YMMV / Buffy The Vampire Slayer S 2 E 16 Bewitched Bothered And Bewildered

• Broken Base: This one splits the base like a knife. This is either a good comedy episode with some good character moments for Xander, or it's a showcase of what some fans hate about Xander's behavior. No in-between.
• Genius Bonus: For the love spell, Amy calls upon Diana, goddess of love and the hunt. Throughout history, Diana has been believed to have dominion over many things including the wilderness and untamed frontiers (which may include love). She has also been depicted as a torchbearer or guide, and has been known to be invoked for issues regarding fertility. It is for these reasons that it makes sense to call on Diana for a love spell. However, because Diana is most commonly known as the Roman goddess of forests, animals, and the hunt this could explain why the spell backfired.
  • Diana, or her Greek equivalent Artemis, is also famous for being a virgin goddess, who Does Not Like Men and does stuff like turn a guy into a deer and sic hunters / dogs on him for peeping on her while she's bathing. So her choosing an interpretation of the spell that would end up harming Xander is entirely in character. Especially considering that what he was requesting was essentially the magical equivalent of a date rape drug. Buffy even calls what he did "invoking the great roofie spirit". (Though, to give him credit, he just wanted to hurt Cordelia emotionally by breaking up on his own terms. He didn't mean to use the love spell the way these kinds of spells / potions designed to be used - to force someone to be attracted to the user against their natural inclinations.)
  • Soren Kierkegaard´s book Either/Or has a section called diary of a seducer, where the "seducer" in question has one particular woman in sight, although his concept of love is fairly erotic. In one of the passages, the Seducer states that he prefers Diana over the love goddess Venus. No surprise that the name of his love interest is - Cordelia!!! In this episode, Xander becomes an unwitting seducer of all women in Sunnydale. And you thought this was an ordinary TV Production? To tie in on the "goddess of hunting" reference, Cordelia´s family name is Chase, just to stress the point.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This conversation, years before the revelation that Spike was a bad poet:
  Angelus: Dear Buffy. I'm still trying to decide the best way to send my regards.
  Spike: Why don't you rip her lungs out? It might make an impression.
  Angelus: Lacks... poetry.
  Spike: It doesn't have to. What rhymes with lungs?
  • Amy turns Buffy into a rat. In a delicious bit of karma, Amy spends three whole seasons as a rat.

---