careful! the ink's still wet!

I startled several people who know my Spike-alholism by not being wild about the epilogue of Showtime. How can a self-confessed Dark Spuffy fan (if that isn't a contradiction - I like the idea of them loving each other in a big non-soppy, non-happy-ever-after way) not be happy when Buffy walks over, cuts Spike down and they start into each others' eyes as the music swirls? Well, this one.

It's farily easy to spot, looking back over this blog, that I am not enamoured with the whole First Evil storyline and have felt ME are going down the lazy plotting route. Easy, routine, predictable. So after weeks of Spike being a little torture puppy who just hangs about getting hurt, and with the recent bad habit of characters standing about talking instead of the old-fashioned (in BtVS terms) use of monsters as metaphors, the whole rising-music, soulful eye contact stuff just made me shudder with horror at the thought of the inevitable hurt/comfort episode which was to follow.

So much so that I went and wrote a fanfic, trying to reconcile my desire for some B/S interaction with my dread of a run-of-the-mill hurt/comfort scene. Thankfully, Potentials skips the whole thing and instead has Spike bursting back into the narrative as an active participant instead of a passive victim. Yay! BtVS has confounded my expectations. In a good way. Of course, I do suspect some of my enjoyment of Potentials is due to the First Evil plot being in remission but this was the first episode for several weeks which I actually enjoyed. I also think a single shot of his belly was the most sexy thing we've seen this season. I was in such a good mood that I even almost forgave Molly her accent. Almost.