I'm getting that.

They tricked everyone into thinking Spike was becoming decent because of his penchant for protecting Dawn and his genuinely heartfelt grief over Buffy's death. Kind of a Vic Mackey "show the devil exists and then spend seasons making you forget it" storytelling device.

I thought it made sense. Buffy's romantically self-destructive, and Riley was way too dependable and straight-laced for her to ever truly fall for.

What. The actual. Fuck.

Irish!

I love your way-too-thought-out theory. The comics can fuck right off (no interest at all in reading them; when the shows finished, the characters finished as far as I'm concerned).

Andrew definitely deserved more than he got (a crying session where he finally acknowledged his guilt). He betrayed and murdered a fundamentally decent person in Johnathan, and by Angel S5 he was living it up in Rome.

But it was strongly established that he had only platonic feelings for Willow. There was never anything there on his part until the plot demanded it. And right after, they went right back to being purely platonic with not even a hint of (romantic) affection between them. It was totally contrived.

That's the thing, though: it's never truly overcome in Spike's case. He still cannot help but do bad things (selling demon eggs as 'the Doctor', his attempted rape of Buffy) because he simply isn't capable of being a decent 'person'.

There are multiple instances throughout Buffy (but not Angel) where they heavily imply that the vampiric versions of people are much closer to the original personality than anybody is comfortable admitting (most notably in Doppelgangland).

Well, not if you like the idea of one of TV's most well-formed and complex characters having never existed.

Well, they were basically having casual sex before Seeing Red, and if there's one way in which Buffy/Angel were always so obnoxiously puritanical, it was in their hardline insistence that 'casual sex = bad' (Faith, Cordelia's demon pregnancy after a one-night stand, Buffy/Parker…)

Needs more British stammering.

My most hated relationship-wrecking was the supremely idiotic and entirely out-of-character Xander/Willow pairing in season 3. It broke Xander/Cordelia up (I realise she was going to Angel, but I loved them as a couple) and it had been established so many times that Xander had no interest in her. A textbook example of…

I always hated the "Angelus is not Angel" development that they came up with in Angel S4. Angelus is Angel with the conscience stripped away. That's what made him such a compelling antagonist (in Buffy, not the pantomime villain in Angel).

Season 4 is arguably the funniest (Pangs, Something Blue, A New Man) and season 6 is really underrated in my opinion. I loved that, while they brought someone back from the dead, they actually took an entire season to explore the aftermath of that. Granted, the Willow druggie storyline was a dud and it's dark as hell,…

Faith and… Giles?

But then we wouldn't have had post-Buffy Wesley.

I think we're all forgetting about the world-igniting passion of Buffy/Owen.

I'm not generally a fan of reality shows, but I'd watch the shit out of Christmas with the Baldwins.