Regarding Lorne and Lindsey, I thought it was made quite clear that Lorne had seen Lindsey's future and knew he'd be up to no good. Basically, assassinating him was a preemptive strike to prevent him from doing any damage in the future. Think of it like what Christopher Walken tried to do with Martin Sheen in The Dead Zone.
Funny you should mention that, because I always felt that the Angelus fleshed out by the spinoff was in direct conflict with the Angelus of Becoming (S2 finale of Buffy). I don't think Angelus of Angel would actively seek the destruction of the world. What Spike said in that last ep of S2 (of Buffy) sounds like something Angelus (or my perception thereof) would have said in the spinoff.
I have watched 11.5 seasons of Buffyverse and still can't get enough! I will most definitely own both shows some day.
I have still to watch the last three eps, plan on doing it tonight. But this season of Angel is amazing. It's got to rank right up there with the best of all Buffy/Angel seasons. I wouldn't argue with somebody if they tried to say it's the best Angel season. I'm still partial to S2, but S5 certainly is just as much of a revelation as S2 was.
I thought the early shows in the season were very strong, too. Just because they were mostly standalone eps doesn't mean they weren't great.
"Destiny" was magnificent. And I loved the party ep (can't remember the title). That one made me laugh out loud a couple of times.
One more point on this: In the commentary on "Destiny", the authors of the episode (David Fury and Steven DeKnight) reveal that the original idea for the episode was to have Angel and Spike fighting over Buffy. Then they decided that wouldn't work, given the fact that there was no longer a Buffy show (and although they don't say so, I suspect they knew they would have problems getting Gellar back later in the season). So they decided to make the fight over something bigger, and since they needed to deal with the fact that Angel was no longer unique, the Shanshu Prophecy was a logical choice.
Regarding Shanshu, Spike wants it a little bit for himself, mostly to try and get Buffy to love him (remember the "No you don't, but thanks for saying it" comment in Chosen?). However, the big reason is that he simply wants to steal something away from Angel.
To really understand the relationship between Spike and Angel,all you have to do is listen to the audio commentary to "Fool for Love" from Buffy's Fifth Season.
Does anybody want to buy a special slipcover for their season 5 Angel? It has the usual English on it, plus a translation into some sort of demon language. Possibly Pylean?
, and I was quite pleasantly surprised at how interesting Spike was once again. Like many others, I became quite annoyed with him in the last couple seasons of Buffy. But I thought he was great here and would have liked to have seen more of him with Angel.