Everyone knows how NOT a shipper I am. So, in the interest of fairness, instead of doing my own rant here, I submit this review by Chief Seattle (webpage link on Raves). In it, he discusses the  Angel Ep "Heartthrob", and in particular, how Angel deals with his grief over Buffy's death. Fair and even-handed. And may I just say Amen.

*~*~*

It would be almost impossible to overestimate the influence that Buffy has 
had on Angel. When he pulled himself out of the gutter in New York in 1996 
it was for her. When in the course of season 2 of BUFFY he started, no 
matter how hesitatingly, to contribute to the fight against evil it was to 
help her. It was Buffy in "Amends" who helped him eventually see he had a 
contribution to make to that fight on his own account. And when he left 
Sunnydale it was for her sake. Finally it was when he ordered her so 
peremptorily out of Los Angeles in "Sanctuary" that we saw the conclusive 
proof that he had indeed found a mission of his own. In five years there was 
hardly a significant event in his life - or unlife - that did not in some 
way revolve around her. So if Buffy really were dead then it would not only 
be natural but necessary for Angel as a character and ANGEL as a series to 
deal with the fact that such a decisive influence on him has vanished. But 
then is there anyone who believes that Buffy really is dead at least in the 
permanent sense of that word? No, I didn't think so. So, if Buffy's death is 
really only a temporary phenomenon then there is no such change for the 
writers to deal with. I find it very interesting therefore that "Hearthrob" 
is so explicitly about moving on after Buffy. The implication is I think 
very clear. This is a statement from the writers that whatever personal 
connection between Angel and Buffy might linger on a personal level the 
remaining connections between the two series are severed.

What We Did for Love

The major theme of "Hearthrob" is what love means to us and how it affects 
us. This theme is explored principally through the ways that Angel and James 
respectively react to the loss of the great loves of their life. But 
addition light on the contrast between these two is shown by the 
relationship between two other couples - Angelus and Darla on the one hand 
and Bobby and his girlfriend from the Student party on the other.

When we first see James and Elizabeth together, their love for one another 
is obvious. They are kissing and laughing:

Darla: "Young love."

Angelus: "Give it a century."

James: "A century? A mere hundred years?"

Elizabeth: "I would need a thousand to sketch the perfect plain of your 
face."

James: "And I would need ten thousand just to name the color of your eyes."
As Angel himself said: "James lived for that woman." And the truth of those 
words is revealed by his reaction to Elizabeth's death:

Vampire lackey: "You want to be alone."

James: "No. I want to die."

And when he goes to the doctor and asks for the cure. He is told that the 
price is a high one. It is only later when we find out what that price was 
that the true significance of his words becomes obvious:

"I've already paid it."

There is, therefore, great symbolism in the picture of James on the 
operating table. Elizabeth's death has literally ripped the heart from him 
and he has nothing else to live for but revenge.

Angel has obviously also just lost the love of his life. And we are reminded 
of that fact several times throughout this episode. But his reaction is more 
low key, less dramatic. Some have complained about this. In it they see the 
suggestion that Angel didn't really love Buffy as much as James loved 
Elizabeth and that it is therefore relatively easier for him to get over 
her. This finds an echo in James own allegations:

James: "You loved someone? With all your heart?"

Angel: "Yes."

James: "No. You didn't. If you had you wouldn't be standing here playing
games with me. You wouldn't be able to, because when she died - or when some 
bastard killed her - it would have killed everything in you."

But this I think is to miss the point. You cannot assume that the only way 
to gage love lies in the violence of the reactions to its loss. In this 
respect James' concept of love for Elizabeth isn't set up as some sort of 
ideal. Far from it. It is quite clearly shown as obsessional to the point of 
being unhealthy. James himself is an idiot. His idea of romance is 
self-indulgent. In Marseilles in 1767 he almost gets himself and Angelus 
killed in order to get a trinket for Elizabeth. As Angelus somewhat wryly 
observes :"This is where love gets you". And are we to believe that revenge 
and suicide is really a measure of one person's love for another? On the 
contrary James' extravagant actions after Elizabeth's death are intended to 
be seen as destructive.

Nor is there any suggestion in the episode that Angel's love for Buffy is in 
any being trivialized. That love is so deeply embedded into the canon of the 
show that the writers don't need to show breast-beating. That is the point. 
They trust that the audience will accept without question that it is there. 
So they can use Angel's quiet and understated acceptance of Buffy's death 
and his willingness to move on to counterpoint not the difference between 
the love he and James felt but rather to counterpoint the individuals they 
were and what they had to live for.

Before he dies James says:

"You think you won 'cause you're still alive? You're such a loser, I lived,
you just existed."

But Cordelia has the perfect answer to that. Even without Angel mentioneing 
the word to her she picks up the accusation he is a loser and exposes it 
ruthlessly:

"If you were a loser, if you were a sick obsessed vampire, you'd go to
a Snod demon or whatever and get your heart cut out. But you're not. You're 
a living, breathing - well a living, anyway - good guy who's still fighting 
and trying to help people. That's not betraying her, that's honoring her."

The truth of these words is unarguable. James lived only for himself and 
Elizabeth. His whole reaction to her death shows that for him there was 
nothing else. Throughout the episode he tries to contrast his love for 
Elizabeth to Angelus' lack of love for Darla and by extension Angel's lack 
of love for anyone. Now it is certainly true that Angelus didn't love Darla 
and the scene between them in Marseilles makes that abundantly clear. When 
he catches up with her in Vienna he neither blames nor forgives her for 
abandoning him to Holtz. There is no suggestion he felt personally betrayed 
by her action. There was nothing between them but their sick little games so 
his only interest lay in continuing to exploit her for his own pleasure:

Darla: "Of course when he finally caught up to me in Vienna I had to pay for 
my sins. Again and again.

Angel: "Can you even begin to fathom the things we did? Of course 
not...you're in love."

And of course he equally casually abandons Darla to Holtz much to James' 
disgust. But there is no real counterpoint here. James' love for Elizabeth 
is simply a different form of self-centeredness. This couple don't care 
about anyone or anything else. They kill for pleasure or in revenge. They 
were going to enjoy themselves with Bobby and his girlfriend. James casually 
killed the vampire lackey who escaped Angel because he lived while Elizabeth 
did not. But even more strikingly James' whole concentration in the 
aftermath of Elizabeth's death is on what he has lost. To the doctor he 
emphasizes that he has paid the price for the cure. To Angel he insists that 
he lived a full life with Elizabeth. The true counterpoint here is between 
James and Elizabeth and Angelus on the one hand and Angel on the other. The 
whole point about season 2 of the series was that Angel's vampire heritage 
meant that he saw the world as revolving about him and the only antidote for 
this was to connect with humanity. Well what we see throughout this episode 
- in great ways and in small - was the way he was doing that. For example 
when he came back from Sri Lanka his present for Wesley, Cordelia and Gunn 
were all perfectly judged, thus showing how well he did know them. He seemed 
to understand Fred a little better than anyone else. At the beginning of the 
episode none of the others seemed that keen on talking to her. Gunn says in 
an offhand way that she's strong. Cordelia seems aware of the fact that she 
is hiding but that is as far as her concern goes. But Angel does talk with 
her. He tells her:

"You just need to take some small steps. Like coming downstairs and hanging 
with us for a little while."

And I think we can assume that he did connect with her here because that is 
eventually what she does - at the wrong moment of course.

That is who Angel is now and that is the significance of Cordelia's words. 
It's not that Buffy's "death" didn't hurt. Cordelia quite correctly 
identified the feelings of guilt Angel had over Buffy's death:

"She was the love of your life and she died. And you weren't there when it 
happened. You couldn't help her fight . . . you couldn't save her . . . you 
couldn't die with her."

And Angel certainly doesn't contradict her analysis. Bobby, the student 
hostage, claimed he loved his girlfriend. But when he was offered his life
if he chose to give her up there was little hesitation:

Elizabeth: "Come on now, life's about choices. You or her, what's it gonna 
be?"

Bobby: "Her . . . take her. Oh God . . .

Elizabeth: "Gee Bobby, you call that love?"

Can we be in ay doubt but that Angel would willingly have sacrificed himself 
for Buffy in a heartbeat? Still while his feelings of guilt may be both 
irrational and futile, they are real for all that. The important point 
though is that he was dealing with them. In the teaser Angel had a cathartic 
encounter with some demon monks from which he emerged tired and bloody but 
relaxed. And there was some by-play about getting drunk in Las Vegas 
performing the same function as that fight. This was not intended to suggest 
that he could get over Buffy's death quickly or easily by superficial means. 
Rather he was dealing successfully with that death because there is now more 
to Angel's life than her - something else to live for and to fight for. The 
fight with the demons (or the alternative remedy) was no more than an 
emotional release - a way of letting out suppressed feelings. It was in fact 
more a symbol of Angel's success in coping than the reason he coped.

In contrast to Angel all James had was Elizabeth and his obsession with her. 
His life had no other meaning and no other significance. I think Cordelia 
was quite right when she identified who the real loser was here.

It is very interesting therefore to look at what the writers were able to do 
thematically here. As I have already suggested this episode serves as a 
clear illustration of how far Angel has moved on from his state of mind in 
season 2. We saw in the "old" Angel the same obsessiveness; the same
concentration on how things impacted on him. In "the Trial" he lost 
something precious to him. As a result he lost all hope for himself and for 
the future. In "Happy Anniversary" for example the Host chided him in the 
following terms:

"If the world were to end tonight, would it really, in your heart of hearts, 
be such a terrible thing? Now, now, sweetie, is that a fun place to be?"

In the self-destructive thirst for revenge was he very different in 
"Reunion" and "Reprise" from James? After all in the later episode in 
particular the desire to kill the Senior Partners of Wolfram and Hart was so 
strong that he was perfectly prepared to die in the process. If he had been 
offered the same bargain as James he would probably have taken it. But now 
in the contrast between him and James we see very powerfully illustrated 
just how far Angel has moved on and just what a gulf there no is between 
himself and what he once was. And I think that this is a very clear and 
powerful way of articulating where Angel now is and which because it serves 
as a bridge between the themes of season 2 and season 3 works exceptionally 
well.

And its great advantage is that at the same time we can also see how far he 
has moved on in another sense. At one point Angel muses to himself:

"In all those years no one ever mattered, not like she did. And now she's 
gone. Forever."

And, as I suggested at the beginning of this piece, in the years between his 
encounter with Whistler in Mew York 1996 and his departure from Sunnydale in 
1999 everything he did was for Buffy. Here still it was more a case of 
nothing else mattered, not just no-one else. Even the aftermath of 
"Sanctuary" when he did what he thought was right even though it hurt her 
served to illustrate the hold she still had on him. He was the one who went 
to Sunnydale to make peace with here and he was the one who effectively 
conceded to her. The fact that Angel was prepared to apologize to Buffy even 
though he knew deep down he was right and she was wrong speaks volumes about 
how important she still was to him. So what we see in "Hearthrob" is how 
Angel as a character is now forced to stand completely on his own feet. I 
know that that will not be a popular thing with everyone. But it seems to me 
to reflect the reality of the relationship between the two shows. In concept 
and theme they were different from day one but both shows were about one 
single individual and the nature of the ties between the eponymous heroes
was such that they could not help but continue to be connected. Obviously 
someone feels that connection must now be interrupted if not severed 
completely. And by showing not so much that Angel moves on but why he can 
move on the writers have I think done that very well.

And I think that there is another way in which the writers handling of Angel 
here is a positive. Inevitably a great deal was going to turn on how the 
audience reacted to Angel's grief on a personal level. The obvious course to 
take here would have been to show Angel turn in on himself completely in a 
huge guilt trip. The danger there is that (for all the reasons I have 
discussed) this would have been too self-indulgent and too much like the 
Angel we had seen before. And finally it would simply have been too 
one-dimensional. There is after all only so much you can do with grief. In 
other words it would have been predictable, uninteresting and for that 
reason shorn of much of its impact. What we got was a reaction I didn't 
expect. Angel was able to move on in the same way a soldier picks up a 
standard dropped by a fallen colleague. But he felt guilty for that reason. 
This was a reaction that was interesting not least because it was 
unexpected. But it was also believable. It reflected the changes that Angel 
had undergone and because of that it was ultimately a more adult and 
therefore a more admirable way of dealing with grief. But at the same time 
it did not minimize the grief and it paid due respect to Buffy as a 
character and to her past with Angel.

Also see: Jess' blog on the subject (less evenhanded, but certainly a lovely rant)

Agree or Disagree