Consequences(not the episode)

[lee]

Ive noticed alot of people are unhappy with some of the things some characters
have done or how they went about it in the Buffyverse.
When you think of all the questionable stuff the Btvs/Ats characters have done,
the main ones i remember are the following:

Angel: the lawyers, the SWAT guy, Brogyn(i think thats his name) and 'attempting'
to kill Wes, and having Lindsey killed.
Lorne: killing Lindsey.
Gunn: killing Freds old teacher.
Spike: threating Wood with killing him.
Faith: s3 killings(she escaped jail)
Xander: Summoning Sweet.(people died)
Giles: Wanting to kill Dawn and Spike. Killing Ben.
Buffy: Attemted murder of Faith.
Willow: Killing Warren.
Anya: Selfless massacre.
Im sure ive forgot a few other big stuff like this.

All of these would be classed as 'serious' crimes. Do you think if all these guys were
regular humans, but they had still done the exact same stuff, that they should suffer the consequences and maybe face jail or some sort of punishment for their war crimes.
Or do you think, given the circumstances, they are aloud to 'slip up' now
and again?
Altough i love the character, Anya was, imo, the only one who should be punished
for what she did.
All the others, should be forgiven.

[Nina]

I don't have trouble with the characters killing people of there is a story behind the act. Angel killing the lawyers was part of his depression storyline, people told him that he was wrong, he found out that he was wrong. The same for Lorne killing Lindsay, it was part of the story and we found out that Lorne feels very bad because of it. The same for Faith and Gunn who both found out that they were wrong and had to pay for it.

But when there is something like Xander with Sweet where there is no arc or guilty Xander, I don't like it. It was glossed over and forgotten, an one time thing to explain why Sweet was in Sunnydale and the character Xander had to pay for that ... also Angel killing the SWAT guy annoys me. I get the idea behind the act, but Angel never cared or had to pay for it. It just happened ... it was a little bit more important for the big story than Xander and Sweet, but still not needed and an weird thing to do for Angel, who showed mercy towards Knox but this guy didn't get any chance. I think that both situations are OOC for the characters and I hate those moments.

I think that Angel trying to smother Wesley is something else, of course ... attempted murder is bad, but in his situation, I can't blame Angel for doing it. You can't expect him to sit next to Wesley and say that it doesn't matter. He was a parent who lost his son because his best friend betrayed him. The same for Willow killing Warren, it's a bad thing but you can understand the character. Maybe Holtz fits in this group as well, but we are rooting for Angel in that story ...

Giles killing Ben was needed. If he didn't, Glory would've survived. He just had to do what the others couldn't ...

The Spike and Wood storyline is awful. I really don't like LMPTM because it's just not very pretty and it feels OOC. We had to see Buffy and Spike as the heroes of the series and they weren't. Spike misbehaved and Buffy gave him slack and Spike never had to deal with it again. The whole storyline was dropped ...

Giles killing Spike was a little over the top because he could've tried to send Spike away. But he became the evil boogy man in season 7 anyway ...

Anya is another problem, she was there for the laughs and only in Selfless she felt bad ... but if you start thinking about her character, you can't justify her being in the show as a good guy.

To make a long post short;
Characters doing bad things can be great tv, but there has to be a reason and there have to be consequences, if not people start disliking the character, the character can have a OOC moment or the whole story fails.