The Mayor shakes up Buffy and Angel’s relationship in Choices by making a speech about how he saw them:
“What kind of a life can you offer her? I don’t see a lot of Sunday picnics in the offing. I see skulking in the shadows, hiding from the sun. She’s a blossoming young girl and you want to keep her from the life she should have until it has passed her by. My god! I think that’s a little selfish. Is that what you came back from hell for? Is that your greater purpose?”
His insight makes the couple break up in the next episode, The Prom, and also encourages Angel to look at his “higher purpose”, which leads to his Investigation Agency in Angel.
July 1st, 2005 at 5:32 am
The mayor’s insight wasn’t all that prompted their break up. Joyce’s talk with Angel at his home seemed to be what really provoked him to break off the romance.
July 1st, 2005 at 8:13 am
But it was the mayor’s insight that first makes angel think that there is no future. Joyce is just confirming it when she visits him
July 1st, 2005 at 3:50 pm
Yup. That’s why I said that the mayor’s insight “wasn’t *all* that prompted their break up.” And actually, I wouldn’t assume that this was the very *first* time that Angel considered it.
One other element of the mayor’s speech: I think he’s doing it partly for Faith. He inadvertently hurts Faith’s feelings by telling her: “If Buffy Summers walked in here and said she wanted to switch to our side, I’d say, No thanks, sister, I’ve got all the Slayer one man could ever need.” Then he sees by Faith’s response that this mention of Buffy hurt her. He says to her about Buffy: “She deserves that poor excuse for a creature of the night. You, on the other hand, can do better.” Later, he has no reason to want to “help out” Buffy and Angel by showing them the trouble they’re heading for if they try to make a life/unlife together. But telling them this is a way to console Faith. And it’s sour grapes–a subject Xander brings up to Cordelia regarding colleges (themes usually do show up more than once in an episode). The mayor was perfectly fine with the idea of Faith and Angel being together, until Angel made it clear he wasn’t interested.
It’s funny that, just before he trashes Buffy and Angel’s prospects for a future, he tells Angel: “Still don’t understand why it couldn’t work out with you and my Faith”–as if Faith and Angel wouldn’t have had the very same problem he points to. Kinda exposes the mayor’s motives.
Of course, the mayor does simply like to pontificate too.
August 30th, 2005 at 10:45 pm
I imagine he’s just trying to shake them up - kind of a ‘divide-and-conquer’ strategy.