It was just really poorly planned I thought. They introduce the badguy but they weren't ready for it to do anything yet so there were lots of episodes with just the Scoobies and the Pontials (some of whom were ANNOYING) just sitting around the house waiting for the season to move on and Buffy making speeches and the whole brainwashed Spike thing was kind of pointless and the "buffy won't choose you" bit was dropped (NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT IT BEING THE PLAN ALL ALONG) but then it rebonded a bit when Caleb was introduced.