David Fury we are friends forever!

What an amazing episode. If the finale is this good, I’ll be a really happy, really content person. This is the kind of love letter that we were getting from Buffy in Season Six and I wanted to keep getting in Season Seven. But we didn’t really. That’s a tangent.

I didn’t love where Cordelia was going in Season Three, but I accepted it for the show they were writing. Season Four was a giant, unfathomable disaster with that character. And letting her coma it out for a little while and then bringing her back this way? It undid all of that. Fury captured Cordelia’s voice so immediately - and Carpenter slipped back into the part so flawlessly that it felt like “Yes, this is where Cordelia would be in Season Five if she’d maintained her natural progression on the show.” We immediately snap back to the affection and feelings we had for that character before she got all demonized.

Calling back Doyle in the Lindsey set-ups and then showing him on screen was incredibly ballsy and incredibly moving. Buffy had very little cast changes during the run of the show. There were additions, of course,  but for most of Season Seven you had the entire main original cast with the exception of Angel and Cordelia. And you were still in the Summers home. Callbacks to Season One were nice, but not as shocking. Angel has gone through some massive changes in location, in stories, in plot, in characters - to start looping back like that has incredible impact.

When Cordelia said something to the about Doyle being the first agent down I had a moment of thinking “Well, we haven’t lost anyone else.” Ugh. Heartbreaking.

And as much as I resisted it at the time, I had no problem with any snippets of Angel/Cordelia romance. I probably wouldn’t have been bothered if she’d stayed the whole season.

It was interesting to me for Cordelia to come back when Wesley is still clearly - quietly - dealing with thinking he had killed his father. Alexis Denisof is such a master of subtlety that there have been minor changes in the way Wesley speaks or interacts or smiles over the last few episodes - every friendly interaction feels kind of forced and performance - that I never fully felt the connection between these two characters. But that’s okay. I’m much happier with not just dropping whatever path Wesley is on right now. (That’s a whole tangent for another time).

I wish Cordelia had gotten more time this season, but what the character got in this one episode was a very, very touching tribute. And this is the path she was always on. Second only to Angel, Cordelia’s life was dictated and constantly muddled with by the Powers That Be. She was always set up to potentially be lost early.

I had inklings something was afoot in her “goodbye” but I somehow managed to not break until Angel picked up the phone. It’s been so long since I watched Buffy that I had kind of forgotten how to TV-cry in front of another person and felt super weird after the episode ended. This was one of those character deaths where the delivery of it is so perfectly filmed, so perfectly realized, so heartbreakingly presented that it really stays with you afterward. Masterful.