The Infamous Buffy Episode That Almost Got a Fan-Favorite Character Canceled
By Chris Snellgrove | Published
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is considered one of the most revolutionary shows on television, and rightly so: it ushered in a new era of quippy superheroism, essentially paving the way for the later Marvel Cinematic Universe. On top of the brilliant writing, the show is also filled with amazing and funny characters that you can’t help but love. This includes Cordelia Chase: she was written to be a no-nonsense girl, but the fans loved her so much that she helped launch it. Angel, BuffyA very successful spinoff.
However, if the Buffy had the producers not been on the line from one of the show’s most infamous episodes, Cordelia wouldn’t have been such a fan favorite; in fact, he would be completely canceled! The episode in question is “Go Fish,” which has a scene where Cordelia mocks the idea that all humans are inherently equal. That’s really bad, but in the line that ended up being called, he seemed to defend the practice of slavery!
Cordelia Like You’ve Never Seen Her Before
In “Go Fish,” Buffy and her friends run several races against Sunnydale High School’s swim team, which seems pretty strong (even by jock standards). It turns out that their coach has been giving these athletes something worse than steroids: he and a crazy nurse have altered the swimmers’ DNA, occasionally turning them into gill monsters right from the start. Creature from the Dark Lake. In the end, the evil team kills both their nurse and coach; most of them (including the newly reformed Xander) are given healing therapy, while the swimmers have passed the point of no return and swim out to sea, their humanity completely lost.
In comparison, Cordelia doesn’t play a big role in “Go Fish,” but she does have some memorable exchanges with Willow and Xander. Willow (who was teaching a computer science class after Jenny Kalenda’s death) complains about a student asking her to change her grade, which Xander says is “not fair” because “It’s a slap in the face to all of us who worked so hard and studied so many hours to get our Ds.” That’s when Cordelia teases Xander that he’s “the voice of the common wuss” and bluntly tells him that “certain people are entitled to special privileges.
Cordelia Almost Cancelled
Instead of backing down, Xander asks her “about the ‘all men are created equal’ thing that’s toxic,” which he sees as “propaganda spread by bad and not-so-good people.” Xander says he thinks Lincoln said that, and after Cordelia scorns Lincoln’s look, Willow clarifies that the quote is from Thomas Jefferson. Cordelia replies, “You kept slaves, remember?” But if you watch the screen carefully at this point, you will see that his lips keep moving after he finishes speaking.
That’s because actress Charisma Carpenter had to cut back on her original dialogue. When filming the episode, he initially said, “I’m keeping slaves. Do you still have them?” The text says that he is asking this question as a “challenge,” which could mean that he was challenging Willow to generate more factoids about Jefferson, or perhaps challenging his friends to name people with serious problems who said good things. However, I believe the line was called for a more sinister reason: the producers realized it sounded like Cordelia was actually pro-slavery.
Asking “do you have anything else?” after saying that Jefferson “had slaves” he may have made the audience think that Cordelia wanted to have slaves of her own. That might sound crazy, but remember she’s a spoiled rich girl (dad hasn’t been arrested for tax fraud) who might he did they had the modern equivalent of a servant in his household. Also, it’s very easy to believe that Cordelia was making pro-slavery comments when her previous dialogue has her openly mocking the idea that all men are created equal.
The Producers Have Quietly Preserved This Fan Favorite Character
By having Charisma Carpenter cut the line, i Buffy the Vampire Slayer producers removed the challenge from his voice; now, he simply reminds everyone that Thomas Jefferson was a bad man who owned slaves. This helps make Cordelia’s mean girl a more tolerable character and keep her from being canceled by the fandom. Which is good, because it would be a little over a year later that Cordelia left Sunnydale to start a new life in Los Angeles as part of Angel spinoff, whose title hero helps solve cases and fight crime.
“Go Fish” is already a bad episode because the fish monsters almost attack Buffy in a very intimate way while the coach says, “the boys have other needs.” Fortunately, this Buffy the Vampire Slayer the episode avoided another scandal by cutting a line that would have made Cordelia Chase a pro-slavery fan. Now, without that problematic conversation, we can enjoy Cordelia for who she really is: a head b*tch in charge of any situation who is not afraid to put her classmates in their place!
