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"I Was Made to Love You" is the fifteenth episode of the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the ninety-third episode in the series. Written by Jane Espenson and directed by James A. Contner, it originally broadcast on February 20, 2001, on The WB network.

Synopsis[]

THE PERFECT WOMAN — Buffy must stop a heartbroken young woman who was manufactured to be the perfect girlfriend from destroying the city and then finds herself comforting the creation over the loss of love in both of their lives.[1]

Summary[]

Buffy is working out at the Magic Box training room, pounding at Xander while he's wearing a large bodysuit. She vents with Giles about her problems with Spike, and Xander consoles the Slayer about her love life, blaming the Hellmouth for her not being able to find a decent guy. Meanwhile, a young woman arrives in Sunnydale, searching for "true love."

The next day, in the Summers residence, Joyce prepares for a date with a man named Brian with the help of Buffy and Dawn.

Walking together, Anya and Tara discuss the Internet and Anya's knowledge of online stock trading and websites. The young woman approaches them, asking if they know where Warren is. When the girls can't help her, she moves on to another person and asks the same question.

That night, Buffy, Xander, Anya, Tara, and Willow attend a UC Sunnydale spring break party. After dancing with Xander, Buffy sees Ben and catches his attention. They chat briefly, and Buffy asks Ben to dance. The young woman arrives at the party, still searching for Warren. He happens to be at the party and escapes with his date before the woman discovers him. The woman questions the people at the party, saying that Warren is her boyfriend and he lost her. Spike approaches Buffy while she's alone, but she tells him off before Ben returns. Ben offers Buffy his number for a possible coffee date and doesn't change his mind when Buffy warns him of her bad history. After seeing Buffy with Ben, Spike goes on to hit on the woman, April, but his suggestive comments anger her, and she throws him through a window. Both amused by Spike's pain and shocked at April's behavior, Buffy tries to talk to her, but April throws her aside and leaves.

Later, at Xander's apartment, the gang quickly deduces that the woman is a robot. While they don't view her as an immediate threat, they do realize that they have to track down Warren and get him to the robot before someone less durable than Spike crosses her. Buffy returns home, and Giles suggests he not watch Dawn alone anymore because he can't take much more exposure to the habits of a young teenager. Joyce returns from her date in a good mood.

April goes door to door searching for Warren's residence. Willow finds on her computer Warren Mears and the house where he could be living. The gang talks about Warren and how he made the robot to fill a void in his life. Buffy finally calls Ben, and the phone rings at Glory's place. Glory morphs into Ben to answer the phone, and a date is made for coffee.

Warren rushes to get packed and move away with his current girlfriend, Katrina, but she doesn't understand why. Buffy shows up at Warren's in search of answers relating to April, and Katrina walks out, upset about being kept in the dark. Warren reveals to Buffy that he made April to be the perfect girlfriend, but he quickly grew bored with how predictable and easy things were with her. He then met and fell in love with Katrina, and, instead of "breaking up" with April, he left the robot in his dorm room to let her batteries run down. Buffy asks if April is dangerous, and Warren tells her that she's only programmed to be in love with him. Buffy understands his answer as a confirmation.

Meanwhile, the Scoobies are meeting at the Magic Box. They receive a visit from Spike, who receives open hostility from them. Spike gives an embellished version of what happened with Drusilla, claiming that he and Buffy actually worked together to fight her off and anything he said to hint at an attraction to Buffy was accidental. Giles roughly shoves Spike against the wall, informs him that they are not his friends or his way to Buffy, and orders him to get over his obsession and leave the Magic Box. After a brief hesitation, Spike gives in and departs.

Katrina encounters April at a park, and the robot uses force to make Katrina admit that Warren is her boyfriend. Buffy and Warren arrives and he tells April he can't love her, but he directs the blame to Buffy. April turns on the Slayer, and they fight. Buffy damages April's electrical work, and the robot finally stops. Buffy stays with April, talking to her about relationships until the robot's batteries run down.

While Xander fixes the college's window, Buffy tells him she realized she doesn't need a man in her life. She also admits that, despite Xander's belief that April was a "crazed robot," she knows April was just trying to do everything she knew how to do to make the one she loved happy. Buffy leaves a message for Ben on his answering machine, canceling the date, which Glory listens to instead.

Spike confronts Warren in his home about making a robot for him based on Buffy. Warren refuses, but Spike won't take no for an answer.

Buffy returns home to find that Joyce has been sent flowers from Brian. She calls her mother upstairs to see if Dawn needs picking up. Receiving no answer, Buffy heads into the sitting room and asks what Joyce is doing. Seeing her mother laying on the couch with open eyes, Buffy quietly asks again for her mom.

Continuity[]

  • Xander tells Buffy that the Hellmouth is a "pretty terrible place" to build a relationship. In "I Robot, You Jane," they joked about being doomed to never find a happy, normal relationship.
  • Buffy considers laughing at a man's jokes to make them like her and exaggerates her laughing when talking to Ben, a tactic Cordelia used in "Reptile Boy."
  • Buffy remarks she has had exactly two boyfriends and both of them left town; Angel in "Graduation Day, Part Two" and Riley in "Into the Woods." This line can also presumably mean that Buffy does not consider other men she has had shorter relationships with to be real boyfriends, including Scott Hope who she dated in "Faith, Hope & Trick," "Beauty and the Beasts," and "Homecoming."
  • This episode marks the first appearance of Warren Mears. He'll return as a recurring character in "Flooded."
  • Katrina is also introduced in this episode. She will return in the episode "Dead Things."
  • Buffy tells Ben: "Again with the non-medical clothing," referring to their previous encounter in which she told him: "I barely recognized you without your hospital scrubs" ("Crush").
  • Ben warns Buffy that he's "not really good" with dancing; Riley had the same conflict when attempting to flirt with Buffy in "The Initiative," and Angel would declare twice that he doesn't dance ("She" and "Judgment").
  • After the encounter with April, Buffy says she's had it with "super-strong little women who aren't me," a reference to her previous encounters with Glory in "No Place Like Home" and "Blood Ties."
  • When Xander notices the women staring at him for his opinion on sexbots, he says he misses Oz, who was part of the Scoobies since the episode "Innocence" until his departure in "Wild at Heart."
  • Willow says that, when people get lonely, maybe it's easier to have someone around, even someone you made up; in "Wrecked," after Tara leaves her, Willow magically fills up Tara's clothes to hug her.
  • Hearing about the arrival of a robot, Dawn mentions Ted and says she "always thought there could be more of him," referring to her fabricated memories from the events of the episode "Ted."
  • The Scoobies are aware of Spike's crush on Buffy, which she found out about in "Crush." Spike also mentions him and Buffy fighting off Drusilla in the same episode.
  • Spike orders from Warren a robot on Buffy's likeness; the Buffybot will be ready in "Intervention."
  • Joyce dies of a brain aneurysm, her death confirmed in the next episode, "The Body," which continues moments before the end of this one. Joyce's illness was first hinted with headaches in "The Replacement" and "No Place Like Home," a tumor discovered in "Shadow" and surgically removed in "Listening to Fear," and her health apparently recovered in "Into the Woods."

Appearances[]

Individuals[]

Organizations and titles[]

Species[]

Locations[]

Objects[]

Death count[]

  • April, battery depleted.
  • Joyce Summers, brain aneurysm.

Behind the scenes[]

Production[]

  • When questioned about the rumors that Britney Spears was originally intended to appear in this episode, Joss Whedon answered: "She wasn't, but they told us she might. And they said: 'Britney wants to do the show,' 'Samuel L. Jackson wants to do the show' — we got that one, one time too. Eventually, I just stopped believing it. So we did hear that possibly Britney wanted to be in the show. We had never seen her act at all, so I was like, 'Well, we'll cover our bases, let's write a show about a robot; in that way, if she can't, we're fine.' And then Shonda Farr came in and did a wonderful job. And the creation of Warren, our villain, and the Buffybot, it all came from the fact that we thought Britney Spears was gonna be on the show, so happy accidents.[2] At the time, it was reported that Spears had to pull out of "a planned appearance" on the show "due to scheduling conflicts," and the episode had to be pushed "to a little bit later" in the season.[3]
  • According to David Fury, when he questioned the amazing technological abilities of Sunnydale residents (reanimating the dead in "Some Assembly Required," constructing lifelike robots in "Ted" and in this episode), Whedon replied: "You're just way overthinking it. The Hellmouth should be able to provide us with anything we want to do; the energy that comes out of it makes mad scientists out of humans who then go ahead and create something evil."[4]
  • The final scene of this episode (where Buffy finds Joyce dead, which is also the teaser of the following episode) was written by Joss Whedon. It does not appear in the shooting script for the episode, which ends with Spike asking Warren to make him a robot of Buffy.[5]

Broadcast[]

  • "I Was Made to Love You" had an audience of 3.4 million households upon its original airing.[6]

Pop culture references[]

  • When discussing who Warren might be, Willow mentions the actor Warren Beatty and the 29th president of the United States, Warren Harding.
  • Anya and Tara discuss making money from online stock trading because the Dot-com bubble was at its peak and just starting to burst at the time the episode was written.

Music[]

International titles[]

  • Armenian: "Ես ստեղծվել եմ, որպեսզի սիրեմ քեզ" (I Was Made to Love You)
  • Czech: "Byla jsem stvořena, abych tě milovala" (I Was Made to Love You)
  • Finnish: "Robottirakkautta" (Love Robot)
  • French: "Chagrin d'amour" (Heartache)
  • German: "Auf Liebe programmiert" (Programmed to Love)
  • Hungarian: "Szerettelek" (I Loved You)
  • Italian: "La ragazza dei sogni" (The Dream Girl)
  • Japanese: "愛するロボット" (Beloved Robot)
  • Polish: "Stworzony do miłości" (Made for Love)
  • Portuguese (Brazil): "Fui Feita para Amar Você" (I Was Made to Love You)
  • Romanian: "Făcut să te iubesc" (Made to Love You)
  • Russian: "Я была создана, чтобы любить тебя" (I Was Made to Love You)
  • Spanish (Latin America): "Hecha par Amarte" (Made to Love You)
  • Spanish (Spain): "Programada para amarte" (Programmed to Love You)

Adaptations[]

Gallery[]

Behind the scenes[]

[]

Quotes[]

Xander: "She's a sex bot. I mean, what guy doesn't dream about that? Beautiful girl with no other thought but to please you, willing to do anything... Too many girls. I miss Oz. He'd get it. He wouldn't say anything, but he'd get it."
Giles: "And you're certain she was a robot?"
Buffy: "Absolutely."
Tara: "Well, she practically had 'genuine molded plastic' stamped on her ass."
Giles: "Dear God, Buffy, there's only so much I can take. We're going to have to change the system. A fourteen-year-old's too old to be babysat. And it's not fair on her."
Buffy: "What's she make you do?"
Giles: "Um, well, we listened to aggressively cheerful music sung by people chosen for their ability to dance. Then we ate cookie dough and talked about boys."
Buffy: "I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry, but if it makes you feel any better, my 'fun time Buffy party night' involved watching a robot throw Spike through a window, so if you wanna trade... No... Wait... I wouldn't give that memory up for anything."
Buffy: "Ow. I don't know about you guys, but I've had it with super-strong little women who aren't me."
Giles: "We are not your friends. We are not your way to Buffy. There is no way to Buffy. Clear out of here. And Spike, this thing... Get over it."
Spike: "I don't know what you mean."
Giles: "Yes, you do. Move the hell on."

References[]

  1. "The Mortuary." Buffy.com. Archived from the original on June 9, 2001.
  2. Matt Mitovich, "Britney, Bunnies, Angelic Reunions: Joss Whedon Answers Questions about the Buffyverse and More. TV Guide, February 18, 2009. Deactivated video archived on "Joss Whedon TV Guide Interview Feb 18, 2009." Youtube, December 15, 2016.
  3. "Britney Cancels 'Buffy' Appearance." ABC News, November 15, 2000.
  4. Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, Slayers & Vampires. Tor Books, September 2017.
  5. "I Was Made to Love You Script." BuffyWorld. Archived from the original on November 11, 2023.
  6. "Nielsen Ratings for Buffy's Fifth Season." Nielsen Ratings for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, & Firefly. Archived from the original on July 8, 2008.
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