YMMV / Buffy The Vampire Slayer S 6 E 19 Seeing Red

• Abandon Shipping: Many abandoned the Spike/Buffy ship after this episode.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Spike's behavior. A lot of people call it his Moral Event Horizon, and he certainly saw it that way himself (hence his immediate search for redemption); others would grant him a "Get Out of Jail Free" Card due to contextual factors not least of which is that some people feel that Buffy practically trained him not to take 'no' for an answer in their relationship (she certainly didn't herself, see "Gone"), and he wasn't operating with normal human morality to begin with... they've as much as said that the soul acts as the conscience and those without it, no matter how good they might like to be, are trying to navigate morality without a working compass. That, and his genuine surprise when he's kicked away suggests that he'd never actually intended to attack Buffy and believed she was doing yet more of their Slap-Slap-Kiss routine, not realizing she was serious until it was nearly too late. Others combine the two, saying that it's an absolutely horrible act that Spike needs to redeem himself for while also acknowledging that the fact that Spike realizes that means he's not irredeemable.
  • That said, most agree that the show would have been better off using just about anything else to be the turning-point in Spike deciding to seek out a soul.
• Alternative Joke Interpretation: While snooping around the Trio's seemingly abandoned HQ in Warren's basement Buffy notices a Vampirella action figure on a shelf and looks disgusted. The standard interpretation of the joke is that Buffy is grossed out by the figure's cheesecake outfit but given we know Buffy has some fairly nerdy tastes herself (including once explaining a reference to 'Q' as being to the James Bond character rather than the Star Trek: The Next Generation character of the same name) it is possible she knows exactly who Vampirella is and is more just annoyed the Trio default to 'sexy vampire lady'.
• Moral Event Horizon: Spike's Attempted Rape of Buffy is seen as this by numerous people both in and out of universe, as it even leads Spike to have a Heel Realization.
  • If Warren hadn't crossed this before with his murder of Katrina, his murder of Tara absolutely cements him as one of the most genuinely loathsome villains in the series.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The show finally regains one of its key relationships, one of the few positive gay relationships on TV at the time... and because Joss Whedon barely knows how to advance a plot without someone dying, it comes to a screeching halt as soon as it began.

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