I mentioned in a previous post a script somewhere about an early season seven episode where Buffy was granted one no-strings wish from a higher power - the episode would have had her agonise about what to wish for through most of it and at the end Willow asks her at the door what she ended up wishing for then Buffy stepping aside to reveal Tara, fully alive. Not sure if fanfic or real, but I remember it seeming pretty legit from what I've seen of Joss's comments and wherever I read it originally. I'm watching season 6 now so no doubt I'll go on a Google binge following "Seeing Red" as I usually do and happen across the thing again, at which point I'll post it here
Regarding Cordelia/Charisma:
Her pregnancy was unplanned hence the complete character assassination storyline that occurred during season 4 of Angel.
Following that they didn't ask her back for Season 5, but didn't tell her they were/ weren't asking her back. She very publicly said prior to Season 5 that she was looking forward to returning to filming. The showrunners basically just didn't tell her she wasn't coming back. It wasn't until filming of Season 5 resumed that she realised the character wasn't going to be in it anymore. And we're talking about a main character here - the only remaining original besides Angel.
The thing with all of Joss's characters is, when he's planning to kill off a character he tells the actor (well, actress... now that I think about it there were never any major male character deaths) usually a whole year in advance. Kristine Sutherland was told about the death of Buffy's mother during the filming of Season 4, and Amber Benson was told about Tara's death during the filming of Season 5 (bad things happen to Tara on the 19th episode of every season she's in, funny little bit of trivia for you
), so they knew it was coming.
Charisma simply wasn't called to be told she wasn't coming back, and was left to wonder what was happening (and she was finished with her maternity leave before filming). She's since said she originally told them she wouldn't come back if they were going to kill her character but in the end decided it was such an amazing episode and that she owed it to the character and the fans to complete Cordelia's storyline, even though she wasn't obligated through a contract or anything.
I don't know where the actual decision to remove her from the show came from, but from what I can tell she was David Greenwalt's character (co-creator with Joss) and he stopped being a showrunner at the end of Season 3. From what I've read, David Greenwalt had to fight for her to be brought to Angel in the first place, so this seems to fit with the abomination of a storyline she has in Season 4 as well as her eventual removal from the show. And there was no bad blood between Charisma and anyone behind the scenes as far as I can tell, everything I've read points to her being really nice and friendly with everyone.
The biggest dickery comes from the fact that she made it known she didn't want to come back if they were going to kill Cordelia. It was only after Charisma had agreed to film the episode that she was told they were killing her off. The fact that they essentially fired her without telling her combined with tricking her into returning to filming really sours the whole of Season 5 for me. It's my least watched season of either show, even though it has some of the best Angel episodes there are.
I've read a bajillion interviews that all say these things but ten year old links are a bitch to find and most of them are sadly (and unsurprisingly) dead. Here's a snippet from a TV Guide interview back in 2003 shortly after they started filming Angel Season 5:
Charisma Carpenter, who won't be returning as a regular cast member on The WB's Angel, spoke for the first time about her abrupt departure in an interview with the Boston Herald and said she was as shocked as anyone. "I was not prepared," Carpenter told the newspaper. "I don't think you're ever prepared for that kind of situation."
Carpenter played the acid-tongued Cordelia Chase for three years on Buffy the Vampire Slayer before moving over to The WB's spinoff series. "Seven years, that's a long time," she said. "I started that show. To not be finishing it is a pretty big deal for me. They went back to work on July 24. ... On that day I thought, 'Oh, today is officially my first day of unemployment.'"
Last spring, Carpenter returned to Angel just 10 days after giving birth to her son, Donovan, and spent two long days on the set, wrapping up the season, the newspaper reported. She said she is absolutely willing to return to the series to provide closure to her character's story arc and bring Cordy out of the coma in which she remained during last season's finale. "I think it would be incomplete if it wasn't addressed but I don't know what's being planned," she said. "I haven't heard anything. As we speak today, there are no plans for me to come back."
And here Charisma is explaining about what happened before she came back to film "You're Welcome". Go to 2:45 in the video.
So yeah, I kind of hold that whole thing against the show now, it almost ruins it for me. We can never really know the full story, but Cordelia went from a character I hated early on to one of my most loved, and although You're Welcome is the saddest episode in the entire Buffyverse for me, I can barely watch it because the behind the scenes stuff make it so depressing for me personally. The show was really REALLY missing something without her, and the realisation after watching it through that the last time you see the "real" Cordelia is at the end of Season 3 is just... pretty heartbreaking IMO.
EDIT: OH I totally forgot, to add a bit of salt to the wound, in "You're Welcome" it was originally supposed to be Buffy that came back to set Angel back on the right path. When Sarah Michelle Gellar was unavailable for filming, they changed the script to include Cordelia.
EDIT 2: I also have serious issues with both Tara and Cordelia's deaths with respect to the character's lack of a reaction. Tara's is almost understandable because of what happens to Willow immediately after it, but Cordelia's is just shocking to me. It's revealed she's actually dead at the very end of the episode, and the episode immediately after just ignores it completely. You don't see any character reacting to the news, she doesn't get a funeral, no reminscing - nothing. I mean seriously, think about her importance to the group, and none of them even react? At all!? This is in complete constrast to Fred who gets about 3 full episodes of mourning. I love Fred but Cordelia deserved better.
