I don't remember Spike taking over Angel for more than a few episodes. But yes, he did take over -- and overbalance -- Buffy.

I think for some viewers (not me personally) any Spike on Angel (so to speak) was too much Spike by that point.

I remember it taking about 8 eps before Spike was integrated successfully into the show -- up until that point nearly every ep had at least one "The Network Made Us Do It, So Here's Another Reminder About SPIKE BEING ON THE SHOW NOW" scene that felt completely incongruous with the rest of the show.

I'd say "Hellbound" and "Destiny" were the only episodes in which he was actually the main character rather than Angel, but I definitely got the feeling that all the supporting characters were backburnered in favor of Spike at least until Amy started playing Illyria. Fred's death seemed to be the one thing that couldn't be made All About Spike, and it forced him back into being part of an ensemble.

All About Spike

Now I'm suddenly trying to imagine Angel being played by Bette Davis. It's kinda amusing.

Part of the problem on Angel may have been the takeover of W&H and the death of Connor at the end of S4. A lot of ongoing (and potentially ongoing) plotlines disappeared.

So is the complaint about Spike taking over Buffy or taking over Angel? In the interests of full disclosure, I was giddy at having Spike over on AtS, though I agree it took awhile to get the fit right.

I think "taking over" Buffy, if that's how you see it, was really a later development than what I was thinking about in relation to the Marsters quote. S2, you had a bit character taking on a bigger role for reasons that may not have been intentional or anticipated. I'd consider the S5 and beyond stuff a separate issue.

And I can barely consider the AtS stuff without the meta, so it's hard for me to really analyze. Personally, I'd have been happy if they just let him go down with Sunnydale. But once that call was made, I still liked the character, so it didn't terribly ping me.

This corner is complaining about Spike not so much taking over Buffy, but continuing to be shoehorned in as a main character after his story had ended. At the very latest, he should have been staked in "Seeing Red." I'm not so sure he really belonged in Angel, and the PTB never really figured out what his story should be, but he didn't seem to create the same imbalance.

Some of the Spike stuff on Angel works better for me in retrospect, after it was clear that they were using Spike to highlight things about Angel.

But a lot of it, especially in the earlier episodes, was tiresome. I feel like there were scenes where he'd pop in, remind people that he was a ghost, and wander out, and I'd be like, "What was the point of that?"

A couple of Spike's pop-ins were hilarious. Not so much during the ghost era, but his small bits in SMILE TIME were priceless. Of course, since I find peeved Angel funny, peeved Puppet!Angel was exponentially funny, and Spike can bring the peeve out of Angel like almost no other charcter.