I get that slightly naive emotion is his thing, but it seems really trivial in the realm of evil to be grossed out by disregard for consent issues, is my point. I'm not going rank pain, just to point that lots and lots of horrible things are to happen every week. It's the point of the show.

it doesn't mean that he doesn't enjoy it from a storytelling perspective. It's two totally different things.

What does it mean? That he's against rape and sexual assault?

disregard for consent issues

FWIW, a lot of the discussion around "Seeing Red" on this board centered on the presentation of rape in the show. How for many people it plays as worse on screen than murder, and makes the character irredeemable. That in the real world murder, kidnapping, torture were all worse or equally bad crimes but that rape and sexual assault affected them differently within the context of a TV show or movie.

Rape and sexual assault are much more common crimes - than kidnapping, murder and torture. That may affect how we perceive them on screen. Also, in our culture excusing rape is much more common that excusing the other crimes mentioned (though this board is blessedly free of that particular social flaw) which may also affect how on-screen rape and assault is perceived.

I know David. I was here.

I'm not going to fall into the trap of ranking evil, but I am going to firmly say that if you're grossed out by a disregard for something that didn't even happen, over a murdering demon saying "Or you could take advantage of me in my weakened state." then you've got a tough row to hoe when people actually get, you know, driven crazy, killed, raped, etc. Seriously. The demon was a woman saying it was okay to have sex with her even though she's not 100%. That's only a consent issue for us because we have meta knowledge. People with concussions are legally allowed to consent to sex in many many cases.

Mark just doesn't get Drusilla.

Anyway, the two plots at work here in "What’s My Line, Part One" are...well, I can’t say I’m totally on board with Spike’s plot? I like him as a character, but I’m still just confused by Drusilla’s characterization. As far as I understand it, she acts the way she does because of the way Angel treated her as his...sire? Is that what that means? Okay, don’t answer that yet. The point I’m trying to make is that the attempt to portray any sort of mental illness on Drusilla’s part just feels lazy. It’s not that Juliet Landau is a bad actress; I think she’s doing the best she can with the material. I just feel like the writers have given us the bare minimum of her story, and because of that, she doesn’t feel like a whole character to me. At best, she exists to irritate Spike and make him angry towards Buffy.

While I am sort of baffled at his complete misread of Drusilla, I do kind of get the criticism that her main character trait as of now is "crazy." Mostly she says a lot of things that don't make sense, which is perfectly entertaining but perhaps doesn't say a lot about her as a person? I think Juliet Landau brought a lot to the character and made her feel like there was someone behind all those bizarre lines.

Yeah he doesn't get Druscilla. It wasn't the turning into a vampire that made her insane, it was Angelus systematically destroying her sanity that made her insane.I kinda want to go over there and ask how he can miss that since he just complained that Dru was limited to the backstory that Angel explained.

Also she's just there to irritate Spike? Doesn't he see Spike's devotion to Dru?]

Oh, by the way, someone made the "Xander is just a teenage boy, geez" argument and was responded to, if you're interested in what the counterargument is.

I keep getting the impression that most of the people commenting there are very young, ie, they don't realize how much grey there actually is in the world.

I keep getting the impression that they've just discovered -isms and it makes them feel like they're better people for being oh-so-enlightened.

While I am sort of baffled at his complete misread of Drusilla, I do kind of get the criticism that her main character trait as of now is "crazy." Mostly she says a lot of things that don't make sense, which is perfectly entertaining but perhaps doesn't say a lot about her as a person? I think Juliet Landau brought a lot to the character and made her feel like there was someone behind all those bizarre lines.

It makes me sad how much he doesn't seem to understand Drusilla. For me, she is such a big part of enjoying S2.