Editing Cordelia Chase (section)

=== Development ===
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|style="text-align: left;"|"I provide conflict, and that's what good drama needs."
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|style="text-align: left;" |— Charisma Carpenter on her role in ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer''.<ref name=WG1/>
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In early seasons of ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'', Cordelia was often used both as [[comic relief]] and occasionally for the damsel in distress [[plot device]], which would require series' heroine Buffy to save her. Any concerns that she was simply one-dimensional were alleviated for the actress when writers developed the character through her relationships with Xander and later Wesley, which led Carpenter to become more convinced of her potential.<ref name=ThrilloftheChase>{{cite journal|date=February–March 2007|title=The Thrill of the Chase|journal=[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer Magazine incorporating Angel Magazine]]|issue=92|page=83}}</ref> In an article about the psychology of characters in ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'', Steven C. Schlozman writes about how "Cordelia is wealthy and, at first glance, superficial, appearing to care most about her own popularity. However, as the show progresses, we learn that her mother has [[myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome]] (ME/CFS) and her father was prosecuted for income [[Tax avoidance and tax evasion|tax evasion]]. She is a reluctant participant, baffled at her own loyal feelings and bewildered at her attraction to the unpopular Xander." He goes on to describe how Cordelia, and "all the characters of ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' are particularly compelling for their depictions of important adolescent themes."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Schlozman|first=Steven C.|date=Spring 2000|title=Vampires and Those Who Slay Them: Using the Television Program Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Adolescent Therapy and Psychodynamic Education|journal=Academic Psychiatry|volume=24|issue=1|pages=49–54|issn=1042-9670|doi=10.1007/BF03340070|s2cid=143198756}}</ref>
Discussing Cordelia's relationship with Xander, Carpenter says, "A lot of Cordy's conflict, and a lot of who she is, comes out around Xander. Because she is in love with him in spite of herself, or in spite of him. I have my best moments with [Nicholas Brendon]." However, her character's growing involvement with Buffy and her friends caused the actress some concern; "I wasn't sure how I felt about it, because I didn't want to lose my edge. I didn't want her to be nice; I didn't want her to change because that's who she is." Carpenter's challenge was to find a balance between the good and bad sides of Cordelia, and she explains, "That's why I enjoy playing her so much. She's got to be somewhat tolerable or why would they hang out with her? But I [try] not to lose her edge, her honesty." Carpenter claims that Cordelia's "rough edges" made for difficult experiences with fans, who expected her to be snobby like her character.<ref name=WG1/> Charisma continually pleaded to get to slay a vampire, which the writers let her do in her final ''Buffy'' appearance, "[[Graduation Day (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)#Part 2|Graduation Day, Part Two]]".<ref name=Zap2itCordy/>

Over the course of her appearances in ''Angel'', Cordelia would develop enormously as a character. Describing this evolution, Carpenter comments, "When I first started playing Cordelia, she wasn't nice. She has really deepened and has a stronger sense of responsibility. She's a team player, which was not the case in the beginning."<ref name=ThrilloftheChase/> Carpenter cherishes what playing a multi-faceted character like Cordelia meant for her as an actress, describing {{blockquote|The road Cordelia has traveled, the journey she has taken up to now has been such a joy to play as an actress, because there have been so many chances to do so many different emotions. Heroic, vulnerable, just angry, possessed, funny &ndash; I get to be all those different things rolled into one. Getting this role, in hindsight... God I made a good decision, or they did.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/angel/interviews/carpenter/page2.shtml |title= Interviews: Charisma Carpenter: From bitch to hero|access-date=2008-10-04 |work= BBC Cult |publisher= BBC.com}}</ref>}} Cultural critic Jennifer Crusie points out how Cordelia was initially perfect for the transition to "selfish, superficial Los Angeles", which turned out to be her "trial by fire".<ref name="Assassination"/>

Executive producer David Greenwalt was very keen to acquire the character of Cordelia for the spin-off series, commenting, "I desperately wanted her to come to ''Angel'' because Angel being dark and broody, we need a big bright smile." At the same time, Whedon felt her presence was sorely missed in the fourth season of ''Buffy'' where "All of our characters got to the point where they were loving and hugging, and it was sort of like, where's Cordelia?", leading him to introduce [[Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|Spike]] ([[James Marsters]]) to the cast to accommodate her absence.<ref name=IntroducingSpike>{{cite video |people=Joss Whedon, James Marsters (interviews)|date=2002-05-20|title=Introducing Spike|medium= DVD (Region 2)|publisher=Twentieth Century Fox}} (''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' Season Four featurette)</ref> According to Marsters, his request for a salary equal to what he was paid on ''Buffy'' caused Whedon to remove Carpenter as a regular cast member.<ref name="ioy20210930">{{Cite podcast |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4VyMNLJYxs |title=The CHARISMA CARPENTER Side Effects of JAMES MARSTERS Taking a Role in Angel  |website=Inside of You |publisher=YouTube |last=Marsters |first=James |date=2021-09-30 |access-date=2023-04-15}}</ref>

Kelly A. Manners describes Cordelia as a "rich gal whose family ended up losing everything to the IRS. So in episode one of ''Angel'', Cordelia showed up in LA trying to start a career as an actress because her family was in jail, actually." Crusie states that in mourning for Doyle Cordelia also begins "finding within herself a new level of humanity".<ref name="Assassination"/>
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|style="text-align: left;"|"Time and time again, [Cordelia] realize[s] what [her] calling truly is ... when [Cordelia] gets the pain of the world and the suffering that's out there, ... [she] realize[s] just how important it is that [she] stay[s] doing this mission alongside Angel."
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|style="text-align: left;" |— Charisma Carpenter on Cordelia's development in ''Angel''.<ref name="I'm Cordelia"/>
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Greenwalt discusses how Cordelia "is sort of forced to become a deeper character" when she starts to receive the visions of the suffering and helpless, "She's sort of living with one foot in the world of 'I want to be an actress' and with another foot in the world of 'I want to save and help people, and I have a deeper purpose and mission.'"<ref name="I'm Cordelia"/> Greenwalt felt that this development allowed Cordelia to develop from a "vainglorious high schooler to someone who's almost like a superhero"; this also provided Carpenter with the opportunity to stretch her potential as an actress.<ref name=Zap2itCordy/> From the tenth episode, "Parting Gifts", Cordelia begins to actively function as a supernatural character in the series while the introduction of Wesley also contributes some added comic relief to the series. It is from this episode Cordelia is also forced to mature as she mourns the death of Doyle, whose visions serve as a painful reminder of him. The [[To Shanshu in L.A.|first-season finale]] saw Cordelia's visions inflict all the suffering of the human world upon her, and to effectively act this, Carpenter's acting coach showed her pictures of real human pain as motivation. The scene took over eight hours to film, and Carpenter was relieved when it was over.<ref name=ThrilloftheChase/> The experience saw Cordelia further resolve to help those in need, stating "I saw the world and there's so much pain. We have to help them." Carpenter explains, "Through the suffering of the world, and through her own experiences, she discovers what's important in life."<ref name="I'm Cordelia"/>

Carpenter pleaded to the producers to let her cut her hair in the second season of ''Angel'', but they were dissatisfied with the darker tone and cut which created a "dark edge of Cordelia" which wasn't as "warm and effervescent as she usually is", so for the third season they wanted her to "go shorter and blonder".<ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/angel/interviews/carpenter/page9.shtml BBC Cult Interviews | Charisma Carpenter A hairy problem], BBC Cult.</ref> ''Angel''{{'s}} third season demonstrates Cordelia's development into a full-fledged heroine. The episode "[[Birthday (Angel)|Birthday]]" saw her being offered the chance to live a life where she never met Angel, but her inner desire to help others sees her sacrifice this life and her humanity to become a half-demon who can better withstand the visions she carries.<ref name=Birthday/> In "[[Billy (Angel)|Billy]]", Cordelia begins to train alongside Angel to become a better fighter and learns quickly. Carpenter began to train extensively with the show's stunt co-ordinators both to learn how to fight and to handle weaponry.<ref name=Zap2itCordy/> In the episode "[[Waiting in the Wings (Angel)|Waiting in the Wings]]", both Angel and Lorne remark on what a fine woman Cordelia has finally become, with Cordelia noting she is more like a superhero than she ever expected to be growing up in Sunnydale. Also in this episode, she and Angel both realize they have fallen for one another, but their love goes unconsummated. Critically, Jennifer Crusie considers Cordelia's ascension to the heavens at the end of season 3 to be the "point that the [[Mutant Enemy Productions]] writers evidently lost their minds". She goes on to describe how Cordelia's compliance with Skip seems entirely out of character.<ref name="Assassination"/> Jes Battis also argues that a paradox is created when "the character who embraces her privilege (Cordelia) gets to become a higher being and exit ''Angel'', and as an overwhelmingly positive force" where later [[Winifred Burkle|Fred]] ([[Amy Acker]]), "the character who is conflicted about her privilege" in season 5 "ends up being possessed by a [[Illyria (Angel)|millennia-old demon]]".<ref name="Blood Relations">"Demonic Maternities, Complex Motherhoods: Cordelia, Fred and Illyria." ''[[Blood Relations: Chosen Families in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel]]''.</ref>

''Angel'' season 4 played with audience's expectations of the now heroic Cordelia by revealing her to be the season's [[Big Bad]]; it was later established that Cordelia had been possessed by a manipulative deity called Jasmine. The storyline was controversial with fans, and Carpenter has admitted hating how a possessed Cordelia seduced Angel's teenage son. Carpenter has said, "I'm in denial about that whole storyline. It was creepy."<ref name=ThrilloftheChase/> She tried to keep a positive attitude about the situation, though;  director [[Terrence O'Hara]] commented that he thought Carpenter had "a lot of fun" playing a manipulative Cordelia in the episode "[[Orpheus (Angel)|Orpheus]]" because she enjoyed coming up with Cordelia's new "[[schizophrenia|schizophrenic]] madwoman" characterization.<ref>{{cite video|people=Terrence O'Hara, Jeffrey Bell|date=2004-03-01|title=Commentary for ''Angel'' episode "Orpheus"|medium=DVD (Region 2)|publisher=Twentieth Century Fox}}</ref> David Boreanaz was also unsettled by the incestuous pairing. At a  2004 convention, he admitted that the season 4 storyline "freaked him out."<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://www.cityofangel.com/behindTheScenes/bts5/halloweenHapps.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060527032006/http://www.cityofangel.com/behindTheScenes/bts5/halloweenHapps.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=2006-05-27 | title=Behind the Scenes}}</ref> The episode "[[Inside Out (Angel)|Inside Out]]" saw the height of this inversion of Cordelia's character, where she is seen urging Connor to murder an innocent girl in order to expedite the birth of the child they conceived together. In an effort to stop Connor, the Powers That Be send the spirit of Connor's mother [[Darla (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)|Darla]] ([[Julie Benz]]) to convince him not to go through with it. The episode sees Carpenter dressed in black, while Benz appears in heavenly white as she becomes the voice of reason and morality. [[Steven S. DeKnight]], who wrote and directed the episode, felt this was a brilliant role-reversal for both actresses as Carpenter is accustomed to playing the benevolent Cordelia where Darla is normally seen as a sinister vampire.<ref>{{cite video|people=Steven S. DeKnight|date=2004-03-01|title=Commentary for ''Angel'' episode "Inside Out"|medium=DVD (Region 2)|publisher=Twentieth Century Fox}}</ref> Much of season 4's storyline had to be adjusted due to Carpenter's real-life pregnancy;<ref name="Reading Angel"/> after Cordelia gives birth to Jasmine in the episode "Inside Out" she is left in a coma for the remainder of the fourth season. Crusie discusses what she felt were the flaws in the execution of the fourth season, {{blockquote|It's that she betrays the man she trusts above all others and who trusts her absolutely; it's that she seduces a boy she once diapered; it's that she dresses like a drag queen and talks like a ''[[Dynasty (1981 TV series)|Dynasty]]'' reject. It's that she's not Cordy, and what might have been fun to watch had we been let into the secret before the Beastmaster seduced Connor becomes the extended rape and death of a much-beloved character.<ref name="Assassination"/>}}

Matt Hills and Rebecca Williams also discuss the treatment of Cordelia (and Darla) in "''Angel''{{'s}} Monstrous Mothers and Vampires with Soul: Investigating the Abject in 'Television Horror'", from ''[[Reading Angel: The TV Spin-off With a Soul]]'' by Stacey Abbot. They see the send-offs of Cordelia, Fred and other characters as part of a pattern of highly gendered "elaborated abjection" seen in ''Angel''. They also see Cordelia's possession in season 4 as part of a recurring pattern: "More so than other characters in [''Buffy''] and ''Angel'', Cordelia has suffered<!-- !  check for tone --> or been threatened with bodily invasion and rape, either symbolically or literally" and recounts the demon impregnation in "[[Expecting (Angel)|Expecting]]", and similarly in "[[Epiphany (Angel)|Epiphany]]", where she develops a gestating demon in her head and then told she must mate with the Groosalugg in "[[Through the Looking Glass (Angel)|Through the Looking Glass]]". Cordelia even remarks on this, as Hills and Williams quote her as she remarks on her "status as a violated and devalued character"; Cordelia states, "If you ever figure out how to get us out of here, I want you to find me a dimension where some demon doesn't want to impregnate me with his spawn!" They liken the horror motif in these examples, and in "Inside Out", to what [[Barbara Creed]] called the 'monstrous womb' in her book ''The Monstrous-feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis''.<ref name="Reading Angel">Hills, Matt and Williams, Rebecca. "Angel's Monstrous Mothers and Vampires with Soul: Investigating the Abject in 'Television Horror'", ''Reading Angel: The TV Spin-Off With a Soul''. ed. Stacy Abbot. I. B. Tauris (September 22, 2005): pp. 203-221</ref><ref>Creed, Barbara. "Woman as Monstrous Womb: The Brood". ''The Monstrous-feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis''. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (December 28, 2004): pp. 43-59.</ref> Jes Battis also comments how, in comparison with the Fred-Illyria season 5 storyline, Cordelia's storyline is not as positive as Fred's rebirth, because Fred got to "'live on' through Illyria, whereas Cordelia is taken right out of the show and receives no interesting blue-haired reincarnation". Continuing, they say that in fact, there is no meaningful connection between the "real" Cordelia and Jasmine, as the Cordelia who did those bad things is killed the moment Jasmine is, "and the 'true' Cordy wakes up from her coma". Further illustrating the comparisons, "Fred/Illyria become a joined mother/daughter subjectivity, a dual being whose constituent essences are inseparable; Cordelia is never so intimately connected with her evil child and is remembered as the healthy, vibrant Cordy that everyone knew." Pointing out symbolic parallels in the subtexts of these gestations, Battis notes {{blockquote|Cordelia, a vocal advocate of her own privilege, creates a fully formed supernatural being, Jasmine, who attempts (shockingly) to control the world. Fred, on the other hand, who internalizes her own privilege and cannot express it except in terms of insecurity and awkwardness, has her body devoured from the inside by the demon Illyria.<ref name="Blood Relations"/>}}

For ''Angel''{{'s}} fifth season, as with ''Buffy''{{'s}} fourth, Spike steps in to replace Cordelia as a source of comedic dialogue within the series. It is also noted by critics that, in the fifth season, "it doesn't take long for Illyria to become a version of Cordelia, giving everyone the cold and honest truth whether they want it or not".<ref name="Blood Relations"/> Concerning Cordelia's last appearance in ''Angel''{{'s}} fifth and final season, Joss Whedon says he used [[You're Welcome (Angel)|the 100th episode]] to reinforce the "mission statement" of the show,<ref name="O'Hare">{{Cite book |title=At 100 (episodes), Angel bites into a new future while remembering the past |publisher=[[Sci Fi Weekly]] |date=February 2, 2004 |first=Patrick |last=Lee |access-date=2007-09-26 |url=http://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw10665.html |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071126040803/http://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw10665.html |archive-date = November 26, 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref> as well as assess where the characters are now compared to how they began. Whedon explains this episode presents an ideal opportunity to—through Cordelia, who was "there at the beginning"—ask of Angel, "Where are you now? Where were you when you started and where are you now and how do you feel about that?"<ref name="Pierce">{{Cite book|title=Don't miss ''Angel'' |publisher=[[Deseret Morning News]] |date=February 4, 2004 |first=Scott D. |last=Pierce |access-date=2007-10-10 |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20040204/ai_n11443629/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071126072400/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20040204/ai_n11443629 |archive-date=2007-11-26 }}</ref> The return to the show's "original concerns" is echoed by the flashback to Doyle's first season advertisement; Sara Upstone points out aerial images of [[Los Angeles]] reappear at the same time Cordelia tells Angel "You forgot who you are," bringing back the show's link to the city.<ref>{{Cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7B42U0hgDy0C&q=%22&pg=RA1-PA10|title=Reading Angel: The TV Spin-off With a Soul |editor=Stacey Abbott|last=Upstone |first=Sara |year=2005 |isbn=978-1-85043-839-7 |access-date=2007-11-11 |publisher=I.B.Tauris |chapter="LA's got it all": Hybridity and Otherness in ''Angel''s Postmodern City |page=110}}</ref> Buffy Summers was originally intended to appear in the 100th episode to get Angel 'back on track', but Sarah Michelle Gellar had other obligations. Writer/director [[David Fury]] explains that since "we couldn't get Sarah" the episode was instead written for Cordelia. He adds, "This turned out to be a Godsend because Charisma was fantastic."<ref>Jozic, Mike, "[http://www.mikejozic.com/buffyweek6.html Week 6; David Fury]" ''Mikejozic.com'' (September 2004).</ref> In the original script, Fury wrote a conversation between Wesley and Angel while driving to the hospital that set up Cordelia as a possible vegetable. The scene was never shot because "the shock of seeing her up and around after a 9-month coma was enough. We just didn't want to tip it too soon," says Fury.<ref>{{cite web|first=Kristy |last=Bratton |access-date=2007-10-16 |title=ANGEL Season Five DVD Collection REVIEW |url=http://www.cityofangel.com/behindTheScenes/bts5/S5dvdReview1.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071020164640/http://www.cityofangel.com/behindTheScenes/bts5/S5dvdReview1.html |archive-date=2007-10-20 }}</ref>