Were they right dismissing Spike?

[soulunsung]

I was talking about S5. S6 is a different matter. In S5, when Buffy said no, she really meant it. And Spike should have backed off.

Fair enough, if we're strictly talking S5 because clearly in S6 it's a completely separate matter all together. 🙂

 

[Skytteflickan88]

DarlaFan2011 agrees: I love your banner!!!

Thank you! I thought it was funny.

 

[SlayerFest]

I love Spike so I always think, "Hey, why are they so mad?" If I choose to watch that episode without having seen Crush recently. Then I think back to Crush and I'm like "Oooh yeah...that's why." He's a vampire and he's tried to kill them all at least once. The fact that they had any trust in him at all previously says a lot. They were justified in the way they acted towards him when he showed up at the Magic Box.

 

[RogueDemonHunter]

Well he kind of had it coming, for what he did although Spike obviously has some problems with this stuff. Ever since we've met him in season 2 all the way up to the current issue of season 9, Spike's story has been all about showing that he is not just this beast, that he is a man and he has slowly worked his way into the Scoobies and has accepted that most of them will never accept him, Spike just wanted to be accepted by Buffy. So while he did do wrong, it was just him creepily longing for Buffy and handling everything badly, in fact handling it terribly, but still he just loved Buffy and was rejected so it was his way of dealing so I think they were abit hard on Spike.

 

[Willow My Love]

I think they should have been more harsh. Think about it this way, He kidnapped her, chained her up with a psycho who he KNOWS would kill her without blinking, and hurts her... all in the name of love? You don't think any of that was motivated by the fact that he's evil?! How is that showing someone you love them?!

I think that should have been the end of Spike, personally. Maybe have him come around a few more times, and maybe Willow could have taken a stand against him or something.

But do I think they were too harsh on him? No.

 

[ChuckGunn]

As for the question in the OP, I don't think the Scoobies acted too harshly. I'm a huge fan of Spike (I would argue his development and his complete story arc is the best on Buffy), but from the Scoobies' perspectives, he had kidnapped their best friend, chained her up, and threatened to unleash Drusilla on her unless she admitted that she reciprocated some sort of feeling of love. It was completely reasonable of the Scoobies to react the way they did.

This topic strayed way off its original path, and there's absolutely no way I could attempt to tackle everything that's been stated. After reading the entire thread, here's what else I have to contribute.

During season 5, Spike was a soulless creature, who was inherently evil. Even when he started to fall for Buffy, he still was an evil, soulless creature. That being said, he did show that he had the capacity to do good. Intervention is a great example of this. The way he resists Glory's torture, which was something that went 100% against every instinct he would have as a vampire, shows he CAN do some good (and the reasoning behind it is irrelevant. Just because he was doing it because he loved Buffy doesn't negate that it was still a good action).

Someone said that you can't have it both ways; that either Spike has to be accepted as a soulless creature who can only do evil, or he always had the capacity for good, so thus should be held even more accountable for every murder he committed. Here's my take on this. As I've said, Spike is inherently evil, but he IS capable of fighting those evil instincts. Presumably, he was always able to fight those tendencies, but that didn't seem important to him until he started to love Buffy.

To me, that shows that he's a better man, or vampire, than any other vamp we see. Whether its because he is uniquely able to fight the evil within himself, or because he seems to be the only Vampire who DOES choose to fight it, the fact of the matter is, something changes inside of him, and he starts to make the choice to fight.

Do I think this lets him off the hook for all of the evil he had done in the past? No. He will always have to live with the decisions he made. Certainly starting to change does not make all of that just go away. But something changed during season 5 that made him want to fight against evil (both the evil within himself, and evil in Sunnydale). To me, this paves the way for his redemption, and for his becoming a hero/champion

 

[Dagenspear]

Yes, it does infringe on their rights. Seeing as they are intelligent, sentient people (unlike your strawman...strawdog...whatever), who, as a whole race/species, do not have the empathy that is the entire basis human ethics, we should overthink the question of whether it's really so bad to be killing. Going into "kill on sight" mode about them stinks of arrogance and human supremacist attitude. I don't see a logical reason to consider it bad, per se, when a vampire kills a human.

Because it threatens humans. And we have the right to defend ourselves. As do all living creatures. Vampires kill humans. That's a threat. So, humans have the right to kill vampires. It's simply self defense. It has nothing to do with good or bad, right or wrong. It's about our self-preservation as a species. And we have THE RIGHT to protect ourselves from anything and everything that poses a threat to that.

---------- Post added at 11:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:24 PM ----------

Also, from the "council propaganda" argument. Vampires are demons. That was proven to be fact in the ANGEL season 2 episode, Through The Looking Glass, where we actually SEE the demon itself in its purest form. Remember? The Pylea episodes.