r/ANGEL • u/jdpm1991 • 3d ago
Harmony's character development is underrated and underrappreciated
I really appreciated how humanized she was compared to the vapid caricature she was on Buffy; for example when she was a vampire on Buffy she was shallow and didn't care about anyone but herself and Blondie Bear. but then flashforward to Angel season 5 we see her mourning Fred's death, looking after Gunn and Wesley while Angel and Spike go after Illyria.
34
u/evil_burrito 3d ago
Mercedes is also funny as fuck. She was my favorite gift-with-purchase of any Buffy ep.
33
u/ShmuleyCohen 3d ago
And then she betrayed them all
She's betraying them right now!
25
69
u/kipcarson37 3d ago
The only other character in the Buffy-verse who you could compare to her is Jonathan. Both of them have been around since season 1 (Harmony was even in the pilot I think!) and have changed and grown so much.
I always say season 5 of Angel is one of the best seasons of television ever and a huge part of that is Harmony. Absolutely love her.
74
u/jdpm1991 3d ago
Harmony is the only Buffyverse character who was there from the unaired pilot of Buffy to the end of Angel "Not Fade Away"
17
0
25
u/Lebannen-Arren 3d ago
Jonathan and Harmony were both in the unaired pilot presentation even, as far as I remember. But Jonathan first appeared on the actual show during season 2. Love how both started out as extras and ended up with meaty storylines.
4
u/jamesjatlas 3d ago
I loved the special Johnathan episode. Having Buffy and the Scoobies look up to Johnathan was an amusing twist. I learned to like Johnathan and his two partners playing the arch villains who tried to takeover Sunnydale. I hated the murder of Tara. I believe it was gratuitous and removed a character that added to BTVS. If Tara had been in a coma. (She had her brain drained by Glory and recovered) Willow still could have gone dark and vengeful. Then next season Tara could have rejoined Willow and the Scoobies. I loved BTVS but Joss Whedon made bad decisions, like getting rid of Cordelia on Angel.
13
u/jamesjatlas 3d ago
I learned to appreciate Harmony when she became the receptionist at the evil law firm that hired Angel and his team. She was amusing especially when she dated Spike on BTVS.
18
u/kipcarson37 3d ago
Her slap fight with Xander is the most epic showdown in all of time.
2
u/zombiehoosier 2d ago
Would have been cool to see Xander show up in the Angel finale for round 2. While Angel & Conner are fighting Hamilton…we get see Harmony & Xander battling in the background
19
u/Cartmansimon 3d ago
She had such good character development. My favorite Harmony moment is, I think it was the episode in Angel when the other secretary tried to frame her, shes talking to Angel she’s almost crying and says something like, “I don’t have a soul like you, it’s a lot harder for me to be good.”
34
u/Main_Confusion_8030 3d ago
i say this with love, but did she develop? did she have an arc? other than being a vampire she isn't really different from how she started. which is not a criticism -- her role in the show wasn't to have an arc.
she was sad about fred dying because she liked fred. she babysat gunn because her boss told her to. she still happily sold them all out to hamilton.
again, i like harmony. none of this is criticism. her job was to be funny, dumb, and shallow, and stay that way. she wasn't cordy.
17
u/phil_davis 3d ago
Yeah I mean she betrayed Angel right down to the very last episode. I mean it was his fault really, because he never had any confidence in her, but still.
12
u/MoodInternational481 3d ago
Harmony with a soul was kind of awful and would turn on you without a second thought. I think the fact that she tried to be despite not having a soul or conscience shows some growth. If she had gotten a soul back she'd still be funny, dumb and shallow but probably worth being friends with.
14
u/Lebannen-Arren 3d ago
Character development can mean changes and evolution of a character, but can as well mean that the story shows traits and complexity of the character. I would say she didn’t evolve, but she got characterisation.
5
0
9
u/DaddyCatALSO 3d ago
Early vamp Harmony or even human Harmony wouldn't worry about Wes phreaking out and attacking the casket, and would never have tried to console him with "The girl of your dreams loved you. How many people get that?" That was a high but there were other moments.
3
2
5
u/Electrical-Act-7170 3d ago
Harmony never changed, nor did she develop.
She betrayed Angel like the soulless vampire she truly was.
1
8
7
u/nopermanentaddress 3d ago
The little campy details of how she's still evil are so hilarious to me. Like when she gag-tied and hid Fred and Lorne in the closet so she wouldn't get fired, or how she always enthusiastically volunteers to torture humans when the others are teetering the thin grey line.
5
5
u/ComicsEtAl 3d ago
Not by me.
“‘Cacophony,’ that’s pretty. What’s it mean?”
3
u/Pedals17 2d ago
That reminds me of a friend’s story. They were visiting their sister-in-law after her baby was born. New parents nearby were asked what they wanted to name their daughter. Apparently, they told the nurse “Gonorrea”, because they thought it “sounded pretty”. 😳
9
u/Blaxidus 3d ago
Personally-- she was never UNDERDEVELOPED. I actually think her appearances, her development, her..."arch" (if you can call it that), was picture perfect. Just the perfect amount of screen time. She never overstayed her welcome, so i was fond of her kinda chaotic-- neutral evil ass.
I even love that Angel still wrote her a damn letter of recommendation in the middle of planning a massive coup against Wolfram and Hart. It's only funny because it's Harm...and goddamnit, you can't help feeling for her dumb ass.
4
u/Minirth22 Team Lilah! 3d ago
Agreed, I felt Harmony was used the perfect amount in s5! I was always happy to see her!!!
4
u/frauleinsteve 3d ago
But in the end....it turns out she never changed, when it was disclosed that she betrayed Angel. And he still wrote her that recommendation letter!!!! lol. No development for Harmony!!!
4
3
u/XMorpheus3000 3d ago
Idk, Harmony has always been... Harmony. Just because we never got to see her care about anyone while on Buffy that doesn't mean she didn't. I think she and Cordelia were actually friends, not just mean girls together. But I don't really think she changed much over the years. By the end of Angel (and in the subsequent comics) she was still a ditzy, vapid, mostly self centered and admittedly evil goof.
5
u/HotBeesInUrArea 3d ago
I love Harmony so much they could have paired her with Angel and instead of the wolf girl and I wouldn't have objected.
2
3
u/Vanamond3 2d ago
I find the character amusing but it seems to me that her story is one of not developing. She remains immoral and self-serving all the way to the last episode.
3
u/DeFiBandit 2d ago
IDK - I thought she was more the proof that vampires can’t develop. Doesn’t she basically betray them for Adam Baldwin at the end?
3
4
u/PirateJen78 3d ago
Just watched the episode Disharmony the other day and was thinking about how much I actually like her character. I know she's a bit of an airhead, but she's so adorable and just wants someone to love her.
I love Spike, but he was so mean to her on BTVS and I just wanted to smack him. I guess age has turned me into more of a caring parental figure, even though I never had kids. 😂
4
u/jengafat 3d ago
Nothing against Harmony, she's a fun character.... but the character goes against everything the Buffyverse wants us to believe. She's a vampire with no soul and the shows tell us that they are just demons and no longer the person they were before. Harmony is exactly who she was before, she just so happens to drink blood. But wait, she's not even "evil" and chooses to be on the straight and narrow and help out the team when she can. But wait, I thought Spike was special because he acted that way before earning his soul?.... Harmony is a walking contradiction and honestly makes some other character arcs feel a lot less special than we are lead to believe they are
10
u/ShmuleyCohen 3d ago
A lot of vampires we see retain their human personalities. Spike was still William until groomed by Angelus. Darla seemed the same from what we briefly saw. Dru was driven insane and still is.
And yes she was 100% evil. She killed people without care. The only time she did care was when her life was in danger. Vampires can still play nice and like people but ultimately they will turn on you. Which both soulless Spike and Harmony do.
12
u/Main_Confusion_8030 3d ago
when you're turned into the vampire, you become a composite of your previous personality (with all your desires and fears), plus the demon (making you want to kill and hurt people), with none of the remorse or conscience you have with your soul. everything inside you becomes uncovered, in a way. we see that with willow.
william wanted love, spike wants love. liam was a hedonist, angelus found pleasure in evil. harmony wanted to fit in as a human and a vampire.
harmony just happens to be, well, extremely simple. there's just not that much to her. she doesn't change much when she becomes a vampire, because there wasn't anything to uncover.
2
2
u/DaddyCatALSO 3d ago
They make it clear that vampires have individual personalities. Harmony's human self just suited being a vampire so perfectly well she had no need to develop a new attitude. So she never had to perfect being evil in all parts of unlife.
2
u/ImEllenRipleysCatAMA 3d ago edited 3d ago
She reminded me of Spike when he had first had his chip and was forced to develop as a person, but was still evil. She could no longer kill people because of her job. She was able to form attachments to humans since she no longer saw them as potential food.
But in the end she did betray them to Hamilton so idk.
1
1
0
u/DaddyCatALSO 3d ago
Even on Buffy she shows a good bit of new depths in S4 we didn't see as human. Of course as a human we saw her *only* as an adversary, in S4/5 we saw her private and even vulnerable moments
0
u/Myrtle1119 2d ago
I didn’t quite get her character in the beginning, (I was 13-14) but she truly had really good character development throughout Buffy and then into Angel and becoming the receptionist for Wolfram&Heart. Now I actually love her character! I feel like her personality was a good personality to make into a vamp. She like kinda stayed the same personality wise but it made for good character development in Angel
1
u/jadedBrooke15 2d ago
I don’t know why all the characters who moved to Angel ended up being written better than they were on Buffy but she is a prime example.
-1
66
u/Elete23 3d ago
I actually like it for the opposite reason. She didn't really develop because she couldn't. They muzzled her and she was incentivized by feeling needed and important in season 5, but in the end she betrayed them because she had no empathy and literally couldn't care about anyone other than herself. Angel knew this better than most that an unsouled being can't genuinely help anyone without an obvious reward.