Too bad, too, that so many of the precious few minutes were wasted by Kennedy and Angel kissing.

And on a lighter note - where was I when Angel and Kennedy kissed? That's a plot twist I wouldn't have seen coming.

On a more serious note, I repeat what I said a few days ago: despite a mid-season drag (a common Buffy occurence, IIRC), and the Giles-weirdness (no explanation that I can see for that, sadly), I've liked this season about 4th best of all 7 seasons - dead in the middle. And even 5 (at the bottom) had some good eps, was better than just about anything else out there, etc., it just had a hella-crap main arc.

I have to say that I can't judge Buffy's behavior in a vacuum. Yeah, the show was metaphor, but she's still the Slayer. And the Slayer has to worry first and foremost about the saving of the world. I took from Buffy this episode a certain adult resignation to that lot in her life. She understood that no matter how much she loved people, she had to let that take a backseat to doing her job.

So, yeah, she was manipulative. That was her job. And what tore her apart for seven years was having to be manipulative while trying to love people, too. Truly an impossible task. So she gave whatever she could to those she loved, but in the end she had to do whatever was needed, including sacrificing her own happiness, in order to save the world.

The scene with Angel illustrated this perfectly. Angel and his Dawson-like neediness was just not something she could deal with and still get her job done. Sometimes you just have to tell people whatever they need to hear, otherwise you can't get done the adult things that need to be done.

She can't deal with people's insecurities over their relationship with her and still be an effective Slayer. She's just got to move them into a state where they are dealing as quickly as she can, so she can get down to the business at hand. And what I took there was, "It sucks, but these are the cards I was dealt. So I just have to play them and then go save the world."

There is no way to be sweet, make everybody happy Buffy, and, in the end, isn't that true of us all? We have to be who we are, and the people who love us should love us for who we are. And if they can't deal, we can't go through life thinking that is our problem.

And you know what, Spike goes out even more heroic because I think he was the only one who ever just loved Buffy for who she was. Warts and all.

Buffy is a user AND a good person AND a selfish hero AND a snappy accessorizer. She's a Renaissance Slayer. They were all put in an impossible situation, week after week, and that has to be hard on interpersonal relationships. Notice how no one on the show ever had a successful one during the entire seven years.

You have 3 arms?

Those are fingers. Stubby, Simpsons-esque fingers.

You have 3 arms?

No! The 3 is my right hand, and the E is my left hand!

Oh, good. Sean got it!

My ASCII art skillz are neither mad nor whack.

OK, the Frayverse now makes no sense at all!

Actually I think there a bunch of ways this makes the Frayverse more likely. If one slayer at a time managed to fight the demons to a draw - tons of slayers all over the world ought to be able to wipe out most of the evil demons from the world. And with the core slayers - the ones with Buffy and Faith who know whats going on traveling around the world and cluing people in, sooner or later they will take trhe offense and start closing hellmouths.

And most of the magic, especially the dark magic in the worlds draws on hellmouths. And the spell that created the slayer was specifically dark magic - even if the spell that changed the rules was cast by Willow the White. So when the last hellmouth closes, the slayers all revert to human. Any remaining demons that were not wiped out by all those slayers either die (or if their human side was strong enough) become 100% human.

OK fanwanking - but really logical fanwanking.

I was talking the finale over with a coworker who isn't a fan, but whose roommate is, and realized that for me, the finale was emotionally satisfying, but intellectually unsatisfying.

By which I mean, if I try to make it work logically, and jibe with all the previous plot developments, I will just get frustrated and annoyed. But without any deep analysis, and having only watched it once, in pleasing company, laughing a lot and bleh-ing in chorus to the excessive schmoop, I really did enjoy it, even though I know it will probably not stand up to the hard scrutiny I tend to prefer.

Which means, I think, I can never watch it again, so as not to harsh my mellow.

but I do feel condemned a little, and don't necessarily appreciate it.

I'm sorry, Sean. That's why I mentioned the other things I don't like, to give some perspective on how I see things. It's quite possible for me to separate the person from the act, and I'm not going to go around saying I think Barbie dolls are a good thing just because little girls do get pleasure from playing with them that outweighs the negative body image issues they may (or may not) develop (I mean, I played with Barbies, and I've never been anorexic, so Barbies must be okay, right?).

If you want to be defined totally by your willingness to snuggle with people who love you when you don't love them the same way, then be my guest, but you're going to have to accept that I'm going to feel a certain way about you. Or you could not care, which is probably the best way to deal.

My sister wants to buy an SUV. Damn her.

I need three arms to write out all these apparently pent up and long winded posts that are pouring out of me.

Anyone know a spell to get me a third arm?

I thought the Slayers Awakening Everywhere montage was way overly cheesy, and I've never liked the "cutting a speech off halfway and then cutting back in the ending montage to reveal the end" style of narrative. It always feels cheap and sloppy to me. This one wasn't as bad as in the UberVamp Telepathy episode, but it's an overused device in this show, and not one I'm a fan of.