I've got a theory...

Most of this is stuff I said over on rahirah's LJ in reply to her review, but I decided to go ahead and restate it here. This episode makes the most sense if you assume quite a bit of time has passed since last week's episode.

Between the Nina stuff and the Fred/Wes stuff, I get the definite feeling that we've missed a few months worth of events between "Why We Fight" and "Smile Time." It would explain the sudden changes in relationships and some of the backstory they had to give tonight: Nina having been coming in for months and apparently flirting with Angel, Fred having gone out on dates with Knox and no longer being interested in him, Fred sending out signals to Wes that he should have been catching, Spike having settled into some sort of contact/relationship with Angel to the point where he could just walk in and get another car, etc.

I'm not complaining too much about it, but if you don't go into the episode with the assumption that we've missed a few months, then the interpersonal relationships in "Smile Time" make very little sense. It does feel a bit like they decided to make some changes and, realizing they didn't have time to show us, decided to just run with it and hope everyone catches up.

Other than that, I loved the episode... it was fun and funny, with a good plot and some creepy bad guys to defeat. Everyone got some good scenes, and there were subplots to keep everyone busy. Damn, I'm gonna miss this show.