What's a vampire slayer to do with her junkie best friend?

Ok, so right on to my long overdue Buffy comments, which, I still am at a loss for. I don’t really know where to start. I did like the finale, and I liked the season as a whole, too. I thought it had some really powerful moments and some really great acting too. Since the finale, I’ve been reading a lot of Buffy-related items online—season recaps and the like. What they all seem to say is that it was an uncharacteristically weak season for the show. Number one, I dunno how you can say that and not mention the strength of the last few eps, but whatever. Number two, maybe it seemed so weak because it was so character driven, and nobody really seemed to have a definitive character this year. You’ve got Buffy, who at once doesn’t want to be there and then find solace (sort of, I guess) in Spike, and then is very un-Buffyish in her treatment of Spike and then is exused for her treatment of him because he tries to rape her (which, yeah was wrong on Spike’s part and I’m not gonna excuse it, but she really fucked him over—pun intended, even if he is *just* a vampire), and then is all walking off into the happy sunset with her new best friends sister Dawn. And we have Will who was strong, leading the Scoobs, then lost/weak Will, who is living with the fact that she didn’t really save her best friend, then we have REALLy weak Will who loses her lover and her strength, then sort of weak Will who learns to live without the magic, then short-lived happy Will, then super evil, but strong Will, then dejected Will, crying into the arms of all people, Xander, who says he’s her best friend, but has done nothing to prove it excapt for saying it and who, one would think, would now be the most changed Scooby, and apparently the most mature? Does a rejection of marriage make him the most appropriate one to talk Will out of ending the world? Has he really changed that much? I really loved the Xander we saw in the finale, but I don’t know if I really buy him. I loved his stuff with Anya and I loved his stuff with Will. But how changed is Xander? I don’t know, I’d like to hope that season finale Xander is the Xander of season 7. I like quippy Xander, but I hate jealous Xander. I like loving Xander and I hate loving myself Xander. On to Anya, who I find the most fascinating of them all (well, maybe excapt for Will, but for similar reasons). What will Anya’s role be next year? How will she interact Xander, who seems to love her and vice versa, when he has an obvious hatred and contempt for demons, soul or no soul, friendly or un friendly. I mean he like Riley, but he hates Angel? C’mon! (Well, I pretty much hate Angel, but I hate Riley too) And I giggled with glee at Will’s attack on Dawn. I guess big things are in store for her, but she’s at the bottom of the people I care about. And silly old Spike, how could he not see that one coming? I can’t even begin to speculate on him because I have too many questions about him. So, what was I saying? Oh, I guess that a season about the characters is difficult to digest when each one of them didn’t really have a set character. Nonetheless, I did like the season. There were some stinkers...."Doublemeat Palace," oh how I wish you were never an episode. And there were some other problems. My biggest problem with "Wrecked" is that it didn’t convince me that magic is a drug. If it did, the redemption of Willow wouldn’t be so difficult in my mind. I don’t think of magic as a drug at all, no matter how hard they try, I will cringe every time Willow says that she is/was a junkie. If I did see it as a drug, I think if everyone did, everything would be so much easier to swallow. When you have something like drugs or alcohol, it’s a disease and so it takes at least some of the blame off the person with the disease, right? But what Willow did, especially with the “Bored now” I cannot help but think that SHE did it. Not the magic. It was her and she has to answer for that. She killed Warren. If she had been drinking and driving and hit Warren as he was crossing the street, she would have to answer for it too, but ultimately, it’s the alcohol’s fault. Personally, I have trouble understanding alcoholism or drug addiction as a disease, so maybe that’s my problem, maybe I should start doing some heavy duty drugs and then I could forgive Willow, but whereas I can sort of say “Ok, alcoholism is a disease, get her some help,” I can’t say magic is a disease, especially since it has become such a part of Willow and such a part of other aspects of the show. Grrrrr, arrrgh, I dunno. This doesn’t even make any sense, I’m like contradicting myself. So, since magic has been such a part of Willow, does that mean that the gang swears it off next season? Why is Giles fit to use it? We know he had his problems in his youth. Does that mean he learnied from his mistakes? And if he did, can Will? Or is she just so weak that she never can learn? And if that’s so, shouldn’t she just get the fuck out of Sunnydale? I mean, how is she going to get better, or whatever, if she’s around the stuff? Blah, blah, blah. If Buffy can keep me so interested that I get pissed off enough to sit down and write these long emails, then they’re doing their job and I have to say that despite my misgivings and thousands of questions, the season must have been some sort of success. And I am so excited that I will be getting my S2 DVDs soon. I can’t wait!