The METAmorphisis of Buffy and that sly fox, Joss Whedon

Season 6 of Buffy has never been my favorite season. She works in a fast food restaurant, every one is super angsty, and the villains aren’t exactly creatures to be feared. They’re nerds. Aren’t we supposed to root for the nerds? At least, that’s what my library of 80’s movies has taught me. So when I watched Normal Again, well, again, I experienced a feeling I have only felt one other time in this class. I felt bamboozled.

Now, everyone remembers that moment in Northanger Abbey discussions when we realized that that saucy little minx Jane Austen had turned us into our own worst enemy and (gasp!) taught us something about how to read a novel. As I had already seen Normal Again, I wasn’t expecting to be so easily duped by Joss and his sly ways. Yet, here I am now, on a Diet Coke high, cursing my naivetee. Let me explain myself.

The episode highlights all I hate about the 6^th season. Everything, as the psychologist tells Buffy, is coming apart in both the series and Buffy’s life. Xander and Anya have split, Willow and Tara have split and Dawn, well, Dawn. Nuff said. Buffy is no longer the spritely cheerleader we expect her to be, facing giant supernatural evils with a happy quip and returning home to her mother and a pat on the back from Giles. Instead she faces a sad, lonely, shockingly, well… normal existence. While the doctor and her parents in Buffy’s mental hospital universe (thus forth to be referred to as BMHU) criticize the Buffyverse, pointing out the ridiculousness of the fantastical world, we as the audience are forced to reflect on our own adherence to the fantasy. We too, have given in to the fantastical world, suspended our disbelief so much that when Buffy faces normal problems (The death of her mother, a sister who shoplifts, the end of relationships) we are upset, even angry at how the fantasy has been shattered. And why is that? Because we, like Buffy, now see the supernatural as normal, and the normal as an oddity. The idea of villains who are, like our run-of-the-mill murderers, humans with souls who cannot be so easily and ethically killed, upsets us even more.

So Joss, in his infinite wisdom, has created a season with a very unhappy Buffy. And a very unhappy Becca (notice how I somehow reverted to the royal we in that last paragraph? What was with that? Way too much BBC over break.). But by doing so, he has forced us to take a step back from the supernatural and realize that underneath all the gothic lies the most important element: the human element. In Normal Again, Joss Whedon creates a meta-critique of the series as a whole through the lens of an alternate reality. By causing Buffy to question her own reality and the normalcy of her life, we become advocates for the reality we know: the supernatural gothic, unreal world of the Buffyverse. So my discomfort with the season is the same discomfort of Buffy in a world that does not adhere to the normality of the past 5 seasons. Ergo, I am supposed to feel this way... like I've been spoon-fed the Buffy philosophy without even realizing it.

And that is how Joss and BtVS did me in. What a tricky man. Damn him and his bamboozling.