Meme taken from shivver13
Name an episode (or episodes, as many as you like) from one of the following shows and I will tell you the following about it.
Buffy, Doctor Who, Farscape, X-FilesWhat I like about it ( Read more... )
Buffy, Doctor Who, Farscape, X-FilesWhat I like about it ( Read more... )
What I don't like about it: Well this is probably the obvious answer, but it's dated horribly in terms of how it judges Xander's character. Cordelia is flattered when she thinks that Xander cast a love spell to force her to love him, and the episode ends on Xander winning Cordelia back because of that, while Buffy actually thanks Xander for doing the right thing in not taking advantage of one of his close friends when she was under a love spell
Favourite line: Spike: 'Why don't you rip her lungs out? It might make an impression'. Angelus: 'Lacks poetry'. Spike: 'Doesn't have too. What rhymes with lung?' Or maybe Angelus's' 'I guess I really *did* drive you crazy'
Best performance: Nicky Brendon did a nice job with this episode
A scene/idea from it that's particularly interesting to me: The most interesting part of this episode to me is probably the relationship dynamics actually. We have Buffy outright say that Xander could do better than Cordelia, and Xander acknowledge that the girl he really wants is 'unavailable', and then he completely blows off the spell to Amy as no big deal when he's under the impression that Buffy is finally taking an interest in him. Basically the episode is pretty explicit on Cordelia being Xander's second choice, so I find it interesting that the episode ends on a supposedly happy note of Xander and Cordelia reuniting, even though I'm not convinced that Xander's feelings for Cordelia were ever that strong. Even after their break-up, it's mostly about him being angry and humiliated at how it's affected his place in the social pecking order at school, rather than the show portraying him as genuinally heartbroken in the way that we saw in say Prophecy Girl when he was moping and listen to sad music. It makes me wonder how much we're supposed to take the ending on face value as a ~happy ending~ and a relationship to root for, or if the writers still had Xander/Buffy endgame in mind during season 2
Something I would have changed to make the episode better: I'm not sure this would have made the episode better exactly, but I would have had Xander work harder to win Cordelia back. I'd have her freaked out at the mindless mob chasing after Xander, and 'that's what you wanted to do to me', and Xander explain his true intentions with the spell were to punish Cordelia. It felt like there was an honest conversation missing in their reconciliation, just Cordelia taking it as flattering when she assumed that Xander was planning a love spell to win her back, and gosh how romantic
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I do defend the Moral of the Story to say that the episode really is critical on Xander. I think Giles's angry yelling is the clearest authorial moral judgment because it's coming from the intelligent wise grown-up who doesn't have a personal dog in the fight. Buffy's kinder stance is muddied by how she's Xander's best friend and is trying to make him feel better about himself because he's clearly guilty. Cordelia's flattered stance is muddied by how she's, IMO, foolish about a lot of things and one of them is how she's so obsessed with being flattered and deemed The Most Special Girl that she'll become blind to other dangers. This stance ultimately killed her in how she fell for Skip's lies and I'd argue, subverted her life to Angel's drama.
I agree that Xander isn't particularly in love with Cordelia. However, I do think it was a happy ending because Xander/Cordelia was important to Xander's and Cordelia's character development. In terms of Xander, it was a learning experience for Xander on how to be in a romantic relationship- and on that level- it had value in continuing for a short time. It's good that they both had a chance to give the relationship a real chance instead of letting Harmony and her crowd dictate the relationship's course. Even though it ultimately landed on a note that, IMO, Xander decided that he liked Cordelia but his Fluking with Willow was part and parcel of how Xander didn't love Cordelia enough to feel like he's in the best relationship possible.
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The episode is critical of Xander in terms of calling him out on the risks of using magic, that you should know that these kind of spells can be dangerous and frequently backfire, what was missing for me though was the questioning of Xander's cruelty and entitlement in wanting to use magic to alter someone else's mind after he got dumped. There's no one taking Cordelia's corner in that respect, and Cordelia herself ends the episode simply being flattered at believing that, 'the spell was for me'. I agree that it was rather depressingly in character for her to find that sort of obsession towards her flattering, but it doesn't work for me as a happy ending with Xander getting the girl, even though Cordelia had no idea what his true motives had been, and that the spell had never been about him being desperate to win her back. (Of course that would have made it much creepier if Xander's intentions had been to force Cordelia to get back together with him through the spell, but still that's clearly what Cordelia ends the episode happy to believe, even when the audience knows that it was actually all about Xander wanting to get his revenge and cause her emotional pain)
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