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Buffy Rewatch: Relationships
Lots of discussion about Spike and Xander led to my own rant about Xander Harris and the Bewitched Bewildered, and Bothered episode! (I would disagree though with the emphasis placed on The Pack and possessed Xander's assault of Buffy, because the structure of season 1 was very different and so I don't place all that much importance on Xander deciding to pretend that it never happened and he has no memories of it.)
I do however have a much bigger problem with Xander planning to use magic to forcibly make Cordelia love him so that he could then dump and humiliate her. Looking back now the Bewitched, Bewildered, and Bothered episode is insanely creepy, especially when Amy warns Xander how insane and desperate a love spell could make Cordelia, and he just gloats that he wants her to unable to eat or sleep or thinking of anything but him! If anything the episode presented Xander and Cordelia in a very unbalanced way as Xander mostly seems annoyed at being dismissed by Cordelia and being made fun of by her friends, she is the one who seems to feel genuinally heartbroken when we are shown the necklace of Xander's that she is secretly wearing. Xander talks to Amy more about wanting payback and to be the one to dump Cordelia, and he's even willing to shrug off the spell's failure as no biggie the second he belives that Buffy might be expressing an interest in him. IMO His primary reason for wanting Cordelia under a love spell was because of his ego
And really there was never that much justification for Xander to react in the way that he did. Okay Cordelia blurted out her wishes to break up at a Valentine's Dance in her usual tactless way, but she also says she's sorry and she didn't mean to do it this way. For high school Cordelia the break-up speech is postively nice even as she never says anything unpleasant about Xander or that her friends feel like he's not good enough, just that they are kidding themselves and that they don't fit together. And however shallow her reasons for breaking up with Xander might have been, it was still her right to break up with him for any reason she pleased!
And then the day after Amy does the spell Xander approaches Cordelia when she is surrounded by her friends, and he is clearly hoping to see her grovel and humilate herself in front of them when he asks if she has anything to say to him, so how the spell became something romantic to bring the two of them back together is just bizarre to me! And the episode doesn't just end with Cordelia having ~having learned her lesson~ by telling off all her friends and choosing Xander in front of them, it also has Buffy thanking Xander for really coming through and him joking about how it was touch and go for a minute there, even though what they're actually talking about is Xander resisting the urge to take advantage of his friend when she was under a spell. I honestly don't know what Marti was thinking with this episode. (And soo disappointing that Gabrielle didn't get to finish her feminist write-up of Buffy episodes :/
And the thing is that if that episode featured anyone but Xander and his automatic nice guy shield, surely that role would have been clearly presented as the villain and Buffy would be dismissing them as a creepy and controlling little dweeb, the way she did other characters such as the boy who got turned down for a date in The Prom and planned retribution, orWarren's plans to dominate Katrina after she ended things with him. But because it's Xander that episode just gets shrugged off at the end with Buffy thanking him for not doing anything worse, and then he actually gets rewarded with the girl. I get the feeling we're even supposed to feel sorry for him when Amy hits on him too and he realises that Buffy's interest in him is only a spell.
I wonder if the Troika from season 6 were possibly the writers attempt to finally be honest about what it really means to use magic to control a woman, the way they could never bring themselves to do with Xander? Yeah okay he never had any plans to take advantage of Cordelia's body with that spell, but he was attempting to control his ex-girlfriend's emotions in a really sick way in order to get the power back in their dynamic. For some reason the writers seemed to feel that Giles yelling at Xander about being careless with magic, and Willow being mad at him because of her crush on him, were adequate consequences for that? Cordelia's only reaction was being flattered because she believed that Xander did the love spell to win her back :/
ETA And okay LOL, the spyware on this entry is now giving me pop-ups on "find a love spell now"
Lots of discussion about Spike and Xander led to my own rant about Xander Harris and the Bewitched Bewildered, and Bothered episode! (I would disagree though with the emphasis placed on The Pack and possessed Xander's assault of Buffy, because the structure of season 1 was very different and so I don't place all that much importance on Xander deciding to pretend that it never happened and he has no memories of it.)
I do however have a much bigger problem with Xander planning to use magic to forcibly make Cordelia love him so that he could then dump and humiliate her. Looking back now the Bewitched, Bewildered, and Bothered episode is insanely creepy, especially when Amy warns Xander how insane and desperate a love spell could make Cordelia, and he just gloats that he wants her to unable to eat or sleep or thinking of anything but him! If anything the episode presented Xander and Cordelia in a very unbalanced way as Xander mostly seems annoyed at being dismissed by Cordelia and being made fun of by her friends, she is the one who seems to feel genuinally heartbroken when we are shown the necklace of Xander's that she is secretly wearing. Xander talks to Amy more about wanting payback and to be the one to dump Cordelia, and he's even willing to shrug off the spell's failure as no biggie the second he belives that Buffy might be expressing an interest in him. IMO His primary reason for wanting Cordelia under a love spell was because of his ego
And really there was never that much justification for Xander to react in the way that he did. Okay Cordelia blurted out her wishes to break up at a Valentine's Dance in her usual tactless way, but she also says she's sorry and she didn't mean to do it this way. For high school Cordelia the break-up speech is postively nice even as she never says anything unpleasant about Xander or that her friends feel like he's not good enough, just that they are kidding themselves and that they don't fit together. And however shallow her reasons for breaking up with Xander might have been, it was still her right to break up with him for any reason she pleased!
And then the day after Amy does the spell Xander approaches Cordelia when she is surrounded by her friends, and he is clearly hoping to see her grovel and humilate herself in front of them when he asks if she has anything to say to him, so how the spell became something romantic to bring the two of them back together is just bizarre to me! And the episode doesn't just end with Cordelia having ~having learned her lesson~ by telling off all her friends and choosing Xander in front of them, it also has Buffy thanking Xander for really coming through and him joking about how it was touch and go for a minute there, even though what they're actually talking about is Xander resisting the urge to take advantage of his friend when she was under a spell. I honestly don't know what Marti was thinking with this episode. (And soo disappointing that Gabrielle didn't get to finish her feminist write-up of Buffy episodes :/
And the thing is that if that episode featured anyone but Xander and his automatic nice guy shield, surely that role would have been clearly presented as the villain and Buffy would be dismissing them as a creepy and controlling little dweeb, the way she did other characters such as the boy who got turned down for a date in The Prom and planned retribution, orWarren's plans to dominate Katrina after she ended things with him. But because it's Xander that episode just gets shrugged off at the end with Buffy thanking him for not doing anything worse, and then he actually gets rewarded with the girl. I get the feeling we're even supposed to feel sorry for him when Amy hits on him too and he realises that Buffy's interest in him is only a spell.
I wonder if the Troika from season 6 were possibly the writers attempt to finally be honest about what it really means to use magic to control a woman, the way they could never bring themselves to do with Xander? Yeah okay he never had any plans to take advantage of Cordelia's body with that spell, but he was attempting to control his ex-girlfriend's emotions in a really sick way in order to get the power back in their dynamic. For some reason the writers seemed to feel that Giles yelling at Xander about being careless with magic, and Willow being mad at him because of her crush on him, were adequate consequences for that? Cordelia's only reaction was being flattered because she believed that Xander did the love spell to win her back :/
ETA And okay LOL, the spyware on this entry is now giving me pop-ups on "find a love spell now"
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Date: 2013-06-23 03:29 pm (UTC)And at the risk of overthinking it, I think that played a part in Cordelia not being that impressed at someone like Jesse drooling over her. A lot of shows will go with the cliche of the pretty and popular girl find herself flattered when she realises that the geeky boy she was dismissing actually has really genuine feelings for her and sees the person that she is underneath, whereas with Jesse all we were ever shown was that he was attracted to Cordelia when she was very mean to the people around her and had few layers, so all we are left to imagine is that it must have been purely about her looks... So yeah I object to the show framing Cordelia as ~the mean girl~ in that instance for not having any time for him when he asked her to dance
And we were also shown very little about why Xander fell for Cordelia, except that he found himself physically attracted when they were arguing. He was still just as dismissive and snarking at her after they began dating, i.e in Innocence when she points out that's not much they can do to help if Buffy and Angel are really in trouble, and Xander snarks back that if the vampires need grooming tips we'll give you a call. He did apologise for that remark later and to be fair he was worried at the time, but still it does beg the question that why was he with Cordelia if that's the way he still saw her deep down? He frequently belittled her interests and didn't seem to have much time for her personality, so yeah I wonder if part of the attraction was that Cordy was in love with him and became softer around him after a time (such as her smile and wrinkling her nose before they kiss in Innocence), which does tie in with part of the attraction possibly being a subconscious ego-drive desire to tame the girl who had always acted like Xander and his friends were beneath her in the past