They hit too hard with the Bangel stuff and then had to swing back just as hard with Spuffy stuff. They were trying to do too much in too short of a time. They should have scrapped the whole "throw Buffy out of the house" ridiculousness because there is no way that they could resolve that in three episodes. It felt like they threw everybody under the bus so the Spike could have his moment. (And I say this as someone who shipped Buffy with the souled version Spike for the longest time.)

Xander at least had his great scene with Buffy (the main reason I didn't give him more screentime in my fic), but we got no equivalent scene with Willow, because they were too busy trying to make us care about Willow/Kennedy. And you are absolutely right that they should have had a Anya/Xander reestablishment scene, especially because they knew that they were killing off Anya. Instead, they just figured we'd all assume they were back together again. (For me it's the way that Anya strokes his hair after he makes his weird "Party in my eye-socket" comment.)

By the way, thank you for the reblog and the nice words over at Tumblr. I do have an account, but as I have people from my real life following me, I try to keep a little distance with my fanfic writing self. It's one thing if people know I may or may not write fic, having them find it on their own is a completely different thing! So I couldn't reblog my own stuff. :-(