ME walk a fine line between showing how things are in 'big business' and reducing all the female characters to symbols. I think the fairly frequent reminders that there are people like the slayers and the Burkles and Anne still out there help mitagate against the latter. As for Wesley that's a smart way of putting it, his Fred was a shell and maybe that's the source of his guilt over the whole thing. If he hadn't reduced her to an ideal maybe she wouldn't have become a nightmare.