I agree that the "twist" in Ted undermined what could have been one of the most frightening episodes ever (a human man using his powerful position to mistreat Buffy, who can't fight back by dint of his being a human and so is subjected to the abuses of male privilege? what could be more scary than that?).

I remember being really freaked out by how awful Ted was and how nobody believed Buffy, then just going "oh" when it turned out he was a robot drugging people. It was like the writers didn't think they could "go that far" and decided to soften the concept by introducing supernatural elements.