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Buffy Season 6, Ep 15 - As You Were

Vidyard video

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Alyssa Dyson

Spike was going to sell them eggs to get money for Buffy so she wouldnt have to work at the doublemeat palace anymore.

RNR

I noticed a couple of things on this rewatch: 1) I don't think Riley apologized for his part in what happened. I just found that a little strange and...lacking? I dunno. Maybe he did back in S5 but in this episode even after Buffy is telling him she never got to say how sorry she was, he was like "nah that's cool" and didn't even acknowledge the trauma he caused by creating the circumstances for her to walk in on her boyfriend giving it up to a vampire. Which leads into my second observation. 2) What Spike says to Riley when he catches them together is basically what he told Riley before ("she needs some monster in her man") which is arguably what led Riley to the fang whores in the first place. But my point being that I think a big part of why Buffy's with Spike is that she really believes that for herself too. She sees such darkness in herself (being the Slayer often feels to her like being a killer, she's expressed this to Dawn and Giles when she has difficulty saying "I love you" to them) and then to walk in on Mr. Normal Boyfriend getting sucked off by a vamp just proved that the only people interested in her are evil (Angel, Spike, we can even recall Mr. Parker Wanktard Abrams fits into this category as a sleazebag and Ford the cancer guy who decided to become a serial killer rather than accept his own impending death). So it's that plus the added trauma of being pulled out of heaven to go back to being this killing machine who also has to take care of her kid sister (who's constantly whining and crying that Buffy's not doing enough for her, even on the woman's goddamn birthday) that drives Buffy to continue sleeping with Spike. So now in this episode, we finally see her get some closure with the whole Smiley Riley thing, where she gets to see that he isn't an evil guy, that he did a bad thing but he moved on from it and has gone back to being a good ol' boy with a wife and a job. That's the moment when Buffy goes to tell Spike that she's done indulging in this self-destructive, self-loathing behavior. She's trying to accept that she's better than this (thanks to Riley's pep talk about how even smelling like hamburgers can't stop her from being a badass hottie).