Normal as in “not supernatural”, not normal as in “indistinguishable ethical set from the rest of society”.
Wuss!
Har har har!!! Let evil prevail!!!
“Hi, Jennifer. My best friend, the witch, is using her magical powers to hunt down and kill the master-criminal who shot her lesbian lover. I would leave Dawn in a crypt with the vampire I used to shag, but he’s not in town right now. Could you babysit tonight? Sorry it’s such short notice…”
Clem seems to be a pretty decent choice. Considering Dawn can at least talk to him about what’s been going on. (Besides that, we’ve never really seen Clem in action. Maybe he’s got a game face of his own. That’d be cool – if he turned out to be really scary when he needed to.)
Another problem with Buffy’s “If Willow kills Warren, it’ll destroy her” speeches is that, in the eyes of the rest of the Buffyverse, it’s okay for Angel to kill people, but it’s not okay for Willow or Faith to do it. Now, mind you, I’m not talking just about his first Angelus days, or Jenny Calendar, but last season, the completely in possession of his soul Angel locked the door and facilitated a massive massacre of humans (Well, mostly humans. They were lawyers). So what is the standard in the Buffy universe? As long as the person broods sufficiently, murder is okay?
What are the chance Giles will appear next week? 100%. Buffy is going to need help dealing with Willow, so she’s going to call on a “magical old friend”
And I’m very certain that Spike will not be the Big Bad next season. Listen carefully to everything he’s said: “I’m going to show Buffy…things are going to change…etc”. Never does he say anything about violence or destruction. With Joss, you have to read between the lines.
The show has spent too much time showing how Spike has changed over the years. They won’t throw all that away by having him revert back to the a-hole he was on day one!
My guess as to what will happen with Spike is: He will regain his soul somehow. OR He’ll have his chip removed, so he can prove to Buffy that it’s not the chip that’s stopping him from violence…he is a reformed man/demon. OR As others in this thread have guessed, he will return as William–the Bloody (awful poet).
I’m one of those misunderstood people in the Spike is not evil camp. I believe that the attempted rape scene was to show Spike hitting bottom. His realization of how close he came to hurting the one he loves is what has triggered his current quest. Next season will be about Spike’s redemption. I believe he’ll become a full-fledged member of the Scooby Gang, and the drum I’ve been beating is that he’ll become Buffy’s new (unofficial) Watcher.
Well now, we don’t know that the Scooby gang would approve of Angel’s actions. As far as we know, they don’t even know about his recent acts of violence.
However, since you brought the subject up, I am disappointed in the way Angel’s murderous rampage has been swept under the rug.
Who senses a possible romance between Xander and Buffy in the wind?
Except that after the attempted rape his comment was something like "What have I done? Why did I stop? I don’t see a lot of remorse in that.
Nonsense. First, as has already been pointed out, Buffy et. al. probably don’t know about Angel’s actions, and even if they do, they’ve never shown scorn or admiration for them: they’ve never expressed any opinion one way or the other.
Second: I wouldn’t say he facilitated the massacre. He knew it was going on, was in a position to stop it, and did nothing. He did lock the study door, but I doubt that really changed anything: no one was getting out of that room unless Darla or Drucilla wanted them to. (BTW, did they every explain why Lindsey and Lilah were spared, or was this just another naked plot contrivance?) Anyway, while it may not have been a morally defensible act, it’s not as bad as, say, flaying someone alive.
Third: It’s not like there wasn’t any fallout from that. The rest of Angel’s gang tried to intervene, and he cut off all contact with them for most of the rest of the season. He created an almost irreparable rift between himself and his closest friends. His inaction at the mansion may have been an evil act, but he did pay for it. Still is actually, since that was the beginning of a direct line of consequence to his current problems with Connor/Stephen.
Fourth: The characters in Angel tend to be realists. The characters in Buffy tend to be idealists. Buffy’s statements are characteristic of her, uh, character, just as Angel’s actions are characteristic of his… well, you know. The fact that their values do not perfectly line up does not invalidate either of their values. The Buffyverse does not have values. The characters within the Buffyverse do.
Aw, c’mon. That entire scene was reeking with remorse. The guy was completely torn up by what he did, despite his protestations to the contrary. Spike is massively, massively conflicted: don’t trust anything he says about himself, because he hasn’t got a clue about what’s really going on in his own head.
Hmmm, I just rewatched the ep last night, and I don’t remember him saying that. I remember him saying “What have I done? What haven’t I done?” I’ll rewatch later to confirm.
The difference could also be “psychological”. Angel has killed before (as a vamp) and has decades upon decades of remorse for his actions. Dreadful, tormented remorse. He can never undo his actions. He will always be a killer (albeit a reformed one with a soul).
So I guess the theory is that once you kill a human, you are never the same. The “innocent Willow” would be destroyed forever.
There is clear precendence that the wish does not have to be wanted. As a matter of fact, the only times it has been shown on the show, it was clearly not wanted.
And come on! Angel locking in the lawyers was seen as almost as bad as what Willow did! Everyone was convinced he had goner over the deep end, that was the point!
True, LaurAnge, but even at that, Willow knows Anya’s tricks and would never actively wish for something she would rather do herself.
Got nothing to say about Angel. Haven’t seen the show.
My wife and I have been doing some discussion. Here’s our WAGs:
[spoiler]
Willow will be the Big Bad next season.
Buffy will get her ass handed to her in this season finale.
Spike will come back with the chip removed, but he will have to use his ability to attack humans to attack Willow.
Dawn will ask Anya for the power to defeat Willow. She will get it, but like all the vengeance demon wishes it’ll have a huge cost.
And here’s the kicker. My wife believes that next season will be the last. Something catastrophic will happen which will destroy Buffy’s world. It will be revealed that Buffy really is crazy and in the mental institution[/spoiler]
Willow is usually a hands-on person when it comes to these things.
Another one of her many problems is her overeagerness to absorb other’s pain and misery. It has now come to a point in which she is overloaded and is lashing out horribly, to the point of no return. She has already made that choice to go beyond punishing Warren. I think she could be the next vengeance demon
I think the only real hope is for Cordelia to take her on. With Cordelia seeming to have won the Random Demon Lotto bigtime, it would make sense.
Next season will be the last season, archmichael, from everything I’ve heard.
As amarinth pointed out, I don’t think the point was to protect Dawn. She was in no danger from Willow. More likely, the point was to prevent her from having to see Willow in full Big Bad mode, and give her someplace quiet to process sitting with Tara’s body all day. I don’t have any real problem with leaving her in Clem’s care.
Until…the amazing plot twist in which Clem is revealed as next season’s Big Bad! Remember, you heard it here first! 
The real problem with that scene (and nobody’s commented on it yet, unless I overlooked it), is that they weren’t expecting Clem to be there. They were expecting Spike. And that, I do have a problem with. “I think I’ll take my sister over to my rapist’s house, and ask him to babysit.” No way. Not even if Dawn did ask to go, Buffy shouldn’t have gone along with it.
I am surprised that they’ve had the courage to take Willow this far, which does seem to put her beyond the possibility of being forgiven. I’m really hoping they won’t sweep this under the rug, the way they did Angel’s morally questionable actions.
Looking forward to the fight next week. And yeah, barring some kind of miracle, Buffy clearly has no chance.
But as she pointed out to Xander, Spike can’t hurt Dawn, and Dawn feels safe there. If Dawn did need a quiet place to process everything, why not let her go somewhere where she feels secure?
Also, I get the impression, and people on other buffy boards seem to agree, that Buffy doesn’t see the attempted rape as an attempted rape. She may be living in denial. I don’t know, but I think she knew Dawn was just as safe with Spike as she’s been the past season 1 1/2.
Edwardina, I really hope they don’t make Buffy and Xander lovers. It’s so rare to see honest-to-goodness, real male-female friendships on TV. Buffy and Xander, as well as Scully and Mulder from the early seasons of X-Files, are one of the very few examples I can think of. It would seem hackneyed and cheap if they fell into the old When Harry Met Sally routine.