I'd have to disagree. WTF?!Cordy was a sad, sad development, but the rest of the show didn't suffer nearly as much as BtVS did under Crack!Willow and the Potentials.

I'd say Crack!Willow was more an error in execution - getting too literal-minded with a metaphor when there were plenty of ways Willow could have gotten to Dark!Willow (who I enjoyed) without it (power corrupting being #1 on my list of should haves). There was NOTHING about St. Cordy that worked for me, conceptually or otherwise. Her going big bad worked OK for me, but it wasn't really Cordy, and until season 5 they never reclaimed her from the pit of suckitude in which they'd dropped real!Cordy. Whereas we got some Willow I liked after the crack scenario.

The potentials are a bit harder to forgive, but, again, I think it was mainly a by-product of the execution (marginalizing the Scoobies) rather then the concept per se. Also, we got enough Giles moments that I never felt he was a lost cause like I did with Cordelia, and I think he was the only one of the core who's character went off the rails (rather than just getting side-lined).

I guess I see the potentials as a bad idea, Crack!Willow as a brief wrong turn (since her flipping evil was fun), and Saint Cordy a betrayal.

I concur with ita. I think they turned the Willow storyline around pretty quickly, and I love the end rush of episodes in S6 because of it.

I never loved any character as much as I loved Wesley, so there's that. Easy the best character evolution we got to see in Jossverse, IMO.

And that's the reason I'll be buying multiple seasons of Angel on DVD. I still get a chill watching him square off with the wheatgrass hating bookie in "The Ring".

taps foot waiting for Ple to show up...

I'd have to disagree. WTF?!Cordy was a sad, sad development, but the rest of the show didn't suffer nearly as much as BtVS did under Crack!Willow and the Potentials. (Oh yes, and Pod!Giles and Absent!Xander and Speech!Buffy. At least AtS only ruined one character.)

I'm with you. But, then, I never really had the Cordy love that others did, so it's not like the downfall of Cordelia left me feeling betrayed as a viewer or anything. (There are some aspects of S5 that do, but that would take too long for me to go into now.)

taps foot waiting for Ple to show up...

Dude, I'm workin' in the other room. Only reason you're seeing me now is that I had to stretch my hips.

See, I didn't recognize Willow in S7 either. I loved her in Villains (enough to forget the crack metaphor almost entirely, if only for that 40 minutes), but after that she was never my Willow ever again

This may make all the difference. I thought that when they actually gave her something to do in season 7, "Conversations with Dead People" for example, she was fine. I just think like the rest of the core Scoobs they didn't do enough with her.

Buffy, the second-tier Scoobs and the bad guys got the majority of the worthwhile moments season 7, IMO.

Dude, I'm workin' in the other room.

But you have a computer in every room.

Only reason you're seeing me now is that I had to stretch my hips.

Mmmmm, Ple's stretchy hips. Do your joints feel loose and gelid yet?

Buffy, the second-tier Scoobs and the bad guys got the majority of the worthwhile moments season 7, IMO.

Second tier scoobs being Anya and Andrew and I loved the episodes that focused on them. After Xander, the character that got the short end of the stick was probably Dawn. I've mentioned it before, but there were lots of little lines that were lost between shooting script and final show that would've made her character much more interesting.

Another reason I prefer AtS to BtVS is that by S7 Buffy, the only one of the main characters I really cared about was Buffy herself.

I liked all the main characters on Angel, and even Spike went from being the wholly annoying waste of space he was in S7 to tolerable, though sadly overused. (Balance, people. Treat him as salt. Use with caution to enhance, but don't pour all over the place, because then it's overpowering and detracts from the nuances of the other ingredients.)

(Especially if your arc ends up depending on the other ingredients, which have been simply background in the overwhelming rush of sodium.)