Who's That Girl?: Great article

» Peggin - Great article

I agree that Buffy made great leaps towards growing up after the end of "Dead Things". I think a good deal of Buffy's behavior between "Smashed" and "Dead Things" was brought on to a large extent by severe depression over the fact that yet another person she loved and trusted up and left her. I really think Buffy would never have fallen apart so completely if Giles hadn't left her. And Spike's assertions that she was "wrong" gave her a kind of "permission" to act that way. Much the same way Spike has often tried to excuse his bad behavior by reminding people that he is a vampire, Buffy allowed herself to believe that, if she was "wrong", then it wasn't really her doing these things.

Once she was forced to face the fact that there was nothing wrong with her, that she was just "different", she seemed to change her attitude a great deal. She still had a lot of depression to deal with, but after "Dead Things", she seemed to be trying to actually deal with it.

-- posted by Peggin