October 24
2010
Buffy vs. her very mind itself!
A look at the season 6 episode 'Normal Again'.
Simon
| BtVS
| 00:20 CET
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34 comments total
| tags: normal again, buffy
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For me, Normal Again is the Out of Gas of BtVS.
(edited for misspelling "Sarah")
[ edited by Amrita on 2010-10-24 17:51 ]
Amrita | October 24, 05:19 CET
jaxn | October 24, 06:09 CET
embers | October 24, 06:09 CET
Taaroko | October 24, 07:16 CET
jclemens | October 24, 07:32 CET
Playing devil's advocated here, but a spinoff series doesn't negate the Normal Again-verse. There's plenty of places and people in Sunndydale who Buffy would've never encountered if she was in that psychiatric hospital. In the Normalverse, everything in Sunnydale is a figment of Buffy's imagination--she's never met these imaginary people nor been to a town called Sunnydale. So there's no reason to think Buffy couldn't have dreamed up Angel's series also.
What was that show that ended with the character having dreamed the entire series which by default made all the shows he appeared on in-character products of his hallucinations?
[ edited by Emmie on 2010-10-24 16:42 ]
Emmie | October 24, 07:41 CET
[ edited by Jaymii on 2010-10-24 17:01 ]
Jaymii | October 24, 08:01 CET
I hate everyone.
Waterkeeper511 | October 24, 08:17 CET
I admire Joss and M.E. for doing it. It's wonderfully written and beautifully acted but don't be messing with my sense of wonder smacking me with a dose of insanity. I was really shaken when I first saw it but now I just skip it. I've seen it more than once but it's definitely on my let's not go there again list.
biffsbabe | October 24, 08:42 CET
"I'm sure I was a really big help, though, with all the slaying and everything. I was in so much trouble. I was a big mess."
It just seemed so prescient for the events of Normal Again, and I found myself toying with the idea that even from the beginning, she was actually still in that hospital.
Amrita | October 24, 09:08 CET
They really don't make television like they used too, Buffy was, and always will be, unbeatable.
Winchester | October 24, 09:36 CET
This is the funniest thing I've heard all week. =D
Matt7325 | October 24, 09:39 CET
Gene Hunt would disagree.
Simon | October 24, 09:58 CET
However I had to admit that the 'Angel' series never figured one way or another in my discomfort with 'Normal Again'. I would never avoid rewatching 'Normal Again', but it is always like picking at a scab when I do: I'm trying to see if it is still as painful as it was before or if I have in some way healed.
embers | October 24, 10:20 CET
Another famous character said it best (and he should know): We all go a little mad sometimes. Thus the sense of relief when Buffy's choice is to come back to us, and not stay in the weird, dark place.
Tonya J | October 24, 10:22 CET
I hate everyone.
That's the line that jumped out at me, too, but partially because I'm a guilty party. It took me years to get past the title and give it a go. I'm not sure if Sarah's looks were a factor, but probably; I definitely remember thinking that David Boreanaz looked like the standard TV pretty boy and I didn't want a piece of that.
The problem of course is that everyone on TV is pretty, so until you get to know the characters, everyone on TV looks the same. From the title and Sarah's face alone, you have no hint that this is anything more than a sexy woman in a campy fantasy setting.
Regarding the spin-off as evidence against the series being a hallucination, I haven't seen St. Elsewhere, but this does bring another kinda special TV moment to mind. Hurley in Lost spends an episode believing that the island and everything in it is a figment of his imagination. His pseudo-girlfriend talks him out of it by recounting an event that happened in another episode and quizzing him on the details. When he can't remember, she says "That's because it happened to me," and goes on to tell him that she's insulted by the idea that she can't have a life outside of Hurley's hallucinations.
Naturally, he could have been imagining all that too, but we know he made the better choice by accepting the validity of someone else's experience. Likewise, Angel and everything that happened to the other characters in Buffy doesn't provide proof that Buffy isn't insane, but it does provide a better option.
...Hurley's a guy on TV who isn't pretty. I think it was easier for me to get into Lost than Buffy. Huh.
Kairos | October 24, 10:48 CET
ShanshuBugaboo | October 24, 11:37 CET
RaisedByMongrels | October 24, 12:11 CET
It actually would have made me appreciate the finale season that much more by invalidating it in a sense. Which is kinda weird to say, I s'pose.
But no more weird than loving how Roseanne ended, which turned the whole series in a book. (I still get annoyed when people don't seem to understand it wasn't just a few seasons - it was the entire series.)
Of course, St. Elsewhere has ruined television single-handedly by incorporating most of it into Tommy's fragile little mind.
Then again, Dallas ruined Knots Landing too. The mindscape is a dangerous territory for television it seems.
;)
didifallasleep | October 24, 14:40 CET
I don't know if I buy RaisedBy Mongrels idea that both realities are real, but I do like that idea better than a total rejection of the reality of schizophrenic Buffy. I've always loved that final scene for that reason. By making it hard, but not impossible, for the viewer to go back to Heroic Buffy, it felt like another layer was added to the already considerable layering of the show. Unlike St Elsewhere or Rosanne, which alienated a lot of viewers by coming out firmly for one interpretation, this was tv for those who can hold more than one way of looking at things in mind simultaneously.
Besides, I was into the show for its ever-deepening characterization, wit and emotional power, more than for the depiction of feminist role-modeling and female agency, which are admittedly weakened here. The addition of a possible tragic reading of both Buffy and Angel outweighs for me the hit to the ideology, even though I support it.
shambleau | October 24, 15:22 CET
That is exactly how I feel about "The Body" instead - I don't skip it, but each time I go to watch it I think, "Oh, well, it can't possibly hurt as much as the first time - I probably won't even tear up." And then I am wrong.
Re: "Normal Again" - like RaisedbyMongrels, I always thought of it as an alternate universe or timeline to which the Glarghk Guhl Kashma'nik demony juice - and her own alienation from her life in her Slayer timeline - opened the doorway and pushed her into. Her challenge was to not get sucked up into the comforting-but-wrong timeline, and to accept/get back to her own.
(That said, I never quite believed in Crazy Buffyland, because the shrink was sorta unbelievably elaborate about Buffy's diagnosis and delusions both right in front of her and to her face. Not likely, I thought. Still, I love this episode...)
About the article... the author kinda had me with some of the insanity-as-hopeless-disbelief-in-one's-power-and-agency stuff, but lost me when he discussed his belief that this episode had some kind of "supercharged" impact on a post-Tara's-death "fan revolt" - and that the analogy of Willow's magick "addiction" to actual drug addiction was also somehow pertinent to fandom really seemed like a stretch.
"The final episodes of season six, dealing as they do with hitting bottom, draw a link between the temporary madness of addiction, fandom, and theater."
Didn't really see all of that in there. Nor did I at all buy the comparison of a psychotic break to the mild difficulty of having to defend the worth and meaning of one's attachment to BtVS to disbelieving friends or colleagues.
"The battle for your understanding of the series in the face of light entertainment like ER and Friends was pretty much a constant pressure that Buffy's psychotic break provided an apt metaphor for."
Yeah. Not sure it was apt, exactly, more like a s-t-r-e-t-c-h... but nonetheless, his examination overall of "Normal Again" provided some good food for thought.
ETF: typos, natch
[ edited by QuoterGal on 2010-10-25 17:55 ]
QuoterGal | October 24, 16:34 CET
treenie | October 24, 17:17 CET
I used to wonder that. Now I know we are all figments of our imagination. A realisation that is simultaneously trivial,
and deeply powerful.
hence | October 24, 22:40 CET
What this article may have missed is that Joyce tells Buffy to be strong--and Buffy does. She chooses to go back to the world where she has to stand up for herself, without help from mom. It may not be real, but it's the mature, powerful, and responsible choice... which gives it deep significance even if it's delusional.
I've always found it quite striking, however, that Buffy pulls herself together about the same time as Tara arrives. Tara has been a surrogate mom to Dawn, of course, but she's also served Buffy in that capacity in S6--she's the emotional core in a lot of ways, filling the gap left by Joyce's death and Giles' departure. There's a reason Tara's death kicks things over into the final arc of S6; she's been holding things together.
ManEnoughToAdmitIt | October 25, 08:09 CET
Edit to also compliment Simon on the thread title; the exclamation point is a nice touch.
[ edited by LKW on 2010-10-25 17:50 ]
LKW | October 25, 08:48 CET
But I did find this in the article very interesting:
I had never thought of that; it's a neat spin on the episode.
Also, I have to totally disagree with this:
Because, in my opinion, the fan revolt surrounding Tara's death was caused by Tara's death. If Tara hadn't died, the fans wouldn't have revolted.
menomegirl | October 25, 08:48 CET
Agreed. I think it's the hardest thing she does in Seasons 5-6, which have no shortage of hardship. It's a tough episode for me to watch. That moment where she chooses to leave Joyce's support behind is both painful and very powerful.
I like the idea that Buffy regains authority over her story and life at this point in S6 very much. You could look at it as the beginning of the end for her depressed period. It starts here and she completes it when she fights with Dawn in the season finale.
Sunfire | October 25, 09:13 CET
ManEnoughToAdmitIt | October 25, 12:56 CET
embers | October 25, 13:09 CET
Matt7325 | October 25, 14:26 CET
Once, just to be annoying, I suggested whenever a SLayer is called in the Buyffyvserse it sucks the sdanity out of a girl in teh Asylumverse; which would vioalte Joss's girl-power themes, of coruse
DaddyCatALSO | October 25, 16:50 CET
Do you mean Newhart? I wonder if this was part of the inspiration for the Buffy episode 'Normal Again'?
[ edited by Sunder on 2010-10-26 07:02 ]
[ edited by Sunder on 2010-10-26 07:02 ]
Sunder | October 25, 21:57 CET
Powerful, yes. Because Joyce is the enemy. Buffy should have killed her a long time ago.
Henious thing to say, n'est-ce pas? That's because your brain knows more about that than you do.
hence | October 25, 23:48 CET
Sunfire | October 26, 06:51 CET