Buffy the Vampire Slayer

 

Normal Again: Season 6, Episode 17, Written by: Diego Gutierrez

                 This episode begins, as many do, with Buffy Summers fighting a demon in a park. The demon stabs Buffy with a needle-like skewer and suddenly Buffy is in a mental hospital getting a shot.  She comes to, dazed and confused, Buffy is in the park and the demon is nowhere to be seen. Buffy walks home but she keeps having flashes of herself in a mental hospital. Later, Buffy is talking with her friends when she collapses. She then finds herself back in the hospital with a doctor telling her that everything is a lie, that she has been in this hospital for six years. Buffy’s parents then come in, which confuses her even more because Buffy’s father left years ago and her mother had recently died. The doctor tells Buffy’s parents that Buffy has been schizophrenic for six years and that she has made up this world of demons to cope with the fact she is insane. When Buffy awakens she is back in her house. She is telling her friends everything that has happened in the hospital, and she reveals that, in the past, she actually spent a short time in a mental hospital, and is wondering if she did ever leave. Buffy’s friends try to convince her that being home is reality and that the belief that she was back in the hospital, is the result of the demon stab, but Buffy just will not believe them. Later, her friends make an antidote that will fix all this, but Buffy refuses to take it because she chooses the other world over the real one; Buffy then tells the doctor in the other world that she wants to be rid of this world of demons. The doctor says that Buffy needs to destroy everything that draws her to that world, including friends and family. Buffy then ties up her friends and family, who are desperately trying to convince her that this is reality now. Buffy’s mother, in the other hospital world, tells Buffy that she can fight the harshness of the world because she has those who love her.  Buffy applies this advice to the real world and unties her friends, to show that she choose reality over the hospital.

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Comments:

-  This is a fabulous episode because it shows Buffy’s inner conflicts with the world around her and that she knows if anyone else spoke of demons they would most likely be in a mental hospital.

-The fact that this episode is called Normal Again implies that Buffy knows how messed up her life really is and that, deep down, she wants a normal life. It shows the basic challenge Buffy faces – the choice between being “normal” or being in a hellish reality with those she loves.

 -  The fact that Buffy’s parents are both at the hospital is a big reason why Buffy wants to stay in the hospital world.  Her father was absent most of her life and so her mother was even more important to her.  Her mother’s sudden death has left Buffy feeling alone.  A part of her would give anything to have her parents back.