Love your last sentence. That's the whole point! It's when we have oxes to be gored that the plot contrivances bite. We just have different oxes.

Indeed. :)

Course, I know that Spike had to stay on AtS and that Joss didn't want to resolve the Buffy/Spike thing (especially on another show), and having Spike directly contact her would lead to some resolution one way or another (and we just can't have that!). So he contrived and twisted and wheedled the plot to accommodate the ambiguous ending, and it ends up just not working for me (and leaving me cranky).