Template:Buffyepisode
"Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" is the sixteenth episode of Buffy's second season, and is the twenty-eighth episode in the series. It was directed by James A. Contner and written by Marti Noxon. It was originally broadcast on February 10, 1998.
After being dumped by Cordelia Chase on Valentine's Day, Xander Harris turns to witchcraft to exact his own form of vengeance.
Synopsis
It is the night before Valentine's Day, and Buffy and Xander are patrolling in a cemetery. Xander shows Buffy the heart-shaped locket that he has bought for Cordelia as a Valentine's gift. He wishes that dating was like slaying - "direct, to the heart, no muss, no fuss." Just then, a vampire rises from the ground, which Buffy disposes of quickly, before telling him that slaying is a little bit more dangerous than dating, which prompts Xander to remind her that she is not dating Cordelia.
On Valentine's Day, Cordelia finds herself ignored and rejected from her group of friends, mostly because she is dating Xander. Meanwhile, in class, he witnesses Amy Madison, whom he knows is the daughter of a witch, bewitching Ms. Beakman into thinking she has handed in her homework. After the class ends, Xander tells Willow and Buffy what he saw. Considering witchcraft didn't turn out well for Amy's mom, Xander decides that he should talk to Amy and warn her about practicing witchcraft. Giles soon arrives to talk to Buffy, but the conversation turns awkward when Jenny runs into them. Jenny tells Giles that she needs to speak to him personally. Giles hesitantly brushes her off, and brings Buffy to the library. He warns Buffy that Angel has a long past of committing hideous and bloody acts "of affection" during Valentine's Day. Although he refuses to go into the details, he suggests she takes a break from patrolling until things cool down.
Drusilla likes a heart
In the factory hide-out, Spike presents Drusilla with a pretty necklace for Valentine's. She seems half-heartedly pleased, until, Angel gives her his gift: a warm, freshly torn-out heart, which he found "in a quaint little shop-girl." Spike angrily tells Angel to focus more on the Slayer, to which Drusilla tells him not to worry. "Angel always knows what speaks to a girl's heart."
That night, while Buffy and Joyce watch television, there is a knock on the Summers' door. Buffy goes to answer, but finds no one there. Instead, Joyce finds a long black box at the back door meant for Buffy. She opens it, only to find the contents of the box is a dozen of red roses with the word "Soon!" written on a card. At the Bronze, Oz and his band, "Dingoes Ate My Baby", are playing, and Willow happily watches her boyfriend play. Cordelia arrives, but her "friends" again rebuff her. Xander approaches a sad Cordelia, presenting her with her Valentine's gift, a heart necklace, and telling her that it may be just teenage hormones that's driving their relationship, or it may be more than that. Cordelia is at first impressed and joyful with the gift, but quickly tells Xander that she wants to break up, because "we don't fit." Xander, agitated, walks off, leaving Cordelia looking sorry and unhappy.
Cordelia, before dumping Xander
The next day, Xander finds himself the talk of the school now that Cordelia has dumped him. He quickly confronts Amy about his knowledge of her magic and then proceeds to blackmail her into casting a love spell for him. Amy reminds him that love spells have to be pure, and Xander tells her that the love spell is "pure" hateful vengeance. To complete the love spell, Xander needs something that belongs to Cordelia, so he quickly asks her for the necklace back. Cordelia returns the gift reluctantly, and pretends to tease him. That night, Xander and Amy perform the spell.
Xander then approaches Cordelia the next day, confident that the spell took effect. To his dismay, Cordelia remains the same—harsh and bitter. Meanwhile, Giles and Buffy are researching more on Angelus' Valentine traits, per her request, when Xander enters. Giles goes off to get more books, leaving them together. Surprisingly, Buffy starts to flirt with a thoroughly confused yet eager Xander. Amy arrives thereafter, and asks to talk to Xander privately. She tells Xander that the spell didn't work, but soon starts to seduce Xander too, much in the same manner as Buffy did. Xander then realizes that the spell has gone awry—especially when one of the Cordettes appear to be hitting on him.
Startled, Xander returns home, only to find a half-dressed Willow under his sheets. Willow expresses a desire for them to sleep together, attempting to seduce Xander. He stutters a mild warning not to do this, and Willow simply licks his ear in response. Having had enough, Xander quickly scampers off back to school, where he finds himself the new James Bond of Sunnydale High. Apparently, the spell has worked on all the women in Sunnydale except for Cordelia. Xander goes to the library and recounts everything to Giles, asking for help. Giles seems disbelieving at first, until Jenny arrives to talk to him and starts to get distracted by Xander's muscles. Giles stresses how irresponsible and serious Xander's stunt was, and, dragging a reluctant Jenny behind him, Giles leaves the library to look for answers. He tells Xander to barricade himself inside the room.
The plan doesn't work, as Buffy arrives in a short leather trench coat and heels, continuing her quest to seduce Xander. Even so, he decides not to take advantage of the situation, and politely asks Buffy to back off. Suddenly, Amy turns up and, claiming Xander loves her, she and Buffy get into a fight. Xander can only watch helplessly. Then, Amy performs a spell and turns Buffy into a rat. Giles and Jenny return, and while Jenny and Amy glare at each other -- with Amy almost turning Jenny into a rat as well -- the two men try to capture the Buffy-slash-rat. The situation gets even worse when Oz shows up and punches Xander in the face for rejecting Willow the night before, as she was on the phone with him all night, crying. The distraction leads the Buffy-rat to escape into the basement. Giles angrily tells Xander to go home before he does any more damage, and asks Oz to help him look for Buffy-rat.
Willow brandishing an axe
Xander regretfully leaves, only to find Cordelia beaten up by Harmony and a group of girls in the hallway, who believe that Cordelia has done a grave mistake by letting Xander go. Xander rescues her and they leave the school together. As they walk outside, they are confronted by an army of Sunnydale ladies, led by an axe-wielding, grief-stricken Willow. As she starts toward him with the axe, Harmony and her friends soon catch up with them. The two groups fight: one looking to hurt Xander, and the other looking to protect him. The girls are distracted enough for Cordelia and Xander to escape to Buffy's house, much to Mrs. Summers' delight, as she is also in love with Xander. She sends Cordelia away to get bandages for Xander's wounds, and uses the alone time to flirt with him. Back in the library, Giles enlists Amy and Jenny's help to reverse the spell, but neither of them want to do anything other than chase after Xander. Jenny manages to flee to find Xander. Amy begins to see reason, and aids Giles in the rescue. Meanwhile, Oz looks for Buffy-rat in the basement, as it approaches a cat and a mousetrap.
Cordelia returns and locks Joyce out of her own house to keep her away from her "boyfriend...former". Joyce persists, though, and she breaks the window to let herself back inside. The two run up to Buffy's room and barricade themselves inside. Angelus comes and pulls Xander out through Buffy's open window with the intention to kill him as a Valentine's Day gift for Buffy. Just before he's able to, however, Angelus is blindsided. Xander initially thinks Buffy has arrived, but his savior is actually Drusilla, who has also fallen under the love spell. Angelus is confused as to why she saved him, but Drusilla tells her sire that she's finally found a real man, and announces her plan to turn Xander into a vampire. Before she sires Xander, the two are besieged by the mob of women and separated. Willow is about to cut Xander's head off, but is stopped by Cordelia. She and Xander are able to flee into the house and attempt to block the front door. Drusilla knocks the back door off its hinges, allowing more women to enter, but Drusilla is unable to enter herself, as she has never been invited inside. Xander and Cordelia have to run again when Joyce arrives with a knife to kill Xander to stop anyone else from having him, and they take refuge in the basement. Xander inadvertently reveals that the spell was for Cordelia, which seemingly touches her. Just then, the women punch a hole through the basement door, and they are trapped in the same place where their relationship began in "What's My Line, Part Two".
Xander and Cordelia as a couple
Just as the dangerous mob advances towards them, Giles and Amy manage to reverse her spells, and everybody was soon cured from the thrall. The girls look around, startled and confused. Cordelia quickly explains that they had all took part in an overzealous scavenger hunt. Meanwhile, down in the boiler room, Oz finds a very much human Buffy very much naked. He awkwardly asks her to stay while he gets some clothes.
The next day, everything returns to normal. Buffy thanks Xander for not taking advantage of her while she was under the thrall, and tells him that he needs to apologize to Willow. Cordelia is back with her snobby posse, but this time, after they humiliate Xander again, she dumps them, and proceed to walk arm-in-arm with Xander, rekindling their relationship.
Continuity
- Oz's band, Dingoes Ate My Baby, performs on-stage for the first time since "Inca Mummy Girl".
- The song which Dingoes Ate My Baby played, "Pain", can also be heard performed in Buffy's house in "Dead Man's Party".
- Amy Madison, who first appeared in season one's "Witch", will have a bigger role to play in season six.
- Xander demonstrates very mild carpentry skills for the first time, when he boards up the door of Buffy's basement to keep the rabid girls away.
- This episode marks the first use of the term "Big Bad" in the quote "the big bad thing in the dark". However, the term would later be shortened to "Big Bad" in the Season 3 episode "Gingerbread". This phrase will be used repeatedly throughout the series to describe the major villains, especially those involved in a season's main conflict. Spike also tends to call himself "the Big Bad" in later seasons.
- Amy asks Buffy "Bad breakup?", to which Buffy replies "Believe me when I say 'uh-huh'". Buffy is of course referring to Angel losing his soul in "Surprise".
- Jenny makes two attempts to apologize and make up with Giles after the events in "Innocence".
- Amy will once again cast the Rat Transformation Spell to turn herself into a rat to escape in "Gingerbread". She remains that way until season six when Willow finally manages to reverse the spell.
- In this episode, we get to see a little of Willow's dark, murderous side. This persona is further developed during season six, from "Bargaining, Part One" to "Wrecked" and "Seeing Red" to "Grave".
- The scene in which Xander and Cordelia are lying on the floor, attacked by the crazy mob, is part of a flashback scene in "Him". Xander refers to the events as "good times", even though he clearly expresses it now as a nightmare. Obviously, Xander has grown and come to realize that not everybody gets to be chased around frantically by a wild bunch of love-crazed women.
- After Xander sees the spell has no affect on Cordelia and enters the library to find Buffy flirting with him for the first time, he seems quite content to forget about Cordy and pursue Buffy, showing that she is his first choice and foreshadowing his break-up with Cordelia in Season Three.
- Drusilla becomes one more supernatural female to be attracted to Xander, joining Natalie French and Ampata Gutierrez.
- We first saw Cordelia and Joyce meet in "School Hard" and in this episode they have been introduced as Joyce greets her by name.
- Amongst the female mob pursuing Xander and Cordelia is the Sunnydale High lunch lady who will recur in "I Only Have Eyes for You" and play a much larger role in "Earshot".
- After this episode, Cordelia leaves the Cordettes and joins the Scooby Gang.
- Despite Cordelia's previously stated desire to keep her relationship with Xander secret, she has officially revealed it by the beginning of this episode.
- While Spike is still weakened from his ordeal in the church, he is starting to noticeably heal with a reduction in his facial burns and an increase in strength.
Body Count
- One vampire, dusted by Buffy
- A "quaint" shopgirl, heart removed by Angelus
Behind the Scenes
A "SHEEP" sticker under the "Etnies" sticker in Xander's room
Production
- "Passion" was originally in this episode's place, but the Buffy creators had to concoct something in a hurry to accommodate Sarah Michelle Gellar's absence for filming "Saturday Night Live". Joss Whedon claims, "We wrote it in a matter of days. We were like 'We have to think of something that will turn Sarah into a rat for four days.'" Sarah shot all of her scenes first before she left to film "SNL".
Broadcast
- The episode is received quite well with audiences and critics alike. The episode boasts a 9.2 rating in TV.com with 540 votes, and proudly stands as the 26th best episode ever.
- After this episode aired in Britain, SkyTV dropped the show from its Saturday 8 P.M. slot and replaced it with 3rd Rock from the Sun. The series wasn't shown for another year, and was only broadcast after fans complained.
Pop Culture References
- Bewitched Bothered & Bewildered: The title of the episode comes from the Frank Sinatra song "Bewitched", written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The second to last verse seems particularly appropriate to the Xander and Cordelia's relationship: "I lost my heart, but what of it; He is cold I agree; She might laugh, but I love it; Although the laugh's on me". The chorus of the song is as follows: "I'm wild again, beguiled again; A whimpering, simpering child again; Bewitched, bothered and bewildered, am I".
- "Who died and made you Elvis?" Elvis Presley (1935-1977), known as the King of Rock n' Roll, was an insanely popular singer beginning in the late 1950s.
- "She loved you before you invoked the great Roofie spirit." Roofie is a common slang term for Rohypnol, also known as the "date-rape drug", named for a person's tendency to slip it into his date's drink and take advantage of her while she's tranquilized .
Goofs, Bloopers & Continuity Errors
- While casting the love spell, Amy invokes Diana as the Goddess of Love and the Hunt. Diana, or Artemis, was the Latin/Greek Goddess of the Hunt sure enough, but she was also the chaste maiden goddess. The Latin/Greek Goddess of Love is Venus, or Aphrodite. Perhaps this is what caused the spell to backfire, making all females in Sunnydale falling in love with Xander but urging them to hunt him too.
- When Xander and Cordelia flee Sunnydale High, it is a bright afternoon (or possibly even morning). By the time they reach Buffy's house, however, it is night.
- In the scene where Amy bewitches her teacher, the name of author "Samuel Clemens" on the blackboard is misspelled as "Samuel Clemmens".
- Although the library doors could be barricaded in other episodes, Xander fails to lock himself inside; the doors suddenly swing both ways.
- Valentine's Day during 1998 occurred on a Saturday, but this episode takes place on a school day. Unless there is an unspoken time jump from Valentine's Day to the Monday after, this is a goof on the writers' part.
Music
- Four Star Mary - "Pain" (Played at The Bronze during the dance.) (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Album)
- Naked - "Drift Away" (Plays when Cordelia dumps Xander.)
- Average White Band - "Got the Love" (Plays as Xander walks through Sunnydale High.)
- Christophe Beck - "Twice the Fool" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Score)
- Christophe Beck - "Buffy Rat"
- Christophe Beck - "Mob Rush"
International Titles
- Finnish: Noidutut (Bewitched)
- French: Un charme déroutant (A puzzling charm)
- German: Der Liebeszauber (The Love Spell)
Other
- Buffy receives a long box full of roses with a card that says "Soon!". In the movie I Know What You Did Last Summer, Sarah's character awakens to find the same message written on her mirror in lipstick.
- Below the Etnies sticker in Xander's room, a sticker reading "SHEEP" is shown. This could be tied to the women who follow Xander like sheep, and Cordelia's line to Harmony at the end of the episode. However, it could also be another band sticker. It is also shown in "Becoming Part II" on a locker behind Buffy and again during the season 4 finale "Restless" in Xander's dream inside the ice cream van and on a locker.
- An X-Men 2099 poster is seen on the wall next to Xander's bed above his nightstand. Joss Whedon is an avid X-Men fan, citing Kitty Pryde as inspiration for the Buffy character. He also wrote a 24-issue run for Astonishing X-Men in 2008.
- This is the first episode which we see the grave with the name "Alpert" on the tomb. This is named after producer Richard Alpert. The tomb can be seen again throughout the series, in "Killed by Death, Becoming, Part One", "The Zeppo", "Something Blue", "Superstar", "Real Me", and "Grave".
- Tamara Braun, who plays one of the frenzied girls in this episode, appeared as the vampire Tara in an earlier season two episode, "When She Was Bad".
- In the October 1, 1999 issue of Entertainment Weekly, producer Gareth Davies states "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" as his favorite episode.
- Nicholas Brendon also claims this as one of his favorite episodes, and found it hard not to laugh while filming the seduction scenes.
- The episode receives an A- at TelevisionWithoutPity.com and cited as "damn fine comedy". The user community, similarly, commends it as A+.
- In 411Mania.com, the episode stands on a final score of 8.0, based on 6 critical reviews, with the consensus being "If you love comedy, or the Cordelia/Xander relationship, then this is the episode for you. This is a light hearted episode that allows you to forget about the evil Angelus and the depressed state that is Buffy for at least one show."
- The unofficial Buffy guidebook Dusted claims that "Buffy crushes the competition by doing fantasy standards better than anything else on Earth." The background score was also praised in the short review.
- This episode is Xander-centric.
- This episode is included in The Slayer Collection: Xander DVD.
Quotes
| Buffy: (looking at a heart-shaped necklace Xander plans to give to Cordelia) "Does she even know what one of these is?" |
| Xander: "Okay, big yuks. When are you guys gonna stop making fun of me for dating Cordelia?" |
| Buffy: "I'm sorry. But never. I just think you could find somebody more... better." |
| Cordelia: "You know what you are, Harmony? You're a sheep." |
| Harmony: "I'm not a sheep." |
| Cordelia: "You're a sheep. All you ever do is what everyone else does, so you can say you did it first. And here I am scrambling for your approval when I'm way cooler than you are because I'm not a sheep. I do what I wanna do and I wear what I wanna wear, and you know what? I'll date whoever the hell I wanna date! No matter how lame he is." |
| Buffy: "Slaying is a tad more perilous than dating." |
| Xander: "Obviously, you're not dating Cordelia." |
| Angelus: "Dear Buffy. Hm. I'm still trying to decide the best way to send my regards." |
| Spike: "Why don't you rip her lungs out? That might make an impression." |
| Angelus: "Lacks...poetry." |
| Spike: "Doesn't have to. What rhymes with lungs?" |
| Giles: "I cannot believe that you are fool enough to do something like this." |
| Xander: "Oh, no, I'm twice the fool it takes to do somethin' like this." |
| Buffy: "Hi, Oz!" |
| Oz: "Hi." |
| Buffy: "I seem to be having a slight case of nudity here." |
| Oz: "But you're not a rat. So call it an upside." |
| Giles: "Might I have a word?" |
| Buffy: "Have a sentence, even." |
| Willow: "Don't be so jumpy. I've been in your bed before." |
| Xander: "Yeah. But, Will, we were both in footy pajamas." |
| Willow: "Xand, I've been thinking." |
| Xander: "Will, I think I know what you've been thinking. But this is all my fault. I cast a spell and it sort of backfired." |
| Willow: "How long have we been friends?" |
| Xander: "A long, long time. Too long to do anything that might change that now." |
| Willow: "But friendships change all the time. People grow apart. They grow closer." |
| Xander: "This is good. How close we are now. I feel very comfortable with this amount of closeness. In fact I could even back up a few paces and still be happy." (Backs up a step) "See?" |
| Willow: (Standing) "I want you, Xander . . . to be my first." |
| Xander: "Baseman. Please tell me we're talking baseball." |
| Willow: "Shh." (Backing Xander against a door) "We both know it's right." (Begins kissing his neck) |
| Xander: "It's not that I don't find you sexy." |
| Willow: "Is it Oz? Don't worry about him. He's sweet, but he's not you." |
| Xander: "Yes he is. And you should go to him . . .'cause he's me." (Willow responds by kissing his ear) "I—I—I don't want to use force." |
| Willow: "Mmm, force is okay." |
Template:QuoteBlokc
External links
- "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" at TV.com
- "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" at The Internet Movie Database