I do wish they'd gone with Xander coming out, maybe the rest of the show would have been a little less girl-power heavy, with Xander having a real story line of his own.

Given that the show was all about the girl power from the get-go, I'm not sure how having Xander be gay would somehow magically change that.

Yeah, and Xander probably would have had to play out that real storyline in absentia via letters to Willow and Buffy from West Hollywood. Remember, there would have been a year and a half on the WB before the network switch, and they were antsy enough about the less controversial lesbian couple.

Given that the show was all about the girl power from the get-go

Well, there's girl power, then there's "the only people who have any significant role to play in the last two years of the story are female--or dead." Being a guy in Sunnydale definitely seemed like a boring thing to be. The whole Slayer-empowerment montage in "Chosen" was one painful anvil after another. I saw Willow being gay as just another anvil labelled "Guys are occasionally fun to have around, but fairly irrelevant to our lives".

Season 8 has really been making up for the lack of Xander in the past few seasons. His volatile love affair with Andrew is proving to be one of the hottest in the history of the show...especially when they did Dr Who role playing in 8.4.

Oh, Cinemax picked up the series, did they? I hadn't realized.

Nope still on UPN, but they are pushing so many buttons that I expect S9 to be on Skinemax or Showtime.

I feel like there are so many stories where the women never get to do anything interesting that I saw the Buffy girl power thing as a nice change. Plus, it might be sexist of me, but I really, really like seeing women be the center of stories. If it's all men, there's nothing *there* for me a lot of the time.

I agree, Lyra. I also disagree though with connie's premise. I think the Xander character faded away, but I do think male characters got plenty of focus, certainly more than our female characters have usually ended up with on Angel.

Also? I would have hated a Xander is gay storyline. I am not sure why, but I guess I just liked that this man who honestly liked women, preferred their friendship, was straight, and would have (at least at times) liked to have been (and in Willow's case, was) romantically (or sexually) involved with them, but when it didn't work out (or last), the friendship was more important, and easily survived the romantic feelings.

OK, so I saw the line-up for FX's "Buffy Marathon" and it struck me as an incredibly Xander heavy roster. In fact ALL the Xandercentrique epis are in it. Is it co-inky-dink or is it because Nick Brendon has a new sitcom appearing on Fox?

Is it co-inky-dink or is it because Nick Brendon has a new sitcom appearing on Fox?

I thought his pilot didn't get picked up?