she didn't want her family to know where she was (3x5); Gunn formally broke ties with his gang in "That Old Gang of Mine" (3x3), removing his character's independence; Lorne lost his club and moved into the Hyperion Hotel in "Dad" (3x10); Wesley and Cordelia had social lives and interests outside of Angel Investigations prior to season 3 - but by mid-season they had no lives beyond what went on in the offices of Angel Investigations.
Shrinking Angel's universe couldn't help but feel incestuous; creating love triangles among the lead characters (first, Gunn-Fred-Wesley; later, Angel-Cordelia-Connor) made the world feel smaller. Likewise the growing emphasis on storyarcs and de-emphasis on 'case-of-the-week' episodes. Indeed, the firm of Angel Investigations had fewer and fewer clients in season 3; the idea that Angel and his friends were running a business became less and less important, to the extent that one interesting idea - Wolfram & Hart trying to tie up Angel by using real world law - was dismissed for good in the same episode where it was brought up (3x4).
This sense of smallness became a huge problem in season 4, where virtually all of the drama of the season was due to events in the characters' personal lives. One senses the creators were themselves aghast what they had wrought; at various points the characters voiced complaints about the season's arc: "I spent most of this year trapped in what I can only describe as a turgid supernatural soap opera," Gunn complained in "Players" (4x16). And after Wesley explained Connor's backstory to Faith in "Salvage" (4x13) Faith quipped, "Can I just ask: what the hell are you people doing?" Wesley meekly answered, "Leading... complicated lives."
In some sense, the events of "Birthday" - where Cordelia became half-demon - marked the end of the Cordelia who fans were familiar with. After that episode her powers changed on an episode-to-episode basis and she was defined mostly by her relationships with the Groosalugg and Angel - to the point that afer going on vacation in "Couplet" (3x14), she had no more significant friendship moments with Wesley for the rest of season 3 or entirety of season 4. And the Cordelia-Wesley friendship had been a hallmark of the program's first 2.5 years! But with Cordelia and Wesley each tied up in separate love triangles, the creators seemed to forget they had a relationship dynamic of their own.
In another sense, Cordelia didn't appear at all in season 4; first she's a 'higher power' (4x1), then she's amnesiac (4x3), then she isolates herself from the group (4x6), then she's revealed to be the season's 'big bad' (4x12), then she falls into a coma (4x17). The storyarc involving Cordelia's transformation into a 'big bad' is definitely a problematic one - there was a lot of behind-the-scenes trouble, notably that Charisma Carpenter's pregnancy changed the plot so that Cordelia was being possessed by the actual big bad, Jasmine.
Frankly, assigning all of the evil Cordelia did to the character of Jasmine was an immense relief to me. I liked Cordelia and it had been difficult to watch her become a sneering, bloodthirsty villain. Jasmine's arrival in "Inside Out" (4x17) was kind of a relief to me because it meant Cordelia could escape from the plot with some of her dignity intact (although apparently this was all much less-fun for Charisma Carpenter, who was basically booted off the show as 'punishment' for getting pregnant).
But the worst aspect of the evil Cordelia plot came about during "Inside Out" in one of the most ill-advised passages in the entire series. It's during that episode that the character Skip delves into a lengthy explanation of how Jasmine had orchestrated her plot. I'm sure the creators considered it a lot of very clever work - tying together events from the first four seasons to make Jasmine appear to be the series' grandest villain, a plot which could appear to have been set in motion all the way back in "City Of". Here is that ill-advised conversation:
Angel: "It doesn't make sense. Cordy was made a higher being because she proved herself to the Powers by bearing their visions. This thing couldn't have--"
Wesley: "--Unless it maneuvered her to inherit the visions in the first place."
Skip: "Uh, oh. Better step on it. The rubes are catching up."
Angel: "It wasn't just her ascension. Everything that's happened to Cordy in the past few years-- all of it—- was planned."
Skip: "You really think it stops with her, amigo? You have any concept of how many lines have to intersect in order for a thing like this to play out? How many events have to be nudged in just the right direction? Leaving Pylea. Your sister. Opening the wrong book. Sleeping with the enemy. Gosh, I love a story with scope."
Gunn: "No way. We make our own choices."
Skip: "Yeah, sure. Cheese sandwich here, uh, when to floss. But the big stuff, like two vampires squeezing out a kid?"
Angel: "Connor."
Wesley: "An impossible birth to make one possible."
Skip: "That's what the kid was designed for."
Lorne: "To sleep with mother love?"
Angel: "To create a vessel."
Skip: "Look out. The monkey's thinking again."
There are two huge problems with the claims Skip made:
- Jasmine's supposedly great master plan had already been undermined twice - first when Angelus killed the Beast in "Salvage" and again when Willow restored Angel's soul in "Orpheus" (4x15).
- The idea that the characters on Angel did not possess free will is fundamentally contrary to the premise of the series - the whole notion of Angel seeking redemption for himself and others, to say nothing of whether his 'pivotal role' in the Apocalypse is to played on the side of good or evil.
The creators fortunately forgot they'd written this as soon as it was aired, I guess? Because the series got back on track; much later in the program during "Power Play" (5x21), Angel himself summed up the series' actual philosophy: "The powerful control everything... except our will to choose. Look, Lindsey's a pathetic halfwit, but he was right about one thing: heroes don't accept the way the world is."
So many of the decisions made around Cordelia in seasons 3 & 4 were bad calls - not only her transformation into a villain, but altering her powers (for no particular purpose other than to write away the subplot about the visions harming her), altering her goals and involving her in in what is the Buffyverse's single least-beloved relationship (with Connor - no mean feat, considering how many Buffy-Riley & Willow-Kennedy haters there are) all added up to a pretty dismal fate for what had been one of the series' best characters. She was legitimately the second lead of the series... only to be written out.
I haven't named any of the Angel creators thus far (other than executive producer Joss Whedon) but I definitely need to single out writer David Fury, who wrote "You're Welcome" (5x12). "You're Welcome" was an amazing feat of writing as it not only gave Cordelia a great send-off but at the same time washed away all of the ill will which season 4 in particular had created. In just one episode, everyone who had liked Cordelia in the past was instantly reminded of why she had been such a beloved character. And considering it was her farewell to the series, it really needed to be done.
These, then, are the three biggest problems I've noticed with Angel. But along the way I've tried to comment on parts of the series which did work; and I do think most of the series still holds up. Heck, season 4 was by far my least-favourite season, but it still contains a number of episodes that I truly enjoy and season 5 turned out to be my favourite season of the program.
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