I've watched it very recently. Agree the Victorian party is pretty dire and that Dru's seduction is completely perfect.
I just think it is a brilliant layered character portrait, combining an unreliable narrator, in Spike, with more objective truth shown to us onscreen. Of a deeply vulnerable character, seduced by his vulnerabilities into a life where his dark side can run rampant. But then he is seduced again by his vulnerabilities away from that. And the result is one big hell of a mess in his head. Despite being dense about himself, he has pinpoint emotional sharpness about others and senses the Slayer nihilism as a way in. And of course, as always with the vamps, as Buffy says somewhere – blood and love and sex and death all hopelessly confused. (I think she says it in Conversations with Dead People, to Holden.) I find the last 20 minutes superb. The range of conflicting emotions Spike travels through... from the intercut Nikki/Buffy scene through to the porch... just stunning.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-11-05 11:00 pm (UTC)I just think it is a brilliant layered character portrait, combining an unreliable narrator, in Spike, with more objective truth shown to us onscreen. Of a deeply vulnerable character, seduced by his vulnerabilities into a life where his dark side can run rampant. But then he is seduced again by his vulnerabilities away from that. And the result is one big hell of a mess in his head. Despite being dense about himself, he has pinpoint emotional sharpness about others and senses the Slayer nihilism as a way in. And of course, as always with the vamps, as Buffy says somewhere – blood and love and sex and death all hopelessly confused. (I think she says it in Conversations with Dead People, to Holden.) I find the last 20 minutes superb. The range of conflicting emotions Spike travels through... from the intercut Nikki/Buffy scene through to the porch... just stunning.