I get the idea that The Girl in Question is one of those polarizing episodes, the episodic equivalent of Andrew: fans either love it unabashedly or really loath it.  I'm in the latter camp.  I admire the guts it took to throw away all the momentum that had been built up just to have one last wacky adventure, but I…

SPOILERS aplenty.

On top of the fact that Skip's speech was off-putting in and of itself, let's not forget that it kind of ruined Skip, or at last drastically changed his character.  Before this episode Skip was a friendly, benevolent balancing demon who bantered about commuting and nachos and such, and suddenly he's a smirking,…

Really?  The Gorch brothers?

Teeny, tiny spoilers.

Okay, so I haven't read the rest of the comments and I'm sure this has been said over and over already, but this is terrific news.  I've loved the Simpsons and I've grown bored and kind of depressed with the Simpsons, and I'm happy that it could be coming to an end before it embarrasses itself and the world further. …

Well, the guy HAD just tried to murder Spike not five minutes before.  Spike could've done much worse than bad-mouth his momma.  And what Spike says seems pretty rooted in his experience, not to mention Robin's, although Spike couldn't have known that specifically.  Whether Nicci had a choice in the matter is beside…

Well, yes and no.  Various women were cruel to him, but he still kept making the choice to change.  He accepted Drusilla's offer of immortality (even though he didn't know what he was getting into).  He staked his mother, which would shape the vampire he would become.  Buffy was cruel to him, but it was his decision…

She had to toughen up.  She was no longer dealing with a close-knit group of people she knew could more-or-less take care of themselves.  There were now several young girls whose lives she was directly responsible for, and she, for better or worse (probably worse), decided to beef up the bitch as a way of dealing with…

Time to roll up my sleeves and fanwank.

I think it was just cut for time, but I'm one of those who would have liked it to have remained in.  Maybe I'm just denser than others, but I needed that hole in Giles' motivation plugged in for me.  The scene still works without it, but I think it's too specific a motivation to really come out naturally in the…

"Jerked around" was probably a poor choice of words, but yeah, I agree that he defines himself largely by his relationships to the women in his life.  The only male I can think of that may have had a big influence over him is Angelus, as we'll explore in further detail next Season on Angel.

I agree that Giles and Buffy don't resemble their former selves here, but I don't think that's a bad thing.  I also agree that Buffy's decision not to sacrifice Dawn was one of her best moments, but it doesn't mean that this Buffy, shaped by her experiences in Season 6 and 7, is any less valid.  The show allowed its…

There's also a theory that Spike's mother was goading him into killing her, twisting what she knew to be his mommy-obsession into something quite a bit more sinister.  The idea goes that she knew that she wouldn't be able to love Spike, or William I guess, as a vampire the way she could as a human, so rather than put…

I read in an interview, or heard on a commentary, or something, that the writers made the connection between Buffy and Spike's mother Anne because they wanted to emphasize how both women profoundly affected the course of his life.  Or unlife, whatever.  If you think about it, all of the big transformative periods of…

Great write-up.  I agree that the ethical questions involved here are what give the episode much of its staying power and I'm not sure Noel approached them from the right angle.  I don't think the Buffy-Giles discussion is intended to show us that Buffy has "seen the light" on the Dawn issue, or to justify her past…

I enjoy Angel's fifth Season quite a lot.  I really do.  It was daring, it built up terrific momentum towards the end and there were more great stand-alone episodes than in probably any other Season of the show.  But the furious adulation confuses me.  Although there were a lot of great stand-alones, there were also…

Hey, that shot also had Spike shirtless for no reason.

Most of it is, but the part where Dawn says that she's "reading like two words of Turkish a night," is cut out, or possibly just not said in the first place.  At least that would have been a weak attempt at explaining where Dawn got all these new skills.

I agree that Andrew's nerdiness far eclipses his gayness, but we knew already knew that.  Mostly I just want an excuse to quote some of Andrew's nerdiest lines.  Here goes: