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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “When She Was Bad”

Here's a scary thought. The first few times I watched this episode, I was quite sure that Buffy's personality issues in this episode were entirely due to some curse put on her by the Master (the head villain of the first season). True, that point was never explicitly made in any of the character's actions or dialogue. But somehow I just knew that had to be the problem.

Yet upon watching it more recently, it became more and more obvious that the issues -- though obviously inspired by Buffy's near-death experience with the Master -- had nothing to do with the Master or anything else supernatural. It had to do with her. It was her true self that acted so insultingly to her friends. Her true self that took joy in teasing poor Xander with a sexy dance which ultimately left Xander frustrated and which made Willow and Angel jealous.

In a later episode, Buffy would describe the old her as a person who was even more shallow than Cordelia. In this episode, we got a glimpse of that person and though it was tempting to say that the Buffy we saw as a result wasn't really Buffy, it would seem more accurate to say that the Buffy we saw in this episode was a Buffy that most of us would have preferred not to see. Yet the writers showed her to us anyway. More power to them.