As far as the touchy feely stuff went - yep, a tad irritating. But not dwelt on nearly as much as the series sometimes is prone to (possibly because it was not Buffy herself who was affected).

Dawn's friends - not terribly impressive. Depends whether they are one-offs or not of course.

And the 'bad guy' ? Well, the revisiting of old characters did look like a bit of a ratings grab. But I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps I feel more upbeat about it because I believe that they would have to drop a long way before they even got close to the disaster which was season six (OMWF and Tabula Rasa excluded).