I'd say pre-chip Spike was the moment in S2 when he learned he could walk again -- and the others didn't know.

Yeah, but he was steamed about Angel cutting in on his and Dru's relationship. I posit that the return of Angleus really wasn't Spike's happiest time.

I bought Gem of Amarra at first, but that was right after Drusilla left Spike for a chaos demon, wasn't it? He didn't seem very happy from the way he treated Harmony.

What was Joyce's happiest? End of School Hard?

Buffy - Right at the beginning of Season 5, before Dracula came to town.

But wasn't she all freaked out about needing to hunt and being unfufilled with Riley (from the teaser to B v. Dracula). Happiest moment for her in my memory is when she accepted the Class Protector Award. As Joss has said many times though, happy Buffy = show bad, so we never got to see it much.

and post-chip, pre-soul would be when he realized Buffy was alive in "After Life".

That is his happiest moment pre-Touched in my book. The look on his face...

But other than Buffy maybe - I agree with the rest.

I think I'd have to go with Buffy being her happiest when receiving the Class Protector award.

Apropos of nothing, I've been watching my recently acquired S3 DVDs and caught the exact changeover from old opening credits to new opening credits (specifically the changover in which recording of the Nerf Herder tune they use), and thought it was pretty neat that they kept those all as is.

Oh, and aside from getting the old Snarky!Cordy that is now long, long gone, S3 was Jonathantastic.

And Faithalicious!!!

And what more could you ask for.

Also? I need to give everybody the opportunity to have a big giant laugh at me.

I don't think I'd seen Amends in the five years since I caught its original broadcast, and I'd totally forgotten that the FE had been on the show before.

No, really. All of S7, I was blissfully ignorant. And since I only found the boards halfway through the season, I'd somehow totally missed or glossed over any and all references to this fact right here on the board and in this thread.

I was just sitting around watching Amends, and then all of the sudden it was like being hit in the head with a brick. I felt very silly indeed.

ha ha ha ha

laughs and points at Sean...

Actually - realizing the FE had been on before was a weird thing for me to. I had just converted a very tough to convert guy at work and he was watching S3 on FX and we were talking about S7 and I was complaining because I wasn't sure the First was going to be a cool villain and he was like "hello, Angel trying to kill himself and the mutual sex dream with Buffy - it's gonna rock!"

And that was so great because he had only been converted like a month earlier. I was a proud, proud fangirl that day...even though I should have remembered that darn it.

Yeah, my "brick to the head" moment also made instant sense of all the conversations I did see about Jenny Callendar not being the FE in S7.

At the time, I just figured y'all wanted to see JC among the dead people the FE appeared as. In all that talk, I somehow never caught a reference to the fact that she'd done it before.

It never even pinged on my radar.

So, again with the big giant idiot-ness.

My list:

Buffy: most definitely the Class Protector Medal; second happiest might be the Christmas morning moment when her eyes lit on the Fray axe.
Willow: the moment when Tara says "Can't we just be kissing now?"
Giles: possibly the rose-in-hand stairclimb from "Passions" but maybe also the earlier episode (can't recall the title) when it became clear that Jenny was not only flirting with him but asking him out. I can't remember the episode or even the lines; I just remember that Jenny says something mildly naughty and a soft little light goes on in Giles's eyes. I think that moment should get bonus points for not being immediately followed by his discovering her corpse.
Angel: what Jeff said.
Dawn: what Jeff said.
Cordelia: probably "Go Fish" - by and large, pure happiness was no real part of her experience in life (though, compared to her life on AtS, her Buffy life was three seasons of nonstop rollicking bliss).
Oz: the Monkey Pants speech. Relaxed, happy, and he could tell from Willow's reaction when he said "You have the sweetest smile" that he'd just opened some door inside her. Actually, most of their non-Veruca scenes together have that happy glow. The actors are longtime friends who totally trust each other, and it shows.
Anya: the moment in "Hush" when Xander attacks Spike and frantically embraces her.
Spike: pre-soul, pre-chip, the moment when he offed the Annoying One. Pre-soul, post-chip, the moment in "Intervention," in the moment after Buffy's kiss of forgiveness, when she tells him never again about the 'Bot and then adds "What you did for Dawn and me? That was real." Post-soul, post-chip, when Buffy's deep in her exhausted sleep and he touches her hair.

There's also the question of when they were the most content - quietly, non-epiphanic or soul-losingly mellowly content. Most of the Oz/Willow moments are sheer contentedness; there's the Scoobies' Bollywood musical viewing; there's Spike letting someone's mom fuss over him in the wake of a shitty breakup and make him hot cocoa with marshmallows.

Uhm, Sean - have you heard my I thought Giles had been to hell and kept waiting for three whole seasons to find out how and why even though there was no real evidence to support that story?

Because if there was a prize for biggest dumbest misreading of a character, storyline, have-you-ever-seen-this-show-before moment - that'd be it.