Buffy Normal Again Fan Theory Smile

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E17NormalAgain

"I know y'all're afraid. I know the world feels like a hard place, sometimes. But you've got people who dearest you. Your dad and I, we have all the religion in the world in you lot. We'll always be with yous. Yous have got a world of forcefulness in your eye. I know you do. You just have to find information technology once more. Believe in yourself."

—Joyce Summers

"For the terminal six years, she'southward been in an undifferentiated type of schizophrenia."

Directed past Rick Rosenthal

Written by Diego Gutierrez, Rebecca Kirshner, & Steven South De Knight

Buffy searches newly rented houses for the Trio's hideout. The 3 find her on surveillance equipment only she gets besides close. While they hibernate in the basement, Andrew calls on a demon which attacks Buffy and starts a fight. The demon grabs Buffy and stabs her with a needle-similar part of its torso.

In a mental hospital, Buffy cries out as she's held by two orderlies and stabbed with a needle. Outside the Trio'due south house, Buffy wakes up confused and lonely and walks dwelling.

Willow prepares to talk to Tara but sees her requite her female friend a quick kiss; Willow leaves, wounded. Tara notices her exit simply information technology'south too belatedly to take hold of her. At the Doublemeat Palace, Buffy works like a zombie whilst having brief flashes to the infirmary where the md tells her information technology's time for the drugs. Willow and Buffy talk about Xander's disappearing human action and Willow's try to talk to Tara. Xander surprises the girls past showing up at the business firm. He wonders most Anya and how to rebuild his relationship with her. The girls tell him that Anya left boondocks a few days ago and that everything will be fine in fourth dimension.

Buffy runs into Spike at the cemetery and they talk about the events at the wedding that didn't happen. A confrontation begins between Spike and Xander and as Willow tries to interruption it up, Buffy becomes weak and collapses. Xander manages a one punch to Spike who focuses on Buffy. At the mental infirmary, a md tells Buffy that she'due south been hallucincating for the by six years and everything she knows nigh Sunnydale is imitation. She's shaken and confused, specially when both of her parents walk in earlier Buffy falls back into Sunnydale world.

Willow and Xander go Buffy home and she tells them almost the mental infirmary and what the physician said. While Willow organises a plan to enquiry, Buffy returns to the hospital where the medico explains to her parents that she's been catatonic from schizophernia for the past six years and her life equally a Slayer has been elaborately created.

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• All Just a Dream: It's suggested that the entire series is Buffy's hallucination and she's living in a mental institution and has power fantasies of saving the world with her imaginary friends. The ending leaves room for interpretation as to which existence (Buffy'southward life as a vampire slayer, or her life as a mental patient) is really All Just a Dream. Joss Whedon has outright stated that either i is a definite possibility.
• Alternate Reality Episode: Buffy, under the effects of a demon's venom, flashes between the normal Buffyverse, and an alternating universe where she had spent the last 7 years catatonic in an insane asylum in Los Angeles, where they accept been trying to treat her for her insane delusions about fighting vampires. The episode makes no attempt whatever to clarify which, if either, of Buffy's perceived realities are the real thing.
• Ambiguous State of affairs: Buffy is injected with a poison that makes her hallucinate... or is it the other mode around? According to a psychiatrist, who may or may not exist a existent person, she is in fact getting better — she has been sick all along, and now she'southward finally waking up from years of catatonic schizophrenia. So, the whole series is either This Is Reality or a mad All Simply a Dream with a dash of The Schizophrenia Conspiracy. In the end, Buffy chooses her life in Sunnydale over her life in the mental establishment, but the catastrophe leaves it ambiguous whether or not the world she settled for is the real ane. Word of God doesn't assistance, either — executive producer and writer Marti Noxon says the mental ward was a hallucination, merely Joss Whedon has said that either estimation is only as legitimate every bit the other.
• And You Were There: Buffy imagines her managing director at the Doublemeat Palace is a doctor in the mental infirmary.

  Female Doctor: Come on, information technology's fourth dimension for your drugs.
  [Flash back to the Double Meat Palace.]
  Buffy: (dislocated) What?
  Lorraine: I said, if I didn't know any improve, I'd think you were on drugs.
  Buffy: (dislocated) Okay. Good.

• Anywhere only Their Lips: Willow is working herself upward to ask ex-girlfriend Tara out for coffee and lesbian love when she sees her greet-and-kiss another daughter. From her viewpoint it's difficult to come across how intimate the buss was, just she runs off anyway.
• Badass Disuse (In-Universe)

  Fasten: It might explain some things, this all beingness just in that brain of hers. Yeah, whips upward some chip in my head, make me soft, fall in love with her. Then, turn me into her soddin' Sex Slave.

• Basement-Dweller: The Trio, though this time it's because they're hiding from Buffy in an empty house.
• Bond One-Liner:

  Xander: I altered his reality!

• Bound and Duct-Taped: Willow and Dawn get this from a crazed Buffy.
• Suspension Them by Talking: Spike delivers this lecture to Buffy. Becomes a "Prissy Chore Breaking It, Anti-Hero" moment when it causes Buffy to cascade away her antidote.
• Continuity Nod: Buffy looks at a family unit photo of her parents with herself every bit a child — the aforementioned child actress used in Season five's "The Weight of the World."
• Cuckoo Nest: A perfect example. The episode ends leaving open the possibility that the unabridged series was in fact the hallucination of an insane Buffy Summers.
  • Notably, instead of Buffy being encouraged to kill herself, she was encouraged to impale all her friends, and came very close to doing so. They got over information technology astonishingly quickly, though. Stuff similar that happens in Sunnydale.
  • The description of the episode on the DVD instance suggests that it was an alternate reality in which they really are hallucinations, but they're perfectly real in their reality. Give-and-take of Joss, notwithstanding, seems to suggest that he finds it perfectly acceptable if fans conclude that the entire serial was the fevered dream of a schizophrenic Buffy.
• Cutting Back to Reality: Several times during the episode, there's a cut between Buffy'southward hallucination and reality — but which cuts are that and which are the other fashion around are left to the audience to decide.
• Description Cut: Willow says that Xander has assistance finding the demon; cut to Xander and Spike stalking through the woods. The doctor's description of this years Big Bad equally "just 3 pathetic piddling men who like playing with toys" to the Trio in their lair.
• Despair Voice communication:

  Buffy: (very quietly) I experience so lost.

  Willow: I know. Y'all're confused. It's, information technology's that crazy juice within you.

  Buffy: Information technology'southward more than that. (Willow frowning) Even before the demon ... I've been so discrete.

  Willow: We've ... all been kind of slumming.

  Buffy: Every twenty-four hours I try to ... snap out of it. Figure out why I'm similar that.

• Unimposing Drink Disposal: Willow asks Fasten to make sure Buffy drinks the mug of yummy antitoxin goodness, but Spike gets into an argument with Buffy and leaves, giving her a chance to cascade information technology away.
• Downer Ending: Depends on which reality the viewer interprets to be real. In the Sunnydale universe, Buffy overcomes her delusions and saves her friends. Buffy in the aviary, yet, goes into permanent catatonia, to the destruction of her parents.
• Dramatically Missing the Bespeak: Buffy tells Fasten, "You're non part of my world" because vampires aren't existent. Bold she's referring to him no longer beingness her boyfriend, Spike goes off on a bluster instead of ensuring Buffy takes her medicine.
• Easily Forgiven: Buffy nearly kills her friends and trivial sis considering the doc in her (possible) hallucination says she needs to get rid of them to go back to normal. She changes her mind at the final second, kills the demon she was almost to feed them to, and begs their forgiveness. They give information technology almost immediately.
• Education Through Pyrotechnics: Willow mentions that her previous attempts at making the antidote "went boom twice" earlier she got it right.
• Elseworlds: If yous believe the theory that the mental ward was actually a Parallel Universe.
• The Ending Changes Everything: The Trio tries to convince Buffy that her life as a vampire slayer is delusional, and she is really a patient in a mental hospital. The episode ends on Buffy in the Mental Institution going catatonic. (Joss Whedon claimed this episode was ambiguous, and the show snaps back in the adjacent episode.)
• Foreshadowing: For "Entropy" — Spike threatens to tell the Scoobies about their affair if Buffy doesn't exercise so.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Buffy hits Xander with one, then drags him to the basement where he and Willow and Dawn tin can be eaten by the Monster of the Week.
• Group Hug: Xander gets a hug threesome when he returns home.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Buffy changes into the Black Leather Jacket Of Ass-Kicking while searching for the Trio, but not the Red Leather Pants of Death — she'southward not quite her old self yet.
• Homoerotic Subtext:
  • The Argumentative Sexual Tension betwixt Xander and Spike is lampshaded in a Deleted Scene where James Marsters gives Nicholas Brendon a mock kiss correct subsequently calling him a "pathetic poof" in their graveyard fight.
  • Buffy is once again fed up with work.

  Buffy: I could wrestle naked in grease for a living and still exist cleaner than subsequently a shift at the Doublemeat.

• A House Divided: The Trio are starting to fray.
• I Only Desire to Be Normal: Function of the reason Buffy most chooses the other reality (if that's what it is); she'd go back to being a normal girl with no demons to fight, no trauma, and parents that are neither absent-minded nor dead.
• "I Know You lot're in In that location Somewhere" Fight: Dawn tries this, but Buffy is as well far gone by that stage.
• Leaning on the 4th Wall: Plenty of this.

  Doctor: Buffy, you lot used to create these grand villains to battle against, and at present what is it? But ordinary students you went to high school with. No gods or monsters ... simply 3 pathetic piffling men who like playing with toys.

• "Leave Your Quest" Test: Buffy gets poisoned past a demon, and suddenly finds herself in a mental institution, with her worried parents (both alive and together) hoping that she might come up out of her prolonged psychosis. She'due south told that being a Slayer and everything that's been involved (including all her friends) was just a prolonged hallucination, and all she has to do to come back to reality is let go of information technology...past killing her friends in the hallucination. In the end, she decided to be an unhappy hero who MIGHT be in a hallucination, versus being a happy person of no consequence in what also might be a hallucination.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Played With. Unremarkably, finding oneself in a mental establishment is not anyone'southward idea of "paradise" — only it might as well be, in contrast to what all Buffy had to fence with at that bespeak in the serial. Dawn even accuses Buffy of not caring about her — when information technology's revealed that Buffy's parents are still together and alive, but Dawn doesn't be. To be certain, the institution seems similar a decent enough place — albeit with the doctors beingness a bit amoral and unprofessional (They practically encourage Buffy to kill her friends).
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: For nigh of the episode, it seems every bit if the mental institution is a hallucination brought on past the demon'southward venom...until the concluding scene, where institutionalized Buffy lapses into permanent catatonia. It's ambiguous whether or non Sunnydale or the mental infirmary are the real world, and Joss Whedon deliberately designed the episode then that information technology could exist i or the other.
• Mind Screw: Buffy is poisoned by a hallucinogen-producing demon and is torn between ii realities: being a Slayer and being an insane girl in an asylum, with parents who honey her and are trying to make her sane again with the aid of a psychiatrist. Only then, when the episode ends, it does and then with an image of Buffy in her normal-crazy-girl reality, not every bit Slayer Girl, leaving you with the impression that the unabridged show, including the afterward seasons, are all a product of an insane girl's overactive imagination unless y'all bear in mind that Buffy hasn't taken the antitoxin notwithstanding as of the final scene and this moment could just represent her choosing not to respond to the hallucinations. Joss Whedon said he considers the series to be really happening, but put that in just for fun, and if people want they can consider the whole series to exist the delusions of Buffy. Which would also make the entire Affections series part of that hallucination, also.
• The Nicknamer: Xander calls Fasten "Willie Wannabite", and Buffy "Sane Daughter" — right before she clonks him with a frying pan.
• No Mere Windmill: Buffy reveals that her parents had her sent to a mental clinic for 2 weeks after she start told them about seeing vampires.
• OOC Is Serious Concern: When Anya doesn't open The Magic Box for a long fourth dimension later Xander left her, he is genuinely scared.
• Or Was It a Dream?: Since the final affair we meet is the insane asylum where Buffy had spent much of the episode "hallucinating" that she was a patient, accompanied by a md pronouncing that she'south lapsed dorsum into catatonia, information technology's left to the viewer whether the previous half dozen seasons were real, or a psychotic hallucination. Bear in heed, still, that Buffy has still not nevertheless taken the antidote equally of this final scene. And that no real-life psychiatrist would call up it was a expert idea to encourage a mental patient to impale their imaginary friends. Joss Whedon personally believes that the events of the series are existent.
• Out-of-Genre Feel: The scene where Psycho!Buffy stalks her sis through their dwelling house is reminiscent of a Slasher Movie.
• Person as Verb: Jonathan says he's "going Jack Torrence" cooped up in the basement.
• Psycho Psychologist: A competent therapist in existent life would nearly certainly not encourage a patient to kill their imaginary friends, which serves every bit a large indication that the aviary reality is a hallucination caused past the demon'southward venom.
• Retcon: Buffy is revealed to take been briefly institutionalized when she showtime learned virtually vampires, which makes Joyce's Weirdness Censor in the first couple of seasons rather implausible. The common fan explanation is that this is part of the timeline that was altered by Dawn's creation. Another possibility is that it's merely a side issue of the demon's venom, since information technology's never referenced again after this episode and Dawn never confirmed in the story. The not-canon (simply canonically plausible) comic interquels that cover the time betwixt The Movie and Flavor i show she actually was institutionalized.
• Rousing Voice communication: Joyce gives 1 to Buffy, that ironically has the reverse effect of what she intended. The fact that her Sunnydale existence is so full of emotional traumas and bug for her and her friends, compared to the asylum where she has no Slayer responsibilities, Joyce is still alive and her parents are still together, convinces Buffy that Sunnydale must be the real globe and she needs to summon the strength to face it over again.
• Maxim As well Much: Spike vents most how his Badass Disuse led to Buffy using him as a sex toy. Fortunately Xander thinks it'due south just some stupid Spike fantasy. Between this and what he walked in on in "Gone", Xander may be in deprival.
• Schrödinger's Butterfly: Is Buffy the Slayer dreaming she's insane? Is she insane dreaming she'southward the Slayer? Are both true? GOD DAMN You lot JOSS.
• Shout-Out: When the Trio are planning a heist Andrew says, "I notwithstanding call back nosotros need eight more than guys" and Warren replies, "I should never take let you run across that picture show."
• Shout-Out to Shakespeare: Xander quotes Mark Antony's eulogy in Julius Caesar.
• Blast Cut: From the demon injecting Buffy to Buffy beingness injected in the mental infirmary.
• Staircase Tumble: Tara's Big Damn Heroes moment is stopped past Buffy tripping her up from beneath the staircase.
• Summon Magic: How Andrew summons the demon — by playing some kind of big flute.
• Surrogate Soliloquy: Willow rehearsing request Tara out.

  Willow: "Hello, Tara. Would you like to leave with me for coffee, nutrient, kisses and gay love?"

• Teens Are Brusque: Buffy notes that she should be taller than her 'little' sister.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Spike and Xander capturing the demon.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Spike and Xander work out their frustrations over their contempo relationship cock-ups on each other.
• That Came Out Wrong:

  Buffy: Some kind of gross, waxy demon-thing poked me.

  Xander: And when y'all say poke...

  Buffy: In the arm.

• Thousand-Grand Stare

  Buffy: (vacantly) I'k okay, Dawn.
  Dawn: The, uh, k-g stare really helps sell that.

• Through the Optics of Madness: A demon stabs Buffy with a weapon that is a function of it. Said weapon is also poisonous and causes brilliant hallucination. Buffy believes she is in an asylum beingness treated for her delusion that she is the Slayer. After 6 years of watching the bear witness, we the audition automatically assume that the Sunnydale scenes are real and the asylum scenes are mirage until the final reveal, which has ane terminal "hallucination" that she's gone catatonic to cast doubt in the viewer's mind.
• Tranquillizer Dart: The anti-Oz rifle makes a reappearance. Instant Sedation is averted — the Glarghk Guhl Kashma'nik demon takes several darts, plus Xander and Spike bashing abroad at it, earlier it's subdued.
• Twisted Echo Cut

  Willow: Dawnie, you tin can help me enquiry. We'll hop on-line, check all the—

  [Smash Cut to Buffy in the asylum. A medico is talking to Buffy's parents.]

  Doctor: —possibilities for a full recovery, but we have to proceed charily.

• The Unpronounceable

  Spike: Oh, balls! Yous didn't say the matter was a Glarghk Guhl Kashma'nik.

  Xander: That'southward 'cause I tin't say Glarma— (demon hits him).

• Written-In Absence: Xander asks if anyone has seen Anya at the start of the episode. The others respond she took off after the wedding.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E17NormalAgain

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