Annoyances in today's Buffy

[avram]

OK, it’s a bridge episode, intended to give us a few more details and set up the Cool Stuff. Not great like some of the recent ones have been, but OK. Still, some gripes...

• What’s with the drowning Spike scene? Will the writers ever make up their minds about whether vampires need to breathe?
• Did it ever occur to Buffy to say, in the presence of the other characters, “Hey, stakes don’t work on this one, but it’s still afraid of sunlight”? I guess we can assume that she’ll be telling them between episodes.
• And why exactly did that little Slayerette run off like that? Could we maybe have spent some time establishing a motivation for the character to do something stupid that’ll get her killed?
• Oh, and nice job killing off the gay one again. Are they farming the scripting out to Fred Phelps?