. . . If it be good, wherefore this mortal bitterness?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

O living death, o delightful evil,

How can you overwhelm me, if I do not consent? 

Petrarch, Sonnet 132

As I was doing research yesterday, I came upon this sonnet by Petrarch. Petrarch was a 14^th-century Tuscan poet who virtually invented the "rules" of courtly love (an idealised love in which the lover and the beloved never actually consummate the relationship). According to the dictates of courtly love, the lover exists to please the beloved, to worship her. This sonnet encapsulates some of the themes explored in I Was Made To Love You. The first two lines can be applied to Buffy, Spike, Warren, Katrina, and April, the last two lines are applicable to Spike's unfortunate dilemma.

This episode explored love from various angles and was gratifyingly complex, given that the primary storyline focused on the exploits of a lovesick sexbot. The whole episode was not just about a crazed sexbot (thank God) but rather can be read as an allegorical or metaphorical representation of what we've seen relationship-wise this season with Buffy and Riley and more recently Buffy and Spike. Sometimes more than one metaphorical level was operating simulaneously, making this (in many respects) the most ambitious episode that Jane Espenson has penned.

The episode opens with Buffy pummeling "puffy Xander." She is incredibly upset that Spike loves her, and wonders if she did anything to inspire his unwanted affections. Giles and Xander assure her that she did nothing, that it is not her fault. Buffy confides in Xander that she's worried she'll never have a "normal" guy, because a normal guy couldn't deal with her super strength and "remarkable self-involvement." Buffy believes that these are the two things that drove Riley 'round the bend. Her very identity as the Slayer was too much for him to handle. Xander assures her that she is worthy of love, but suggests that the Hellmouth isn't the best place to establish a healthy relationship. Buffy is looking for True Love. True Love with a normal, non-bumpy headed guy. True Love with a guy who doesn't enjoy verbal sparring and, well, doesn't "get off" on her beating him up. Good Luck Buffster! Love has indeed been a bitter experience for her.

In the very next scene we see robot April arrive. Her incredulous driver asks her what an earth she wants in Sunnydale. "True Love," the preternaturally perky one replies. The connection between Buffy and robot April has thus been established. Both are seeking that elusive True Love.

We then see April going around town asking innocent bystanders if they've seen Warren. She is a pretty single-minded in her pursuit of her True Love! At the Spring Break party, Buffy is also pretty single-minded. She decides to flirt with Ben and tries really hard . . . too hard. She laughs too loudly at his jokes, and seems almost . . . desperate. Speaking of desperation, Spike shows up at that very moment. Spike approaches Buffy and in a painful exchange gets in a few barbs. But the genuine hurt he is feeling at being shut out of her life is apparent. It's not his fault he's fallen in love with her. And perhaps it's not her fault that Buffy seems not to reciprocate. But more on that later. The most significant part of this exchange is when Buffy told Spike to leave her alone. Spike considers her, his expression softens as the pain flits across his face, he nods, and turns around, respecting her wishes. This is not the act of a ruthless stalker. In that moment, Spike won some brownie points from this viewer and demonstrated that he has changed. He did not rail against Buffy and try and cause a scene. He simply acknowledged what she wanted and granted her wish, even though it caused him emotional pain to do so. This act may have even been a little bit selfless, especially as he knows, "the only chance he had [with Buffy] was when [she] was unconscious." Interesting.

Ben approaches Buffy again and gives her his phone number. Buffy seems extremely distracted as Ben talks with her. Spike sees this exchange from across the room and is jealous. He decides that turnabout is fair play, and sees the attractive April. With a determined note in his voice, he makes the moves on her. Buffy shoots a look at Spike. Her expression here puzzled me. Why does Buffy even care what Spike is up to or if he's making the moves on another woman? If she hated his guts, one would think she'd be glad to have him off her hands. I watched this sequence more than once to make sure I wasn't reading something into it that wasn't there, but indeed, Buffy is distracted from her conversation with Ben and glances over to see what Spike is up to with April. Spike, being the pig that he sometimes is, makes a lewd suggestion and gets thrown through the window. Spike obviously has a lot to learn about romancing a woman; no big surprise there. Last week he threatened to kill Buffy and chained her up in his crypt. Flowers might have worked better. Oh, and don't forget: diamonds are forever, just like vampires!

Perhaps the most significant scene of the episode occurred in the Magic Shop. The Scoobies are sitting around discussing the robot. Xander has lustful feelings for said robot and claims, "What guy doesn't dream about that?" He then invokes the memory of Oz, which I'm sure, given Willow's hurt expression, didn't go over too well. I didn't particularly like leering, horny Xander in this episode. If I were Anya, I'd kick his ass. But I digress . . . Anya asks, "Why would anyone do that if they could have a real live person?" Willow replies, "Maybe he couldn't. Find a real person." Buffy is irritated. She doesn't want to sympathize with Warren. "Oh come on. The guy's just a big wedge of sleaze. Don't make excuses for him." Willow replies, "I'm not. I'm just saying, people get lonely. Maybe having someone around . . . even someone you made up . . . maybe it's easier." Tara chimes in, "But it's so weird. I mean everyone wants a nice, normal person you can share with, but this guy, if he couldn't find that . . . I guess it's kinda sad." Buffy of course reads her own situation with Riley into this conversation, and immediately goes and calls Ben. But I think, given Spike's order for a sexbot at the end of the episode, that this dialogue could also be applied to him. Spike is a lonely guy and even his sleazy, robot-ordering actions might be viewed sympathetically. Xander says guys dream about having a sexbot, a creature that will do whatever the man desires (what a feminist that Xander!). So Spike's ordering of a sexbot within Xander's idea of normative male behaviour isn't that twisted. Hell, Xander might order one himself from the sounds of it. All Spike wants (like Warren) is something that will love him back, exclusively. He's never had that. Cecily didn't love him, Drusilla cheated on him, and Buffy disdains him. He can't find someone to love him, so he decides to have something made that will love him back. It's profoundly sad really, and points out that even vampires "get lonely."

Spike's loneliness is exacerbated by his ostracisation not just by Buffy but also by her friends. He tries to be friendly to the Scoobies when he goes to the Magic Shop. We (the audience) have no idea what Buffy has told them about Spike, but even the cold hard facts are pretty grim. From the Scoobies and Buffy's perspective, a soulless evil vampire who has tried to kill them many times in the past is now in love with the Slayer. He might be dangerous. He did chain Buffy up and threaten, albeit half-heartedly, to kill her. Buffy might have omitted other details, like how he saved her from Drusilla, but even if she didn't, the Scoobies are Buffy's friends, not Spike's. Naturally, out of loyalty to her and out of respect for her wishes they would be hostile to Spike. That didn't make this scene any easier to watch. Spike genuinely likes Dawn and her rejection of him must have hurt. He's really burned his bridges in every possible way and he will have to do something pretty spectacular to get in Buffy and the Scoobies' good graces. I wouldn't rule that out though. When Giles confronts Spike and tells him to "move the hell on" Spike draws (an unneeded) breath, but decides not to say anything. He leaves quietly. There's no ranting and raving in his crypt, no threats of killing Buffy and her mates. He simply packs up the Buffy shrine in a box and proclaims that he will "bloody well move on." Spike has changed.

The scene right after the confrontation in the Magic Shop involves April and encourages the audience to draw parallels between April's plight and Spike's plight. Spike has just been humiliated because he loves inappropriately. April approaches a table of boys and asks about Warren. One boy purposely misdirects her, then makes fun of her. I believe both the scene in the Magic Shop and the scene with the boys were intended to elicit sympathy from the audience for both of these characters. It worked.

Buffy and Warren's conversation further establishes connections among Warren's situation, Buffy's situation, and Spike's situation. Warren tells Buffy that "everyone deserves to have someone." When Warren couldn't find a real girl, he created the robot to love him. He really thought he'd be in love with her, but it was too easy and predictable. "She was exactly what I wanted and I didn't want her." Sounds like Riley and Buffy's relationship to me. Riley was the "perfect" normal guy. But ultimately Buffy didn't really want him and Riley knew it. Katrina, on the other hand, was "funny, cool" and gave Warren "a hard time." Love isn't something that is easy. Love is difficult. Love can be "mortally bitter." The path of True Love is not smooth. This is something that both Spike and Buffy need to learn. If Spike hopes to attain Buffy's love (a pretty tall order) he must genuinely change, suppressing his demonic nature. If Buffy hopes to attain True Love she will have to come to terms with her own identity and realise that many "normal" guys will be intimidated by her beauty, brains, and brawn. Both of them will have to stop being desperate.

The final showdown with the robot was incredibly poignant. After trying to kill Katrina and Buffy, April is injured and is slowly running out of steam. April says wistfully, "I did everything I was supposed to do. I was only supposed to love him. If I can't do that, what am I for? What do I exist for?" April here gives voice to the questions that might be occupying both Buffy and Spike. April's very existence is dependent on loving another. She has no independent identity. Throughout this episode Buffy was trying to find True Love to prove to herself that she was worthy. She needs to spend a little time figuring out who she is. And Spike is the saddest case of all. In Crush Spike says that the Slayer has consumed him, that she has taken over his body until there is very little of him left. Spike needs to figure out who he is as a chipped vampire who no longer has an overwhelming desire to do evil. He needs to figure out who he is and what his role will be independent of his love for Buffy. He needs to define himself, not be defined by love. Of course, his ordering of the sexbot at the end only serves to further emphasize his single-minded obsession, how little of him and his dignity is left. This episode (like the Angel episode that followed) showed a vampire hitting rock bottom. Spike has nowhere to go but up. Spike needs to read Petrarch and learn about courtly love: the art of loving that ennobles rather than destroys. Hopefully he won't "consent" to let the "delightful evil" overwhelm him and will continue on his difficult path.

As the robot winds down, she begins to spout comforting platitudes to Buffy. When life deals you lemons, make lemonade. Things are always darkest . . . [before the dawn/Dawn?]. Buffy will need these platitudes and much more as she deals with what happens at the very end of this episode; she finds her mother's body on the couch. I usually don't cry during Buffy episodes, but this is every child's worst nightmare. Next week will be very harrowing, but I'm sure that Joss will treat the subject with the seriousness it deserves.

I enjoyed this episode a lot more than I thought I would after reading the wildfeed summaries (here's where Sanguine eats her scornful words). Although Leoff and Austin do a tremendous job (thanks guys!) after this week I have resolved never to read wildfeed spoilage again. For both Crush and IWMTLY I was upset by the summaries, but was pleasantly surprised by the episodes. Sometimes the artistry is in the actual execution, watching the actors work, hearing the nuances of the actual lines. So no more wildfeed for me! I enjoyed seeing the bonding moments between Joyce and the girls, Xander being perceptive, Anya growing as a person, Giles's escape from having to hear about Joyce's date ("Right. Must go. See you tomorrow. Bye Joyce."), Spike's "tight, hot, little body," Anya having "trouble adjusting to the idea of Lutherans," Spike's respect for Buffy's desire to be alone, Ben wearing Glory's dress, and Buffy's realisation that she doesn't need a man.

Having said that, I didn't like Xander's horndog ways (yuck!), Anya's attitude that his behaviour didn't bother her when it obviously did, Spike ordering the sexbot (although I see now where they might be going with this---he gets the sexbot and finds that the excitement lies in unpredictability), the lack of Big Bad advancement (I thought Glory was on a timetable here?), and Joyce's death. The last point I have to put in my dislike column, because it's profoundly sad and I can't say I will "enjoy" watching how this plays out. I do think it will be good for the storyline, however, and will cause Buffy to grow even more as a person.

If I had to assign a point value to this episode, I suppose I'd give it a 7/10. Far better than I expected!