You are right that the cues could be read one way by people who are used to having their emotions and reactions cued by the writer. The show actually does that quite a bit. We get the super-dramatic music, visuals of Buffys noble sacrifical death in The Gift. That's where all the cues go. But the actual words and actions are more layered than that. There's just so often a distance between the cues and the text that I'm in the habit of reading the gap as part of the story. I just naturally read the cues as indicating the meaning Buffy attaches to what is going on. The text usually gives me more than enough to see that her POV is as limited as any human's POV is and that she has her own set of distortions and so on. So I just don't read the cues as the writers' commentary on anything. But I agree that it's annoying that there's a good chunk of the audience that would follow those cues into some unfortunate conclusions about what's going on.
But I think I've said elsewhere, I'm a peculiar reader of the text.
I'm not sure that I see Xander's speech as a last word. Triangle undercuts it in a variety of ways. I think it's up to the audience to decide whether to see B/R through Xander's lens or the rather comic lens offered in the next episode.
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You are right that the cues could be read one way by people who are used to having their emotions and reactions cued by the writer. The show actually does that quite a bit. We get the super-dramatic music, visuals of Buffys noble sacrifical death in The Gift. That's where all the cues go. But the actual words and actions are more layered than that. There's just so often a distance between the cues and the text that I'm in the habit of reading the gap as part of the story. I just naturally read the cues as indicating the meaning Buffy attaches to what is going on. The text usually gives me more than enough to see that her POV is as limited as any human's POV is and that she has her own set of distortions and so on. So I just don't read the cues as the writers' commentary on anything. But I agree that it's annoying that there's a good chunk of the audience that would follow those cues into some unfortunate conclusions about what's going on.
But I think I've said elsewhere, I'm a peculiar reader of the text.
I'm not sure that I see Xander's speech as a last word. Triangle undercuts it in a variety of ways. I think it's up to the audience to decide whether to see B/R through Xander's lens or the rather comic lens offered in the next episode.