Reviewed by Sanguine

So, she's having the wiggins is she? None of us are real? Bloody self-centred if you ask me. Spike, Normal Again

Since last year, Buffy has been preoccupied with what is "real." Are Spike's feelings for her real? Is her relationship with him real? Is Dawn real (the episode The Real Me implied the question by the title)? And now, the most profound and unsettling question of all has been posed.

Is any of it real?

This question is one that philosophers have been grappling with for centuries. How can we know what is real when we each experience the world through our own subjectivity? For Descartes, and other rationalists, the capacity to think proves existence (the famous cogito ergo sum). For Locke, who believed in our ability to comprehend the properties of objects around us, the mind is a blank state, or a tabula rasa (sound familiar?). Our experiences in the world teach us everything: how to have a relationship, our identity, etc. Berkeley, more skeptical about our ability to know truth, would have appreciated this week's episode, Normal Again, written by the promising newcomer, Diego Gutierrez. Berkeley argued that the mind has no independent means of verification for what we perceive. For material idealists like Berkeley, knowledge of material objects (the world around us) is impossible, as we only have access to mental representations of these objects, not the thing itself.

Of course, Kant refuted these theories, but that's another story . . .

The story at hand, Buffy's story, begins like many others we have seen before. She's tracking down the latest bad guys, trying to find the Troika's lair. And she almost does it, too. She finds the house that they're occupying, but the Nerds of Doom are one step ahead of the Slayer. They spy her through the window and take pre-emptive action. Andrew summons a demon with an unpronounceable name to poison the Slayer. After a vicious fight, Buffy is wounded. The demon's syringe-like appendage jabs into her arm and . . .

Suddenly Buffy is being jabbed with an actual syringe. She is in a mental hospital.

Throughout the episode, Buffy flashes back and forth between the world in Sunnydale and the world of the asylum. One moment she's at the Doublemeat Palace. The next, she's being told by a nurse to take her drugs. One moment, she's witnessing a fight between Xander and Spike. The next, she's being told that Sunnydale isn't real, that her friends are all figments of her imagination, part of a grand schizophrenic delusion, and that she's been in a mental hospital for six years. Most shockingly of all, her mother is alive, her parents are still together, and they desperately want their daughter back. They want to take her home, and take care of her. They want to absolve her of her burden.

In careful tones, the kindly doctor explains the nature of Buffy's delusion. Her delusion, is, of course, the television show itself:

"Together they face grand overblown conflicts against an assortment of monsters, both imaginary and rooted in actual myth. Every time we think we're getting through to her, more fanciful enemies magically appear . . . Buffy inserted Dawn into her delusion, actually rewriting the entire history of it to accommodate a need for a familial bond.

Buffy, but that created inconsistencies, didn't it? Your sister, your friends, all of those people you created in Sunnydale, they aren't as comforting as they once were, are they? They're coming apart. Buffy, you used to create these grand villains to battle against and now what is it? Just ordinary students you went to high school with--no gods or monsters. Just three pathetic little men who like playing with toys."

The doctor makes a plausible case. In fact, Buffy's situation--her belief in the "truth" of a fantasy world that does not exist--is very similar to our situation as viewers. Whedon has made these characters seem very "real". We share their hopes, their fears. When they screw up, we lament. When they triumph, we rejoice. We believe in the "truth" of this world, and now we learn that this "truth" may have just been a construct. But of course, it always was a construct. It was always a television show. Life in Sunnydale is, quite literally, a show, and we all have played a part, viewing it, enjoying it, speculating about where the narrative might take us, writing our own versions of the future, our own alternative realities for the characters created by Whedon.

Which brings us to another series of questions. Is the asylum more real than Sunnydale? Is it possible that both worlds are real?

According to the Buffyverse cosmology, alternative universes and dimensions exist. The doctor tells Buffy that she had a period of lucidity this past summer, corresponding to her "death" in Sunnydale. Is it possible that when Buffy dove into the portal, she actually was transported to this other dimension--a dimension where all her needs were met? She was with her parents, secure, safe, finished. When Buffy's friends (Willow, Xander, Tara--Spike and Dawn were, of course, both excluded) pulled her back in, her life in Sunnydale seemed hard and violent. Everything was difficult. And, most of all, she didn't want to be there. She wanted to go back to her childhood, go back to the asylum world where everything was easy. When the demon gave her the hallucinogenic drug, the boundary between the two realities blurred, and Buffy had the opportunity to choose between them: a choice she didn't have when she was initially resurrected.

To support this theory, let's examine the moments when Buffy reverts to her asylum world. Invariably, they are moments of great stress and pain. The asylum world, is, for Buffy, a way of avoiding her feelings, avoiding the truth about herself.

The initial flash to the asylum world occurs when the demon first stabs her. The shock of attack prompts Buffy to seek refuge. The next time the line between the two realities blurs is when she's working at the Doublemeat Palace--a job she loathes but feels forced to do.

Most frequently, however, Buffy's flight from Sunnydale occurs when she's interacting with Spike or Dawn.

The first scene with Spike occurs right after Xander's reappearance. Xander describes his feelings about the loss of Anya: "And ever since [I rejected Anya at the wedding], I've had this painful hole inside." The camera focuses on a rather sad-looking Buffy. "And I'm the idiot that dug it out. I screwed up real bad."

Buffy replies, "Hey, we all screw up."

And immediately we cut to Spike, walking through the cemetery. Does this imply that Buffy is missing Spike? That she made a mistake when she dumped him? Or perhaps she made a mistake by sleeping with him in the first place, using him for sex?

In any case, Buffy is back to her bitca self when she runs into her former lover in the cemetery. After treating him with kindness and respect in As You Were and Hell's Bells, she's unfortunately back to her old, demeaning tricks. After insulting Spike, she does settle into a rather comfortable chat about the wedding that wasn't. Spike takes Anya's side, commenting, "Yeah, well, some people can't see a good thing when they've got it." He's right--where Xander and Anya are concerned. And perhaps on some level he's right about him and Buffy. Their relationship didn't need to be horribly dysfunctional.

Willow and Xander catch Buffy chatting with Spike, and immediately Xander tells Spike to run along. Xander's jealousy is palpable, his hostility irrational. After all, he and Anya invited the guy to their wedding, and now Spike's Public Enemy Number One? Xander ain't the king of consistency. Spike rises to the bait and critiques Xander's bad behaviour, calling him the "King of the Big Exit."

Ouch.

Xander, of course, is furious. So is Spike. "Let's not listen to Spike. Might get a bit of truth on you." Spike has always been very perceptive, good at analysing other people's psyches. But Xander doesn't want to hear the truth. He punches "Willie Wanna Bite" and Buffy collapses.

The conflict between her friend and her erstwhile lover has prompted her escape to the asylum world--a world where her loving parents are just waiting to take care of her.

Buffy's next escape is also Spike/Xander related. She tells Willow, Xander, and Dawn about her hallucinations. Buffy talks about the demon that poked her, and Xander, his sublimated desire for Buffy rising to the surface, asks, "And when you say poke?"

"In the arm," Buffy replies, exasperated. But in fact, she has been "poked" by a demon. Naturally her mind makes that connection, and once again she feels the need to escape. She's back in the asylum world. This time the doctor is offering a cure, and explains away her whole existence in Sunnydale.

Her impulse to escape from Dawn occurs when Dawn, concerned about her sister, goes to Buffy's bedroom to check on her. Buffy turns the conversation to Dawn's stealing and her grades and says that she has to do better. Suddenly, Buffy's back in the asylum world. Her mother is telling her that she doesn't have a sister--that Dawn doesn't exist. Buffy, considering the alternative, would like to believe her.

Willow and Xander (with Spike's help) procure the appendage from the demon, so they can cure Buffy. Willow successfully brews the antidote and leaves it with Buffy, telling Spike to make sure she drinks it.

Spike considers his Slayer and asks her if she's alright. Buffy replies, "You need to leave me alone. You're not a part of my life." She would like this to be true. That would mean that she wouldn't have to deal with him--deal with her feelings for this thing, this man she should hate.

"Fine then." Spike replies. As if to confirm the veracity of Buffy's statement, when Spike tries to enter Buffy's room, he's stopped by a beam of sunlight. Again, Spike has momentarily forgotten that he's a vampire and that vamp+sunlight=self-immolation. Somewhat daunted, he continues: "But I hope you don't think this antidote's gonna rid you of that nasty martyrdom."

And Spike is right. Buffy does have a martyr complex. Remember, in Tabula Rasa, she chose the name Joan--a reference to one of the most famous (possibly schizophrenic) female martyrs of all time--Joan of Arc.

Spike continues his astute analysis: "See I've figured it out, love. You can't help yourself. You're not drawn to the dark like I thought. You're addicted to the misery. It's why you won't tell your pals about us. Might actually have to be happy if you did. They'd understand you and help you, God forbid, or drive you out where you could finally be in the dark with me. Either way you'd be better off for it, but you're too twisted for that. Let yourself live, already. And stop with the bloody hero trip for a second. We'll all be the better for it." Then he pauses, and expertly directs his parting shot. "You either tell your friends about us, or I will."

Spike is partially right here. Buffy does seem addicted to misery and if she accepted her capacity to love a soulless vampire, then she might have been happy with Spike. But that last bit is the sticking point for her. If she were to admit her feelings for him, then her whole status as a hero would come into question. How could she be a hero and still be sleeping with the enemy?

But is Spike really her enemy? And if he isn't, what does that mean about the nature of vampires? Can she trust what she's been told? Experience has told her that vampires are evil. But her experience with Spike has also made her question her received notions. Spike hasn't done anything explicitly evil for a long time (although he's done things that are amoral and he was tempted to bite the girl in the alley).

Spike then leaves the Slayer to make her decision. He hopes she will choose life, but he realises that it must be her choice. And Buffy decides to escape again. She can't accept what Spike is telling her. She can't accept him. Gray Spike doesn't belong in her world--the world of Sunnydale, Season One, where everything was black and white and the bad guys were bad and the good guys were good. But now everything is falling apart. Buffy tells her parents and doctor, "I don't want to go back there. I want to be healthy again."

The hardest thing to do in this world is to live in it.

So, Buffy decides to rid herself of her delusions--Willow, Xander, Dawn, and later Tara. Instead of merely ignoring them--a strategy used by schizophrenic John Nash--Buffy takes a more proactive approach, attacking them and tying them up in the basement with a hungry demon. The conversation preceding Xander's capture, and Dawn's pleas for mercy, are both interesting in terms of the theory that the asylum is an alternate reality that Buffy is using as a refuge.

Xander spies Buffy in the kitchen. He approaches her, and the conversation turns to Spike. Whilst capturing the demon with Xander, Spike had let slip that Buffy was using him as a "sex slave." Xander is obviously disturbed by this, but he can't believe it's true. He tells Buffy, "Talk about losing touch. I hate to say it, but I almost feel sorry for the guy. Almost. The things that poor guy was saying. I mean, I get it. Ya know, been a part of the Buffy obsession . . ."

So, Xander finally admits that he's "a part of the Buffy obsession." That explains his consistently hostile behaviour towards Spike. He knows something is going on, and he's terribly jealous. But Xander's honesty is rewarded by a frying pan to the face. Buffy knows that Spike was telling Xander the truth. And she doesn't want to deal with it. Any of it.

When Buffy goes after Dawn, her sister entreats her to look at her. "You're my sister," she tells Buffy, "I need you and love you. Somewhere inside you must know that's real."

But Buffy doesn't want it to be real. She doesn't want Dawn to need her. She doesn't want her love. She wants to be in a normal world, without demons. She wants to be taken care of. She replies to her sister's protestations in a caustic tone. "Sure it is. So what's more real? A sick girl in an institution, or some kind of super girl, chosen to fight demons and save the world? It's ridiculous."

And it is, really. But sometimes life is ridiculous. Sometimes being different is good.

Buffy continues, and her train of thought inevitably stops at Spikesville, "A girl who sleeps with a vampire she hates? Yeah, that makes sense."

No, it doesn't make sense. Our actions don't always have a rational explanation behind them. And Buffy doesn't hate Spike. That's the problem.

After depositing her friends in the basement, she reverts to the asylum world. The doctor encourages her and her mother tells her to take her time. The doctor then advises, "Make it as easy on yourself as possible. There's nothing wrong with that."

So Buffy decides to make it easy, to destroy the reality she doesn't want, to kill her friends so she won't have to face them or their neuroses.

But why doesn't she kill Spike? He's the biggest thorn in her side, and yet somehow he's exempted from her plan. Interesting.

Asylum World Joyce encourages her daughter. "I believe in you . . . Be strong, baby, OK? I know you're afraid. I know the world feels like a hard place sometimes. But you've got people who love you . . . You've got a world of strength in your heart. I know you do. You just have to find it again. Believe in yourself."

These are the words Buffy needs to hear. She can cope with being a hero. She can be strong. She can accept the love of the people around her. She tells her mother goodbye, and leaves the realm of childhood behind.

"I'm sorry. There's no reaction at all. I'm afraid we lost her."

But Sunnydale has gotten her back. We hope.