Season 5 AtS? I think that AtS struggled with how to make sense of Spike in a new context. And, on a purely character-level, I think Spike was in the midst of a huge, difficult transition. He was in flux and the show was in flux as to how to use him, I don't htink they really solved it until "Hole in the World." Complicating matters was that some of the writers -- Craft and Fain in particular -- simply didn't know Spike and it showed in their writing until they got a bit bitchslapped by fandom and went back and watched BtVS.

I think any of those transitions are difficult, so I cut some slack, but it was rocky there for a while.