Normal Again

"Normal Again" is the 17th episode of season 6 of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The Trio summon a demon whose hallucinogenic venom makes Buffy believe that her implausible and nightmarish life as vampire slayer has actually been her own elaborate hallucination as a mental patient, catatonic in a hospital for the past six years.

Plot[]

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Buffy searches newly rented houses for the Trio's hideout, and the three discover her on their surveillance equipment when she gets a bit too close. While they hide in the basement, Andrew Wells calls on a demon that attacks Buffy and starts a fight. The demon grabs Buffy and stabs her with a needle-like skewer from his forearm (similar to the Polgara in season 4). Buffy flashes to a scene in a mental hospital where as a patient she cries out as she is held by two orderlies and stabbed with a needle. Buffy wakes up alone outside the Trio's house with no demon to be seen; hurt and confused, she walks home.

Willow prepares herself for talking to Tara, but spots Tara greeting another woman with a quick kiss (on the cheek) and Willow walks away, wounded, just before Tara sees her. While working at the Doublemeat Palace, Buffy experiences visions of her at the mental hospital, where a doctor administers her drugs. Willow and Buffy talk about Xander's disappearance after his aborted wedding and Willow's attempt to talk to Tara. Xander surprises the girls by showing up at the house, wanting to talk to Anya. The girls tell him Anya left a few days ago and try to reassure him that everything will work out in time.

Buffy runs into Spike at the cemetery and they talk about the aborted wedding. A confrontation begins between Xander and Spike, and as Willow tries to break it up, Buffy gets weak and collapses. Xander manages one punch to Spike before his attention is drawn by Buffy. Back in the "reality" of the mental hospital, a doctor informs Buffy that she has been hallucinating her entire Sunnydale life in the hospital for the past six years. She is shaken and confused — especially when both of her parents appear together, with Hank having abandoned his family years earlier and Joyce having subsequently died in the Sunnydale world. Buffy falls back into the Sunnydale world, finding herself surrounded by her concerned friends.

Willow and Xander get Buffy home, and she recounts what she saw and was told at the mental hospital; Dawn is hurt when told she does not exist in Buffy's "ideal" alternate reality. While Willow organizes a plan to research, Buffy falls back to the "reality" of the mental hospital, where her doctor explains to her parents that she has been catatonic from schizophrenia for all of the past six years – except for the brief period of lucidity Buffy dimly remembers as her time in "heaven" – and that her life as the Slayer has been an elaborate improvised hallucination she has constructed for herself in her mind, explaining what Buffy realizes is its extreme improbability and illogicality compared to the "mental patient" scenario.

In Sunnydale, Warren Mears and Andrew return to their hideaway with boxes after leaving Jonathan Levinson alone. Leery of their secretive behavior, Jonathan suspiciously questions the contents of the boxes before trying to leave the house himself. Warren does not agree with that idea and convinces Jonathan to stay in the basement.

Willow shows Buffy a picture of the demon that stung her: a Glarghk Guhl Kashmas'nik. Willow tries to comfort her friend but Buffy confesses to Willow that, in the beginning of her Slayer life, she told her parents about vampires and was put in a clinic for her supposed insanity. Buffy wonders if she is still there and therefore Sunnydale really does not exist, but Willow assures her that is not true. Xander and Spike patrol for the demon that hurt Buffy; Spike recognizes it and they capture it.

Dawn comforts Buffy, who dazedly notes that Dawn has been misbehaving, and the problems need to be dealt with before "coming to" in the hospital, where her mother reminds Buffy that Dawn does not exist. Dawn realizes through Buffy's babbling that she is considering this, and rushes from the room. Xander and Spike manhandle the demon into Buffy's basement chaining it while Willow breaks off its stinger to make the antidote, which she must synthesize without using magic.

Later, Willow presents the antidote to Buffy in a mug and leaves her to drink it as Spike delivers a monologue urging her to abandon the life that has grown so hellish for her and choose peace with him. This misfires, convincing Buffy to reject the antidote (which she pours unnoticed in the trash) and with it, the "delusion" of being a Vampire Slayer. In the hospital, Buffy tells the doctor and her parents that she wants to be healthy and rid of thoughts about Sunnydale. The doctor tells her that she has to do what is necessary to destroy the elements that draw her back there, like her family and friends, in order to truly be healthy.

Willow and Buffy are talking in the kitchen. Xander arrives at the house and finds Buffy alone in the kitchen. He talks to her about Spike, but she knocks him out cold and drags him into the basement, where Willow is already bound and tape gagged. Buffy finds Dawn upstairs where she is packing to stay at her friend Janice's house. Buffy chases her through the house as Dawn pleads that she is real. Dawn is bound and tape gagged in the basement with the others and with the chained demon.

In the mental hospital, the doctors urge Buffy to make her task easy on herself, so in Sunnydale Buffy unchains the demon in the basement to kill her friends for her. Xander pleads with Buffy to free his hands, but she retreats under the stairs. Meanwhile, Tara shows up at the house and finds everyone in the basement. She uses magic to free Willow and Dawn and attack the demon, but the demon is too strong for them; Buffy grabs Tara's feet through the stairs, making her fall and knocking her unconscious. At the hospital, Joyce encourages Buffy to fight against the Sunnydale reality, telling her that she has the strength to fight against the harshness of the world and must fight it because she has people who love her. Buffy, inspired by her mother's mis-chosen words, takes her advice to "believe in" herself literally, thanking her mother and saying goodbye to her as she chooses a life of suffering in the nightmarish Sunnydale reality over the much less arduous world represented by the mental hospital.

Buffy wakes up in Sunnydale to save her friends. She kills the demon and then reconciles with her friends, urging them to quickly make her the antidote while she stays on guard against relapsing again. Back at the hospital, Buffy is still sitting in her corner of the room, now completely unresponsive as the doctor shines light into her pupils. He tells Buffy's heartbroken parents that she is "gone"; Buffy has succumbed to her illness.

Production details[]

According to Joss Whedon, this episode was the "ultimate postmodern look at the concept of a writer writing a show", as it questioned fantastical or inconsistent elements of the show "the way any normal person would". Whedon added that the episode is intentionally left open to interpretation; the actual cause of the delusions, either the poison or Buffy's return to "reality", is not made explicitly clear. "If the viewer wants," Whedon says, "the entire series takes place in the mind of a lunatic locked up somewhere in Los Angeles... and that crazy person is me." Although, "Personally, I think it really happened."^[1]

Producer/writer Marti Noxon commented; "It was a fake out; we were having some fun with the audience. I don't want to denigrate what the whole show has meant. If Buffy's not empowered then what are we saying? If Buffy's crazy, then there is no girl power; it's all fantasy. And really the whole show stands for the opposite of that, which is that it isn't just a fantasy. There should be girls that can kick ass. So I'd be really sad if we made that statement at the end. That's why it's just somewhere in the middle saying "Wouldn't this be funny if ...?" or "Wouldn't this be sad or tragic if...?" In my feeling, and I believe in Joss' as well that's not the reality of the show. It was just a tease and a trick".^[2]

Reception[]

The Futon Critic named it the 35th best episode of 2002.^[3]

References[]

External links[]

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• "Normal Again" at IMDb