During a patrol through the cemetery, Xander shows Buffy a silver necklace he intends to give to Cordelia the following night for Valentine's Day.
Giles warns Buffy that Angelus becomes particularly vicious around Valentine's Day, and suggests she stays indoors for the following nights.
Xander is heartbroken, and blackmails Amy into casting a love spell upon Cordelia so he can take revenge by breaking up with her.
She begins to act similarly to Buffy, so Xander rushes home and finds Willow in his bed, where she attempts to seduce him.
The love-crazed mob breaks through the door and attacks Xander and Cordelia just as Giles and Amy manage to lift the spell.
Essayist Theresa Basile compares the episode's complex treatment of the dangerous nature of love spells with the classic Shakespeare comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream.
"[3] Vox ranked this episode at #68 out of the 144 Buffy episodes, calling it "a marvel of tonal balancing: The Xander A-plot is slapstick and funny with a core of heartbreak, and the subplot of Angel musing on the perfect Valentine's Day gift for Buffy keeps the menace and subtle horror of the season's central plot running through the background.
Club praised the acting of "Nicholas Brendon, who gets to do slow-burns, double-takes and head-palms — all the classic business of the comic actor — throughout the episode, while also getting to display how deeply wounding this whole Cordelia situation is."
He admired the subplot with Angel, "who lurks around the edges of the episode like a malicious presence, reminding Buffy and the audience at home that he could strike at any time.
It's topical, funny, silly, romantic, clever, horrifying, and has a great moral for all of us: being yourself is more important than pleasing the masses.
And now, this long character arc has come to fruition in a terrifying and hilarious way," though the episode is difficult, being "inherently about one man violating the consent of EVERY single woman in the entirety of Sunnydale, possibly the world... [T]he show takes what was awful about Xander in the past (his creepy opinions of attractive women) and then actively uses that against him.