Summary
Here’s our discussion on Season 2, Episode 16- Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. I can’t tell you how much it bothers me that there is no Oxford comma in that title, but I digress. We discuss why on earth they chose Diana as the goddess of love, how they missed some opportunities with who is attracted to Xander, but how some parts of this really did make us laugh. For the record, “sprung,” “young,” and “rung” all rhyme with “lung,” Spike.
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Music
Music for this episode is “Digging a Grave,” by Shadows from the Underground, and is used under license from Audiosocket.
Myth Taken: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Podcast 
Love the note from the listener about Drusilla’s wardrobe. I’ll have to pay more attention to that.
My thoughts re: Cordelia being pleased with Xander’s choosing to try and make her miserable with a spell: I think, especially as we saw in Phases, that Cordelia has had a legitimate gripe w/Xander and how his focus has been split between her and Buffy and Willow. Which isn’t to say that Xander can’t have other female friends, but he’s still clearly pining for Buffy and his weird fixation on Willow and Oz in the last episode wasn’t the greatest way to express his friendship with Willow. She wants him to focus on her. Now, I think Xander’s love spell being enough for her to be flattered by it isn’t great, and I do think it reflects and imbalance in their relationship, because for their entire relationship he IS really fixated on Willow and Buffy, and eventually cheats on her with Willow. So Cordelia’s just kind of in this position where she just wants him to give her his attention, even if it’s a little… warped. (Also, it seems like Xander has a weird trend, with both Cordelia and Anya, of insulting the women he’s dating. I don’t get it. Either date them or don’t.)
I love Cory’s theory about Artemis/Diana and Xander being hunted, and Laine’s about Xander projecting his own intentions about Cordelia’s behavior into the spell and that being why female desire is presented in such a specific, narrow way. Both of those totally work for me as a way to read this episode.
Also, Laine, I love your thoughts about Larry saying something kind of similar to Xander’s ‘lap dancing’ comment to Xander. It IS really weird to think about how accepted (and even expected) it was for guys in high school to make comments like that and for it to be considered so normal as to be almost background noise (at least in media; I don’t know how that played out outside of any high schools besides my own). Like, when Buffy reacts seriously, and Xander’s thrown off by that, it’s almost like he’s saying, “what? I always talk like that. It literally means nothing.” And yet, we can see from characters like Oz (and Larry, post-coming out to Xander) that it’s not like it was mandatory to talk like that. Thinking about how gender politics have changed somewhat is making me feel both grateful and very old.
Can’t wait to start the next ep. Passion messed me UP the first time I saw it.
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