He's fine, but whatever.

That's my opinion too. Unless someone told me what they'd have done if they hadn't written for him, who the hell knows?

But we don't know he did. We know that we might have given his time to Lorne, but Wesley could have gotten it. Or Harmony. Or Nina. Or Eve. Or naked sweaty Lindsey.

No, we can't know what they would have done with the time. But, new character is shoehorned into the show and another character gets far less facetime and no arc? I feel confident that they are correlated. (I also feel like all the other characters were not underserved.)

Moreover, a lot of Spike's purpose could have been filled by Lorne--e.g., watching Illyria; being the Anya/Cordelia "truthteller." I think every Spike storyline and his character arc could have been discarded this season with no net loss to the show's arc and storyline.

Then what explains last season's underuse of Lorne? It'd have been nice if they'd sat down and figured out what his best use was, but it wasn't Spike stopping them from doing it.

I feel like he's far more sidelined this season, but I could be wrong.

I still feel that he AND Spike is one wacky sidekick too many.

I think Spike could have been better used (to draw parallels and show growth in Angel) than he was.

I also agree Lorne could have been better used, but hell, even the time he's been given this season has been wasted. Since about mid (I'm fudging the timeline), he's been useless. Gunn, Angel, Wesley, even Spike get to use what they're good at to move any given episode along. Lorne, NSM.

Though I cheered this week when Angel said Lorne was right -- about his viewpoint on good vs. evil. Because that's the one I'd always thought he had, whether or not he's actually right.

In the first third of the season, I found Spike actively annoying, and wanted him off my show. Since then, he's been better integrated, but I'm still not sure the season's been made better by his presence. He's fine, but whatever.

I agree that he doesn't really add to the show. However, I think he fits into Angel's Avengers (hee) a ton better than he ever fit in with the Scoobies. He just gels better with this cast, even if he doesn't really improve anything by being here.

He just gels better with this cast,

Oh, I think exactly the opposite. I like Spike, and I've thought he's been more or less fine this season, but he has seemed so completely out of place in LA.

And I'm sure a large part of that is because he came over from 5 seasons on BTVS. He belongs to Sunnydale, in my mind. AND he was dropped into the 5th year of AtS, so it felt like cramming a Sunnydale character into an already-cohesive LA whole.

There wasn't a similar problem with Wes joining the cast, in my mind, only because he was a small part of BTVS (not even a full season), and he came to AtS partway through the first season, when it wasn't a cohesive whole.

As always, Your Beagle May Vary.

I'm with Steph, mostly. I do think he's gotten to the point where he fits better with AtS now than he did with BtVS late-S7 (and I have a theory about that), but in the beginning of the season, he stuck out like a sore thumb.

His size may have been difficult to work around.

In other news, I now have seasons 1, 2 and 3 on DVD ... so I can enjoy what was, even though there won't be any more.