This Year's Model of Humanity

When I first started watching Buffy, Season 7 was half over, and I didn't start watching new eps right away, so I watched everything except the last 6 episodes in reruns. Because of that, my viewpoints tend to be a bit different than people who've been watching for years. I thought that both Season 6 and Season 7 *started* brilliantly, then about a third of the way through the season, they lost what made me love them. There's no season of Buffy that I love unconditionally, but Seasons 6 and 7 are the ones that fascinate me the most. Those (especially S6) are the ones where the themes and the character arcs (all of them) speak most to me and move it from, "hey, this is a really cool show" to "this is GREAT television," even if I didn't like the execution of a lot of it, and even if some of it really ticked me off. Because of that, most of my fannish involvement deals with those seasons. I liked Season 1, for instance, but I don't have a whole lot to say about it, and most fanfic from that period just bores me. Season 6 or 7 fanfic (and post-those seasons), however, gives me the chance to look at what fascinated me, and see it executed differently than the writers did it, with different takes on the themes or conclusions of those arcs.

I don't believe I've ever heard the "big picture" argument. What do they mean by that?

I'm also looking forward to Buffy = Wesley.