![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I enjoyed the final episode of Angel. I don't think it holds up at all well to extended scrutiny, but I still enjoyed it, and I thought it was much better than the Buffy finale.
Despite all the ranting I plan to do, I watched the episode twice. We begin with a rant about Lindsey. More rants may follow.
My biggest problem with the final episode was Lindsey. Oh, the acting was fine, and the character was consistent within the episode. But I had to pretend Lindsey had always been that way, when the truth is that character consistency went to the winds for him, as for others.
I liked the Lindsey's development through the first two seasons of the show, back when Wolfram and Hart was a law firm that often -felt- like a law firm. There are two basic turning points for Lindsay: when he goes to Angel about the magical blind kids and when he leaves Wolfram and Hart.
A. Blind Kids
I think Angel is correct when he describes Lindsay's decision to warn him about the kids as panic, not a true change of heart. Holland is the one who makes the episode shine here. Harold Feld loved all the little touches that made W&H feel like a real law firm that happened to have access to black magic, mind scanners, and demons. Yes, he told me, if they could get away with it, law firms would love to shoot those who took clients with them when they left the firm.
And Harold told me that he could feel the power of Holland's offer to Lindsay at the end of the episode. And Josh pointed out a lovely bit of multilayered meanings in the scene in Holland's office just after Lindsay's co-worker was shot. Holland makes it clear that he knows what Lindsay is up to and that he could, with a nod of his head, have Lindsay killed. He then explains why he won't.
It sounds like Holland is issuing a threat in this scene, and that is not inaccurate. But, as Josh pointed out, it is also a temptation scene. Holland says, essentially, "I could have you killed with a nod of my head." He is also saying, "Would you like to be able to kill someone with a nod of your head?" Lindsay is almost certainly not hearing it at the time, but he must be aware, if only subconsiously, of the question when Holland offers him Holland's old job. "You can have the power of life and death over others" is the unstated implication.
Yes, accepting is evil. And it makes perfect sense that Lindsay would choose to be evil. Angel Investigations treated him like shit when he risked his life to help the right side. Holland rewarded him for betrayal. And, while Angel's choices of whom to trust are gender based, he was right that Lindsay was panicking, not repenting.
B. Leaving LA
Lindsay's next turning point is when he leaves Wolfram and Hart. At this point, he is not panicking. He is disgusted with the firm. He no doubt has unresolved issues with Angel and Darla, but these just aren't important for the next couple of seasons.
C. Back Again
Fifth season Lindsay has had his character completely rewritten. What is his motive? To Get Angel. Why? Because Angel has the power at Wolfram and Hart that Lindsay wanted.
This makes utterly no sense. Lindsay was offered more power and turned it down. He changed his mind? Er, not buying it with no reference to it. I'd first thought Lindsay wanted to bring down W&H, and thought Angel had been corrupted. This would have been more fun.
But no, Lindsay's jealous of Angel. So, his ultimate plan is -- what, again?
First, he brings Spike back as a ghost and then makes him corporeal again as part of a plot to
a) mess with Angel's head and
b) convince the Senior Partners that they have been "backing the wrong horse".
So far, not a bad plan for those two goals. And masquerading as Doyle could have been a nice touch.
But in practice, it was less polished. Okay, we have corporeal Spike, rival claimant for the Shansu prophecy. And it does mess with Angel's head.
And it also, apparently, drives people crazy because of the cosmic rift caused by having 2 champions. And it makes the conduit to the Senior Partners vanish.
I guess we're supposed to assume Lindsay and Eve set up the craziness and vanishing conduit. I wish this had been explained. I wish some explanation of how it had been done had been given. But I think the craziness and the chalice of Mountain Dew make little sense. That is, what is this supposed to accomplish? I think to convince Angel and Spike that the threat is real. I gather Lindsay'd hoped Spike would kill Angel to get to the chalice. But why, if he has such a personal hard on for Angel? How could he know the two would arrive so close together and be twits? Sure, Angel's head has been thoroughly played with because Spike won the fight, but getting that result seems merely fortuitous for Lindsay. And did he have no concern for how flat his scheme felt once the chalice is revealed as such an obvious fake? Such dopey execution feels like saying, "Well, if it works, cool. If not, who cares? It supplies the week's plot." And all of this is with me not worrying about why Lindsay and Eve aren't concerned about the consequences of driving folks crazy -- if only from the Senior Partners.
D. Psychic Monsters
The next attempt I recall was to put Angel into a coma, then get him rescued by Spike. This serves what function?
Presumably, the goal is to play with Angel's head some more, especially what Lindsay playing Doyle for Spike. But it requires Lindsay to have a near telepathic comprehension of Angel's mind, and enough precognition to know exactly what crack Spike will make about helping the helpless. I don't buy it.
This is ignoring the question of why 2 critters are needed, whether Eve knows the full plan, and why she is allowed to walk around freely. Because she's a liason to the Senior Partners? Who have gone to some trouble to recruit people who have shown no compunction about killing W&H employees, even after they took over the LA Offices? Well, Eve's a woman, and I think the series shows that Angel consistently gives women more of a chance than men. Come to that, most of the regulars do, too.
I suppose we could say that, at this point, Lindsay seems consistently anti-Senior Partners and anti-Angel, unconcerned with whether Angel dies or not. You know, that would have been neat: It not being about Angel, but about the Senior Partners, with Lindsay seeing Angel merely as their latest tool.
E. Vision Girl
So now, I think we come to the Cordelia episode. There, Lindsay's plan, as Avram put it, seems to boil down to "Beat Angel up, gloat, and release a monster to kill him." Frankly, this is boring coming from a man who seemed to have bigger plans. Granted, he was rushed by Cordelia's presence, but it's still a bit of a let down.
And W&H have a monster to kill Angel, Just In Case? Did I get that right? If so, where was it in the series' last minute? If so, um... Aren't there faster and easier ways to kill a vampire, starting with switching his Necro-tempered glass windows for ordinary Folger's crystals?
Possibly more on the Cordelia plot later. For now, I'm just focusing on Lindsey.
F. Of Hell Dimensions and Diabolical Intentions
All right, the Senior Partners grab Lindsey as soon as his magic protection goes away, and Eve goes into hiding. My assumption is that the SPs are ticked at Lindsey for messing with Angel. After all, the SPs have their own plans for Angel, and Lindsey really didn't mess up any other part of W&H, afai recall. Well, except make the employees go crazy for a day -- hey, maybe that explains why Angel and Spike were twits who'd rather fight for dominance than save the world that episode? -- but W&H may not be too concerned with that. Employee mortality and morality is, after all, Angel's problem.
I'm not sure why Lindsey is being tortured, but not interrogated. Then again, maybe he knows nothing of interest to the Senior Partners. After all, they have no problem making the wards supposedly making his house invisible when they're ready to deal with Eve. Hm, Lindsey's not dead, so even if it's only his name on the lease, why can Angel and Spike waltz in uninvited?
Why don't the Senior Partners tell Angel anything about what they think Lindsey was up to and why? The have a conduit again. Or they could send a memo. Or go through Hamilton.
Why doesn't Angel -- or any of his friends -- care what and why Lindsey was up to and what the Senior Partners think of it all? Why aren't they interested in the Spell of Hiding from Senior Partners?
And why is Lindsey's Big Info old news that, as Angel said, we heard years ago?
G. Black Thorns
Oh, wait. I guess Lindsey knew more after all. He just forgot to mention the Circle of the Black Thorn. And his big plan was actually to get invited to become a member. Did I get that right?
If I go along with Lindsey's new personality, okay, that's a goal that makes sense. But, how was he going to get invited? Killing Angel? Huh? If Angel needed to betray a lieutenant, Lindsay just needed to kill a vampire he didn't much like? Not even at least betray Eve?
And are we really supposed to believe that Lindsey is so hopelessly, irredeemably evil that even Lorne agrees he must die? Yes, the scene was great. Both actors were great. But I don't buy it.
Sure, it is possible that Lindsëy could become what he was in Season 5. But, because fiction must be more realistic than reality, I need an explanation the writers never provided. The Lindsey who left LA was not panicking. He was disgusted with Wolfram and Hart. He gave up what he now claims Angel stole from him. I need more convincing scripts.
And Lorne's verdict on Lindsey because Lorne heard Lindsey sing? Also not buying it. Lorne has been wrong enough times and Lindsey complicated enough that I don't buy that he will "never be part of the solution". If someone other than Lindsey had been introduced who did what Lindsey did, I might buy Lorne's judgement of this hypothetical person. Heck, I'd buy it if it were Eve. Or Harmony. But that's part of the gender rant, which is a different rant.
H. An Alternate Reality
In addition to feeling like I need an explanation of how the Lindsey from season 2 became the Lindsey from season 5, I have one other problem with season 5 Lindsey and his plot: They're dull.
Here's how Josh and I would have done it.
Lindsey comes back, planning to mess with Wolfram & Hart and Angel, who he thinks has gone bad. He still brings Spike back, but has more coherent plots and better scripts. Angel gets him back from the Hell dimension, and the Senior Partners have more of a motive for torturing a Lindsey trying to destroy them than for torturing a corrupt Lindsey merely making a power play.
Okay, run the Lindsey bit of the second to last episode more or less as it was, but change a bit of the Angel-Lindsey scene in the last ep. Or don't change it, but make it mean what we thought it meant, as modified by the alternate Lindsey personality.
That is, Lindsey and Angel talked between episodes. A lot. Angel either convinced Lindsey he was still trying to be a good guy. Or, for a darker story, he tortured Lindsey to get more information than that crappy apocalypse twaddle. After all, Gunn's condemned to a hell dimension for this guy. And it would allow some build up to Dark Angel, as opposed to the utter lack of suspence I felt in the penultimate episode.
But either way, this is how he learns of the Circle of the Black Thorns. And he is able to infiltrate it where Lindsey wasn't, and Lindsey agrees to help take it down, now realizing Angel is on his side, more or less. But Lindsey's job is not to take down a few demons.
No, the man who knows more than anyone else about the Senior Partners actually does know something about them in this scenario. He is the key to taking the fight to the Wolf, Ram, and Hart themselves. You know, an actually useful goal, while the rest of the group thinks they're making a glorious, if suicidal and somewhat stupid final stand, taking out the Thorns.
This could tie in nicely to a theory Beth Bartley had when we inflicted the episode on her. When Angel made his speech about taking out every single Black Thorn, she thought that Angel was counting himself as a Thorn to be destroyed, and that he wasn't telling the others. This could work especially well if there had been a nice build up to Dark Angel.
I. Alternate Alternate
Or, alternately, I could take season 5 Lindsey, either with some other character in the role, or an explanation of why he changed. This explanation could be that the Senior Partners do not forget and played mind games to make him do what he did.
Think about it. The Senior Partners have absolutely no trouble making the magical wards Lindsey put on his place vanish. Angel and Spike can waltz into the place without an invitation. The Senior Partners don't mind that Lindsey was rescued and that he talked to Angel.
And I wondered whether the Senior Partners and the Powers that Be might be one and the same. In this version, they are.
Jasmine, a Power that Was, was no friend of the Senior Partners and no friend of the Powers that Be. Fourth Season could almost get me to believe that the Jasmine arc had been planned from the beginning, but that's another rant.
Cordelia waking up in 5th Season kept Angel from leaving Wolfram and Hart, and that's what started me wondering if they were the Powers that Be. This would also work with the Lindsey of the previous theory, who would know this, and who would have targetted Cordelia because he knew she was a pawn of evil forces, despite her best intentions.
But back to this theory. Cordelia's parting kiss gives Angel a vision. This vision is something the Senior Partners want Angel to have. They want Angel to destroy or corrupt his friends and himself while weeding out some pawns the Senior Partners no longer need.
This theory was prompted by comments from Harold Feld and a gentleman responding to Peter David's post on the last episode of Angel. Both made excellent points about the moral fallacies of the episode and of the implications Angel's actions from killing Drogan, thus leaving the Well unguarded, to sacrificing Lorne's innocence by having him kill Lindsey.
The advantage of this theory is that it takes the last season pretty much as written. But I like the earlier theory better.
That's it for now. Got more rants to contemplate.
Despite all the ranting I plan to do, I watched the episode twice. We begin with a rant about Lindsey. More rants may follow.
My biggest problem with the final episode was Lindsey. Oh, the acting was fine, and the character was consistent within the episode. But I had to pretend Lindsey had always been that way, when the truth is that character consistency went to the winds for him, as for others.
I liked the Lindsey's development through the first two seasons of the show, back when Wolfram and Hart was a law firm that often -felt- like a law firm. There are two basic turning points for Lindsay: when he goes to Angel about the magical blind kids and when he leaves Wolfram and Hart.
A. Blind Kids
I think Angel is correct when he describes Lindsay's decision to warn him about the kids as panic, not a true change of heart. Holland is the one who makes the episode shine here. Harold Feld loved all the little touches that made W&H feel like a real law firm that happened to have access to black magic, mind scanners, and demons. Yes, he told me, if they could get away with it, law firms would love to shoot those who took clients with them when they left the firm.
And Harold told me that he could feel the power of Holland's offer to Lindsay at the end of the episode. And Josh pointed out a lovely bit of multilayered meanings in the scene in Holland's office just after Lindsay's co-worker was shot. Holland makes it clear that he knows what Lindsay is up to and that he could, with a nod of his head, have Lindsay killed. He then explains why he won't.
It sounds like Holland is issuing a threat in this scene, and that is not inaccurate. But, as Josh pointed out, it is also a temptation scene. Holland says, essentially, "I could have you killed with a nod of my head." He is also saying, "Would you like to be able to kill someone with a nod of your head?" Lindsay is almost certainly not hearing it at the time, but he must be aware, if only subconsiously, of the question when Holland offers him Holland's old job. "You can have the power of life and death over others" is the unstated implication.
Yes, accepting is evil. And it makes perfect sense that Lindsay would choose to be evil. Angel Investigations treated him like shit when he risked his life to help the right side. Holland rewarded him for betrayal. And, while Angel's choices of whom to trust are gender based, he was right that Lindsay was panicking, not repenting.
B. Leaving LA
Lindsay's next turning point is when he leaves Wolfram and Hart. At this point, he is not panicking. He is disgusted with the firm. He no doubt has unresolved issues with Angel and Darla, but these just aren't important for the next couple of seasons.
C. Back Again
Fifth season Lindsay has had his character completely rewritten. What is his motive? To Get Angel. Why? Because Angel has the power at Wolfram and Hart that Lindsay wanted.
This makes utterly no sense. Lindsay was offered more power and turned it down. He changed his mind? Er, not buying it with no reference to it. I'd first thought Lindsay wanted to bring down W&H, and thought Angel had been corrupted. This would have been more fun.
But no, Lindsay's jealous of Angel. So, his ultimate plan is -- what, again?
First, he brings Spike back as a ghost and then makes him corporeal again as part of a plot to
a) mess with Angel's head and
b) convince the Senior Partners that they have been "backing the wrong horse".
So far, not a bad plan for those two goals. And masquerading as Doyle could have been a nice touch.
But in practice, it was less polished. Okay, we have corporeal Spike, rival claimant for the Shansu prophecy. And it does mess with Angel's head.
And it also, apparently, drives people crazy because of the cosmic rift caused by having 2 champions. And it makes the conduit to the Senior Partners vanish.
I guess we're supposed to assume Lindsay and Eve set up the craziness and vanishing conduit. I wish this had been explained. I wish some explanation of how it had been done had been given. But I think the craziness and the chalice of Mountain Dew make little sense. That is, what is this supposed to accomplish? I think to convince Angel and Spike that the threat is real. I gather Lindsay'd hoped Spike would kill Angel to get to the chalice. But why, if he has such a personal hard on for Angel? How could he know the two would arrive so close together and be twits? Sure, Angel's head has been thoroughly played with because Spike won the fight, but getting that result seems merely fortuitous for Lindsay. And did he have no concern for how flat his scheme felt once the chalice is revealed as such an obvious fake? Such dopey execution feels like saying, "Well, if it works, cool. If not, who cares? It supplies the week's plot." And all of this is with me not worrying about why Lindsay and Eve aren't concerned about the consequences of driving folks crazy -- if only from the Senior Partners.
D. Psychic Monsters
The next attempt I recall was to put Angel into a coma, then get him rescued by Spike. This serves what function?
Presumably, the goal is to play with Angel's head some more, especially what Lindsay playing Doyle for Spike. But it requires Lindsay to have a near telepathic comprehension of Angel's mind, and enough precognition to know exactly what crack Spike will make about helping the helpless. I don't buy it.
This is ignoring the question of why 2 critters are needed, whether Eve knows the full plan, and why she is allowed to walk around freely. Because she's a liason to the Senior Partners? Who have gone to some trouble to recruit people who have shown no compunction about killing W&H employees, even after they took over the LA Offices? Well, Eve's a woman, and I think the series shows that Angel consistently gives women more of a chance than men. Come to that, most of the regulars do, too.
I suppose we could say that, at this point, Lindsay seems consistently anti-Senior Partners and anti-Angel, unconcerned with whether Angel dies or not. You know, that would have been neat: It not being about Angel, but about the Senior Partners, with Lindsay seeing Angel merely as their latest tool.
E. Vision Girl
So now, I think we come to the Cordelia episode. There, Lindsay's plan, as Avram put it, seems to boil down to "Beat Angel up, gloat, and release a monster to kill him." Frankly, this is boring coming from a man who seemed to have bigger plans. Granted, he was rushed by Cordelia's presence, but it's still a bit of a let down.
And W&H have a monster to kill Angel, Just In Case? Did I get that right? If so, where was it in the series' last minute? If so, um... Aren't there faster and easier ways to kill a vampire, starting with switching his Necro-tempered glass windows for ordinary Folger's crystals?
Possibly more on the Cordelia plot later. For now, I'm just focusing on Lindsey.
F. Of Hell Dimensions and Diabolical Intentions
All right, the Senior Partners grab Lindsey as soon as his magic protection goes away, and Eve goes into hiding. My assumption is that the SPs are ticked at Lindsey for messing with Angel. After all, the SPs have their own plans for Angel, and Lindsey really didn't mess up any other part of W&H, afai recall. Well, except make the employees go crazy for a day -- hey, maybe that explains why Angel and Spike were twits who'd rather fight for dominance than save the world that episode? -- but W&H may not be too concerned with that. Employee mortality and morality is, after all, Angel's problem.
I'm not sure why Lindsey is being tortured, but not interrogated. Then again, maybe he knows nothing of interest to the Senior Partners. After all, they have no problem making the wards supposedly making his house invisible when they're ready to deal with Eve. Hm, Lindsey's not dead, so even if it's only his name on the lease, why can Angel and Spike waltz in uninvited?
Why don't the Senior Partners tell Angel anything about what they think Lindsey was up to and why? The have a conduit again. Or they could send a memo. Or go through Hamilton.
Why doesn't Angel -- or any of his friends -- care what and why Lindsey was up to and what the Senior Partners think of it all? Why aren't they interested in the Spell of Hiding from Senior Partners?
And why is Lindsey's Big Info old news that, as Angel said, we heard years ago?
G. Black Thorns
Oh, wait. I guess Lindsey knew more after all. He just forgot to mention the Circle of the Black Thorn. And his big plan was actually to get invited to become a member. Did I get that right?
If I go along with Lindsey's new personality, okay, that's a goal that makes sense. But, how was he going to get invited? Killing Angel? Huh? If Angel needed to betray a lieutenant, Lindsay just needed to kill a vampire he didn't much like? Not even at least betray Eve?
And are we really supposed to believe that Lindsey is so hopelessly, irredeemably evil that even Lorne agrees he must die? Yes, the scene was great. Both actors were great. But I don't buy it.
Sure, it is possible that Lindsëy could become what he was in Season 5. But, because fiction must be more realistic than reality, I need an explanation the writers never provided. The Lindsey who left LA was not panicking. He was disgusted with Wolfram and Hart. He gave up what he now claims Angel stole from him. I need more convincing scripts.
And Lorne's verdict on Lindsey because Lorne heard Lindsey sing? Also not buying it. Lorne has been wrong enough times and Lindsey complicated enough that I don't buy that he will "never be part of the solution". If someone other than Lindsey had been introduced who did what Lindsey did, I might buy Lorne's judgement of this hypothetical person. Heck, I'd buy it if it were Eve. Or Harmony. But that's part of the gender rant, which is a different rant.
H. An Alternate Reality
In addition to feeling like I need an explanation of how the Lindsey from season 2 became the Lindsey from season 5, I have one other problem with season 5 Lindsey and his plot: They're dull.
Here's how Josh and I would have done it.
Lindsey comes back, planning to mess with Wolfram & Hart and Angel, who he thinks has gone bad. He still brings Spike back, but has more coherent plots and better scripts. Angel gets him back from the Hell dimension, and the Senior Partners have more of a motive for torturing a Lindsey trying to destroy them than for torturing a corrupt Lindsey merely making a power play.
Okay, run the Lindsey bit of the second to last episode more or less as it was, but change a bit of the Angel-Lindsey scene in the last ep. Or don't change it, but make it mean what we thought it meant, as modified by the alternate Lindsey personality.
That is, Lindsey and Angel talked between episodes. A lot. Angel either convinced Lindsey he was still trying to be a good guy. Or, for a darker story, he tortured Lindsey to get more information than that crappy apocalypse twaddle. After all, Gunn's condemned to a hell dimension for this guy. And it would allow some build up to Dark Angel, as opposed to the utter lack of suspence I felt in the penultimate episode.
But either way, this is how he learns of the Circle of the Black Thorns. And he is able to infiltrate it where Lindsey wasn't, and Lindsey agrees to help take it down, now realizing Angel is on his side, more or less. But Lindsey's job is not to take down a few demons.
No, the man who knows more than anyone else about the Senior Partners actually does know something about them in this scenario. He is the key to taking the fight to the Wolf, Ram, and Hart themselves. You know, an actually useful goal, while the rest of the group thinks they're making a glorious, if suicidal and somewhat stupid final stand, taking out the Thorns.
This could tie in nicely to a theory Beth Bartley had when we inflicted the episode on her. When Angel made his speech about taking out every single Black Thorn, she thought that Angel was counting himself as a Thorn to be destroyed, and that he wasn't telling the others. This could work especially well if there had been a nice build up to Dark Angel.
I. Alternate Alternate
Or, alternately, I could take season 5 Lindsey, either with some other character in the role, or an explanation of why he changed. This explanation could be that the Senior Partners do not forget and played mind games to make him do what he did.
Think about it. The Senior Partners have absolutely no trouble making the magical wards Lindsey put on his place vanish. Angel and Spike can waltz into the place without an invitation. The Senior Partners don't mind that Lindsey was rescued and that he talked to Angel.
And I wondered whether the Senior Partners and the Powers that Be might be one and the same. In this version, they are.
Jasmine, a Power that Was, was no friend of the Senior Partners and no friend of the Powers that Be. Fourth Season could almost get me to believe that the Jasmine arc had been planned from the beginning, but that's another rant.
Cordelia waking up in 5th Season kept Angel from leaving Wolfram and Hart, and that's what started me wondering if they were the Powers that Be. This would also work with the Lindsey of the previous theory, who would know this, and who would have targetted Cordelia because he knew she was a pawn of evil forces, despite her best intentions.
But back to this theory. Cordelia's parting kiss gives Angel a vision. This vision is something the Senior Partners want Angel to have. They want Angel to destroy or corrupt his friends and himself while weeding out some pawns the Senior Partners no longer need.
This theory was prompted by comments from Harold Feld and a gentleman responding to Peter David's post on the last episode of Angel. Both made excellent points about the moral fallacies of the episode and of the implications Angel's actions from killing Drogan, thus leaving the Well unguarded, to sacrificing Lorne's innocence by having him kill Lindsey.
The advantage of this theory is that it takes the last season pretty much as written. But I like the earlier theory better.
That's it for now. Got more rants to contemplate.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
Okay so, yeah. Lindsay can't decide if he wants to kill Angel, be him, or sleep with him. His leaving in Dead End is as much the younger brother grown up as anything else -- I used to have something to prove to you and to myself, that I'm as good as you, but I've done It now, whatever It is (doing the right thing for the right reasons, giving two fingers to authority, beating Angel with a sledgehammer, who knows?) I'm convinced we're square, you've given me some gruding acknowledgement of it, and I can let go of the rope now, which is the only way we're ever gonna end this tug of war.
In that sense, I could buy a Lindsay who was doing a pretty good job of moving on in his life until he found out Angel took the job with W&H. And then it's kinda like having the big brother you used to compete with marry the one that got away. Sure, you were better off out of it, but that's not the *point*. She was yours to leave, not his to take. All of those old feelings come rushing back, for both objects. And what if he succeeds where you had to walk away? What does that say about you?
In that sense, Lindsay's attitude towards Angel and W&H parallels Angel's attitude toward Spike and Buffy. So Lindsay comes back, like poking at a sore tooth or returning to the scene of the crime, and his agenda is not to make Angel die, or even lose, as it is to make himself Angel's equal again, one way or another.
One way is to knock Angel off his pedastal -- and I think all the Spike stuff was directed to that end. Another is to pull himself up to the same level, with his Nepalese kung fu and his circle power play. I'm honestly not clear on whether Lindsay himself meant to take on the Senior Partners or to join them -- I'm not even sure Lindsay was sure. I'm not sure how much it mattered to him. Angel could accept him as archnemesis or as an ally, it was still acceptance.
(The slash also makes more sense out of Lindsay sacrificing Angel to get into the circle, though I for one am convinced he had Eve slated for the chopping block all along. He never even seemed slightly interested in her apart from her utility.)
I think that's why he took so much glee in the equally matched swordfight, and didn't seem to care if he died -- and why he was so hurt by Lorne in the end.
I agree that it didn't always make too much sense in the details, it definitely wasn't as well written as it could have been, and the motivation was far from clear, giving the effect of Lindsay wanting whatever the plot needed him to want. This is way more work than I should have to do to make it make sense. But I do think it is at least one plausible motivation that makes his attitude and behavior pretty consistant.
From:
no subject
I do like the idea of Lindsay having Eve slated for the chopping block. But we didn't see it.
There are some shows where there are some things I'm willing to take as given, even if I have to read between the lines. Sometimes. But not Angel, not this stuff. Yes, Mr. Author, you really do need to explain. And yes, the explanations do need to be consistent, and to make sense.