Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered

[Updated April 29, 2013]

BB&B is one of the best beloved Buffy (heh) episodes. It’s funny, it has great scenes – Xander’s walk down the hallway, Buffy in her raincoat – and it makes fun of Valentine’s Day. Hard to imagine what more anyone could want from an episode. Anything beyond that is just the cherry on top.

Giles tells us what the episode’s about: “I know it's not love. It's obsession. Selfish, banal obsession.” It’s pretty easy, also, to identify one person who’s obsessed: Angelus. He’s obsessed with Buffy. The reason Angelus has this obsession begins with Buffy herself. She gave her heart to Angel, but a magic spell converted Angel into Angelus and Angel’s love into Angelus’ obsession. In pursuit of that obsession, Angelus threatens to destroy Buffy’s metaphorical heart, Xander:

“Angelus: I wanted to do something special for Buffy, actually to Buffy, but this is *so* much better!

Xander knees him in the crotch, but Angelus isn't fazed. He flips Xander over backward onto the grass again. He bends down, grabs Xander's hair and lifts his head up.

Angelus:  If it's any consolation, I feel very close to you right now.”

Mapping this onto the metaphor is easy. Amy’s spell backfired on Xander, just as Buffy’s love has now backfired on her. The women of Sunnydale pursue Xander like Angelus pursues Buffy. Those plotlines intersect when Angelus realizes that he can attack Buffy through Xander. Dru is the one who saves Xander from Angelus because the id must protect the heart – the heart was the focus of the id’s desire and the id needs to preserve that.

I should add a comment at this point about the particularities of the love spell. The misfire of the spell is very subtle and very revealing about what it says about Xander (not Buffy in metaphor, just Xander). Amy recites “Let my cries bind the heart of Xander's beloved.” The problem is, Xander pretty much loves all women. In Phases, Willow told Cordy that “He's so busy looking around at everything he doesn't have, he doesn't even realize what he *does* have.” That’s Xander’s emotional state which the spell picks up – he doesn’t really love Cordy, he’s busy looking around at everyone else. (In fairness, the way Cordy hid their relationship created an incentive for Xander to act that way.) Because Xander is in some sense attracted to all women, the spell causes all women to become obsessed with him rather than Angelus, as it might have done if the metaphor became too literal (so to speak).

In reading more recent reviews of the shows, I see that a lot of commenters dislike Xander in this episode because they see him as “roofie-ing” Buffy. (h/t anonymous) My basic view is that Xander certainly didn’t intend that result, so I cut him some slack on it. Now, I don’t think he deserves very much credit for not taking advantage of Buffy (or others). After all, given the circumstances it really would have been rape. The idea of giving credit for not doing something that would have been obviously wrong is problematic.

The way I'd phrase it is that it was nonetheless good for the show to reinforce the point by having Buffy praise Xander. Praising someone for doing the right thing, even when that's expected, seems like a good way to encourage it. Still, Xander does get off pretty easy here -- his original intent was pretty awful, but he pairs up with Cordy at the end. He does get some punishment from Giles and Willow, but we don't see it.

At the end, it’s Giles who breaks the spell Xander caused. That’s what Buffy needs to do, namely break the spell under which she caused Angel’s love for her to turn into the obsession of Angelus (unintentionally, just as the effect of Xander’s spell was unintentional). Exactly how to do that is her challenge.

Trivia notes: (1) The title comes from the show tune of the same name in the musical Pal Joey. (2) Having Oz notice the cheerleader statute at the beginning of Phases seems like a clever and subtle way to remind everyone about Witch before Amy makes her reappearance here. Amy, you’ll notice, didn’t seem to need much persuasion to perform the spell. (3) The transition between scenes is typically clever. At the end of the scene in the warehouse where Angelus gave Dru the still-warm heart, Dru said “Don’t worry Spike. Angel always knows what speaks to a girl’s heart.” The episode shifted immediately to the Bronze and we heard the music of Dingoes. The title of the song they were playing was “Pain”, which is obviously what Dru meant. In mid-song we broke to Buffy and her mother at home discovering the sadistic roses Angelus left for Buffy, then it was back to the Bronze where it picked up in mid-song and the song continued to play until Xander approached Cordy, whereupon the song stopped and she broke up with him. If you watch very carefully, there was a red-haired female student in the background of the X/C scene. That student then walked past Xander in the hallway the next day and giggled at his misfortune. The show is filled with neat transitions like this and I haven’t mentioned any before, but this sequence was particularly good. (4) “Say it with flowers” was an advertising slogan for florists. Buffy used the phrase to tell Giles about Angelus’ “gift”.