S7 Spuffy pondering

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Yesterday, snickfic made a post on the things she doesn't like about Spike in S7. I'll just copy the relevant point here:

The non-discussion of the AR. It is the huge purple elephant in the room in S7, rarely referred to but entirely overshadowing Spike and Buffy's relationship. I wish they'd actually talked it out sometime, even if we didn't see much of the discussion on screen. Just a hint that this was something that they were working through and moving on from would have been helpful.

In the comments, angearia asked a very good question, which is: "What discussion of the AR would be satisfying? What needs to be said to make it work?"

And so I'm curious. I've seen plenty of people express displeasure with the way the AR (or even the entire S6 Spuffy relationship in general) was brushed aside in S7, but I don't know that I've ever seen anyone answer Emmie's question of what would make it better. (This may or may not be relevant to a fic idea I'm working on, but I ask more out of curiosity than anything else, as one who doesn't have a problem with what we were given.)

It seems like a difficult question to answer, since there's no real life equivalent to going and getting a soul, but are there expectations that Spike - or Buffy, for that matter - need to meet to make it "okay" for them to pursue a relationship again? Are verbal apologies and forgiveness necessary, or do actions speak louder than words? What is it that people find lacking about the way it was addressed on the show?

Comments

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you're right about the not-wanting-to-open-a-can-of-worms part on the creative end, so I understand why it was done the way it was, but as a viewer, that doesn't really placate me - the out-universe reasons for not saying things conflicted with what I thought the characters probably would say. Plus, my suspension of disbelief had a hard time with the idea that the whole cast would really stand around like incurious cows when they had such interesting material to talk about - I mean, here we are, still talking about the implications of all this, and they were there.

On Buffy coming back: no, I never expected anyone to confront her directly, for exactly that reason. But I could easily visualize a fascinating talk between, say, Xander and Anya about it, or Dawn asking Willow or Tara some followup questions about the spell.

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Plus, my suspension of disbelief had a hard time with the idea that the whole cast would really stand around like incurious cows when they had such interesting material to talk about

Hmmm, I wonder about that, actually. I mean, it's kind of like when fans go to cons and ask the actors about specific scenes or lines that they don't even remember. And the fans think, "But that's iconic! How could they not remember?" But you always have to keep in mind that this was a job for them, and they didn't spend nearly as much time thinking about it and analyzing it as we do. Half the time, they probably didn't even know what was happening outside their own scenes. I tend to think there wasn't a whole lot of discussion among the cast - they showed up, did their job, and then promptly forgot their lines so they could memorize the new ones for tomorrow.

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I think I must've been unclear there - I meant the whole cast as in characters, in-story, not the actors. I wanted to see the characters talk more about these things.

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OH! I gotcha. :) When you said cast, I immediately thought actors. I'm not sure how I thought you got to the actors from there... maybe if they were all having the discussions on set, there'd be more pressure to include it in the episodes? I don't know. It makes more sense now, lol.