Some People Are Hard To Be Friends With

I really enjoy the dilemma Gage and Isaacs have presented Faith with so far in Angel & Faith. Namely, the dilemma of how to be a good friend to someone making bad decisions.

It didn't do Angel any good to sit around brooding (even if he is very good at it), so anything that gets him up and moving sounds good at first. Then it turns out he's decided resurrecting Giles will fix everything. Which, look, back when the Scoobies brought Buffy back, Spike was the only one who realized it was a stupid idea. When even Spike - impulsive, damn the consequences, do anything for love, including that, so whatta ya say now, Meat Loaf? Spike - knows something is unwise, that should be a tipoff it's not the smart play.

You'd think Angel, after all the time he's spent 'helping the helpless' to atone for his centuries of horrific acts, would know it can't be made all better with one stroke. He's the one who told Faith they never stop paying for their crimes*. Still, the big, grand gestures are a lot easier than the daily grind, so it's understandable he sometimes forgets.. It's just forgetting usually involves distancing himself from his friends, or taking over an evil law firm.

Now the problem becomes how far to support him. Faith knows this is a bad idea, she had a discussion with Giles about the very subject (with regards to the vulcanologist she killed in Season 3 of Buffy). She also knows Angel is too bull-headed to be talked out of it easily. If she threatens to withdraw her help if he doesn't drop this, she knows Angel will just go on without her. So she sticks with him, and makes her own plans to make him human with the Mohra demon blood.

I wouldn't say it's a good plan. There are people Angel could save as a vampire, that will die if he's only human. Not that he wouldn't try to save them, which is the critical flaw in her plan. Just because he wouldn't be a vampire, doesn't mean he'd stop trying to fight evil. Which means he'll wind up dead for real soon enough.

Also, if Faith succeeds, there's a very real chance Angel will get his nose bent out of shape over it, which could cause a rift between the two. This probably wouldn't be good for either of them, since neither one has a lot of people they can call friends, while they each have enemies lining up around the block. I think it'd be worse for Faith, to lose one of the only people who ever believed in her, or gave any sign they cared about her. I believe the official list is her first Watcher (Dead), Giles (Dead), Angel**. Maybe she'd be OK with it, feeling she did the right thing, but if he goes out and tries to fight evil as a human, and winds up dead, I could see her taking that badly.

That's kind of how things go for them, they support each other, regardless of what it costs them. Angel protected Faith from the flames of Buffy's self-righteousness, which didn't do the tentative "exes as friends" thing he and Buffy had any good. And Faith nearly killed herself capturing Angelus so he could be reensouled. Which is one of the things I like about those two, that they'll go to the wall for each other. This situation's a little different for Faith, though. A grand sacrifice isn't likely to straighten Angel out. If anything, he'd add Faith to his list of people to resurrect. What she has to do is figure out some way to convince him to redirect this drive towards something constructive. Which can be tricky. If she pushes too hard, he'll get defensive, and trying to force him off this path (by making him human) won't do anything but breed resentment, and lead him to carry out his plans on the sly.

Words have never been Faith's strong suit, so it'll be interesting to see if she can talk Angel down, or if she'll even try.

* Back in Season 4 of Angel, when they took the magic drug fueled trip through Angel's head.

** Xander might have qualified briefly during Season 3, but she blew that to Hell with the nearly killing him and all.