Rewatched BTVS 3x13 “The Zeppo” and it was a lot more charming than I remembered!

I really got a kick out of the running bit of “Xander barging in on the plot” and I think it works for two reasons:

1. The audience understands, halfway through the third season, what a Buffy plot looks like. The beats of “This could be the end of the world” and “Buffy and Angel fight about who is going to sacrifice themself” and “Willow and Giles work together to find a magical solution” are all things that we recognize from other episodes, such as the S1 or S2 finale. The audience can fill in the blanks because we’ve seen enough Buffy episodes already.
2. The show has not abandoned the melodrama. The argument that Angel and Buffy have in this episode closely parallels the one they had in 3x10, which was just three episodes ago. In including this episode, the show is poking fun at itself, but it’s not going to stop having episodes that are sincere and melodramatic in this way.