So if you admit things crossed over that makes it a cross over... NO?

Angel & Cordelia crossed over from Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Does that mean that every episode of Angel is a crossover?

I suppose if you want to be technical about it, every little, piddledink, unimportant, or trifling thing which crosses over from one thing to the other could be labelled a crossover.

Personally, I still think that it was more of a tie-in than a true crossover. When I think of a true crossover I imagine the major characters of both shows interacting to deal with one major storyline. Little things like Buffy & Angel fighting side by side, or against each other; Kate arresting Giles for carrying a bunch of deadly weapons; Cordelia having to work with ex-boyfriend Xander & his new demon girlfriend; stuff like that.

Also neither part of this 'crossover' was truly essential to the other part. If you only saw one series, you wouldn't miss anything by not seeing the other part.

Okay you win. How can I compete with that? Still I think you would be missing out if you only watched one show. Too many references. Loved Spikes "Slutty the vampire slayer" dig. He really is the best bad guy. That "Hey I wanna •••• little kiddies blood" vampire disturbed me V. much. Angel was a fool to destroy the gem. Things could have become a whole lot interesting. I hope the second cross over is as good as it sounds. (Im from the UK )

Right. What made it most annoying was the way the WB advertised it as "The Buffy/Angel Crossover Event!" Hardly an event, people.

The second crossover is not for the faint of heart or cold of blood, trust me. Yowsa!

The second one is much better.

Actually I had nothing against the stories themelves, but the WB did make this BIG DEAL out of the crossover, so I was expecting a lot more than what they delivered.

And they hardly deliverered an epic did they?

Just to change the theme here a bit; vampires are severely allergic to light aren't they? They're also not very keen on fire. So ... how come Spike can light a cigarette with a lighter - thereby holding a naked flame about 3 inches from his face - and not react at all?!

Good to see him again though.

Also, wasn't it remarkably easy for Angel to remove the ring from the newly 'unkillable' vampire torturer? I would at the very least have closed my fist and thrashed around a bit seeing as how I was already impaled on a very large splinter!

Finally, I know we seem to be mainly Brits here anyway, but since I only have terrestrial and am seeing everything for the first time, could someone please tell me where this fits in with Buffy? They showed the first episode of Angel the day after Graduation 1 (so this episode was the day after the first episode of Buffy season 4 - The Freshman). Where should it have been?

Oh yes. Buffy episodes WITHOUT adverts last for 45 minutes. This episode of Angel WITH adverts only lasted for 41 - are they shorter or are we missing a lot?

Tim--I've heard that both Buffy and Angel suffer cuts when they go to Britain, due to violence.

This episode comes immediately after The Harsh Light of Day, episode three of the fourth season of Buffy.

The vampiric allergy to light takes a lot of hits here and in Buffy. As long as Angel doesn't stand directly in a beam of light, he wanders around the day pretty well. I'm sure after all these years Spike is immune to a little worry about his lighter.

Tim,
4 min 29 secs of this episode were cut by C4. There's a massive campaign underway to get them to show it a later time. I'm amazed you can make sense of the story with the butchering that C4 are doing to it.

SC4 are apparently about to start showing it in a late night slot. I hear you can only pick this up in Wales though. Ireland's TV3 are also showing it uncut, try picking it up there. Your only other option is to wait for the video boxsets which are released next month.

Good news for UK viewers. C4 have agreed to a late night reshowing uncut. Unforunately they can't slot it in until January.

While this episode didn't amount to much in terms of a crossover, I thought it was nevertheless a fabulous episode. The funny comments were coming thick and fast at the beginning; in particular Spike's interpretation of the conversation between Angel and the girl he'd just rescued which had me half hysterical. I also loved the one-word-at-a-time conversation between Angel and Oz, Doyle's question as to whether they were always like that and Oz's answer, "No, normally we're laconic."

This episode was directed by Bruce Seth Green. Is that the same person as Seth, or is he his dad or what?

This was the first time I'd heard of Angel being Spike's sire. Is it true? I knew that Angel had sired Drusilla, but did he really sire Spike as well?

I don't know what part of Britain James Marsters comes from, but I've never heard anyone British pronouce the word as "pouf". I've only ever heard it as "poof". To try and explain better: James pronounces it like the word "poo" with an 'f' at the end whereas I've only ever heard it pronounced like the word 'put' but with an 'f' instead of the 't'.

Callie: James Marsten comes from the California part of Britain. He's a Yank.

I agree, it's a great episode. When it originally aired, the WB hyped it as the Second Coming (well, kind of) and I think I personally was a little underwhelmed at its crossoverness. Except for the dumb reason he smashed the gem--as the seasons progress the "I can't go in the light" thing takes a real beating--it holds up well.

Thank you, Mark. If James hasn't got any British background at all, then I'm mightily impressed by his accent, as it's only very occasionally that it slips into an American twang.

Another thing that puzzled me about this episode was Oz's repeated comment that Angel looked "really really pale" when he was out in the sunshine. Was this meant to be a sly dig at Oz himself, who was a heck of a lot paler than Angel was? I thought that Angel actually looked quite healthy for someone who'd not been out for 200 years!

Callie, Bruce Seth Green is no relation to Seth AFAIK. He's a fairly well known director (I'm pretty certain he directed a lot of Babylon 5 episodes)

This is the second time we've heard Spike say that Angel was his sire. He said it back in S2 when we first met him. However despite these two references Joss has stated that Dru sired Spike and that Angel is the equivelant of a grand-sire.

Why did Cordelia and Doyle actually take the gem to the warehouse? This really puzzled me. I mean, when they had found the gem, they said something like "So we are gonna give Spike the gem, and then he'll kill us all? Bad idea." And then they took the actual gem to the warehouse, threw it in a corner, and the next minute Oz crashed his car into the warehouse so them and Angel could escape. Since they had planned this and Spike had only one second to look at the ring before Oz came, why did they use the actual gem? They could as well have taken some cheap ring (probably from a chewing gum machine) and threwn it there. The way they had planned it, they and Angel would escape but Spike would have the ring. Did they really think he'd NOT come after them and Angel once he'd be invincible? It just doesn't make sense.

...vampires are severely allergic to light aren't they? They're also not very keen on fire. So ... how come Spike can light a cigarette with a lighter - thereby holding a naked flame about 3 inches from his face - and not react at all?!

In the Buffy/Angel universe, vampires are harmed by direct sunlight, not just any kind of light. Also in the Buffy/Angel universe, vampires can be "dusted" by way of being consumed by flames, but direct contact with a very small flame will generally have no greater effect on a vampire than it will a human (an exception being the Buffy episode "Graduation Day, Part 2", in which at least one vampire was dusted within a second after being impaled in the center of the chest by a flame arrow).