That is, it's certainly a way those characters have behaved in the past and would probably behave again... but I'm less convinced that it's the way they'd react at that specific time and place.

Does that make it in-character though? If Buffy in S7 started acting like she was S1 Buffy again, wouldn't that be OOC?

Was Spike joking about vamping his mother? I thought he was trying (and failing) to be sympathetic to Wesley by sharing his own experiences.

It was played as a joke (which...astounds me in a bad way). And it was certainly not on par with Spike's normal perceptiveness and, well, touch in dealing with people.

we often hold fictional characters to much higher standards of consistency than we do real people. Real people sometimes do odd things or behave in a strange way, and we just shrug and say "What's got into him?" But if a fictional character does that, we all scream "OOC!"

Heh. Just saw your post over there. And I partially agree. However, I don't think it's out of line to point out when a character has stretched the bounds of their current characterization. The Buffy/Angel scene does that. I thought it was a bizarre scene before I watched AtS. After having seen what was going on on AtS around that time, I find it even more bizarre. Sometimes, a fictional character is just out of character.

Angel left Buffy at the end of S3. After her death in S5, he kinda got over her. Then he had a huge love affair with Cordy that ended with Cordy in a coma in S4. He'd just practically lost his son and joined up with the Big Evil. And suddenly he's back in Sunnydale bugging Buffy about getting back together? The who what huh? There's such a thing as character consistency. That's not it.

Empathy doesn't come naturally to guys. We learn about "sharing your own experiences to show sympathy" in advanced classes only, and lots of men never mastered the skill.

And, yet, Spike previously had displayed a keen perception and a knack for dealing with people's issues (Buffy in S6, Dawn in S5, noticing Willow's angst way back in S4). Making such a poor display of "empathy" is at odds with his character.

Not to mention that I still can't see him revealing that experience to people he barely knows, especially in such an off-hand manner. It was a cheap joke by the writers and didn't come out well at all.

Nostalgia is one thing. The B/A in Forever was believable nostalgia. The B/A in Chosen was just out-and-out fan service.

Can you spot a trend developing? :-)

Not sure we're gonna reach an agreement on this one. When is another time that Spike is genuinely trying to be sympathetic towards someone that he mucks it up so badly? Normally, with guys, he doesn't even try. If he hadn't said anything, I would have found it more believable.

And, again, his cavalier mention of siring his mother just doesn't work for me. Spike doesn't talk about his past (Unless offered money). Not even to try to make somebody else feel better.

Perhaps we're looking at some poor execution. Because if the line had been treated with more sensitivity than acting as a meta-joke, I might not have so much of a problem with it. As it played, it made Spike look like a socially inept buffoon.

So if it had been an actual "discussion" as opposed to a comedic one-liner, that might have been interesting. But I don't consider that line to be Spike "opening up" about his past or anything of the sort. That was a throwaway joke and doesn't do right for Spike's character.

Okay--did the read through anyway.

I agree that LMPTM was mos def cathartic for him. Spike knew that his mother--his real mother loved him. So discussing his experience with the demon that took her over is okay now. And it wasn't as if he was just talking about it nonchalantly out of the blue--Wes thought he'd murdered his father. Spike knew kind of what that feeling was like, so he rambled out something in an attempt to make Wes feel better. A poor plan of doing so (in contrast to Angel's, as mentioned). The joke, perhaps, is in how we the audience see the information given from both Angel and Spike, but not in what Spike says. He wasn't trying to be funny.