I Was Made to Love You is the gateway to one of the most astonishing stretches of
television I have experienced. I can say without hyperbole that the Buffy and Angel run of Reprise,
The Body, and Epiphany changed my life. Those episodes are largely
responsible for the existence of this video series and I have been, variously,
excited and anxious about what I might say about them for nearly 8 years now.
I say gateway because, while I don't have the same reverence for it as I do the next three,
I Was Made to Love You's final scene contains a cliffhanger that triggers the run. And,
I think that presents a challenge in giving the rest of the episode its due. The next
three are SO emotional, dramatic, and outright traumatizing that I Was Made to Love You has
always sat in a long shadow for me, little more in my memory than "that one episode right before
you-know-what happens..." or "the one with Warren." That is until our recent rewatch
and streamed discussion of it here on this channel, when I finally realized
there is a lot more interesting stuff to this one than I'd previously noticed.
So, for the purposes of this discussion I have decided that, beyond this introduction,
I'm not going to talk about the cliffhanger in this video. An argument can be made either
way but I believe that whatever ideas the cliffhanger generates for discussion won't be
diminished by waiting one more episode to discuss them. Leaving them in kind of
wipes away some of the interesting nuances of I Was Made to Love You.
And, yes, I realize...that is probably partly the point.
Summary: Creaking Towards Ecstacy Picking right up from Spike being
uninvited from the Summers' home, Buffy is working off a bit of her Spike-induced
revulsion by beating up a bag of Xander. 00:23: B: I feel gross. I mean...dirty.
G: That's ridiculous. You can't be responsible for what Spike thinks or feels.
There is probably an analysis already written out there someplace regarding what an interesting
contrast this is: Giles’ hardline response to Buffy’s Spike news versus Joyce and Willow’s
reaction in the previous episode, which involved at least partially questioning whether Buffy had
some culpability for ‘leading Spike on.’ JOYCE: Honey, did you ... somehow,
unintentionally, lead him on in any way? Uh, send him signals?
BUFFY: (ponders) Well, I ... I do b*at him up a lot. For Spike that's like third base.
Buffy continues to vent her frustrations until Puffy Xander objects and I'm not sure that I
understand the training value of Puffy Bean Bag Xander, other than the hilarious sight
gag and Buffy getting some revenge for Xander laughing about Spike's crush in
the previous episode. He's so immobile he's incapable of threatening her anyway...just
wobbling from one side of the room to the other. How is having a dude in the bean bag helpful?
Anyways Buffy wonders if maybe needs to be a little less Buffy to attract a man and
Xander brings my favorite version of Xander to the scene: The 'you're my hero,' Xander.
02:08 "Or maybe you can just be Buffy and he'll see your
amazing heart and he'll fall in love with you.
The next morning Joyce is doing a fashion show for the girls because she's going on
a date that evening. I absolutely love them grilling her about her date Brian's intentions.
Joyce's anxious questioning of the choice of movie-as-a-date is deeply relatable. I believe
I've had just that same conversation with a friend before an online date.
5:30 "Or maybe we shouldn't do a movie at all. Because you can't talk during?"
Anya and Tara are out for a walk and Anya is telling Tara about avoiding big tech
while investing. I couldn't help but wonder what she'd have to say about
NFTs and crypto. And this is when they run into April, a nice girl looking for Warren.
At a party that night, after dancing with Xander, Buffy sees this super cool dude wearing a snorkel
and drunkenly wobbling over the punch bowl but decides to lower her standards and talk
to Ben instead. Personally, I don't get it but I love her placing herself in a
position where she can’t be missed and pulling the, “Oh HIIII didn’t see you there,” move.
In walks April and Anya catches Xander up. 10:30 Oh, that girl. Tara and I met her. She
speaks with a strange eagerness and selects her words a shade too precisely.
That may be the most chef's kiss Anya line ever,
though I think it might be impossible to pick. Which ones are yours? My other is probably…
“Men are evil. Will you go with me?” Spike tries to make Buffy jealous
by whispering in April's ear and April tosses him through a window. Buffy goes
home to bail out Giles from babysitting duty. “My God Buffy, there’s only so much I can take.”
It's an Espenson episode so I can't possibly fit every delightful line
into a summary. The Giles scene is almost completely composed from them,
as he describes his evening with Dawn before Joyce comes home and mortifies Buffy with talk
about her date. “MOTHER.”
It's some of the most humanizing and fun writing Joyce has had in the series so far.
(That's right, I said so far because we're not. going. to. talk. about. it.)
The next day the team figures out who the Warren is that robot April is looking for. They express
pity for the loneliness that might drive someone to build a sex bot and Buffy goes and calls a very
glisteny post-Glory-transformation-Ben. They line up coffee.
Warren and his girlfriend Katrina are packing to run from April when Buffy knocks to enlist
his aid. Spike stops by the Magic Box to see the Scoobies, but finds that he's
lost some of his Yoko powers. 26:00 We are not your friends.
We are not your way to Buffy. God, I love it when Daddy...er...Giles
gets a little Ripper-energy going. Anthony can be truly chilling when he needs to be.
Ted Lasso: "Well that would make me a real piece of shit."
April attacks Katrina. Warren tries
to talk her down and then turns her on Buffy. 33:30 "She growls? You made it so she growls?”v
We get a shockingly touching scene between Buffy and April. Spike goes
to Warren to have him build a robot for him based on Buffy. In a conversation with Xander,
Buffy decides she doesn't need a guy right now and calls Ben to cancel their coffee
date. Glory overhears. And that’s how it alllllll ends. What a fun light episode.
Review: Cookie dough and boys ‘I Was Made to Love You,’ is a surprisingly funny,
sweet, and endearing episode. Actually, maybe not that surprising, given it’s an Espenson.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the episode Ted but I love the use of it in the show’s fantasy lore.
Warren is just some Weird Science twenty-something who built an April in his dorm room. Maybe he’s
the original Ted’s nephew. I also love that Dawn is the one who makes the Ted callback.
DAWN: A robot? Really? Was it Ted? 'Cause I always said there could have been more than one of him.
Because of course, the monks provided her with all the requisite memories,
including the Ted ones. One of the fun questions of the season is how
all the stories we know might’ve played a little differently with Dawn in them.
The part of April was actually written with Britney Spears in mind. According to David Fury,
Britney turned it down because she wanted to play someone who, you know, hung out with the
Scoobies…not a…well, you know. Xander: She’s a sex bot.
Right. I think I’m personally glad for the way things turned out. Shonda Farr,
the actress who plays robot April, does a great job of infusing April with warmth and humanity
without losing the robot schtick. April is actually nicely complex. There is a lot
of symbolic stuff going on here that wouldn’t have worked if April were JUST…well you know…
Xander: She’s a sex bot. Right. That. And not that the
episode is kink-shaming. I believe it was Sara from Costume Codex who, in our discussion of
the episode made the salient point: No one has any problems with your sex toys...just don't make them
sentient or feel pain when you're not around. There are a handful of fun jokes layered into
April’s operating system we see from her vantage point. Including that April is programmed to think
Warren is a snappy dresser, and a good dancer, and has a routine to keep him happy called,
“Give Him Presents.” I also love the spelling errors like the way, in remove obstacle,
he spelled obstacle like testicle. However, avoiding spoilers as best I can, Warren is
such a heinous vile character that it makes some of those cute jokes in this episode…less cute.
The episode contains a strange technical issue, starting at the second to last commercial break.
While everything to that point has the familiar warm reds and pinks that this season is bathed in,
starting at the scene with Buffy and Xander fixing the window something happened to
the episode's color correction. Every scene except the cliffhanger has a yellowish-green
tint. Maybe these scenes were very late-in-the-game additions that didn’t
get the proper time in the editing bay? Or perhaps there was an issue with the
DVD mastering. There is a similar issue with the color in some Season 7 episodes,
it’s just odd that the problem is only there for one story-block of this one and not the whole
thing. Even more painfully, I went and checked the abominable remaster, and the color problem
is fixed there…along with having all the NEW ridiculous issues the remaster introduced.
But my pickiest of nits with this one is that I couldn’t stop asking myself, why is Warren
running? Maybe it’s the Star Trek in me Data: “If you had an off-switch,
would you not want to keep it secret?”
It seems almost impossible to me that he wouldn’t have given April an off-switch.
Sarting in bed again Entwined dualities are a
big part of this season’s thematic structure – Two different halves of one whole. There
is always the push and pull of young Buffy with her calling as the Slayer. Toth wanted
to divide Buffy into those parts but managed to do so with Xander instead. In this episode,
we get a glimpse of a classic, Ripper, and Giles. Of course, there is Ben and Glory.
Because of that emphasis, it’s no surprise that relationships,
an inherent duality themselves, have been a big feature of the stories this season. I mentioned
in the video for Restless how Whedon portrayed Tara and Willow as a yin and yang, light and
dark. That structure may become more relevant as this season continues. The more I watch the show,
the more surprised I am by how well Spike works throughout the series as a dark yang to Buffy.
*Split screen of April punching/attacking both Spike and Buffy
And Crush was about his consuming need for romantic validation, without which…
“I’m nothing without her.” April: “I'm only supposed to love him. If I can't
do that, what am I for? What do I exist for?” If Triangle was about Buffy’s post-Riley grief, I
Was Made to Love You is about her figuring out how to move forward…or…you know…where does she…uhh…go?
You know…from here? Doing that well and avoiding the same mistakes means processing
and understanding the mistakes you made, and that is what’s at the heart of the episode.
Buffy’s first attempt is to just “get back out there,” and in doing so, she nearly initiates
the same familiar relationship loop she’s been in all over again. Angel was a reforming monster
who suffered a relapse of monsterdom and became the season's big bad. Riley was an essentially
indoctrinated member of an elite government agency who turned out to be the big bad or,
at the very least, the one whose hubris spawned him. Then things with Riley really started to go
downhill. By the middle point of this episode Buffy’s attempt to just, “Get back out there,”
has her on the way to starting something with the magically conjoined twin of this season’s big bad.
We’ve talked about the trap of relationship looping previously with Spike’s romantic
history and with Angel in The Prodigal. By default, most people are bad at being lonely and
treat it like an illness to cure. The two most common forms of the loop are to constantly get
into the relationship with the same problem or to pendulum back and forth. One relationship didn’t
work. Go for the opposite. Then the opposite. Essentially variations of the same behavior.
The interruption of Buffy’s loop comes in the form of Warren and April. And I think it’s fair
to read Warren and April as another duality from this season, accounting for why Buffy,
at different points in the episode, identifies with both of them. Since Buffy’s connections
with April are more straightforward let's start with her similarities to Warren.
Dodgeball: “I’m sorry, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.”
Essentially, Warren is Buffy’s loneliness and ego. In the scene in the Magic Box,
the Scoobies describe April’s creator as pitiable for not being able to find a partner and having to
build an April. That conversation is the impetus for Buffy to leave the room and call Ben for a
coffee date. Incidentally, and for no reason whatsoever, I just wanted to point out that is
TARA, who expresses compassion for Warren. TARA. TARA: But it's so weird. I mean, everyone wants a
nice normal person to share with, but this guy, if he couldn't find that, I guess it's ... kinda sad.
Yup. Anyway, later Buffy actually meets Warren and, in between his toxic nonsense, he
occasionally says things Buffy relates to. April, who was always there and always everything Warren
needed her to be, got boring. Which bears a whiff of something Buffy became guilty of with Riley.
In the video for Crush, I talked about Sartre's two varieties of bad faith romantic love:
the sadist and the masochist. Warren is the sadist, demanding that his romantic partners
abandon their authentic selves to fit him. 27:30 "Yeah I mean I felt like I deserve to
have someone. I mean, EVERYONE deserves to have someone."
On the surface of it, that is an emotionally relatable idea. But actually, no individual
DESERVES to have any other individual. Certainly, Warren who expresses some
textbook characteristics of narcissism does not. Warren believes himself a good person
without needing to demonstrate it and thinks of everyone around him as playing a character in
his story. His sense of entitlement informs the decisions he makes that Buffy would never do,
including creating a robot girlfriend that feels pain when he’s not around that he then abandons
to die, as well as his belief that Katrina has ANY reason to forgive him and take him back.
April, and by association, Buffy, represent the masochistic bad faith
romantic style. There are a ton of parallels between April and Buffy
in this one. April is a beautiful, superstrong not-just-a-girl who acts
on the whims of her male programmer. Travers: “The Council fights evil. The
Slayer is the instrument by which we fight.” The episode opens with Buffy suggesting maybe
she needs to convert herself to be more what a man might want —more of an April.
And this time around I noticed that after each episode of violence, April sounded apologetic and
sad for what she was programmed to do. 15:30 "If I hurt you just now,
I am sorry. And I hope that your boyfriend will take good care of you."
Then of course, in their final scene together, April expresses confusion over what has happened.
A: I rechecked everything. I did everything I was supposed to do. I was a good girlfriend.
B: What else do you want from me, Riley? I've given you everything that I have,
I've given you my heart, my body, and soul! Before she dies on the swing…
*Music from the Gift playing softly in the background.
What would Buffy do? As usual, and get your bingo
cards ready, the key is choice. While I love their regular parallels, Spike doesn’t get one
lacking a soul. The jury is still out on chippy Spike, though the episode misdirects us for a
moment into believing that Spike is going to do as Ripper says and move the hell on, when really…
“Here’s your specs.” Warren, a sadistic narcissist pretty much only has
one set of operating instructions. And April never got a choice because Warren didn’t program one for
her. But Buffy breaks out of the loop by the end of the episode and makes the choice to fly solo
for a while, rather than subverting her identity to fit someone new or seeking out another Riley.
“I’m going to get to know Buffy.” #cookiedoughshipper
She may not clearly understand what happened with Riley or how things are supposed to be
different in the future but she’s given herself the time to figure it out. Discovering who she is,
alone. Unifying the two parts of herself we see in this one: the sometimes-selfish,
lonely, and naive, vulnerable side and the powerful relentless side of herself who faces
the ugly in the world every day. Her decision is a beautiful thing because knowing your authentic
self, whole and complete is the vital part of avoiding Sartre’s pitfalls in relationships.
There are so many things here I identify with – things that just take a lot of time
and a lot of ache to understand. But I love Buffy’s decision because loneliness isn’t an
infection that requires a cure. Almost without exception, the only thing that feeling lonely
means is that we’re probably alone. The rest is just layers of story that we make up about why.
B: Maybe I could change. You know, I could, I could work harder. I could spend less time
slaying, I could laugh at his jokes, I mean, men like that, right, the, the joke-laughing-at?
Conclusion: Good-guys: stalwart and true. In the end, I got a lot more out of this
one than I ever had before. It’s sweet, funny, and surprisingly prescient. The
string of episodes from this one to ‘The Gift’ actually feels like a test run for some of the
themes explored in Season 6. And Buffy’s final scene with April is so surprisingly touching.
What with all of their parallels, it feels like a moment of intimate connection where
Buffy actually allows herself some compassion. APRIL: (smiles) Maybe this is a girlfriend test.
If I wait here patiently this time, he'll come back.
Giles: What do you want me to say? Buffy:
Lie to me. BUFFY: I'm sure he
will. And he'll ... he'll tell you how sorry he is. You know, he told me ... how proud he
was of you and ... how impressed he was with how much you loved him and how you tried to help him.
Still, time marches forward and indifferent reality rears its head. Knowing what we know,
April’s last line is less a cheerful affirmation during a dark moment
than a foreboding warning of darkness to come. And, as I watched this time, I was struck by how,
batteries running down, there was a moment where April’s voice reminded me of someone else.
April: “Things are always darkest before the… Tara: “Be back before Dawn…”