I don't know what it is with the comments, but I don't suppose it matters that much. Since Honeybunch posted an agreement that Spike was better when he was evil, an idea I heartily agree with, no one has had anything to say, so that's okay.

I don't required a ton of feedback anyhow. I have no objection to talking to myself. (A captive audience is a thing to be exploited.)

This weekend I made soup (Yes, McSwain! Soup! Evil vegetable-beef soup!).

I also made meatloaf. Owing to a misplaced faith in the recipe writer, I used a 12x7 pan when I should have used a 12x4 pan, so instead of "loaf" I would up with something more like "meaglob." Last night, my ungrateful roommate, for whom I undertook this arduous task (I'm not a big meatloaf fan), took one look at it and stuck a frozen thing into the microwave.

Kids today. No gratitude for the effort you make. It tasted right, okay? I tried it myself.

Lemme see...what excitement over the weekend? Friday I went to the grocery store. Apparently every working person in town stops by the grocery store on the way home on Friday evening but that's better than Geezer Thursdays.

Saturday...I can't remember. I remember that food figured largely into the day. I ate lunch and dinner out, but the reasons for such an unusual activity escape me. (Oh, yes, it was 75 degrees and sunny, so we walked about half a mile up the street to a restaurant for dinner. It seemed a shame to waste such a nice evening sitting inside.)

Whatever events took place in between the two meals are lost in the mists of forgetfulness.

The major chore I undertook this weekend was to get the bulk of the 22 hours of Spike BtVS I have on tape watched. I started Saturday evening and picked up again Sunday morning and I can assure you that by about 4:00 Sunday afternoon, I was sick to death of teenagers standing around bleating, "What shall we do?"

Some shows, and some subplots, are good in marathon and some aren't.

This whole "Glory" thing was probably great in first-run, but sitting down to watch it all at one go was amazingly boring. I haven't quite finished it. I have, I think, one more episode in the arc to finish up but I just couldn't take any more of it yesterday.

Spike was cute. Heh.

I may be suspicious of whether or not I'll like him once he's firmly in the throes of EnsoulledBuffyLove, but I like how he's getting there. I liked him having hotsie-totsie dreams and getting a RoboBuffy made and I liked the flashback bit with Drusilla.

I like the way that the more we see of "evil" Spike (at least, during the time frame covered by the show), the more he is revealed as the most "human" of vampires.

More than anyone on the show, he's totally ruled by his heart. When he was in love with Drusilla, he was as evil as he knew how to be, because that's what she seemed to want. From the bits I've seen of EnsoulledSpike, he seems to be trying to be the "normal, everyday guy" that Buffy has fooled herself into thinking that she wants. (Before he was Ensoulled and when they were doing the hokey-pokey was probably much closer to what she really wants, but her own inability to admit it destroyed their relationship.)

Even beyond Buffy, I think he has a true fondness for Dawn. If he lost his soul tomorrow and didn't have the chip regulating his behavior (I understand it's been removed), I'm not sure he'd attack Dawn. I think he might go after Buffy just because he's obsessive, but he's not Angel and he wouldn't take out everyone close to Buffy in an insane attempt to "impress" her.

Oddly enough, I'm not sure he'd go after Giles, either. Xander or Willow, yes, but I'm not sure about Giles.

And, regrettably, I'm not liking Tara any more than I did at first. The character gets on my nerves. Now that I've seen the episode with her family in it, I understand her better, but I don't like her. It's a pity because I still adore Willow and I'd like her to have someone. It's nothing against the actress, I just wish they'd written a different character.

I like Xander better than I did at first. The character does seem to be growing and changing. I understand that he's the touchstone for "normal" among the group, but that hasn't made his incessant whining any more attractive up until now. He's better as he begins to carve out a more-or-less normal life for himself aside from his SlayerSupport duties.

I loved the bit with the gang tromping through the cemetery, crunching potato chips and watching Riley do his SuperSoldierSneak from tombstone to tombstone. Heh.

I like Riley. (He's big, he's reasonably (ahem) buff, and he's willing to take his clothes off. What's not to like?)

Looked at objectively, the whole Initiative subplot had more holes than a Swiss cheese, but on the other hand, we live in a world where just a couple of years ago, the Department of Defense actually commissioned a study to find out whether or not coffee keeps you awake, so I guess the idea of them wanting to capture demons to try and create supersoldiers out of them isn't that farfetched. The military is pretty much dumb enough to try anything.

The whole chip thing they did to Spike never made sense. As clumsy as the Initiative was, the idea of capturing vampires one by one and making them unable to harm humans was a lot stupider than just figuring out better ways to kill them. Nor does it explain what they were doing with the other demons they captured, but whatever, okay?

I'm just saying. It's a pity that I'm going off the show right about the time I'm finally seeing the most Spike episodes, but I'm not sure how much more teenage angst I can take.

Plus which, the episodes just aren't as good. The whole thing with Buffy going catatonic once Glory snatched Dawn was just filler...it was something they did because they didn't have enough action to fill up the required 45 minutes and there wasn't anything for Buffy to do. On the grounds that it gave Spike some extra screen time, it was a good thing, but I found myself fastforwarding through the, "this is Buffy's brain" section of that episode.

That's about where I dropped out yesterday, so I'm not certain how they resolve the whole subplot. I might get to it this week.

Overall thought:

Spike: Yum.

Spike having hotsie-totsie dreams in which he appears nekkid: Yum, yum!