Oh, good.

Other people are noticing. From Boils and Blinding Torment–“The Sanest Buffy Site On The Web”–a recap of Angel’s 15th episode of the fifth season:

So turns out, not only is it evil and a punishable offense to have sex in the Buffyverse (now more correctly, at least for a few weeks longer, referred to as the Angelverse I suppose), it is also inherently offensive to be a woman. It is bad, wrong and incredibly stupid of you and you will be punished with death. Just ask Cordy. Or Lilah. Or Fred. Oh, wait, you can’t. They’re dead.

ETA: Those of you with more than a casual, polite interest in my occasional annoyed rants about Angel & Buffy–and who know both series pretty well–should click below. The rest of you will probably want to move on to my next occasional annoyed rant about Kerry, as the Angel stuff won’t make much sense, if any.

From the B&BT recap of “Smile Time”:

Fred sashays her pert little ass into Wesley’s office and gives him a big, passionless kiss. Luckily, that’s just the kind that gets Wesley’s motor running, and we fade out to the sight of two geeks going at it like one of their parents is out of town and left them the keys to the camaro.

I haven’t been watching Angel this season apart from popping my head up once to see Cordy die, so I’d missed this testament to the Angel writers’ imagination. Bringing together a couple of crazy kids who loved each other, just an episode before you cause them unimaginable pain and make another woman a victim of your killing spree.

Well, they’d never, ever done that before, had they?

That’s what Joss Whedon meant when he said he likes surprises and those stupid, stupid television audiences don’t and that’s why not enough people want to watch his shows anymore.

Now that’s what I call pursuing your muse. That’s the kind of vision that the meanies at the WB and FOX just didn’t understand.

(If you’re gonna be snarky, go all the way)

Ben Varkentine