Meme taken from shivver13

[frelling_tralk]

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-Files


What I like about it.

What I don't like about it.

Favorite line.

Best performance.

A scene/idea from it that's particularly interesting to me.

Something I would have changed to make the episode better.

Comments

[sunclouds33.livejournal.com]

I also like the Buffy/Oz scene when she's de-ratted. Buffy and Oz are both so cool that it feels right that they're both so chill about handling a teenage-awkward fest of being naked in front of your best friend's boyfriend.

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.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

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

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)