He's Really Not All That Bad

[deird_lj]

You know, I think Giles has a bit of an undeserved reputation.


(By the way, I did actually mean that spoiler warning, so gabrielleabelle, if you're still reading, for goodness' sake STOP.)

Specifically, I'm thinking about the scene in Shells, when Angel rings Giles for help, and Giles refuses.

As a reminder: Fred has died, Illyria has emerged, and Angel, reasoning that "the soul is what matters", tries to contact Willow for help bringing Fred back. And Giles tells him that Willow is currently unable to be contacted, and refuses to help Angel at all, because Angel's still working at Wolfram & Hart.

I've seen a lot of discussion, both fic and meta, of this scene, and almost invariably, people tend to assume that Giles was being presumptuous, and he shouldn't have dismissed Angel out of hand.
And then they decide that, clearly, Willow (and Buffy) would be really annoyed with Giles for doing that (and for behaving just like he did in Lies My Parents Told Me) because, obviously, Fred was lovely and they would definitely have helped her, had Giles just let them know...

I think I disagree.

The thing is, Fred is dead. Very definitely dead.
And I really don't see Willow - season seven Willow - trying to reverse someone's death. Not after the whole pulling-Buffy-out-of-heaven, losing-her-girlfriend-horribly, and-oh-by-the-way-almost-destroying-the-world thing. She just wouldn't.
Sure, she'd be sad (possibly very sad) that Fred had died, but she wouldn't try to bring Fred back. She's done that before.

And Buffy?
Buffy had, not five episodes earlier, sent Andrew in with a squadron of Slayers to back him up, and made it perfectly clear that, while Angel was at Wolfram & Hart, she really didn't trust him.

Giles might have been giving his own opinion, he might have had Buffy right there beside him dictating his every word, he might have been lying about Willow being unreachable... I really don't know. It's possible that he didn't discuss the situation with anyone before turning Angel down. What I don't agree with is the idea that Giles was responding any differently to the way the others would have. Not definitely, anyway.

So, yeah. I think he's getting unfairly blamed for that one.
Just an opinion.

Comments

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

I've never felt Giles was being the bad guy here either. It's Angel who's decided to go work for Ultimate Evil, after all.

And since his reason for doing so was Connor, and the memory spell means that nobody else even knows about Connor, then Angel would have been unable to give anyone else a good reason why he was working for W&H.

Incidentally, Giles says that Willow is unable to help because she's gone to Tibet and is currently on the astral plane: that does seem like an actual reason why she's unavailable, and not just a feeble "She's washing her hair" excuse. :-) I'm guessing this is part of the "six month mystical walkabout" she went on between seasons 7 and 8.

Although my own theory is that actually, Willow and Buffy and Giles already knew that Illyria was about to rise, and Willow was actually off doing something about it, like destroying that temple that Illyria goes to to summon her army. I've got a half-finished fic around here somewhere going into that in a lot more depth.

[deird1]

o.O Willow destroying Illyria's army? Cool! Write it! Write it!

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Just to add: if we assume that Team Slayer already knows about Illyria rising, then Giles could probably find out through contacts that it was Charles Gunn - Angel's trusted confidant and right-hand man - who arranged for Illyria's sarcophagus to be smuggled through Customs.

So Angel, CEO of Wolfram & Hart, is deeply involved in an attempt to raise an Elder God, and now he wants to lure Willow (who, in Giles' opinion, is incredibly powerful but also naive and prone to impulsive mistakes) into the clutches of his evil law firm?

Frankly, I think it was only Buffy's own personal remaining vestige of hope that Angel hadn't really turned evil that stopped her agreeing to send a squad of Slayers to stake him...

[deird1]

Ooh. Very good point.