Angel & Faith #6 offered a pretty solid rebuttal to Harmony's "don't waste time thinking about past mistakes" philosophy from the previous issue. Which was fine with me, as that attitude had really bothered me. Not surprised me, this is Harmony we're talking about, but it did irritate. Maybe because I have a tendency to dwell on missteps myself, but more because coming from Harmony, it's a feint.
Harmony doesn't look back on all the people she killed as a vampire because it would take away time she could be spending thinking about herself. She can try and frame it as concentrating on what she can do, not what she did, but it's a matter of self-absorption. Just as Harmony doesn't espouse this idea of not siring or even biting without permission out of some high ideal. It has the benefit of a) maintaining her celebrity, and b) keeping her from being staked by some Slayer who, unlike Buffy, doesn't regard her as a complete joke. I'm surprised she was so worried about that video. Seems like the sort of thing a celebrity would play off as a youthful indiscretion, or as a weakness she could play for sympathy in some public apology which ends with Harmony pledging to go into rehab. Works all the time in our world with drugs, booze, and politically incorrect statements. Why not in theirs over vampiric-related issues?
Beyond that, the reason Faith and (especially) Angel can't ignore their pasts is because their pasts are still an active threat. Sure, Angel could just try washing his hands of Drusilla. That's what he did for the first century after the curse dropped the Soul Hammer on him, but that didn't mean she stopped killing people, with or without Spike and Darla. Now she's here, and she's sane, so I'm curious to see how Angel deals with her. Hopefully more efficiently than that half-assed immolation he tried on her and Darla during, what Season 2 of his series? I don't mean kill her necessarily, it might be possible to reason with her. So far, if she's breaking the "no siring/no biting without consent" rules, she's being sneaky about it.
As for Faith, she tried ignoring past mistakes, and it lead to her working for the Mayor, ending up in a coma, and then in prison. Going the other direction is producing substantially better results thus far, even if she did befriend that snooty British Slayer, only to end up killing her. And she's using her mistakes to guide these younger Slayers so they don't step on the same land mines. That being said, this appearance of her "father" is definitely trouble, and you could consider that a part of her past she's tried very hard to forget. I don't know whether he's real or a fake, though my money's on fake. Even if he is real, I have doubt he's there out of some altruistic desire to reconnect with his daughter. More likely he thinks he can get money or fame, or even more likely, he's in debt to some demon like Vinnie the Shark. Perhaps Angel can try the immolation thing again, only on the alleged Mr. Lehane?
Just don't do another half-assed job of it, Peaches.
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