Wait a minute........

[ItMustBeBunnies]

Ok Im watching First Date right now, and I just saw the part where Buffy and Willow are talking about principal wood and buffy says "Why does everyone in this house think Im still in love with Spike?." WHAT? bekind rewind.....Since when did she love Spike? wasn't it always rammed down our throats that she did NOT love him?. Id love to believe she did, I do think she did in the end but this statement seems very odd to me....
What do you guys think? writter slip up?

[Urgent Power]

I think the truth slipped out of her mouth.

[The Kinslayer]

I think it has more to do with the fact that people thought she loved Spike. And now she´s reacting to the fact that people still believe that even if she´s tried to convince them of the opposite. More like a "Why don´t anybody believe me?!" kind of deal. But with my memory I wouldn´t trust me on this. It was just the first thing that came to me.

[fly on the wall]

IMO, Buffy said it partly in exaggeration and partly because it's what everyone thought (again, exaggerated). Hard to explain, but I know what I mean. Ok, I'll give an example...if someone had a few weeks where they partied every weekend all weekend, then stopped, and people kept mentioning it, they could say something like "Why does everyone think I'm still an alcoholic?" without ever having truly been one...see what I mean?

I think to use that as proof that she loved Spike is a cop-out. I don't think she was in love with Spike, but regardless, I think their relationship is worth more than a random blurt-out.

[white avenger]

I think that Buffy meant exactly what she said, and, furthermore, knew exactly what she was saying. There was no Freudian slip, no transposition of words, and no hidden meaning. In Season 6, she had, indeed, been in love with Spike, though maybe "in lust" with him might have been a bit more accurate. It wasn't a healthy love, and romance probably never entered into it, but, yes, she was in love with Spike. In love with the pain and humiliation that she could cause him, and in love with the sense of perversion caused in her. It made it easier for her to hate herself. She didn't begin to love him, however, until the next season, when she finally realized just how far he had gone to please her. That's when she began to love him.

[Dlou444]

I figure by the time you trash a cemetary crypt and have the hot, steamy invisible monkey love....you kind of have to admit you have warm fuzzies for the guy.
Now, whether you choose to label those warm fuzzies as "love" in another moment is entirely up to the person saying it. But, then again I don't think, "Why does everything still think I wanna have cheap sex with the dead guy in the cemetary?" might not have cast her in the best light. If I were her, I think I'd have chosen the word "love" too.

[Fake Shemp]

I've brought that line up before on discussions as to whater she loved him or not... im going with a big fat YES!

[Airam]

Well I am a huge Spuffy fan so I may be a little biased, but my thinking is, in as simple a way as there is, it was an admission. The brilliant writers that brought these characters to life for us week after week wrote that line for for Buffy to say therefore it should be accepted as cannon. We can all try to get into Buffy's psyche as much as we want and speculate if she meant it literally or not, but it doesn't change the fact that she said it, point blank. Now, I believe that she did love him, and I think its something that happened to her very gradually, i don't think she'd ever be able to really pinpoint exactly where, poof, she was in love with Spike. If I were to chart a course I'd say the first spark was in season 5 in Intervention with that kiss at the end... yeah she was grateful that he didn't give up Dawn, but you know she could have just said thanks. She started to care for him in season 5, to really count on him, then when she came back from the dead in season 6 it started down the right path for a minute but she wasn't in the right state of mind and things went off course and just got confusing. I really believe that had she not died Spike and Buffy would've gotten to the point of love quicker and smoothly without the mind-games and using. But nontheless, in season 7 after she found out what he did for her there was just no denying the feelings she had as much as she might have wanted to put them on the backburner. And thats why she said what she did in First Date and why she told him she wasn't ready for him not to be there at the end of that same episode, and why she again told him that she loved him in Chosen... because she DID love him! And that's what I think about that.
:p

[dantesparadise]

I absolutely agree that she meant what she said because even tho it started a lot earlier the culmination of those feelings can be seen in Beneath You I think in that moment in that church watching what a strong man gave up for her she couldn't love him more in that moment. The look on her face when she finally realized what was going on with him was so gut-wrenchingly painful that you can't deny what she felt with any amount of speculation and you look where they got to in End of Days there is no question what those quiet moments in the basement meant.

[bloody pet]

I think the truth slipped out of her mouth. i mean you cant keep liying about something like that and excpect people not to know. plus who would want to deny spike anything?

[pernilleborup]

It's called a Freudian slip. It happens