Welcome to Rewatching Buffy, the part of the blog where I rewatch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Each Tuesday evening, you’re invited to join me as I attempt to rediscover what made me love this show 20 years ago.

Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered

• Xander and Buffy are in a graveyard discussing his gift to Cordelia for Valentine’s Day.
• Of course this is interrupted by a rising vampire, which Buffy handily slays.
• Cordelia’s “friends” are giving her a hard time about dating Xander.
• Amy’s back. You’ll remember her from the early first season Witch episode. And she’s clearly dabbling in the witchcraft.
• Giles bumps into Jenny. It’s still awkward after the whole Angel-losing-his-soul thing.
• Spike gives Dru a necklace for Valentine’s Day. Angelus gives her a human heart.
• “I found it in a quaint little shopgirl.” Ha… Seriously, Angelus’ humor is so much better than Angel’s.
• Angelus also delivered a box full of roses to Buffy’s back door. The note inside said, “Soon!”
• Xander gives Cordelia the necklace. And she breaks up with him.
• “Do you know what’s a good day to break up with somebody? Any day that’s not Valentine’s Day!”
• She doesn’t like being ostracized by the popular girls.
• The next day everyone’s giving Xander crap for being dumped. But Cordelia used to go through unnamed guys weekly and the world just kept turning.
• Xander wants Amy to cast a love spell to make Cordelia crazy about him so he can turn the tables and break her heart instead.
• Amy needs something of Cordelia’s for the spell, so Xander goes back for the necklace. She claims it’s in her locker, but she’s really wearing it. Aww…
• The spell is cast. But it clearly didn’t work. Cordelia isn’t so much enamored with Xander as annoyed.
• But Buffy seems super into Xander. So does Amy. So does some random girl from history class.
• The spell worked on everyone but Cordelia. This is gonna get way bad.
• Now Cordelia’s friends hate her for dumping Xander.
• Xander tells Giles, which pisses Giles off. Especially when he witnesses Ms. Calendar’s infatuation firsthand. “People under love spells are deadly.”
• Buffy throws herself at Xander and becomes really angry when he rejects her. Then she and Amy get into a fight.
• And Amy turns Buffy into a rat. Over time, we’ll see that this is Amy’s go to attack.
• Giles was mad before. Not sure there’s a word for his feeling toward Xander now.
• Xander saves Cordelia from an angry mob of girls and gets her away from the school.
• Oz is busy tracking down Buffy-rat. So is a cat.
• Xander and Cordelia hide out at Buffy’s house. Where Joyce is also obsessed with Xander.
• They head up to hide out in Buffy’s room, where Angelus attacks, pulling Xander out the window.
• Xander is saved by Drusilla. Who is also under the spell. She wants to turn Xander into a vampire so she can love him forever.
• Enter the mob.
• Cordelia discovers that Xander’s spell was for her. Which, for some reason, she finds endearing.
• Giles and Amy work together to reverse the spells. Buffy is back to normal. And all the girls return to normal just as they’re about to move in for the kill.
• Cordelia tells her friends off and gets back together with Xander.
• Body count: Vampires – 1 (I’m not counting the quaint little shopgirl because she wasn’t killed on screen)

Passion

• Y’all… this is a tough episode to watch. It’s also one of the best. Passion made number three in my personal top ten list of Buffy episodes.
• Angelus is stalking Buffy outside The Bronze. And feeding on a random girl.
• He watches Buffy as she gets ready for bed. And leaves a picture that he’s drawn of her sleeping on her pillow.
• How can we revoke Angelus’ invitation to Buffy’s house?
• Some students enter the library while the gang discusses Angelus’ activities. Xander is apalled. “Does this look like a Barnes & Noble?”
• Jenny and Giles have a real conversation for the first time since Angel lost his soul. She admits that she’s in love with him.
• Buffy has to have a talk with Joyce about Angel. If she sees him, don’t let him in the house.
• Willow finds an envelope on her bed. Inside are all the fish from her aquarium. Dead. So she’s gonna sleepover at Buffy’s.
• Drusilla has a vision. Someone is trying to break up their happy home. Cut to Jenny buying an Orb of Thesulah, an important item for the spell that could return Angel’s soul.
• Buffy catches Jenny before school and tells her that Giles misses her.
• Giles has found a way to reverse the invitation. So they work the mojo on Willow’s house, but not before Angelus leaves a drawing of a sleeping Joyce in Willow’s room.
• Angelus is waiting for Joyce when she comes home from the market. He’s coming off like an obsessed ex-boyfriend. And lets it slip that they slept together.
• Joyce goes into the house, but Angelus can’t follow. “Sorry, Angel. Changed the locks.”
• Dru visits the magic shop where Jenny got the Orb of Thesulah.
• Jenny saves the translated spell onto a disc, but she’s not able to perform the spell right away. Angelus shows up.
• He breaks the computer and burns the printout copy. He doesn’t know about the disc.
• He chases down Jenny through the school. And he breaks her neck. RIP, Ms. Calendar.
• Angelus takes Jenny’s body and puts her in Giles’ bed. And he set it up good, too. Roses. Opera music. Poor Giles.
• He calls Buffy to let her know about Jenny. Angelus is watching as she gets the phone call. He’s really getting off on hurting her and her friends.
• Giles goes into vengeance mode. Xander’s thought: “I hated Angel long before you all jumped on the bandwagon… So if Giles wants to go after the fiend that murdered his girlfriend, I say faster pussycat, kill, kill!”
• Rupert begins by firebombing the factory, then beating Angelus with a flaming baseball bat. Dru wants to help Angelus, but Spike holds her back, “No fair going in unless he tags you first.”
• Buffy arrives and saves Giles from getting his own neck snapped. Spike, Dru, and Angelus get away when Buffy realizes she has to save Giles from the fire.
• Remember that disc that Jenny saved the ritual to? We see Willow accidentally knock it off the desk where it lies next to a file cabinet. To be forgotten…
• Body count: Humans – 2

Killed by Death

• Buffy’s climbing a wall to get into a cemetery. But she doesn’t seem to be on her A game.
• She almost slays the Scooby gang, who are out taking her place because she’s got the flu.
• Angel then shows up and the fight just isn’t going well for Buffy. He gets the upper hand until the rest of the gang chase him off.
• Then Buffy collapses. Things do not look good for our heroine.
• The flu is pretty bad and Buffy is hospitalized.
• Back story: Buffy hates hospitals. When she was 8, she was with her cousin Celia when she died in a hospital.
• At night, in all her feverish glory, Buffy sees a scary demon following a sick kid in the hallway.
• Why do people on TV and in movies find the need to rip out their own IV needles? Is this something people do in real life? It’s not something I’d ever do. I don’t care how delusional with fever I was.
• But since Buffy ripped the IV out and went for a walk, she witnesses a couple orderlies removing a dead kid from the children’s unit.
• A couple other kids let Buffy know that Death comes at night but the grown-ups don’t see him.
• The gang decides to help Buffy figure out what’s happening to the kids in the hospital, but they’re skeptical, thinking that Buffy’s fear of hospitals is just pushing her to come up with a monster to fight.
• Willow and Giles think that the “monster” in question may just be a doctor who is administering an experimental treatment on kids with the flu.
• But that can’t be the case because he’s attacked and killed by something invisible.
• One of the kids drew a picture of the monster. That should help with the research.
• Once they discover that the monster is called Der Kindestod, they figure out how it kills.
• Buffy flashes back and realizes that this is the thing that killed her cousin when she was a kid.
• To fight Der Kindestod, Buffy induces a fever so she can see the thing.
• It works, she sees the demon and goes after it as it chases after the fleeing children.
• Buffy gets to the kids in time to stop Der Kindestod from killing anyone. She slays. Then she goes to recover from her new fever.
• Body count: Humans – 2; Demons – 1