Ask HN: Is there anything in between HTML and SPA?

I've been through backbone & angular and I'm starting to question the necessity of a full blown framework when all I want is some structured js for each page/resource.

More fundamentally it seems the offer on js libraries are either tailored to eye-candy widgets or the big SPA. Nothing has popped in my radar as proposing an incremental step from server side HTML to MV([A–Z]) Dom/json manipulation which entices you to almost build the app twice.

What I'd really like to see rather than a client-side-solution is a server/client migration path from html to spa without being tide to one or the other