somniloquence

It breaks my heart, even after all this time of being away from the Spuffy and feeling like the end of S6 and S7 ground away my heart for that story. Watching it again after a long time, I'm reminded of how intensely I felt that pairing, and since it was made long before Seeing Red destroyed the fandom for so many people, it's still got the power to show how doomed it all was without it being a forced, contrived, repugnant character destroying device perpetuated by brain dead showrunners. Because that was the nature of their relationship -- the line in the song that's repeated is "I've never felt so alone, and I've never felt so alive" and that was pretty much what it did to Spike and in many ways to Buffy, and we never needed the crappy anvilly nature of an attempted rape to show that.

Beautifully put. This is exactly how I feel about the pairing - it broke my heart, too, and to this day I can't tell you how much it annoys me to see Noxon's name on the Mad Men credits. I'm sure she has little to do with its greatness - she appears to be a great coat-tail rider, although for the life of me I can't imagine why people keep allowing her to do so. I'll never forgive her for ruining BtVS. Obviously she had Whedon's tacit approval, but still.

Off to watch the vid. Thanks for the rec.