A "Look how faithful he was, and now finally he gets to nail her!" storyline would have been vile (and, actually, I'm not sure S7 Buffy could have pulled off B/X without slipping into that trap), but I don't think that's what MSCL was going for.

Yes, it would have been vile and would have been vile for B/X, too. When I want B/X, that's not what I want. I consider the early X--->B cravings over. This would have been something new, that grew as they grew, and as they realized they really didn't want monster in their (wo)man.

I think part of my general resistance to the friends-becoming-lovers dynamic is that I read it as often coming from a viewpoint that regards being paired up as an absolute necessity, as if single people are worthless and should take any opportunity, no matter how unsuitable, to avoid the grisly and horrible fate of not being part of a couple. Frankly, I run into that enough in real life between matchmaking-obsessed friends, nosey relatives, and a society that's generally so couplecentric that I can't go out to eat without a host or hostess saying "Oh...only ONE for dinner?" in a tone of voice better suited as the reply to an announcement of some debillitating illness. I think platonic cross-gender friendships are too rare and precious on television to be casually traded in for romances when the latter are so much easier to establish.

Aside from the shallow, I saw in Krakow someone who looked in the mirror and thought the world was wrong and unfair and he was RIGHT, dammit.

Jordan? Just realised there was a mirror.

It may turn out that I need to smack him for being needlessly smug and self-satisfied, but at least there'd be a delay. Brian inspires that now.

eta:

I think platonic cross-gender friendships are too rare and precious on television to be casually traded in for romances when the latter are so much easier to establish.

Oh, yeah.

I can't disagree with anything Matt said. Even as somebody who occasionally loves the friends into romance thing.ETA: ita, I do that, that's why I can't hate Brian for it. But I am older and have learned to keep it to myself for the most part.

And there were hints that Brian, or someone like him, might have eventually been Angela's long-haul guy

JZ, I agree with you that Angela is more like Patti than she realizes -- that's one of the things I noticed when I rewatched the series last year. That said, i think the "or someone like him" in this sentence is key. She wouldn't have ended up with Brian because of her blind spot, because she had been that annoying kid across the street for so long, and also because I think it qwill be hard for her to forgive him for his role in the letter debacle at the end of the series.

But I do think someday, possibly a day long after college, they might sit down and say, "what if?".

Catching up late, but I know that, for me, the timing becomes a big issue (in large part, though not entirely, due to where the characters are at different times). I agree that, in S7, B/X would have been very wrong, but at the top of S4, I think I could have gone for it. With neither of them fitting in their new worlds, and their previous SOs out of the picture (to a lesser, but still present extent, including Willow), I could see it being kinda messy and working really well, story-wise.

I don't have a problem with the friends become lovers storyline, in theory, mostly because all of my own (few) relationships have been with women I was friends with first and continued to be friends with afterwards. However, it does need to be written well and not come out of nowhere.

I do agree that friends of different genders that are strictly platonic are fairly rare in fiction and they should be represented more often.

So B/X wouldn't have bothered me, though I would have rather seen Xander/Willow. But I realize that would have opened up a whole other can of worms in light of the dead lesbian cliche brouhaha.

They were so sweet in s3. Aww.

I also would have enjoyed Xander being the gay one. Apparently Joss considered it.

They were so sweet in s3. Aww.

They really were. And as much as I like Oz, I was disappointed that Willow chose to go back to him after her and Xander's little "affair" was revealed. On the other hand, I can see how the rebuilding the trust aspect of her and Oz's relationship and the "cheating is bad" message were probably better choices narratively.