This is why I say you can remove Buffy from the last two seasons. Especially as that stops most of the bad things happening. In S7, the Scoobies are totally irrelevant, even without the focus on Spike. They could have just gone to Tahiti, Wolfram & Hart could have shown up, tossed Spike into the Hellmouth with the amulet and called it a day.
S4's arc is weak (though still better than S7 - overpowering and pointless - and S6 - nonexistent), but it has many of the best filler episodes of the series.
You compare S3 Buffy and going up against the Mayor. Taking advice from everyone, delegating tasks to people with the right skills, researching and coming up, despite some wobbles, with a plan that had a chance of working, to her behaviour in S7; taking advice only from Spike and coming up with a "plan" that literally has no way of succeeding. Unless the plan was "lure everyone into a trap, get them wiped out and unleash the Ubervamps." The difference between the competent S3 Buffy and the incompetent S7 Buffy is Spike and what you have is someone making bad decision after bad decision thanks to abuse.
It also makes everyone else look like idiots for listening to Buffy's plan - enter the Hellmouth, hopefully activate the Potentials, fight thousands of Ubervamps and... there's nothing after and go "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea" instead of going "That's effing brain dead. Are you trying to get us all killed?"
A show about punching evil in the face doesn't work when it has no face. Angel handled it better; the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart are always behind the scenes, never actually encountered.
With. One. Bathroom.
Who needs Hell, they're already living it. 😀
Storyteller would have ended with the Potentials breaking into the bathroom and beating Andrew to death.
