Right, like even in Shakespearean tragedy, doesn't someone usually live to tell the tale?

• cough*AndrewandDawn*endcough*

Sassy: Yeah, the standard ending for a Shakespearean tragedy sees all the main characters lying around dead except one, who restores order and gets to be the next king or something. I was expecting the season to end w/ Buffy dying yet again and then going to heaven, and maybe w/ a bunch of other characters dying; I thought Faith might also die redeeming herself and then a new slayer would be called.

Gleebo: Andrew and Dawn the survivors! What are you crazy? (actually I do kinda like them, but I'd be quite cross if they were the ones left alive and the Core Four, Spike, and Anya were all on the floor dead)

I seriously doubt Joss intended on killing the core four.

Unless it was the brakes going out on the bus as they went through a moutain pass after the finale and Willow was knocked out, so couldn't save them with magic.

And the only survivor is Faith, on Spike's motorcycle, who sees it all.

Then in the sequal series, Spike is sent back by TPTB, shows up to be her watcher....and get his bike.

Exactly why I figured it would have been right up Joss's alley because pissing people off is so damn fun.

yeah, but it's kind of an ending that a lot of people expected, so...

Killing off everyone kind of limits you. Blake's 7 did it, and now Avon is the only one who get's his own series. It's 25 years later, but...

On Cheers, John Ratzenberger wanted to end the series with Cliff coming into the bar and shooting everyone with an UZI, but that didn't sit well with the network....

Maybe he could have just shot a jukebox playing that annoying theme song.

Going into the Buffy series finale I totally expected at least one of the core four to bite it. I was thinking Xander or Giles, and hoping it wasn't any of them. Guess I got what I wanted.

Blackadder always ended the season by killing everyone. Didn't seem to be a problem.

Someone may have already mentioned this (since I've been out of town and not in a position to keep up with you keyboard monkeys :-) ) but ASH will appear in an episode of the A&E series MI-5 next week. He playes a veteran agent who falls in love with a member of the group he's infiltrating.

The name of the episode is "Traitors' Gate"

So what do I think? I think the Slayers turn on themselves. I'm saying War of the Slayer Succession.

You mean there can be only one?

The implication I got from the deleted scene was that he planned on, umm, well, making her feel it, consent be damned.

Really? I didn't get that *at all.* I read it as being just Spike's normal sexual routine; I didn't think he would have used the toys without Buffy's consent.

I fall sort of in the middle on this - I think for Spike, at that time, chains and stun guns fell within reasonable means to get her consent. It's not throwing that issue aside so much as it is coming from it from an entirely different conception.

Ken, I'm with you on the S7 B/S dynamic. I didn't see Buffy really wanting to rekindle their relationship, but even more, I don't think Spike himself would ever have been comfortable with that. He worshipped her for allowing him to still be her back-up and her champion, but going further would have been as hard or harder for him than for Buffy.