'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered' gets its name from a 1940s show tune
in which a woman, who has done pretty well with men
falls for one that is beneath her.
Click on the annotation or the link in the description to listen to the Ella Fitzgerald version.
But here is a relevant lyric.
"Men are not a new sensation I've done pretty well I think"
"But this half-pint imitation Put me on the blink"
"I'm wild again, beguiled again A simpering, whimpering child again"
"Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered am I"
Prepare for a review that consists mostly of me just gushing.
*Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered
Xander and Buffy are hanging out in the cemetery and Xander is being paranoid over his Valentine’s Day gift to Cordelia.
As Buffy teases him for it Xander makes an acknowledgment of the torch he still carries for Buffy.
At school the next day, Cordelia discovers her social status
has been downgraded from Alpha to Beta by Harmony and the rest of the Mean Girls.
Xander sees Amy use magic in English class to get out of turning in a paper.
The matter is quickly dropped in the hallway and we see that Jenny is still being frozen out by Giles.
"Rupert."
"Miss Calendar."
It's Valentine’s Day and Giles warns Buffy that Angel is prone to particularly brutal displays on the day in question.
Meanwhile, Angel is taunting Spike by stealing Drusilla’s affection.
The wounds on Spike’s face appear to be appear to be healing up.
Angel is debating the best way to torture Buffy and chillingly, Drusilla says with vacant eyes,
"Angel always knows..."
"...what speaks to a girl's heart."
After being spurned by her clique again,
Cordy breaks up with Xander after he gives her his silver heart pendant.
Given Cordelia’s status, news of the breakup gets rapidly spread around school.
Xander finds Amy and blackmails her into casting a love spell for him.
She says she needs an item of Cordelia’s so Xander goes and gets the necklace back.
Cordelia says it’s in her locker and then in what is possibly one of the most humanizing Cordelia moments so far,
she uses her locker door to disguise the fact that she was actually already wearing the pendant.
Xander and Amy perform the spell and the next day
Xander approaches Cordelia for payback.
But Cordelia is unphased and Xander sulks away in shame.
Buffy pushes Giles for the specifics of Angel’s previous Valentine’s Day conduct
and we get the first use of the term “Big Bad”.
Xander seeks pity from Buffy and Buffy suggests they hangout that evening and comfort each other.
He jokingly suggests lap dances and…
"Play your cards right."
...uh oh.
Amy interrupts the two of them and let's Xander know the spell didn’t work but they can try again.
Notice how quickly Xander has abandoned the thought of getting revenge on Cordelia now that Buffy is showing interest.
Anxious to get back to Buffy he brushes off Amy
...but Amy is persistent.
"Well, I liked spending time with you. You're so sweet."
Yeeeeah, there you go buddy. Now you’ve got it.
Xander flees home and discovers Willow in his bed.
At school, Cordelia’s clique has turned on her again
...this time for dumping Xander.
Xander comes back to school to try and get help from Giles.
Xander confesses to Giles just as Jenny comes in.
"Have you been working out?"
Buffy shows up in nothing but an overcoat.
Xander pleads with her to stop because, as much as he wants to, he knows it’s the spell.
And the episode turns.
Amy shows up and turns Buffy into a rat.
As Giles and Xander try and catch the Buffy rat,
Oz shows up and decks Xander for making Willow cry.
Man, I love Oz.
Giles sends Xander away and Xander discovers Cordelia's attackers in the hallway.
The two of them flee.
And outside is a particularly distraught Willow
...holding an axe.
Alyson Hannigan does an unbelievable job playing agony and rage in the same scene.
Willow, handles her emotions darkly.
Anarchy ensues and Xander and Cordelia flee to Buffy’s house.
Not the greatest idea given Joyce is there
...and female.
They try and hide in Buffy’s room but Angel is there and throws Xander back outiside.
Angel tries to kill him but Drusilla intervenes.
Xander and Cordy go and hide in Buffy's basement.
As Xander is practicing carpentry for the first time,
he confesses that the spell was intended to target Cordelia,
not everyone but.
The Xander horde gets through the door
right as Giles and Amy reverse everything just in time.
Xander is once again social pond scum.
He runs into Cordelia and clique and Cordelia,
given the choice between Xander and Harmony,
chooses Xander.
THIS is what a one-off episode should be.
There are no MacGuffin men
or randoms introduced simply to put our characters in peril.
The conflict and turmoil of the episode is induced by the flaws in our much beloved characters.
So what went wrong with the spell?
There are a number of possibilities.
First, if you listen to the wording of Amy’s spell:
"---goddess of love and the hunt."
"I pray to thee."
"Let my cries bind the heart of Xander's beloved."
Cordelia has been complaining about Xander’s lack of focus on her for the past couple of episodes.
In 'Phases' when she and Willow were commiserating, Willow said of him:
"He's so busy looking around at everything he doesn't have..."
"...he doesn't even realize what he DOES have."
And in the episode opening Xander says he and Cordelia are becoming boring.
Remember how quickly he ditched the idea of revenge on Cordelia when Buffy was lusting for him?
Which brings up another point.
Consider Xander’s actual motivations for having Amy perform the incantation:
"If you don't wanna be with her forever than what's the point?"
"The point is I want her to want me. desperately, "
"...so I can break up with her and subject her through the same hell she's been putting me through."
It wasn’t love for Cordelia that drove him to the stupidity.
It was revenge.
"Xander is a lusty seventeen year-old boy who wants what he doesn't have."
One other thing to consider is Amy invokes Diana, Goddess of Love and the Hunt.
Except that Diana WASN'T the goddess of love.
That was Venus or Aphrodite.
Honestly, this is one of my favorite one-offs.
Christophe Beck’s score is a fantastic standout.
Ordinarily in these episodes, the Big Bad’s appearance feels posthumous and a little reductive
but the interplay between the vampire trio is delightful to watch.
Angelus continues to torture Spike by one upping him with Drusilla.
He doesn’t care whether it’s a human he hurts or not.
He just likes to see the pain.
And Drusilla’s comment is some nice foreshadowing to Angel’s attempt
...to kill Xander in order to hurt Buffy.
He knows what Xander means to her and how much it would hurt.
OK.
Things I don't like.
There was this.
"I also remember that you didn't."
"Need cheese?"
"Undress me."
"You came through."
"There might just be hope for you yet."
I don’t think Xander deserves a trophy for not taking advantage of Buffy.
In fact, I think it says something about the sad state of men in this season that this deserves a highlight at all.
"Guys!"
Xander is casually inappropriate SO often.
"You know, hey, I don't know what everyone's talking about."
"That outfit doesn't make you look like a HOOKER."
"Buffy, I feel a pre-birthday spanking coming on."
"Would lap dancing enter in that scenario at all? ''Cause I find that very comforting."
Sometimes it's even a bit vicious.
"You dragged me out of bed for a RIDE?"
"What am I, mass transportation?"
"That's what a lot of the guys say, but it's just locker room talk."
"I wouldn't pay it any mind."
Thinking you deserve an award for...
let's call it "functional human decency"
is a part of the “Nice Guy” fallacy
and feels a little weird to me in a show like 'Buffy'.
Let's see ...what else did I not like?
Umm…
OH, Oh, oh!
I got it.
Samuel Clemens' name is spelled wrong on the English Teacher's board.
Boom.