Interesting take on "Intervention." I particularly like the parallels you draw between it and "Chosen." I found the Scoobies' reactions to Spike's death at the end of "Chosen" to be flippant and enraging with the exception of Buffy, but I really do think her wistful smile was an indication of their connection--that she really understood what he'd done and why he'd done it. I hadn't thought of it before in terms of a gift, though; I like that.

One of the things I find the most interesting about the Buffybot's programming is that I think it's such a meld of Spike's wishful thinking and his actual insight into Buffy and her darker impulses. Because what Buffy has for Spike is a sinister attraction, one that's wrapped up in release and death (i.e. the bite of a vampire) and the evil she confronts on a daily basis. So there's another layer of reality/unreality there, where the fake plastic Buffybot utters lines that Spike wants to hear that actually are things the real Buffy feels, as we come to see in S6.