Oh God, that's brilliant.

Oh. Too painful to breathe. Laughing so hard.

My gut feeling is that they'd miss a lot of the metaphor, but that the overall quality of the storytelling is so good that they'd understand what was going on and enjoy it.

I think Paul (homeschooled) got most of the metaphor, even without the experience. (edit: what he missed was a lot of the pop culture refs.)

I thought Spike was stalkerish in S5, not charming. It was pretty well established in IWMTLY that building the April bot was a bad thing and then Spike goes and builds a Buffybot. Sure she was cute and funny, but still...ick.

I thought Spike was stalkerish in S5, not charming. It was pretty well established in IWMTLY that building the April bot was a bad thing and then Spike goes and builds a Buffybot. Sure she was cute and funny, but still...ick.

The reason that all works for me is it contributed to that tension inherent in Chipped!Spike. He really was not so much a monster, and still not a man. He wasn't bad enough, and wasn't good enough. Yeah, the bot building was one of the bad things he did, and then, in the same episode, he endured a severe beating and risked death, to protect Dawn (and Buffy). He did lots of despise-able things, right along side some noble things. I really thought they did a good job setting up both Buffy's attraction to him, and her self-disgust. Both seemed reasonable to me.

I'd never seen that type of self-destructive sexual behavior portrayed on prime-time TV & it just FLOORED me.

That was my exact reaction. She looked so dead inside to me. I think this was my first season of watching Buffy in real time (as opposed to reruns) and I wanted to find out what was going to happen to her.

See, I thought the BuffyBot was stalkerish, for sure, but I also thought that episode marked a turning point in Spike's character--if memory serves me right, there was a run of several episodes there in late S5 and early S6 where Spike wasn't doing anything you could point to as creepy stalker guy, and OTOH was doing a lot of good things. So I thought his storyline was going to be about growing a soul gradually or becoming good without a soul or something along those lines. Turns out I was wrong, but IIRC I was far from the only person who expected something like that at the time. So when I was supposed to see the monster in Spike again, I had major cognitive dissonance, because I thought he'd gone beyond that.

One thing with the 'bot, though, is Spike himself often seemed to know that this was the wrong path to be taking. "She" wasn't giving him what he really wanted, and he knew it.

So when I was supposed to see the monster in Spike again, I had major cognitive dissonance, because I thought he'd gone beyond that.

Yeah, this was my issue as well.

Also, later in Bargaining, he rejects the 'bot completely.

So when I was supposed to see the monster in Spike again, I had major cognitive dissonance, because I thought he'd gone beyond that.

Yeah, I think they leaned too hard on the assumption that people would stick with "soulless vampire = evil." I can totally see why you would've thought they were going there, Susan; I thought they were going there myself until somewhere around Smashed, and God knows it wasn't because I wanted them to.

Also, of course, I was permanently scarred by the "but if she'd just listened to him he wouldn't've had to chain her to a wall, would he?" conversation. Spike was my great learning experience on How Fandom Interaction Can Impact Your Opinion Of A Character.

ETA: Said conversation was not with Buffistas, I should make clear.

One thing with the 'bot, though, is Spike himself often seemed to know that this was the wrong path to be taking.

This is true.

Spike was my great learning experience on How Fandom Interaction Can Impact Your Opinion Of A Character.

This is also true for me.