Chapter I:

 Season 1of BtVS

Alienation

If I were to choose one word to capture the theme of the first season of BtVS, it would be alienation.  But it was one of the strengths of that season that the treatment of this theme was multi-dimensional.  The writers took different aspects of the feeling of alienation and wove them together into a single coherent picture.   So, for example we had -

This is, of course, the story of Buffy and the rest of the Scooby gang in season 1.  But in order to explore the theme of alienation properly there had to be a counterpoint.  There had to be the cheerleader living the life Buffy coveted. There had to be the insider who was a part of the clique she, Willow and Xander were excluded from.  And there had to be someone living their life out in ignorance of the surrounding darkness.  This person was Cordelia.  In this sense Cordelia played a vital role in season 1 because without her none of its central themes would have made very much sense.

The Caste System at Sunnydale High

In this context, for example let us take the very first meeting between Cordelia and Buffy.  Here Cordelia is helpful, even kind to the stranger

Cordelia:  “If you're looking for a textbook of your very own there's probably a few in the library.”

Buffy:  “Oh, great, thanks.  Where would that be?”

Cordelia:  “I'll show you, come on. So you're from Hemery, right? In L.A.?”

Buffy:  “Uh, yeah.”

Cordelia:  “Oh, I would *kill* to live in L.A. That close to that many shoes.”

But as it turns out all this friendliness is conditional.  Cordelia recognizes in Buffy someone who might become a member of the ruling caste in the school.  And so for the first time we are introduced to the idea of a highly structured society divided along certain lines:

Cordelia:  “Well, you'll be okay here. If you hang with me and mine, you'll be accepted in no time. Of course, we do have to test your coolness factor. You're from L.A., so you can skip the written, but let's see. Vamp nail polish?”

Buffy:  “Um, over?”

Cordelia:  “So over. James Spader?”

Buffy:  “He needs to call me!”

Cordelia:  “Frappaccinos?”

Buffy:  “Trendy, but tasty.”

Cordelia:  “John Tesh?”

Buffy:  “The Devil.”

Cordelia:  “That was pretty much a gimme, but... you passed!

Buffy:  “Oh, goody!”

Coming from the right “home”, having a certain fashion sense, having particular tastes and  interests;  all of these were necessary pre-requisites before one could be accepted into the “in-crowd”.  If you could show that you had what it took for this purpose then Cordelia’s helpful and friendly attitude showed the sort of loyal friend she could be.  But her attitude towards Willow immediately after this scene also shows the other side of the coin:

Cordelia: “Willow! Nice dress! Good to know you've seen the softer side of Sears.”

Willow:  “Uh, oh, well, my mom picked it out." 

Cordelia:  “No wonder you're such a guy magnet. Are you done?”

Here she is being rude, arrogant and dismissive.  And all because Willow lacked “coolness” in terms of fashion sense, independence from parents and success with boys. 

In effect Cordelia is being used as the personification of the caste system in Sunnydale High.  First she is the litmus test for everyone as to what it took to be part of the in-crowd.  If you hang out with her you are in; if you don’t you are out.  Secondly in her values we see the values of that system.   What is it that makes a member of the in-crowd and what excludes them? In the main these are materialistic values, a fact emphasized by the importance she attaches to clothing, including (as she just demonstrated to Buffy) shoes.  But image too was important.  With Jesse in particular  the crucial factor that made Cordelia despise him was his lack of self-confidence.  As a human she roundly rejects him:

Jesse:  “Hey, Cordelia!”

Cordelia:  “Oh, yay, it's my stalker.”

Jesse:  “Hey, you, uh, you look great!”

Cordelia:  “Well, I'm glad we had this little chat.”

Jesse: “Listen, uh, you know, you wanna dance, you know?”

Cordelia:  “With you?”

Jesse:  “Well, uh, yeah.”

Cordelia:  “Well, uh, no! C'mon, guys.”

But as a vampire, with the injection of self-belief and even a little arrogance she seems quite taken with him:

Cordelia:  “Hey! Hello! Caveman brain! What are you doing?”

Jesse:  “Shut up!”

Cordelia:  “Well, just one dance.”

I think that this difference between the way she treated Buffy and the way she treated Willow and the way she responded to pre- and post-vamp Jesse is intended to indicate that (in contrast to the gang of four in “the Pack”) simple nastiness is not an inherent part of Cordelia’s makeup.  Otherwise she wouldn’t have shown any consideration for Buffy.   Rather her treatment of others is a product of the value system that she has bought into.  And a necessary part of that system is that other people are only important insofar as they say something about you.  They are if you like the ultimate fashion accessories.  As she said to Buffy:

“You wanna fit in here, the first rule is: know your losers.  Once you can identify them all by sight they're a lot easier to avoid.”,

So, for example in “The Harvest”, we see Cordelia’s definition of the right boys to hang with:

Cordelia:  “Senior boys are the only way to go. Guys from our grade, forget about it, they're children. You know? Like Jesse. Did you see him last night, following me around like a little puppy dog.  You just wanna put him to sleep. But senior boys, hmm, they have mystery. They have... what's the word I'm searching for? Cars! I just am not the type to settle. You know? It's like when I go shopping. I have to have the most expensive thing. Not because it's expensive, but because it costs more.”

For her the person you go out with has nothing to do with love or even attraction.  It is all about money and status.   And the best illustration of this is in the episode “Invisible Girl” Mitch her boyfriend is injured.  Her reaction shows just where her real priorities lie:

Harmony:  “Oh, Mitch. How is he? Will he be okay?”

Cordelia: “ Well, the doctor says he'll be fine. They're gonna send him home tomorrow. But... you should've seen him lying there. All black and blue? How's he gonna look in our Prom pictures? How am I ever gonna be able to show them to anyone?”

Harmony:  “Well, they can do wonderful things with airbrushes these days.”

Cordelia:  “You think?”

And when it comes to protecting something you care about, other people just do not count.  So, for example, in “The Witch” Cordelia threatens Amy when she might be an obstacle to her cheerleading ambitions:

Cordelia: “I have a dream. It's me on the cheerleading squad, adored by  every varsity male as far as the eye can see! We have to achieve our dreams, Amy. Otherwise we... wither and die!”

Amy:  “Look, I'm sorry about...”

Cordelia:  “Shhh! If your supreme klutziness out there today takes me out of the running, you're gonna be so *very* beyond sorry! Have a nice day.”

In this context the way in which the whole world was seen through a warped perspective was, of course, best demonstrated in “Invisible Girl”.  Here we see how the caste system in school and the attitudes underlying it involve ignoring another’s pain and creating in too many a sense of isolation.  It requires the sacrifice of human feelings for the rewards of status and power.

The Values of the Scooby gang

Cordelia’s attitudes and values are intended to counterpoint those of the Scooby gang.  They essentially stand for self-sacrifice for the sake of others.  Indeed the contrast in “Invisible Girl” is intended to be particularly powerful because Buffy puts her life on the line to protect Cordelia even though she is the author of her own misfortune and Marcie is essentially seen as a sympathetic person.

And the most striking aspect of this counterpoint is that it is Buffy’s willingness to help others that distances her from the life she wants.  As we have already seen, Buffy would still like to be a normal girl who can be a cheerleader and, in particular, can have a boyfriend.  In this respect Cordelia represents, for her, something of role model.  But it is Buffy’s need to fight the forces of darkness and help people that keeps on sabotaging that ambition. The first sign of a division between them came with Buffy’s interest in the dead guy in WttHM.  This provokes Cordelia into a classic one-liner:

        “Morbid much.”

But perhaps one of the best examples of this is when Buffy tries to rescue Willow from a Vampire also in WttHM.   When  Cordelia comes out of the restroom and surprises her. Buffy reacts by taking Cordelia by the throat and pushing her up against a wall, eliciting another classic comment:

        “God! What is your childhood trauma?”

Her suspicions of the newcomer are further reinforced when Buffy defeats Luke and the other vampires in “the Harvest” because in doing so she is shown to know them.  Accordingly, Cordelia, who could have become a friend, is now transformed into someone who regards her sanity with grave suspicion and certainly doesn’t want to be friends with her.  There is therefore a direct relationship between Buffy’s willingness to help others and her deteriorating relationship with Cordelia and this is in turn symbolic of her isolation from the mainstream of the school.  This is, again an illustration of the way in which Cordelia is central to our understanding of the theme of alienation.  The self absorbed and materialistic attain the commanding positions in a hierarchical system precisely because they are self-absorbed and materialistic while those who stand on the opposite end of the spectrum are on the outside precisely because of that fact.

In season 1 this is perhaps best illustrated by the tussle between the two of them over Owen in NKABOTFD.  In one respect this contest isn’t exactly credible.  Willow describes Owen in the following terms:

“He hardly talks to anyone. He's solitary, mysterious.  He can brood for forty minutes straight, I've clocked him.”

Given Cordelia’s taste for trophy boyfriends I do have some difficulty in understanding why she would be remotely interested in him.  But she is and, because she isn’t the slayer, this gives her an immediate advantage.  Buffy is late for her first date with Owen so she can move in unopposed. 

And yet, despite appearances it is Buffy and the others who have the real power.  They know what is going on.  Cordelia, along with everybody else, remains unaware of the true situation.  Of what happened in the Bronze in “the Harvest” she says:

“Well, I heard it was rival gangs. You know, fighting for turf? But all I can tell you is they were an ugly way of looking. And Buffy, like, knew them! Which is just too weird. I mean, I don't even remember that much, but I'm telling you, it was a freak show!”

In NKABOTFD, her efforts to engage the attention of both Owen and Angel flounder because, for different reasons, they are interested in substance and not in show and she is reduced to sulking.  It is almost as if, through the counterpoint the writers are telling us that the self-absorbed materialism that attracts all the attention in the High School caste system is not what is important.  What does count are things of more substance.

Chapter II:

 Season 2 of BtVS

Rethinking Cordelia

As I have tried to argue, in season 1 of BtVS Cordelia was less of a character in her own right and more of a plot device intended to help the development of a theme.  True we do get a sense of personality but it’s not a particularly well rounded one; it’s more of a stereotype of a self-involved American princess.  But it seems that, just like Angel, the writers made a conscious effort to rethink and redefine her character for season 2.  In particular they tried to humanize her and to show other sides to her character as well.

And the writers started this process at the very end of season 1 in “Prophecy Girl”.  In this episode there was a crucial development.  For the first time we see a Cordelia who is not only aware of the supernatural threat around her, she willingly takes part in the fight against it.  And here there is, for her, an unexpected catalyst by way of a boyfriend named Kevin.  In contrast to her feelings for Mitch we are, I think, supposed to see that she has a genuine fondness for Kevin.  For example when he hasn’t helped to install some sound equipment in the Bronze her reaction is not what you would expect:

Cordelia:  “Oh, Kevin said that he'd bring everything to the Bronze last night. He promised! We'll never get everything ready in time.” 

Willow:  “He probably forgot. It's not *that* big a deal.”

Cordelia:  “Uh, you don't understand. I'm not mad! He totally flaked on me. On me! And I don't even care. God help me, I think it's cute! Oh...”

And of course the reason Kevin “flaked” on her was because Vampires had murdered him and we see Cordelia discover his body.  This moment was, I think, intended to achieve two purposes.  First it was to explain Cordelia’s decision to fight the Vampires that attacked the school instead of just looking after herself.  And it was also I think intended to engage our sympathies for her more deeply than before.  I do not think that the writers were especially effective in achieving the latter.  We simply saw too little of Cordelia and Kevin and knew too little about him.  Curiously we also saw very little of Cordelia’s post-murder trauma.  Indeed it was Willow’s trauma we were invited to sympathize with because (somewhat unbelievably) she supposedly knew all the victims.  So we had little opportunity to develop a strong reaction of sympathy for Cordelia or to understand her loss.

But much more successful was the way in which we got a first glimpse of Cordelia’s courage.  Previously there had been nothing to indicate any special bravery at all.  Indeed in “Invisible Girl” she appeared as a classic bully.  She was tough when she had the upper hand but once down she appeared quite intimidated by Marcie.  But in “Prophecy Girl”, instead of turning tail and fleeing, she not only rides to the rescue of Willow and Jenny Callender she plays a full part in the battle of the library.  Indeed, my favorite scene here is when she bites a vampire and says:

            “See how *you* like it!”

Now that Cordelia was aware of Vampires and other demons and was therefore able to establish an entirely new relationship with the Scooby gang, the role her character played in the series had to undergo some changes.  But it was, of course, necessary to try to preserve some continuity.  First of all it simply would not have been credible to present Cordelia as a completely different person.  But equally, the writers hadn’t entirely given up the themes explored in season 1.  In particular the major theme of season 2 was Buffy’s struggle to come to terms with her future as slayer and her increasingly desperate attempt to reconcile this with having a normal life.  Much if not most of that centered around Angel and in episodes like “Some Assembly Required”, “Reptile Boy” and “Halloween” we see Cordelia presented as the model of “normality” to which Buffy aspired.  So, in “Reptile Boy” when Buffy feels trapped by Giles concept of a slayer’s duty and rebuffed by Angel’s doubts about their future, it is Cordelia’s example that she follows in making a grab for a slice of a normal life in the form of a frat party with drinks and college boys.  But Buffy could only aspire to normality and never actually achieve it.  And Cordelia was important here too because she was always there to dramatize the reason why.  In “Some Assembly Required” she makes a fairly obvious play for Angel and there is nothing Buffy can do about it because she has other things on her mind.  In “Halloween” Buffy feels vulnerable in comparison to Cordelia:

Willow:  “How  was your date last night?

Buffy:  “Misfire. I was late due to unscheduled slayage. Showed up looking trashed.

Willow: “Was he mad?

Buffy:  “Actually he was pretty unmad. Which probably had something to do with the fact that Cordelia was drooling in his cappuccino.”

Willow:  “Oh, Buffy. Angel would never fall for her act.”

Buffy:  “You mean that 'actually showing up, wearing a stunning outfit, embracing personal hygiene' act?”

This counterpoint continued to work so well because of the contrast between Cordelia’s materialistic sense of values on the one hand and Buffy’s obligations as slayer on the other.  Cordelia only needs to think of herself.  Buffy, no matter how much she would like to cannot.  This was how the writers preserved the continuity between Cordelia of season 1 and the Cordelia of season 2.  But at the same time they were able to make her a more sympathetic and well rounded individual.

This process was not without its problems.  So Cordelia could not simply be accepted as a core member of the Scooby gang from the beginning of season 2.  That would have been completely incompatible with Cordelia’s materialist values and her sense of herself as being at the top of the Sunnydale hierarchy and, as such, far above Xander and Willow to name but two.  This left the writers with a fairly fine line to walk.  They had simultaneously to redefine her relationship to Buffy, Xander and the others and bring out new aspects of that character without changing her character fundamentally.  In other words they had to humanize her.

Humanizing Cordelia

So, for example when, early on in WSWB, Cordelia was asked whether she had revealed what happed on Prom Night she replies:

“Are you nuts? Do you think I would tell people that I spent the whole evening with you?”

This was the Cordelia who was obsessed with her status in the school and hated and feared the consequences of hanging around with the “terminally uncool”.  And in many other ways too her sense of values hadn’t changed.  When talking about her summer holidays she complained about her parents:

“I mean, they promised me they'd take me to St. Croix, and then they just decide to go to Tuscany. Art and buildings? I was totally beachless for a month and a half. No one has suffered like I have. Of course I think that that kind of adversity builds character.  Well, then I thought, I already have a lot of character. Is it possible to have too much character?”

This was to reassure us that she was the same self-centred materialistic Cordelia of old.  However, very cleverly the writers while leaving this  basic characteristic unchanged allowed us to look at it in a rather different way.  In the scene in which she disavowed the Scooby gang there wasn’t the same edge that we had seen in her treatment of Willow in WttHM or indeed Marcie in “Invisible Girl”:

Cordelia:  “Oh, look, it's the Three Musketeers.”

Buffy: “Was that an insult?”

Xander:  “Kinda lacked punch.”

Willow:  “The Three Musketeers were cool.”

The concentration is no longer on the “rule by fear” aspect of Cordelia that we saw in season 1.  In fact, in episodes like “Some Assembly Required”  she can even be seen asking for favors from someone like Willow or being ignored by her or Xander.

Cordelia: “ Xander? I just wanted to thank you for saving my life. What you did in there was really brave and heroic, and I just wanted to tell you if there was anything that I could ever do to...”

Xander:  “Do you mind? We're talking here.”

Or, indeed in “School Hard” when trapped with Willow, somewhat unbelievably the concentration is on the way in which she annoys the latter.

In general with Cordelia from now on the accent was very much on the humor to be derived from her self-obsession. Of course even in season 1 the writers had exploited the full comic potential of such a distorted point of view as her’s.  So, for example, when asked to analyze “the Merchant of Venice” her comments were hilarious:

Cordelia:  “Yeah. With Shylock it's whine, whine, whine, like the whole world is about him. He acts like it's justice, him getting a pound of Antonio's flesh. It's not justice, it's yicky.”

Ms. Miller:  “But has Shylock suffered? What's his place in Venice society?”

Willow:  “Well, everyone looked down on him.”

Cordelia:  “That is such a twinkie defense. Shylock should get over himself. People who think their problems are so huge craze me. Like this  time I sort of ran over this girl on her bike. It was the most  traumatizing event of *my* life, and she's trying to make it about *her*  leg! Like *my* pain meant nothing.”

Cordelia’s preoccupation with herself is so completely disproportionate and such a total inversion of the normal system of values that it cannot help but be absurd.  And time and time again this aspect of Cordelia’s personality is put to devastating use to derive some humor from otherwise horrific situations.   But that was always balanced by reminders of Cordelia's power and the way she could use it against others like Marcie in "Invisible Girl".  In season 2, our attention was increasingly focused on the humorous aspects of her self-involvement and away from the fear and intimidation.   Take her attitude to the exchange student Sven in “Inca Mummy Girl”:

Cordelia:  “Ohhh, I keep trying to ditch him. He's like one of those dogs that you leave at the Grand Canyon on vacation? It follows you back across four states. (Sven finds them) See? My own speechless, human boomerang.”

We then see the reality of the situation:

Sven:  “I thought this exchange student thing would be a *great* deal. But look what I got stuck with! 'Momento!' 'Punchy fruity drinky!' Is Cordelia even from this country?”

As with Angel a little gentle humor like this proves to be a wonderful way of humanizing an otherwise difficult character.  In Cordelia we now see a person who, no matter how hard she tries, isn’t completely in charge of her life and everything and everyone around her.  More and more we get a sense of someone who can be just as much out of her depth as anyone else.  And this is nowhere more evident that in “Reptile Boy”.  There she evidently saw herself as mature, sophisticated and worldly-wise.  In fact she turned out to be a naïve little High School girl just ripe for the picking like all the others.   This is a girl who is no longer threatening to the Scooby gang, but essentially a more sympathetic figure. 

The Hidden Cordelia

And equally important, for the very first time, the writers began to show us the Cordelia behind this façade of self-interested materialism; to help us understand a little why she was like that.  Here an important clue, for example, came in her reaction to being kidnapped in WSWB:

Cordelia: “ What an ordeal. And you know what the worst part is?”

Jenny:  “What?”

Cordelia: “It stays with you forever. No matter what they tell you, none of that rust and blood and grime comes out. I mean, you can dry clean till judgment day, you are living with those stains.

Jenny:  “Yeah that's the worst part of being hung upside down by a vampire who wants to slit your throat: the stains.”

Cordelia:  “I hear ya!”

Here we see a girl who has a very hard, practical streak in her.  She isn’t much of a philosopher.  She doesn’t concern herself overly with abstractions such as the difference between good and evil.  She is far more concerned with the day to day task of living and making life as comfortable for herself as possible.  An example of this attitude is to be found in the following exchange in “School Hard” when Cordelia and Xander are helping Buffy to make stakes in anticipation of Spike’s attack:

Cordelia:  “My fingers are cramping. How long have I been doing this? 

Xander: “Three minutes.”

Cordelia:  “So, can I go now? She doesn't need this many stakes. I mean, if this guy Spike is as mean as you all said, it should be over pretty quickly. We're still all rooting for you on Saturday. I'd be there for you myself if I didn't have a leg wax.”

From Cordelia’s point of view her attitude makes perfect sense.  I mean why cause yourself trouble for no real purpose?  Equally why put yourself in danger if there is nothing you can do to help?  Cordelia is certainly no coward as she proved in “Prophecy Girl”.  But she is too self-possessed and realistic to want to put herself in danger when there is no point in doing so.  Perhaps the best example of that is to be found in “Innocence” when Buffy and Angel have gone missing after a visit to Spike’s factory:

Xander: “Okay, we gotta find 'em. Um, we gotta go to that place, that, uh, that factory. That's where they're holed up, right? Let's go.”

Cordelia:  “And do what? Besides be afraid and die.”

Xander: “ Well, nobody's asking you to go, Cordelia. If the vampires need grooming tips we'll give you a call.”

Giles:  “Cordelia has a point. Now, i..i..if Buffy and Angel were, were... harmed, then we don't stand to fare much better.”

And another aspect of Cordelia’s hard practical streak is her “I speak the truth attitude”.  We have already seen an example of this in the last quote from “School Hard” when she quite casually suggested that Buffy might have been killed by Spike.  But there is an even better example of this in “Killed by Death”.  When Buffy thinks she saw Death in the Sunnydale Hospital, Cordelia makes a link to a childhood trauma and isn’t afraid to say so:

Cordelia:  “So this isn't about you being afraid of hospitals 'cause your friend died and you wanna conjure up a monster that you can fight so you can save everybody and not feel so helpless?” 

Giles:  “Cordelia, have you actually ever heard of tact?”

Cordelia:  “Tact is just not saying true stuff. I'll pass.”

That indeed does seem to sum up Cordelia’s basic philosophy.  Stuff happens. What is the point of pretending that things are different to what they are?  You have to make the best of it you can.  As an attitude this is actually very attractive because it’s honest.  And that is one of Cordelia’s great qualities.

And another of her associated qualities is an instinctive grasp of human nature, something that does seem to fit in very well with her hard headed practical approach to life.  We have already seen this in her insight into how Buffy might have misconstrued the figure she saw in hospital as death.  Or again later, after Buffy’s impassioned denunciation of James in IOHEFY it is Cordelia who understands where she is coming with her “over-identify much” comment. 

The writers have also been careful to balance Cordelia’s very particular sense of priorities with some evidence that she can indeed be a good friend.  Hence her warning to Buffy in WSWB:

Cordelia:  “Buffy. You're really campaigning for bitch-of-the-year, aren't you?”

Buffy:  “As defending champion, you nervous?”

Cordelia:  “I can hold my own. You know, we've never really been close, which is nice, 'cause I don't really like you that much, but... you have on occasion saved the world and stuff, so I'm gonna... do you a favor.”

Buffy:  “And this great favor is...”

Cordelia:  “I'm gonna give you some advice. Get over it.”

Buffy:  “Excuse me?”

Cordelia: “ Whatever is causing the Joan Collins 'tude, deal with it. Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever, but get over it. Cause pretty soon you're not even gonna have the loser friends you've got now.

Or again in “The Dark Age” when she offers to help do some research to find out about the demon haunting Giles.  In neither case is there a great emotional attachment to the other person.  In “the Dark Age” she almost withdraws the offer of help when it means working with Xander.  But nevertheless here we do see a Cordelia who can be a thoughtful friend, at least when it costs her nothing to be.

Of course at this stage Cordelia is too peripheral a character for any of this to mean much in the context of BtVS as a series.  But I think they are important strands to show that the writers did want to make her a more rounded character and less of a stereotype and this effort paid dividends because it gave them a platform on which to develop her character rather more later on.

Cordelia and Xander

The next major turning point for Cordelia came in WML I and II.  Here we saw the beginning of a “romance” between her and Xander.  The word “romance” is in quotation marks because I am not sure that this is the right description of the relationship, at least during season 2.  Certainly this was a very odd pairing.  Someone who dresses or, indeed  behaves, like Xander with his awkward, goofy mannerisms and off-beat sense of humor would not normally be to Cordelia’s tastes.  And Xander who had so often been on the receiving end of Cordelia’s derision for his lack of prospects, family background and dress sense could hardly be expected to regard her with anything other than distrust.  Indeed in episodes like “Dark Ages” when they nearly came to blows and in the sparring in WML I the writers seem to have gone out of their way to emphasize the differences between them.  And even after they discovered their mutual attraction, just how ill-matched a couple they were is amply demonstrated by the following conversation in “Bad Eggs”:

Cordelia:  “Xander?”

Xander:  “Shhh-sh-sh.”

Cordelia:  “It's just that I'm worried we're gonna miss class.”

Xander:  “You know what? This would work a lot better for me if you didn't talk.”

Cordelia:  “Well, it'd work a lot better for me with the lights off.”

Xander:  “Are you saying that you can't look at me when we do... whatever it is we do?”

Cordelia:  “No, it's not that I can't, it's just more... I don't want to.”

Xander:  “That's great! That's just dandy! We're repulsed by each other, we…we hide from our friends...”

Cordelia:  “Well, I should hope so! Please!”

Xander: “All in all this is not what I'd call a big self-esteem booster.”

Cordelia:  “Tell me about it! Just look at you! And those clothes. Where did you get those shoes?”

Given all of this there was indeed only one conceivable explanation for a relationship between them and that was given in the scene which immediately followed the above conversation.  We move to Mr. Whitmore’s Human Biology class where he is speaking about:

Mr. Whitmore:  “S-E-X. Sex. The sex drive in the human animal is intense. How many of us have lost countless productive hours plagued by unwanted sexual thoughts and feelings?”

As the rest of that scene demonstrated Cordelia and Xander are worlds apart in so many ways but such is the mystery of human biology they apparently could not keep their hands of each other either. 

This was perhaps never going to be the most natural of couples.  The individuals concerned had a lot of obstacles between them: background, ambitions and values for a start.  To make it a more realistic pairing some considerable work was needed but I am afraid that – with the Angelus arc now ready – it did not receive the necessary attention.  The relationship was sprung out of the blue with no real build up.  True they also had more than a little in common: their courage, a blunt honesty and loyalty to friends.  But we see little evidence of either of them appreciating the finer points of the other’s personality or even simply enjoying each other’s company.  Cordelia herself noted Xander’s unwillingness to pay attention to her:

Cordelia:  “I mean, with Xander it's always, 'Buffy did this', 'Willow said that'. Buffy, Buffy. Willow, Willow. It's like I don't even exist.”

Instead the concentration is, at this stage at least on, physical attractiveness and I have a certain resistance to the idea of a relationship built essentially on this alone.

But from the structural point of view there was a great deal of sense in this development.  Cordelia had never been one of the core Scooby gang.  Really the only connection between her and the others was that she was in on the same secret they were. Now Xander provided a more solid reason for her to be closely involved in the epic struggle that was to dominate the end of season 2.  So, for example, in episodes like “Innocence” we now see her acting as a fully fledged team member by decoying the soldier at the military base and, as she later put it by being  “on the first wave of the clean-up crew.”  And it is only in such a role that we get the full value of her remarkable combination of virtues: her courage in the face of real danger coupled with her impatience at having to put up with unpleasant things such as having to collect what was left of the Judge:

Cordelia:  “Pieces? We get the pieces. Our job sucks!”

And then there was a genuine willingness to help combined with a rather peculiar sense of the value of others.  So when in “Go Fish” the school swim team started to disappear her reaction is predictable:

Buffy:  “First and second, actually. Which means if my theory's correct, Gage Petronzi, the third-best swimmer on the team, would be the next item on the menu.”

Cordelia:  “God, this is so sad. We're never gonna win the state championship. I think I've lost all will to cheerlead.”

Xander:  “Raise your hand if you feel her pain.”

It is this combination that not only makes Cordelia in many ways a fascinating character but also added great value to first BtVS and then ANGEL as series.  Her radically different perspective on the serious events we regularly see there adds humor which helps break the tension and prevents things from becoming too grim.

But the relationship with Xander was perhaps even more important for the development of Cordelia herself.  As we have already seen a key function of her character in season 1 was to help define the caste system in the school – the insider and the outsider - and to identify the values that upheld that system. And among these key values was the need to preserve image by not hanging out with losers or the terminally uncool.  Xander was universally regarded as just such a person; hence her desire to keep things between them a secret:

Xander:  “I dunno. This... thing with us, despite our better judgment, it keeps happening. Maybe we should just admit that we're dating.”

Cordelia:  “Groping in a broom closet isn't dating. You don't call it a date until the guy spends money.”

Xander:  “Fine. I'll spend, then we'll grope. Whatever. I just think it's some kind of whacked that we feel we have to hide it from all our friends.”

Cordelia:  “Well, of course *you* wanna tell everybody. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I, on the other hand, have *everything* to be ashamed of.”

It is indeed a strength of the characterization of Cordelia in season 2 that while she has been greatly developed and humanized as an individual she has remained largely true to this essential set of values.  Hence her desire to break up with Xander in BBB.  But in that episode we see for the first time her basic values tested and in the process we get a better understanding of why she adopted them in the first place.

Before BBB Cordelia was able to maintain her place in the school hierarchy, keep her friends and see Xander.  But at the start of that episode these considerations come into direct conflict when Cordelia is cold shouldered by Harmony and the others because of Xander.  So, she decides that she has to make a choice:

Xander: “I've been thinking a  lot about us lately... the why and the wherefore. You know, once, twice, a kissy here, a kissy there. And you can chalk it all up to hormones.  A…and maybe that's all we have here. Tawdry  teen lust. But maybe not. Maybe something in you sees something special inside me. And vice versa. I mean, I think I do. See something. So... [He pulls out a jewelry box and hands it to her.]

Cordelia:  “Xander... Thank you. [holds up a necklace and pendant] It's beautiful. I wanna break up.”

Xander:  “Okay, not quite the reaction I was looking for.”

Cordelia:  “I know. I'm sorry. It's just... Who are we kidding? Even if parts of us do see specialness, we don't fit.”

This was classic Cordelia: the head ruled the heart.  She decided where her interests best lay according to that very practical set of values she had and  went with that.  For a girl like her, life would be far more comfortable swimming with the prevailing tide and keeping her place in the hierarchy of the school.   That meant far too much for her to give up.  But in the course of BBB, Xander and Cordelia had to rely on each other for their very lives.  I think that perhaps for the first time they really started to appreciate the courage and level-headedness that each other possessed.  For Cordelia this led to a realization that Xander was not a person to be given up lightly.  And a necessary part of that realization  is that other people are not just important insofar as they say something about you.  And once you realize that then the obverse also becomes true; that your own worth as an individual doesn’t depend on those you associate with. That was why she realized that just because Xander was her boyfriend didn’t diminish her own “coolness”, and equally that “coolness” didn’t simply depend on being seen with the “right” people.  So, when at the end of BBB Harmony starts to pick on Xander again she takes his side:

Cordelia:  “Harmony, shut up. Do you know what you are, Harmony? You're a sheep.”

Harmony:  “I'm not a sheep.”

Cordelia:  “You're a sheep. All you ever do is what everyone else does just so you can say you did it first. And here I am, scrambling for your approval, when I'm *way* cooler than you are 'cause I'm *not* a sheep. I do what I wanna do, and I wear what I wanna wear. And you know what?  I'll date whoever the hell I wanna date. No matter how lame he is."

Previously Cordelia’s values were seen as reflections of the prevailing values of the in-crowd in High School.  But now we see her in a different light.  It is not that her values have changed.  Cordelia still wants to be cool.  She still cares about what she wears.  And Xander’s lack of material success still marks him out as a loser. But Cordelia is now saying she is very much her own person.  Her values are her own, not a reflection of others.  They may not be that different from Harmony’s but that was not because she needed anyone else’s approval.

Chapter III:

 Season 3 of BtVS

The Senior Year

Evidence of this change is in her is seen early on in season 3 in both her relationship with Xander and the other Scoobies.  First of all Cordelia now seems to have been accepted not just as Xander’s girlfriend but as one of the Scooby gang itself.  In “Homecoming” she enlists Willow’s help in compiling a database of her competition for Homecoming Queen.  And when she and Buffy lock horns she isn’t as one might have seen earlier treated as the outsider.   Rather she is also seen as a friend and the object for the others is to see the contest amicably settled.  Just as strikingly, after some initial hesitation, she and Xander form a more normal couple than ever they did in season 2.  It’s not just the fact that they are now seen together regularly; it’s the way they act in each other’s company. In particular they seem actually to value each other for who and what they are.  So, in “Beauty and the Beasts”, we have the following exchange over Pete, the man-beast:

Oz: “Yeah. A freshman told me that Pete had eight iced cafe' mochas and just lost it.”

Buffy: “That's better than the estrogen theory. I heard he took all of his mother's birth control pills.”

Cordelia: “He didn't? Pete was a monster? Where have I been?”

Xander: “In your special place, Cor, which is why I adore you.”

There was a time when Cordelia’s self-involvement would have elicited a stinging response from Xander, but not now.  And Cordelia herself does show a new appreciation of others.  For example while waiting to begin the SAT’s, she and Buffy start talking about Giles:

Cordelia: “He is wound a little tight. I had this philosophy book checked out from the library for, like, a year, and he made me pay the fine, even though it was huge. I was sad to return it. It was perfect for starting conversations with college boys. Of course, that was B.X.”

Buffy:  “B.X.? Before Xander. Clever.”

As we have seen, college boys were for Cordelia the touchstone for the sort of person she wanted to become.  She wasn’t interested in them as people; all she wanted was to use them to help create the right image for her.  But this was a Cordelia who saw in someone else more than just a fashion accessory.  Rather she valued him for what he was as a person.  And indeed the depth of her affection for Xabder is shown by the fact that not only did she have his picture in her locker but she was actually prepared to go bowling with him.  She evidently hates the idea:

Xander:  “C'mon. It'll be fun.”

Cordelia:  “I don't know. I just thought we were gonna do something...you know, classy?”

Xander:  “What's classier than bowling?”

Cordelia: “Apart from everything ever? Let's see...”

But she gives in…for him.  But again it must be stressed that this was not an entirely new Cordelia.  We have already seen from the quote from “Beauty and the Beasts” that she can be as self-involved as ever and this is demonstrated still more forcefully by “Homecoming”.  There she volunteers to remind Buffy about the yearbook pictures and is just about to when she is distracted by two boys she wants to get to vote for her as Homecoming Queen.  And beneath it all this is the really the sense of herself that Cordelia feels most comfortable with – the Cordelia who is the center of the Universe, the Cordelia who has every want provided for.  It is why even though she does love Xander and values him as a person, still can’t quite accept that they really belong together.  As she says herself in “Homecoming” when she thinks she is about to become a victim of Slayerfest ’98:

“I'm never gonna be crowned Homecoming Queen. I'm never gonna graduate from high school. I'm never gonna know if it's real  between me and Xander, or if it's just... some temporary insanity that made me think... I loved him. And now I'm never gonna get the chance to tell him.”

Here we again see the struggle going on within Cordelia – the head vs the heart.  The hard practical side that knows she can never fulfill her ambitions for herself with Xander and the side of her that really does love him.  In the simple word “insanity” we see both the strength of her feelings and also the idea that those feelings are completely irrational for someone like her.

And it is I think the nature of this struggle within her that is responsible for the nature of her reaction when she discovers he has been unfaithful to him.  The part of her that loved him was, of course, deeply hurt.  But that hurt was sharpened by the thought of just what sacrifices she had been prepared to make for Xander.  And  there is another consideration.  In “the Wish” we see that, having been dumped by Xander, Cordelia becomes an object of ridicule.  I mean if Xander is regarded as a loser and Cordelia is dumped by Xander then what does that make her?  For Cordelia of all people the loss of face would have been devastating. There is of course a degree of exaggeration in this for the purposes of the story but I think we can easily enough accept the basic truth of the scenario.  I mean Cordelia was hardly much of a diplomat and one can imagine there were quite a few people about with scores to settle (including people like Harmony).  So there would be no shortage of people there who would be willing to take advantage of any chink in the Cordelia Chase armor.  So, it’s little wonder that her reaction was extreme or indeed that it concentrated on casting Xander in the role of loser.  There are many examples of this but the one that sticks in my mind is the one that comes at the beginning of “the Zeppo”.  After being humiliated by school bully Jack O’Toole she is positively gloating:

Cordelia: “Boy, of all the humiliations you've had I've witnessed, that was the latest.” 

Xander: “I could've taken him.”

Cordelia: “Oh, please. O'Toole would macrame' your face. He is a psycho. Which is still a lot cooler than being a wuss.”

Xander: “ Why is it that I've come face-to-face with vampires, demons, the most hideous creatures Hell ever spit out, and I'm still afraid of a little bully like Jack O'Toole?”

Cordelia:  “Because, unlike all those creatures that you've come face-to face with, Jack actually noticed you were there.”

Xander: “ Why am I surprised by how comforting you're not?”

Cordelia: “It must be really hard when all your friends have, like, superpowers - Slayer, werewolf, witches, vampires - and you're, like, this little nothing. You must feel like Jimmy Olsen.”

Xander:  “I was just talking to... Hey, mind your own business!”

Cordelia:  “Ooo, I struck a nerve. The boy that had no cool.”

Xander: “I happen to be an integral part of that group. I happen to have a *lot* to offer.”

Cordelia: “Oh, please”.

Xander: “I do!”

Cordelia: “'Integral part' of the group? Xander, you're the, the *useless* part of the group. You're the Zeppo. 'Cool.' Look it up. It's something that a sub-literate that's repeated twelfth grade three times has, and you don't.”

And as she walks away she adds to herself   “There was no part of that that wasn't fun”.  This was not only revenge for her own hurt but was perhaps a way of reassuring herself that she was better off without him.  After all if he was such a loser then she had nothing to feel bad about did she?

And indeed the final few episodes of the third season of BtVS were, for Cordelia, all about her attempt to rescue her sense of self-respect not only from her humiliation at the hands of Xander but even more importantly her humiliation at the combined hands of her parents and the IRS.  In “Choices” Xander meets Cordelia in a dress shop where she ha been admiring a prom dress.  She boasts to him of all the colleges she has been accepted into.  But it later transpires she is actually working in the shop.  Her father had made

"little mistake on his taxes — for twelve years."

And now she and her family were losing their home, she couldn’t go to the colleges she had been accepted into and she had:

            "no dresses, no car, no cell phone"

Everything that had defined Cordelia Chase had gone - her possessions, her status.  And with them also went any hope she had of fulfilling her ambitions for her future.  But here we see her strength of character and her pragmatism.  First of all though she is initially reluctant to divulge the unpalatable facts about her change in fortunes, when she has to she comes straight out and admits the truth to Xander.  More importantly she is not going to let a little setback like this get her down.  She doesn’t have a prom dress, so what does she do?  She works to get one.  Gall and wormwood it might be for her, but the dress is important because of what it symbolizes.  It represents the life she had and the life she wants again; and if working is what it takes to get the dress, then so be it.

And then there is Wesley.  Her attraction to him might seem at first a little surprising.  But it makes sense.  He is English, he has a double barrelled name and what Cordelia might call “good breeding”.  Perhaps significantly she isn’t fooled into thinking he was more than he actually was.  There is a wonderful moment in Graduation Day I when Cordelia finds out Wesley is leaving:

Giles:  "Buffy has quit the council.  She'll not be working with Wesley from now on."

Cordelia:  "But he is her Watcher."

Giles:  "Buffy no longer needs a Watcher."

Cordelia:  "Well, does he have to leave the country?  I mean, you got fired, and you still hang around like a big loser.  Why can't he?"

Here we see that, for Cordelia, everything really is all about her and what she wants.  But more interestingly we see a fairly dispassionate assessment of Wesley’s contribution to the team thus far.  It’s just that for the moment, it’s what he represents – a certain “class” – that Cordelia values. But in the end there is more to Cordelia than thwarted ambition and the attraction of having a trophy like Wesley to show the world that she is really still something.  She does want and need substance.  And when they kiss so awkwardly they both seem to realize there is nothing between them and both accept this fact.

And really from that point onwards, for Cordelia her move to LA was entirely logical.  She had nothing to keep her in Sunnydale any longer.  Although her relationship with Xander ended on a friendly enough note, there was no longer any future for her there.  She could no longer take up the College offers she had been made and she could entertain no realistic hopes of an advantageous marriage.  All she had were her own formidable qualities of strength and determination to rely on as she tried to make her own way in the world. 

Conclusion

Angel and his story were always going to be the driving force behind ANGEL the series.  But sending Cordelia to LA where she could join him was, I think, a very smart move.  She was in many ways the anti-Angel.  Whereas he was preoccupied with the metaphysical, her concerns were practical.  Whereas he had to worry about others, she was more concerned with herself.    With Cordelia you could almost guarantee an opposing viewpoint.  And because she was no respecter of persons you had as well in Cordelia someone who was well able to articulate and defend that viewpoint.  Not only that but her own unique perspective on the world - an ability to say things many of us might think but wouldn't dare say - readily lent itself to the sort of humorous counterpoint to the worthy seriousness that too often was Angel's trademark.