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Originally Posted by cliffdweller
I'm with you here. The thing is, and as you say, they couldn't leave Willow that way, they had to bring her back to the "center" of the group which she always was in the beginning and throughout most of the series. She's the anchor of the show and, and so they couldn't let her delve too darkly into the "black arts" and keep her there. You're right, they could have handled this a bit differently, they could have nuanced her character as kind of a bad-ass magician without having her deep-end that way.
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I think part of the reason they took the tack they did was because they wanted Willow to be the "big bad" at the end of the season, but there were a lot of episodes to fill between "Smashed" and the finale... So by adopting the drug metaphor and having her "OD" and then become a "recovering junkie" of sorts, they were able to put that storyline on hold and bring her back to the center of the group for a while, as you said, before having her "relapse" toward the end after Tara's death.
I think they still could have done this - have Willow realize that she'd gone a little overboard and lay off the magic for a while - without resorting to the "magic = drugs and drugs are BAD!" metaphor. Especially since, throughout the course of Willow's "relapse" at the end of the season, the focus is never on the idea that magic is a drug to which she's addicted, but rather that magic is a means for her to avoiding coping with the pain of Tara's senseless death, as well as a way for her to feel that she has the power (however corrupt) to fix the situation and set things right. But oh well. An opportunity lost.