If Spike had been killed off would you have kept watching ?

[Faded90]

To expand on my earlier answer I feel like the show suffered in S6 and particularly 7 in having to squeeze him into a show that didn’t particularly have a place for him. I think Joss has said that they brought him in and did the ‘annoying neighbour’ schtick in S4 which didn’t hugely work and wouldn’t have worked long term so they came up with the ‘in love with Buffy’ storyline which I felt worked in S5. I thought it was a great storyline then and this is easily Spike’s best season for me but then they wanted to develop it and ‘go there’ and we had the creation of Spuffy to the detriment (IMO) of both characters. The problem is Spike is at his best when he has a snarky antagonistic relationship with the group, which meant in S6 and 7 particularly he basically has no relationship with anyone other than Buffy. Buffy particularly in S7 feels lumbered with him and he takes up so much of her screentime. Spuffy also requires Buffy to be miserable, because a happy sparky Buffy doesn’t choose to spend her time with Spike. She doesn’t . When she’s in a good place she enjoys being with her friends and Dawn, so Spuffy requires Buffy to be miserable in a dark room and this got tedious by the end of S7. S7 also suffered from giving Spike about 10 different half baked storylines, almost all of them coming to absolutely nothing and petering away, screentime which could have went to characters who actually still had some stories to explore that could actually be concluded. Like we get Robin, the child of a slayer and you think ‘wow this could be fun to explore Buffy’s position on having children, learning about his Mother and how she lived as a slayer’ except no, it’s another Spike storyline.

I think my issue with it is I don’t care about the romances on shows. I don’t mind them if they are just part of a characters story but not when they became the main part. It felt like with Spuffy they try to make Spike the most pivotal part of every part of Buffy’s life - he’s her lover, the only one who understands her, the only one who defends her, the only one she can rely on - like NO! Spuffy takes up so much of Buffy’s story it feels like a weight around her neck

So yeah I think the show would have been better off in S6 and 7 with no Spike. As much as I enjoy his character before this and I think James is a fantastic actor

 

[WillowsFaith]

Yeah, Spike is a great character and all but definitely not as important as one of the main Scoobys. Like if Willow died or Giles died, I could understand someone’s reaction to quit watching. But personally I never quit a show I love just cuz a character I like dies during a season. Buffy has way more to offer

 

[r2dh2]

I voted No and not because I would have stopped watching the show but because I would have missed the entire show. I started watching it because of Spuffy S6 so probably I would have never started watching it, which would be a shame because I enjoy the entire show (Spike and no-Spike seasons/episodes/storylines).

 

[Priceless]

Seriously, it's worth considering @Priceless 's remark "In a reboot they'd make him a basketball fan". Manchester's reinvented itself as a global city and United (I think) has (perhaps) lost its rootedness - its specificity. I don't know if a football reference would work now.

I was going to say American football, but basketball seemed to fit Spike and the times better. More urban, whereas American football always makes me think of Southern America small towns, not Spike-ish at all.

 

[Buffy Summers]

Honestly a football reference on an American show works better now than it did when the show aired - people here actually watch it now.

I liked Spike a lot through season 5, but I’m not sure killing off any character would have made me stop watching.

 

[sk]

Absolutely.
The show was never about a single character for me.

/SK

 

[NothingVentured]

Prove the nonsense wrong instead of just dismissing it.

Supplant Spike with Jonathan or Andrew and you have the same meta without mass-murdering angle. Spike is but a cog in a machine where that line fits every character, a line that fits them far better. Spike is not an outcast. He's a jerk that steals from and insults everyone around him.

But such meta is a pretty good example of what I was talking about. You can pick any topic on the show, and, if you fudge the definitions and boundaries enough, make it about Spike. Spike can at once be a misogynist, racist homophobe and a gender-queer paragon draped in a LGBTQ flag because he cries and likes women and men (sometimes). You can go through the show, pick this instance or this piece of dialogue, ignore everything that contradicts it and stick Spike into it, much as you could other characters. It's the natural human tendency of pareidolia and apophenia.

. It's not just Spike, though, and it's not just BTVS/AtS. And that is why people are increasingly dismissive of academic analysis of modern media.

Back to the original point, it's this that leads to Spike dominating discussions. You have a vocal minority of fans that do this, the vocal minority that argue against it and the bulk of the fanbase that get tired of the whole thing and leave. It's like the kids getting tired of Mom (Spike fans) and Dad (Spike haters) arguing and go stay at a relative's house. That is why Spike fans and haters used to get banned from boards. Not because they liked Spike, but because their insistence that Spike is the main character got annoying. Because everyone leaves or stays quiet, the effect compounds itself.

That and stuff like this...

Rude and uncalled for, since this was quoted I will let this remain, but for future reference - post made only with the intention to be rude to other members will be removed.

They do not contribute to discussion and have no place on these boards.

No, it wasn't rude, nor was it uncalled for. It was an honest assessment of a piece of published meta posted by another member of the forum. It was not a comment about Tribel or any other member of the board. If such comments are "uncalled for" or "rude", you've got a busy days work ahead of you going through all the threads on this forum deleting such commentary about the shows, the writers, the actors, et al. Better start with the OP suggesting the actors were phoning it in the latter seasons since suggestions of inferior work are "rude and uncalled for".

Or continue with off-topic things like football.

 

[Stake fodder]

I definitely would have kept watching, as there's a lot more to the show than Spike, even if I did find his arc fascinating. They could have expanded other plot lines. and developed Anya more if they insisted on having a "demon learning to be human" thread. Also, I'm a completist about TV shows; I'll watch to the end even if I start to hate it, though I'm sure that wouldn't be the case with BtVS!

As for Spike's favorite sport (not sure how we got on that), I'd vote for boxing. I'm sure he'd feel that the next best thing to beating people up himself is to watch others do it.

"Happy Meals on legs" has a nice resonance because Fast Food (Taylorism/Fordism/Scientific Management) has a direct line back to the Industrial Revolution. Does no-one ever connect Consumer Capitalism with actual consumption (it's a common metaphor...doesn't Chaplin use it in Modern Times)?

Chaplin definitely did! (Modern Times efficiency-eating machine link)

 

[Ethan Reigns]

What no one has mentioned so far is if Spike disappeared, they would have to fill the huge amount of his screen time with something else and that something else would probably be better. Spike is one of my favourite characters. But the Spike overload in the last two seasons didn't do him or the show any favours. If Buffy has dispatched Spike with a wood-handled comb or some such thing during the attempted rape, we would have had a greatly different set of discussions about it but the more important thing is, the time would have to have been filled with something else and that something could have been a new Buffy romance (yawn), a new character, earlier arrival of fewer potentials but better development of each and maybe Robin Wood could have become a major character.

However, I think Spike moving to Angel was a good move - he livened up the last season very well.

 

[Buffy Summers]

No, it wasn't rude, nor was it uncalled for. It was an honest assessment of a piece of published meta posted by another member of the forum. It was not a comment about Tribel or any other member of the board. If such comments are "uncalled for" or "rude", you've got a busy days work ahead of you going through all the threads on this forum deleting such commentary about the shows, the writers, the actors, et al. Better start with the OP suggesting the actors were phoning it in the latter seasons since suggestions of inferior work are "rude and uncalled for".

If you think there’s a misunderstanding about what you posted, then that’s one thing, and that can be discussed calmly and rationally. But doubling down on being rude to a staff member in this manner will not be tolerated.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

If Spike had been killed off would you have minded?
If Spike was killed off in a funny way say for example if the car he arrived in kept going into a rock wall,
if Buffy had beaten the whatsisname outta him in the vampire attack on the school he led,
maybe if the cage he killed the anointed one in dropped down on him, that would have seemed an effective ending.

 

[Skeletor Rigby]

I'd have kept watching for sure - I don't watch any show just for one character, but it's hard for me to imagine the show without Spike those last few seasons as I personally feel he was pretty integral to Buffy's journey/development and found that development really compelling. He's just as integral to the show in the later seasons as Angel is in the early ones and their impact on and relationships with Buffy are pretty important to her character growth and development as well as the evolution of the show itself and its maturity of view re: good vs evil, black vs white, human vs demon, soul vs unsouled, etc. Both of those characters have relevance to the show and its world-building beyond their romances with Buffy - they have reasons to be there beyond them and I just can't imagine BTVS without either of them any more than I could Willow or Xander. (I'm not calling out Angel here from a shipping perspective btw - I feel that's important to note - more the fact that they're both the Vampires in Residence on the show who not only serve similar functions but also bookend it with each having 3 seasons where they're pretty prominent, S4 being the one in the middle - a transition from Angel with crossovers to Spike serving as comedy relief before the show figures out what to do with him, so I feel they're pretty evenly positioned in the show)

Spike in particular as a character complicates the narrative of the show when it comes to vampires (although I'm not convinced he does all that much as I think ultimately Angel/Angelus is the outlier by the time the show ends) as well as the narrative the characters are trying to tell themselves and I actually think that's a good thing if we're going with the thesis that BTVS is ultimately about growing up and also just allowing a long-running show to grow and evolve. I don't know how much of that it would do if it was always just about the core 4 and no other characters were allowed to come in and become as integral. Also, starting in Season 5 and continuing through 7 we have left high school far behind and are now fully existing in adult spaces which means the world is bigger and more dangerous and more complicated from here on out. Buffy is actively interrogating her identity as a Slayer and who she really is in ways she hasn't done before which again, is a part of growing up. She's digging into the dark side of being a Slayer and what it's doing to her as a person and she's coming to a place of actively trying to integrate the two - essentially the dark and light parts of herself to become a whole, grown-up person (and woman) throughout these final seasons. Of course she gravitates towards Spike, of course he becomes more important to the story if the story is about becoming whole, accepting all the parts of yourself, accepting that the narrative you've been taught to believe, even the one you've built yourself for yourself, isn't always right or complete, which again, is part of growing up and accepting yourself as you are instead of who you think you should be or even who the world thinks you should be. You could argue why couldn't this character arc be explored with the scoobies but... the scoobies are 100% human, even Willow even though she is super-powered. They can walk away at any time if they choose to - they get to *choose*. They don't exist in the same space Buffy and Spike do. Buffy is a human that has demon in her, it's where her power comes from, Spike is a demon that has humanity in him - they're mirror images of each other, and that mirroring is there from the very first episode Spike appears in even if that was not originally a part of the plan for him and it continues throughout the series. Their acceptance and understanding of each other whether romantic or not becomes an acceptance and understanding of self including the pieces they don't like or would rather hide from or downplay - it's an acceptance of every facet of themselves, the light and the dark and being able to move forward with a better understanding of who they are, who they want to be and who they can be without shame and without their dualities tearing them apart. I don't think you could have that narrative in the same way without Spike as he's such a catalyst and also, again, a mirror for Buffy to look into and interrogate what she sees in it. Maybe they'd arrive at another narrative entirely without Spike in those later seasons and I'm sure it would be great but... I like this one, it feels right to me for the show and Buffy herself even when it falters or goes down some suspect alleys or the execution is not... great.

So yes, ultimately, I would still have watched the show from the beginning, but I don't know how much rewatching I would have done or if it would have stayed with me as much as it does just because a lot of what I think about and am interested in reading about is mostly centered around those later seasons and Spike is integral to those.

 

[NothingVentured]

If you think there’s a misunderstanding about what you posted, then that’s one thing, and that can be discussed calmly and rationally. But doubling down on being rude to a staff member in this manner will not be tolerated.

Pinpoint what exactly is rude about either statement. Then perhaps there could be calm and rational discussion about it.

The comment that sparked rebuke broke no rules. It was not directed at the member or any member. It was directed at a published piece of work. As I said, if THAT is not allowed, then neither should many of the posts on the board as a whole including the opinion in the OP. That very nature of this topic circles around the overall validity of the Buffyverse sans Spike, an indictment on the work of hundreds considering the intent of the work. It's all the same thing.

Unless the new meaning rude is curtly disagreeing without ego-massaging. If that's the case, go ahead and get your banhammer out. Then continue to wonder why all anyone does on these boards is talk about Spike.

 

[Ann]

I watch Buffy because I like her and other characters I find interesting. The premise of the show drew me to it and not any single character. I didn’t watch to see Spike and he wasn’t the show imo. I would have kept watching if he wasn’t on it.

 

[Taake]

And nonsense like that is why no one takes academics seriously anymore.

The comment that sparked rebuke broke no rules. It was not directed at the member or any member.

Directed at a member with an academic background. It did not single out or discuss a published piece of work. It wholesale and flippantly dismissed another members entire post in a rude manner. Again, discuss it, fine. The above was not discussion. It is a common internet manner of speech that seem to think it is witty, while skirting the line of rudeness. However, without a social context such as tone or inflection of voice (or previously established rapport) it is just rude.

If you are capable of discussion, as in this defense of yourself, why not spend more time formulating arguments rather than one line dismissals or trying to tell us how to moderate.

Because we certainly don’t massage egos and won’t be massaging yours either.

go ahead and get your banhammer out. Then continue to wonder why all anyone does on these boards is talk about Spike.

Fine, temp ban. But I suppose it was nice that your were single-handledly trying to save us from only Spike talk, in a Spike thread.

 

[thetopher]

Absolutely. Spike is not the show, Buffy and her friends are the show. To me anyone other than the Buffy, Willow and Xander are completely expendable. Even Giles post S5, and I actually like Giles.

As for Spike being 'the most interesting' I strongly disagree. He gets talked about so much because he pretty inconsistent when it comes to the different writers depicting him; fans love to point out all sorts of ways that these inconsistencies are really great writing (or maybe deep meta) that depicts a fascinating, deep, layered character...but a lot of it is projection.
Spike takes up lots of screen-time, gets some good/funny lines because he can be as rude and unpleasant as he likes without any consequences and is portrayed by a decent actor with charisma. Hardy irreplaceable.

 

[Priceless]

As I've said, I would continue to watch this show without Spike. But would I have bought all the comics? Or joined forums? Or spent 20 years discussing this amazing show without Spike? Not so sure about that if I'm honest.

 

[katmobile]

I voted No but it would depend on how and when it was done. I'm still glad it wasn't though.

 

[Joan the Vampire Slayer]

I absolutely would have kept watching! I wouldn't have known what I was missing! Though I personally feel that the show would lose without Spike's presence, it's still a great show.

As I've said, I would continue to watch this show without Spike. But would I have bought all the comics? Or joined forums? Or spent 20 years discussing this amazing show without Spike? Not so sure about that if I'm honest.

I agree. For me, Spuffy is the aspect that most interests me about the series, and what overall inspires me to read fic and discuss it all these years later. Without Spuffy, I wouldn't be nearly as involved in this fandom. I'd still own the series on DVD likely and rewatch it here and there probobly.

 

[The Bronze]

I was all in before Spike showed up.