By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 1 hour ago

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show filled with amazing characters, and fans love to debate which one is the best. Many prefer Buffy, the natural leader who uses her abilities as a Slayer to put vamps and other supernatural baddies in their place. Others prefer Willow, the geeky girl next door who eventually embraces her own magical mojo. Other fan-favorites include Spike (the bad boy with slick hair and a slicker accent), Anya (the former demon who loves nothing more than sex and money), and Faith (the sexy Slayer who goes from being Buffy’s frenemy to being her worst nightmare).

Few fans name Cordelia, and for good reason: while she grew as a character once she joined the Angel spinoff, she spends the vast majority of Buffy as a mean girl who does nothing more than disparage the other characters we know and love. After a while, it’s easy to start asking yourself a very blunt question: “why is Cordelia even in this show?” However, the answer is deceptively simple. She’s here as a constant reminder of how much Buffy (who was basically Cordelia before becoming a Slayer) has grown as a character. 

The Softer Side Of Sneers

In those first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cordelia is seemingly the opposite of Buffy in every way. Buffy is defined by her duty to protect others, and she often misses out on the best parts of her high school days because she is busy fighting vampires. Cordelia, meanwhile, is a spoiled little rich girl who constantly berates Buffy for being so different than pretty much everyone else in Sunnydale High School.

While she gets some fun, sarcastic lines here and there, Cordelia can often feel like a superfluous character. However, she serves a more basic function in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by being an ongoing foil for Buffy. Like all good foils, Cordelia is everything that Buffy isn’t: she’s weak instead of strong, cruel instead of kind, and cowardly instead of brave. Nonetheless, Buffy is sometimes envious of Cordelia, like when she wishes she could be more like the resident mean girl because she thinks that’s the kind of woman Angel liked when he was still a mortal.

The Yin To Buffy’s Yang

Of course, Cordelia is a foil with a very specific purpose: she’s here to highlight how much Buffy has grown as a character since becoming the Slayer. Before Buffy moved to Sunnydale and fully embraced her destiny of fighting vampires, she was a vapid valley girl in Los Angeles. She just wanted to buy cute clothes and enjoy being popular, and she was so good at this that she was eventually elected Fiesta Queen. All of this is supremely shallow, of course. But to Buffy, this was the normal life she had to sacrifice in order to become the Slayer.

The constant presence of Cordelia highlights the significance of Buffy’s sacrifice. Until her family went broke and she had to move to Los Angeles, Cordelia enjoyed all the privileges of being Sunnydale’s most popular girl. All the women want to be her, and all the men want to be with her. She gets what she wants wherever she goes, and she generally gets to rule the school with the indifference of an imperious queen.

She’s A Killer Queen

In short, she has the life that Buffy desperately wants to have. When we see Cordelia sneeringly enjoying the fruits of her popularity, it’s easier to appreciate how Buffy sets her own needs aside for the sake of others. After a while, Buffy grows into her new life, and aside from occasional relapses (like her desperate bid to get elected homecoming queen), she never seriously tries to become a vapid Valley girl again. When we look at Cordelia, we see everything that Buffy is not, which only helps us to appreciate the Slayer’s growth that much more.

Buffy fans might hate Cordelia for being endlessly cruel to their favorite characters. But she is a constant reminder that Buffy, had she never become the Slayer, would be just as bad, if not worse. Greatness was thrust upon Buffy, and she rose to the occasion so well that she ended up saving the entire world, time and time again. Without Cordelia, the fandom might (like so many Sunnydale residents) very well take Buffy’s sacrifices for granted. Thanks to Cordelia, though, we got to spend three years appreciating how Buffy left her childhood behind to save everyone’s life but her own.

If you still really hate Cordelia, though, you should start rewatching Angel. By the end of that show, you’ll realize that nobody hated Sunnydale’s snarkiest Scooby more than Joss Whedon, who proved himself the meanest girl of them all by ruining her character (and, allegedly, Cordelia actor Charisma Carpenter), one insane plot point at a time. 

By Jonathan Klotz
| Published 13 seconds ago

Sabotage, blackmail, extortion, it’s all another day at the office for the political representatives onboard Babylon 5. The intergalactic space station is supposed to be a neutral zone for trade, commerce, politics, negotiations, and all manner of diplomatic activity, but early on during Babylon 5’s run, viewers learned how dirty politics can get in the 23rd century.

“Born to the Purple,” the third episode of Season 1, is the first of many episodes to focus on the Centaurian Ambassador, Londo Mollari (Peter Jurasik), this time, he’s fallen for the classic spy move: the honeypot. 

Women Were Always Londo’s Greatest Weakness

It’s a classic move in real-world espionage that exploits sexual relationships for the purposes of blackmail and information gathering. In “Born to the Purple” Londo finds himself smitten by a gorgeous Centauri dancer, Adira Tyree (Fabiana Uderno), to the point that he’s abandoned diplomatic duties, including the crafting of a peace treaty with the Narn and his future best friend forever, G’Kar (Andreas Katsulas).

That’s an unintended side effect of her attention. The plan hatched by Adira’s owner Trakis (Clive Revill, the original voice of Star Wars Emperor Palpatine) is to steal the Purple Files and blackmail the Centauri into doing everything he wants. 

The Purple Files contain information on the highest ranks of the Centauri government, including secrets that very powerful, very important individuals don’t want to be made public. Londo is, allegedly, an important Centauran, and also an easy mark.

Adira manages to scan his brain while he’s sleeping off the drugs she slipped him, gets the information, and then has a change of heart and betrays Trakis. Trakis responds by convincing Londo she’s really a Narn agent and uses the lovestruck fool to help track down where she’s hiding. 

While Londo and Sinclair infiltrate the Dark Star club, G’Kar and Talia Winters (Andrea Thompson) meet with Tarkis to verify that he has the Purple Files. Talia uses the old psi-corp trick of saying, “don’t think of what I’m about to tell you,” and gets the location of where he kept Adria. The ability to read minds feels like a cheat code in a world of political espionage. 

Adira is eventually recovered, and her ownership papers are taken from Trakis, allowing her to stay, as a free woman, with Londo onboard Babylon 5. She breaks his heart when she decides to go to a Centauri planet instead. One day, she’ll return for Londo. 

The Honeypot Has Been Used Throughout History

“Born to the Purple” is the first hint at the incredible chemistry between Londo and G’Kar when they give the exact same advice to their subordinates at the negotiating table: “Don’t give away the home world.”

It’s a glimpse into the depths that hide beneath Londo’s foppish appearance and his unique view on the world of love. As a standalone episode, there’s not a lot connecting it to the rest of Babylon 5 outside of the fantastic character moments that would eventually define the series. Not every episode has to push the mythology arc forward, something that creator J. Michael Straczynski was well aware of, and the episode’s writer, Larry Ditillio, helped lay the foundation for the revelations of later seasons. 

Honeypots like Adria were used in actual, real-world espionage and popularized by Russia during the Cold War. Watch The Americans, and you’ll quickly realize most of their spy work involved pretending to be in relationships with the target.

An argument could be made that poor Anne Boleyn from The Tudors is an early historical example. If anyone on board Babylon 5 would fall head over heels for the honeypot, it would be Londo, and if anyone could eventually convince a honeypot to come back to him, it’s also Londo.                  

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 22 seconds ago

If you know much about Star Trek: Voyager, then you know that nobody on the cast complained quite as much as Garrett Wang. The Ensign Kim actor sometimes had very righteous gripes, like when he revealed how the writers allegedly fat-shamed him and Robert Duncan McNeil by writing their recent weight gain into a script. Sometimes, his complaints are shocking, like his unsubstantiated claim that he was told to underact by Rick Berman in order to make the show’s aliens seem more realistic.

In fact, when he repeated a version of that complaint to a TV Guide reporter, who dutifully reported that a Star Trek actor was badmouthing his own TV show. To this day, Wang is convinced that this snafu is why he never got a chance to direct. Fortunately for the actor, not all of his complaints fizzled out. If we had never complained about the writing for his character being boring, then rockstar writer Brannon Braga would never have created “Non-Sequitur,” arguably one of the best episodes to ever feature Ensign Kim.

The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Grease

What is “Non-Sequitur” about? In this tale, Ensign Kim awakens in San Francisco to discover that he never joined the Voyager crew and, thus, never got stranded in the Delta Quadrant. He still has his memories from his time aboard ship, but it’s easy enough to forget all of that in the arms of his hot girlfriend. But his absence from Voyager also meant that Tom Paris lost his spot on the ship, becoming a drunken loser with no purpose. In the ultimate “bros before hoes” moment, Kim teams up with Paris to restore the timeline, ensuring that their bromance will continue on the other side of the galaxy.

“Non-Sequitur” is a very solid Star Trek: Voyager story, especially if (like me) you’re a big fan of both Harry Kim and Tom Paris. As it turns out, though, this episode would never have been written if Garrett Wang hadn’t complained to writer and producer Brannon Braga. As the actor confessed to The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, this episode “was the result of me going into the production office and saying….When is Harry gonna get the girl? When is he gonna have the action?” Braga responded, “Don’t worry about it,” and went on to create “Non-Sequitur.”

Too Cool For Pool

Generally speaking, Wang was quite happy with the finished result because it delivered everything he wanted. The altered timeline of “Non-Sequitur” gave Ensign Kim a cute girlfriend, and it let him kick a little butt once he decided to return reality to the way things were before. He also gets to become a full-on action hero, stealing a runabout, escaping Starfleet pursuit, and even beaming out into the vacuum of space, all in a desperate bid to restore the timeline. 

However, this wouldn’t be a Garrett Wang story if there wasn’t one more complaint. According to the actor, he asked Brannon Braga to intersperse all the action and romance “throughout that year,” hoping Kim would become a more dynamic character throughout Season 2. Instead, Braga “put it all in one episode.” Fortunately, “Non-Sequitur” served as a fun showcase for Wang’s abilities as an actor, one that almost (but not quite) made up for what he really wanted: a promotion for his eternally underused, eternally underacting ensign.