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Every season of Buffy has an episode which the writers use as a vehicle to advance the mythos; to give us information about the buffyverse and the characters place in it that we would not have seen otherwise. Typically, these episodes are metaphorical or dreamlike or magical in nature. Restless is the primary example, but Once More With Feeling, Nightmares, The Wish, and Superstar all serve a similar purpose. By stepping out of the narrative arc for a moment, the writers can give us a new perspective on what we are watching. I believe that "Normal Again" may be one of the most important of these episodes.
Normal Again gives us (as so many have mentioned) the cliched storyline of the "This is all in my head" plot. This plotline has been used (to mostly good effect) in so many Twilight-Zone-style shows that there are too many to mention. However, there is a distinction here between these shows and Buffy. These shows are frequently episodic in nature, and it is merely an exercise in "Lady-or-the-tiger" whether the protagonist is hallucinating or not. However, for a show which is deeply plotted and makes a fair effort to maintain forward continuity (witness the comments predicting Dawn's arrival several seasons previous) like Buffy, this question achieves paramount importance.
In analyzing this show, there are two equally valid, and more importantly, equally interesting possibilities: Is Buffy, in fact, mad or not? If Buffy is sane, then Normal Again is an episode (Filler, perhaps?) that shows the depths to which Buffy has sunk. No major modifications to the mythos are needed, and we get intriguing glimpses of characterization. (Buffy was institutionalized? No wonder she hates hospitals...) However, if Buffy is mad, then this episode is pivotal to understanding what will come. We must recontextualize every one of our assumptions. This is not a bad thing, but it may prove difficult and confusing. In this essay, I will attempt to explore the three possibilities and their ramifications. (yes, three. This essay is all about challenging boundaries and assumptions....)
Possibility A: Buffy is sane; the section entitled "One thing left to lose".
Choice 2: Buffy is Mad; the section entitled "Up the Rabbit hole, and what Buffy found there"
Option Omega: Non-Binary Buffy; the section entitled "Joss is my Shepherd, I shall not want...."
and naturally, my personal favorite,
IV: Eponymous Other; the section entitled "Eponymous Other".
"One Thing Left to Lose"
If Buffy is sane, a quick recap of the episode goes like this: While on routine patrol, Buffy is attacked by a monster unleashed upon her by the Lame Gunman. It injects her with a poison that causes her to hallucinate that she is in fact in a mental Institution. Because of her intense depression, she begins to believe this, seeking an escape from her painful and disappointing existence currently. These actions cause her to lash out at her closest friends, placing them in mortal danger. However, Buffy is able to summon the inner strength needed to rescue her freinds and end the hallucinations. The end of the episode is her final "trip" under the influence of the poison, displaying in ironic fashion both her strength and love for her friends.
The question we must answer is this: Why would Buffy allow this to progress so far? Surely her life is not so fragile that this could unbalance her so quickly and so deeply? The answer to this question is the answer to a question posed in Season two. (OK, I am the only one who posed it, but that is immaterial. Consider it retroactively posed; the monks edited history again....) When Buffy goes to kill Angel, Whistler tells her (her retreating back, actually) that she has "One thing left to lose". At the time, all assumed that the one thing would be Angel. Later, she tells Angel, that after everything has been taken from her, what remains is "me". Let us examine what Buffy has lost, and we can begin to answer why she would rather live in a Mental Ward...
In season one, she lost her life. Normally, this would be kinda the last item on a list like this, but Buffy is a special girl. Yeah, she was kinda traumatized, but a little bone-crushing cured that up fine... Didn't it? Buffy's reaction to life-losing: Ignores it until forced to deal.
In season two, she lost her innocence and her home, as well as Angel. Her reaction: Runs away.
Season three, she loses Angel forever, along with her hopes of ever being a normal girl. Reaction: Ignores it, has inappropriately timed sex with Parker.
In season four, she loses her connection with her friends, her mother, and her world view. Reaction: Actually attempts to restore them, but this is clearly only to set us up for-
Season five, where she loses her mother, and finally commits suicide. Reaction: Suicide, whether noble or not, whether neccesary or not, is still running away.
And in season six, she loses even death itself. She retreats deep within herself, wondering at her inability to be touched by her own life.
So, we must ask ourselves.... What one thing does Buffy have to lose? She has been stripped of everything, slowly, never really regaining it. Until finally, in Normal Again, she loses it all: No longer was she "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer." She was just "Buffy". This is the conflict she faces again and again, and is the primary theme of the show: Buffy's _desire_ is to be a normal girl, but her _duty_ is to be the slayer. Each time she is faced with this conflict, she has chosen her duty, but at increasingly higher personal cost to herself. In this episode, she finally pays the highest one of all. You might think that dying at the hands of the master, killing Angel, or jumping from the tower was the highest price possible, but no. In Normal Again, Buffy chooses "Slayer" instead of "me". She abnegates all possibility of Buffy the non-vampire slayer. Every choice, every conflict, every price paid led to this moment: Buffy denies her Self, in favor of the Slayer. Previously, she had struggled to maintain balance, to be "Buffy, _and_ the Vampire Slayer". This is no longer possible, and she has known it since Bargaining, with her feelings of "coming back wrong" (We knew it too. What did Willow summon? "The warrior of the people". The slayer. Not Buffy.) Buffy is dead, and the slayer walks again, wondering why she feels distant from her friends. Everything the Spirit of the First Slayer told her was true. How long will it be before Buffy needs someone to speak for her?
So, the vision that the demon poison presented her was temptation of the most powerful sort: Become Buffy. Make the choice she has never made, take the path she has never trod. Choose what she desires over what her duty is. This is why Buffy goes so far. This is how low she has sunk. Season one, two, three or four Buffy would never have even considered it. Season five Buffy did (Weight of the World), but Willow brought her back from it. Buffy's decision to fight the demon was her noblest moment yet, and her most phyrric victory. The closing moments of the episode shows what she feels and thinks as the demon poison works upon her again. A Buffy, lost to the world, as if dead. Only the slayer remains.
"Up the Rabbit Hole, and what Buffy found there"
On the other hand, (this is such a large other hand, it ought to be, "on the other person", or perhaps set of people.) Buffy could be stark, raving loony. There are many compelling arguments for this, most of which are made by the doctor. We won't go in to those, however. Instead, let us examine what it means if the show is in fact only a fantasy inside Buffy Summer's head. No grand adventures, no sweeping victories and defeats, only stories made up by a sad, sick girl to hide from a scary world in. (Like the alliteration? I put little bits like that in just for _you_, dear gentle reader.)
If Buffy is nuts, then her world is peopled by figments of her imagination. Everyone is, in a sense, a reflection of Buffy (Malkovitch? Malkovitch malkovitch malkovitch.) This, of course, dovetails nicely with plot elements from "Primeval" and "Restless". Each of Buffy's friends represent elements of herself, elements she likes and wishes to become closer to. Conversely, each "demon" is an aspect of herself that she despises, and wishes to destroy.
We are all comfortable with the "physical demon substituting for metaphorical demon" style, and it makes for powerful storytelling. (I still think that nothing beats the "Highschool is Hell" metaphor). However, "Normal Again" adds another layer to this. These are not archetypal demons anymore, representing the fears of all mankind, these are personal demons. Each demon represents a specific and carefully delineated aspect of Buffy.
This interpretation is very aesthetically pleasing. It could very well be what Joss Whedon has been planning all along, on that great Wall Chart in the Sky. Buffy's story (the show) has always been one of mythic adolescent angst, tales of overblown hyperbole. (Just as Angel (the show) is about the melancholic mid-twenties, with his search for self and redemption). And now, in the show itself, we have the reason for such emotional melodrama! In a marvel of self reference, we learn that all of this takes place in Buffy's fervered brain, thus completing the circle. Buffy's stories are about Buffy, for Buffy, containing reflections of Buffy.... ("I think, therefore Buffy is...." Oz always knew.)
Each character represents a piece of Buffy. Blending all aspects of the characters together gives the composite Buffy, what she will be like when she (if she!) ever manages to reintegrate herself and function normally again. (See that? That was a pun for my gentle readers! Hoho, I am so witty!) The character of Willow is the character that Buffy has given the most detail and careful background to, and has shown the most growth. That, and the very close emotional bond that Buffy has with her, means that Willow (the character) is probably a image of what Buffy wishes she was like, her preferred vision of herself. Xander and Giles represent stable and reassuring depictions of masculinity, reminding Buffy that not all males are evil and terrible. That is why they are essentially unchanging, their characters never shifting much. New facets may be revealed, but Buffy's emotional comfort depends upon them remaining stable. Dawn represents the alien and the strange inside her. Dawn is like Buffy; in a sense _is_ Buffy, but remains perpetually outside her understanding. Entirely uncoincidentally, Dawn is the same age Buffy was, when Buffy entered her fantasy realm. Even though Buffy is willing to die for Dawn and the innocence she represents, she cannot understand her in the framework she has built. Also uncoincidentally, Buffy's mother is essentially unchanged in her world. Joyce, though always clueless and befuddled, truly loved Buffy. One wonders, then, about Hank....
An insane Buffy, paradoxically, offers us hope. Buffy has an expiration date marked on her, as all slayers do. Sooner or later, she will die, and not come back. She has no future except pain, and hurt, and death, and killing. Eventually, this will catch up to her, and the only question is how and when. We, as viewers, know this. Lingering in the back or our minds is the knowledge that the very nature of the buffyverse will not allow her to have a happy ending. The very best that can happen is for Buffy to die saving her friends, and the world. To do otherwise would be a dramatic cop-out. But, we have an out. Buffy can still have a happy ending. The series finale can have Buffy go home to her loving parents. This slices the gordianknot the show has created: Every action Buffy takes, is in essence, futile. She will never close the hellmouth, and save the world for good. The best the scoobies can hope for is to hold on holding on. But if Buffy "wakes up", it does, in effect, close the hell mouth. Her work hasn't been in vain if it is a metaphorical journey to sanity. Buffy _can_ have a happy ending. She can walk into the light without worrying about who she left behind. There is no other way for her to get that happy ending.
"Joss is my Shepherd, I shall not want."
Of course, we must never lose sight of the "Omega option." Perhaps both realities are true? Buffy is simultaneously institutionalized, and the Slayer? Schroedinger's Cat can be both, and is Buffy any less in a box? The Omega Option is the path of faith. Wait and see. Joss has not failed us yet. Perhaps institutionBuffy is still the slayer, too. A slayer dreaming she is a slayer, waiting to wake up to new challenges. Perhaps Joss just threw it out there to comfort us when he kills Buffy. We fans can clamor that it was all just a hallucination. So, just repeat the Omega Option slogan:
I Trust in Joss
I Trust in Joss
I Trust in Joss
And what I tell you three times is true.
"Eponymous Other"
The section, in which, gentle reader, you tell me where I'm wrong. The best bit of all!
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revision_Johanna
[x] Once the shooting script is available, expect editing, revision_ing, and possible outright denial and recanting of the themes presented here.
[This message has been edited by revision_Johanna (edited March 13, 2002).]