I actually just watched "Buffy" yesterday and I was looking through the episode list and it was the first time I'd thought about "Buffy vs.Dracula" in ages. It definitely felt like a huge wasted opportunity

I felt like their biggest problem there was with casting honestly. It seemed like Marti wanted him to come across as more seductive and mesmerising in her script, but the actor seemed like he was more interested in doing the sort of campy performance that would have fit better in the Buffy movie. The writers always have the characters making jokes about the villains, but it’s when you turn the villains themselves into a joke that it just doesn’t work

And yeah it’s good that Charisma was ultimately happy with the script, but I don’t really understand why they weren’t upfront with her about what they were thinking of doing, especially when she had specifically said that she didn’t want Cordelia to be killed off

And I agree that they didn’t need to treat her like that, that’s my biggest issue with all that, you could tell that they were taking out some frustrations with how they were portraying the character, and it all felt a bit nasty for a while there