No, Xander definitely had jerk moments, but I think they came for the most part in a logical but immature way. You could kinda see why he does or says those things but at the same time he handles it the wrong way.

Trust me, you are not alone in your Xander hateage.
Debs might want to speak up here- Xander bashing is definitely one of her areas of expertise.

moi xander bash? never :P

i am right there with you i really dislike xander, if i could just erase him from the show i would, it is probably why i like angel better than buffy sometimes cause he's not there lol

i know exactly what you mean about the responsibility the ultimate example for me is him bring forth the demon sweet in once more with feeling he killed people, burned them alive and nearly sent dawn to a eternity of hell and no one blinks a eyelash
the gang thinks buffy has slept with spike at a time when she feels down and it's a need to call a intervention....exactly how much attention to the scoobies pay to one another

i dont hate xander but i do agree with you when you say no-one asks for explanations from him. After he left Anya (at the freaking altar) when he came back Buffy and Willow were all "Oh we've been so worried" never asking why he did it and when they were talking to Anya they just kept asking her to forgive him so unfair.

I don't hate Xander, although I do feel that he could be a big tool sometimes. I find a few of his offenses forgivable due to my suspicions that they were born out of a certain writer's head. I don't think that I need to say which writer that would be.

i most absolutely second debs, broody_4_cheerie and her sister on this one :P
I still can't believe how Anya and Cordy fell for him!

I LOVE XANDER. he's hilarious, sweet, caring, cute, smart (in a weird way), loving, and overall wonderful. i enjoyed him through the whole series. sure he has is bad spots, but everyone on buffy has their bad spots! spike tried to rape buffy, willow betrayed tara, dawn shoplifted, giles helped wood attempt to kill spike, etc. and xander left anya at the altar. and, with the result of all the other couples, i didn't really think it was going to happen anyways. i was pretty sure it wasn't gonna happen one way or another. seriously, is there an episode where some trouble isn't a-brewin'? so you see, everyone has bad patches.

and they were together again at the end right? but then anya died... well yeah but that wasn't xander's fault was it?

you mentioned above other people's fault but they had to suffer for them they went through the consequences and made great efforts to redeem themselves, spike got a soul and will now spend his life doing good, willow gave up magic cold turkey and i don't think she'll ever forgive herself for killing someone, dawn was crying out for help afterwards she took her punishment and repaid for the items....or said she was going to, we don't actually see her doing it, giles spends a fair few episodes in turmoil and yeah i did hate him a bit for that but he makes up with buffy

xander's just imature, he sent buffy off to kill angel over his own jealousy, he sent faith off to kill angel for the same reason, not only did he cheat on cordelia but he did barely anything to try and redeem himself and when she didn't want to know he then turned against her and tried to get the gang to turn against her, talk about kicking someone when they're down

he barely seemed to even grieve his friend jessy
and he always does stupid stuff for he thinks will be best for him that just causes him to get in the way


*phew*!
okay i am being very harsh here just because i am in the ranting mood to be fair he does have some funny moments and he didn't sleep with buffy when she was under a spell and he grew a teeney tiny bit in season 7

wow debs, i'm surprised! thanks for the tiny compliment to xander!

ha ha ha, yeah i do try and like every joss character ;)


.....although i draw the line at Kennedy the best i can say about her is nice hair

ditto

I HATE Xander with a Passion hotter than the fires of Hell.The ONLY time I ever liked him was when he and Cordy were doing the snarky dating stuff.Other than that I hated him.

look my honest opinion without xander the show wouldnt have half the comedy it does, of course xander acts like an idiot and sometimes does and or says stupid things, think about it though. . . who hasnt on that show??? almost every single one of the characters has been evil or has been believed to be evil at one point or another. Plus xander get what he deserves in season 7 he loses his damn eye!!!! so stop bashin him geeze

Xander can be funny, but he can't act, is a jerk and can be really annoying.

Personally, Xander was the human element the show needed. He was everyman. Also, it wasn't jealously that made Xander lie, since he was with Cordelia at the time...it was a military decision...the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. If Angel had to be sacrificed for the world to go on, so be it. Now, the S3 intervention...he had legitimate concerns because as Willow said, when it comes to Angel...Buffy can't think straight. Now, was I the only one that saw that he's the only one that paid the price for the Fluke. I mean Oz took Willow back pretty easily and Xander was left to suffer alone with his friends pushing him away. Also, he went from being a competent leader to butt-monkey of the universe. I blame the whole Spike as good guy thing...because in order to make an evil sob like him good, the real heroes had to look worse by comparison. Hence, Buffy's superiority complex, Dawn's kleptomania, Xander's commitment issues, Willow's magic addiction, and Giles' abandoning them. Also, it was better for him to leave Anya at the altar than marry her and regret it afterwards. As far as Buffy and Willow talking with Anya...well, they never really liked her to begin with...they put up with her for Xander's sake...just like with Cordelia.

I see someone describes Xander as being “hilarious, sweet, caring, cute, smart, loving and overall wonderful”. I have a few issues with that description, especially the “overall” part. Xander didn’t have “bad patches”. A bad patch is going through a period of joblessness, drinking after your significant other leaves you, being shunned by your family when they find out you’re gay or a well of depression you might sink into when a beloved pet dies. Casting black magic spells, attempting rape, getting people killed, betraying your best friend and exonerating murderous exes deserve a rather more serious phrase than a “bad patch”.

My dislike of Xander stems from his blatant hatred of Angel and indeed all vampires. It’s understandable in a way; all grudges stem from the personal and vampires murdered and turned his friend Jesse. There was also his pathetic crush on Buffy. That also helped fuel his dislike of Angel.

I think Xander was glad to find out Angel was a vampire. It gave him an excuse to hate him without looking petty. Let’s not forget who was the first one to suggest Buffy murder Angel when she let them know the truth about his nature. (Except that calling Angel by that stupid “Deadboy” nickname DID make him look petty, childish, spiteful and idiotic. It’s not even that original an insult! Isn’t it something he could call any vampire, really?)

However, Xander chose to take his hatred of Angel to ridiculous extremes, ignoring the various times the vampire helped him or saved his life. Who was it who led him into the Master’s lair to save Buffy? Who was it who rescued Xander and his friends when Marcie Ross locked them in a room filling with deadly gas? Who was it who stood by his side when he attacked frat boys who were going to sacrifice Buffy to a giant snake? Who was it who saved Xander when Faith tried to strangle him? Well?

Xander was willfully blind when it came to his own sins, faults, excesses and crimes. When he was infected with a hyena spirit, he tried to rape Buffy and kill Willow. Then he pretended to forget about it afterwards, a lie that Giles actually became accomplice to—no doubt because Buffy, in sheer decency, never told her Watcher what Xander tried to do to her.

Ah, but Xander gave himself away in a later episode, didn’t he? Funny how that slip was never called on or how Buffy let him get away with it. Why, exactly, did Xander pretend to forget? Was it so he could continue to pretend to be a friend to Willow while ripping her heart out by dating inappropriate females?

It may have been that he didn’t want Cordelia finding out about it; outspoken as she was, she would likely have ripped him a new one for trying to rape Buffy and then pretending to forget about it. Cordelia might also have wondered if Xander’s lie might have been through a last lingering hope that he could be with Buffy. The brunette cheerleader was no fool; she clearly resented his concerns over Willow and she likely knew about his residual feelings for the Slayer.

Then again, Xander might simply have preferred to have the moral high ground where Angel was concerned. Amnesia meant that Xander was the innocent victim of a spell gone awry. He wasn’t to blame; he wasn’t conscious of his actions, during or after the botched hyena enchantment. But Angel was a knowing, full-time demon, aware of his crimes, even though his soul wasn’t in evidence when he committed them. That gave Xander the gift of superiority over the vampire and presumably made him far more fitting a playmate for the likes of Buffy.

Perhaps part of Xander’s disdain for Angel came with a barely concealed contempt for Buffy. After all, Xander never slept with a demon and Buffy slept with two. Of course, Anya(nka) had been a demon of 1,100+ years standing, far longer than the time she spent being human. Yes, she never really expressed remorse for the many people she’d killed but recited her acts of vengeance with cheerful relish. No, she didn’t choose to be human again; it was forced upon her. (Witness that nasty comment about how they would all grovel before her when she got her powers back. Brrr.)

There was also that embarrassing business about how she turned her husband into a baby-eating troll. Hmmm. She was human when she committed that awful piece of spellcraft—I wonder if Xander knew that. Perhaps that’s why Xander could fall for Anya. He could commiserate about casting vengeance spells on people when they broke your heart.

BUT she was human when Xander slept with her. We can be sure he didn’t have sex with her once she was a demon; her hatred was too strong at that point. They only had sex together after D’Hoffryn stripped her of her powers once more and the Potentials were in the house. So, for Xander, relationships with murderous-minded creatures like Faith and Anya are perfectly acceptable as long as 1) they’re not vampires 2) they’re female and/or 3) they remain human.

Lest there are people out there who say that Xander was more sinned against than sinning, let us point out the episode in which he wanted Cordelia to suffer the pangs of unrequited love and blackmailed Amy into casting an evil spell on her. Unfortunately, the spell backfired and he and Cordelia nearly got killed by a crowd of spell-maddened women. Oops! Luckily, nobody was hurt and everybody could laugh it off afterwards as a big joke.

But… there’s his casting of another spell with the dancing and singing demon Sweet. According to the newspaper held up in that episode, six people died, immolated by their own emotions. Buffy almost died too and did anybody take Xander to task for causing that? No, indeed. Willow killed two people during her vengeance-fueled rampage across Sunnydale and got spirited out of the country for rehabilitation (though, she might have been taken away to be killed for all they knew). Six people died because Xander and all anybody focused on was Dawn’s pathetic shoplifting. Unbelievable.

However, there was another ugly stain on Xander’s escutcheon, almost as bad as his hypocrisy about fraternizing with demons and the usage of black magic. There was his deliberate lie to Buffy about Angel’s soul being restored when she went off to fight Angelus.

We can understand why Xander wouldn’t let her know that Willow was restoring Angel’s soul. Perhaps he thought that Buffy couldn’t be trusted, that she’d hesitate or try to avoid killing Angelus as long as possible, just until the spell could be worked. In the midst of that terrible hesitation, the mouth of Acathla would open and the world would be sucked into a hell dimension. That was a real possibility and posed a risk Xander couldn’t take.

But we weren’t allowed to know if this is what Xander was thinking. What we did know with absolute certainty was his rabid hatred of Angel, long before the others felt it, and that he told a deliberate lie to wreak his vengeance, a lie that implicated his best friend.

Why tell such an untruth? Why drag Willow’s name through the dirt like that? Why not simply keep silent about what Willow was attempting to do? The sin of omission is a less heinous one than a deliberate untruth, especially one that casts aspersions on somebody he supposedly cared about, a girl he threatened to kill Buffy over if she got hurt.

We never know. That moment, when Buffy and Willow find out the awful truth of his deception, just slides by without closure or conversation, like so many other things in that execrable final season. That’s because Mr. Whedon was far more interested in dealing with the aftermath of Buffy and Spike’s disgusting psychosexual affair and those boring Potentials (trust me, Buffy wasn’t the only one who had trouble remembering their names). There was no time to spare for the problems of Willow, Xander, Giles, Buffy’s core team for the better part of five years.

But why dwell on Xander’s lie when there was a bigger issue at hand: the disposal of Anyanka after she killed a whole lot of frat boys. When Angelus was on the rampage, it was “faster, pussycat, kill, kill”. But Anyanka was once more on the warpath and Xander wanted Buffy to put on the brakes! Well, wasn’t he the flaming little hypocrite?

So people like Anya, Faith and Andrew got free passes for behaving like jerks and killers but Xander dumped all over Angel because, hey, he was the soulless Scourge of Europe, right? Maybe Buffy couldn’t think straight about Angel. But, frankly, neither could Xander and his disgust over Angel deeply colored his behavior towards other people in his life.

In a way, I can understand why Mr. Whedon wouldn’t have Buffy confront Xander about his transgressions. There was no way Buffy could ever have forgiven him if she dwelled on them and that would have caused a serious breach in the group, long before the awful seventh season.

I hate him also! I've always been a fan of Xander when I was just watching an episode here and there but I just finished season two and I HATE him. I want to like him so bad but he is such an ass!!

I totally agree with you. Zander got on my nerves. That's
Why I always got a secret pleasure when he got beat up.
Like when Angel was faking being evil again to trick Faith.
And, he punched Zander in his face. I still laugh at that
Scene. When Zander lost his eye to Caleb. I didn't feel
Bad for him at all.
I never understood why Buffy didn't just punch him in his
Face sometimes.

He was my favorite character. There are times when he is and times where I want to slap him silly. I agree with you, like when the Buffy and Spike thing happened and he got all mad at Buffy because she slept with Spike, someone he hate. She told him that it was her private life and he got all up in her face basically saying that she should have told him. Sure maybe she should have mentioned that she had been sleeping with Spike but Xander made it about him, like she slept with him and I don't know. But he just acted all selfish at that point. Then Xander telling Riley, who I also really don't like, about her private life with Angel, as if it were any of Riley's business to begin with, it wasn't even Xander's. His girlfriend was a 1000 year old demon who killed a lot of innocent people through out her times as a demon, nearly got married to her but yet he yells as Buffy over dating two vampires. I also found Xander to be kind of a bully, like he was unpopular in school, he didn't have a lot of friends, he did cheat on his first girlfriend with his best friend, but regardless, he was a bully. Willow I think was the best out of all the them, while she had her moments, she didn't lecture Buffy or get in her sex life as it wasn't her business just like it wasn't Xander's. So, yeah, I see your point.

Xander was always jealous he hated Angel and Spike because they vampires and had better chances with Buffy then he did lol