Deep Fried Chicken Parts: Life Serial as a template for Season 6 of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer

by Melissa

Mutant Enemy have always made a policy of foreshadowing important developments within a season through innocuous-seeming comments in earlier episodes. Season 4's Restless laid a template for future developments in the series. In this essay, I will demonstrate that the fifth episode of Season 6, Life Serial, sets out the template for the season so far, and extrapolate key themes for the remaining episodes of the season.

The episode opens with Buffy's return from her meeting with Angel. She bears deep-fried chicken parts to share with her Scooby friends. The significance of the chicken is profound and extends throughout the season.

There is an old (and not very good) joke about an Englishman and a cannibal, that is surely known to ME. The Englishman takes a bite of an unidentified meat and says, "Tastes like chicken". The cannibal - eating the same dish - comments that it "tastes like Englishman". The chicken is therefore a symbol of Buffy's resurrection, and of the human flesh that sustains the vampires that her calling dictates that she slay. Her returning from the meeting bearing chicken symbolises both an end (in that the chicken is dead) to the relationship and a beginning (in that she has been resurrected) to her relationship with another consumer of humans: Spike, the chipped vampire. Of course, Buffy did not choose to purchase chips with her chicken. Is this foreshadowing of things to come? Surely it is no coincidence.

The next segments of the episode revolve around the three nerds' attempts to test Buffy (or possibly to test themselves). The first of these occurs when Buffy attempts to return to school with Willow and Tara; the Nerds plant a time-distorting device on her. As if the time distortion was not enough, Buffy's first class revolves around the "Social Construction of Reality": stressing the externality and independence of social reality from individuals... (and, conversely, that each individual participates fully in the construction of his or her own life.). "Because social phenomena don’t have unproblematic objective existences, they have to be interpreted and given meanings by those who encounter them."; as I will demonstrate, the lessons Mike teaches are relevant to the entire season. It is worth noting, also, that Willow fails to recognise or act on Buffy's feelings of alienation and even stupidity.

When college doesn't work out so well, Buffy tries on Xander's life, moving to work at the construction site. Although physically strong enough to do the job, a nerd-engineered demon attack puts paid to Buffy's hopes of "Diving right into the work force. Being the breadwinner. Building things with my hands." Buffy destroys the site and Xander's colleagues deny having seen the attack, leaving him no choice but to fire her ass.

Duly fired, Buffy lines up for her next job - at the Magic Box. This after having told Xander that "Gaaah. I’d rather be dead. Again." than work Retail. This time, a time-loop sees Buffy repeatedly looking for a Mummy Hand in the Magic Box basement, until she finally finds a solution - avoid the problem entirely (sound familiar?)

The final life Buffy "tries on" is Spike's - after drinking in his crypt, they travel to a demon bar. Buffy is attempting to escape the realities of her life by submerging herself in Spike's world. We saw a demon bar in Bargaining - we know what they're like - but in this tame place four placid demons peacefully play poker for kittens. On leaving, Buffy and Spike are confronted once again by the nerds. Buffy is too drunk to realise what they are, falling over after pounding Jonathan-disguised-as-demon, and Spike takes her home and delivers her to Giles. After turning herself inside out, Buffy accepts a cheque (a pay-off?) from Giles to tide her over. A problem avoided is a problem ... avoided (as they might say if they thought of it).

So how does this relate to the other episodes of the season?

The Season opener, the two-part Bargaining, represents Buffy's resurrection. As I have established, this is represented in the opening scene of Life Serial by the chicken.

AfterLife relects Mike's words from the sociology tutorial: "'Objective' measurement is actually a social construction on the subjective meanings ascribed by those doing the measuring...". Willow's assumption that Buffy was in a Hell dimenson coloured her reasoning and was influenced by her desire to do the magic that would bring Buffy back. The Scoobs lacked any objectivity in the question of Buffy's resurrection, and the consequences that Spike points to seem likely to return to bite them.

Flooded sets up many of the season's plot arcs. The Buffy-as-chicken analogy is raised once more, this time as they discuss their master plan: "Shrink rays. Trained gorillas. Workable prototype jetpacks and chicks, chicks, chicks." It should come as no surprise to the reader that "Hypnotise Buffy" is later added to the list: it is signalled by the reference to poultry.

In All the Way, Buffy once again plays the role of the Shop-Girl, helping Anya to run the Magic Box on a busy Hallowe'en. And again, we see a Life Serial reprise, when Buffy runs off to join Spike in his crypt instead of staying with her friends, celebrating and enjoying their lives.

Once More, With Feeling, largely a stand-alone episode, shows us Buffy's need to have Spike at her back, to protect her, just as he helped her to stand in her intoxicated state during Life Serial. "One day he'll be a real boy," Spike says of the wooden puppet-man who he brings to the Magic Box, once more pointing to the fact that there may be multiple realities (as Mike refers to in his lesson). Willow, too, points this out: "I've got a feeling some kid is dreaming and we're all stuck inside his wacky Broadway nightmare" - where does the show end and the creator begin? Are we, the viewers, all stuck in the same nightmare, or are we perhaps part of a greater scripted effort?

Tabula Rasa shows us Buffy trying on another life; that of Joan, the Martyr. As she denies the meaning of her kiss with Spike, rewriting history (Mummy Hand, anyone?), she is also confronted with a re-run of it. Buffy is blowing hot and cold, as though some mystical reset button had been activated.

Smashed is another episode that shows us the present is simply echoes of the past. Each scene is a mirror of a previous episode, although many are slightly changed. Mike told his class that "All knowledge of the world is a human construction rather than a mirror of some independent reality..." - this is fortunate, as a vampire has no reflection and therefore cannot be a mirror. Or perhaps we should say that a vampire *is* a mirror - for a mirror can only reflect, and has no objective self to be reflected. In the final scenes, Buffy plays a game of "chicken" with Spike, and manages somehow to both lose and win simultaneously.

Wrecked shows us primarily that addiction is a really good excuse for a lack of self-control. Of course, Buffy's lack of self-control stems from her fear (she is chicken, remember) of facing up to her own actions.

Gone is another episode that centers around Buffy's need for emotional isolation: invisible, she feels freed from the responsibilities that her life must necessarily entail. Just as in Life Serial she borrowed her friends' lives to make them her own, in this episode she hides from her own life.

INVISIBLE BUFFY: Free of rules and reports ... free of this life.
SPIKE: Free of life? Got another name for that. Dead.
INVISIBLE BUFFY: Why do you always have to ... (pouty) I thought we were having fun.

Buffy is too chicken [geddit?] to face her own life and solve her own problems; and if she is not careful, she may return to her death (as the deep-fried chicken in the bucket).

In Double Meat Palace, we see the real reason why the chicken Buffy brought was deep-fried. While the burgers symbolise Buffy and Spike (the chicken and the meat), the deep fryer symbolises her inability to progress beyond the mundane; to bring meaning to her existence. Instead, understandably reluctant to experiment on the job front, she sticks to the world of fast food and of fat so thick it creates plugs in your ears - plugs so thick that you miss your friends' and even your sister's calls for help. Of course, these are the same friends who let her down individually in Life Serial and en masse both in this episode (who lets their thoroughly broke friend buy them dinner, for starters?).

Dead Things reprises key themes from Life Serial: Buffy looks to Spike to make things better, even while she treats him appallingly. We have progressed to the Demon Bar part of the episode; and Clem's arrival in Older and Far Away confirms this. Buffy's scene with Tara at the end of Dead Things - showing that she has sunk as low as she can - parallells her vomiting into the toilet at the end of Life Serial, just before she is rewarded with Giles' cheque. Of course, her only reward at this point is a molecular sunburn; and what she needs (and Tara tries to provide) is Chicken Soup for her Soul. By Older and Far Away, however, all her valuable lessons appear to have been lost; the Mummy Hand Effect has reared its ugly head again (except of course that a hand doesn't have a head to rear).

Riley and Sam Finn's arrival in As You Were is smoke and mirrors, just like the Magic Bone Demon in Life Serial. Buffy's attempt to dump Spike appears also to be the trigger for a magical reset; they are doomed (as with the Mummy Hand) to replay this scenario until Buffy gets it right; until those two crazy kids can make their love work.

Hells Bells is (rightly) Xander and Anya's episode, with less focus on Buffy. Her scene with Spike shows that she may be starting to get it right, and the fans can have hope that they may eventually progress beyond their kiss/kick relationship. But it is up to Buffy, the chicken. And which came first, the chicken (kiss) or the egg (kick) -- and which will we be left with at the end of the season?

The last episode aired to date, Normal Again, symbolises a return to Mike's classroom. The writers suggest that Buffy's life could all have been a delusion; that it is her perception (and only her perception) that has created the world which she inhabits.

During this highly experiential season, the audience have sometimes felt as though they shared the hangover Buffy must have had after Life Serial (another sign of her empathy with Spike of the headache-inspiring chip). The constant changes in characterisation; the events that are never referred to again; all are explained by the Life Serial templatist approach.

So what does this tell us about the remaining episodes of the season?

Clearly, the deep-fried chicken shows that Spike is to be de-chipped. Buffy (the chicken) is served without chips, but with her crispy vampire coating intact. Expect to see Spike offer her his leather duster - the one taken from Nikki the 1970s Slayer - as a token of his esteem and regard, and of his sincere regret for past eevildoing.

Although a strict following of the Life Serial template suggests that the "reset button" theory could be true - that the season could be undone with a wish or a spell - I am (possibly heretically) not a strict templatist. It seems clear to me, for the reasons outlined above, that the task which Buffy must complete in order to break the cycle is to relate openly and honestly with Spike, the meat in her burger.

- 01-Apr-2002

More Essays

E-mail feedback to webmaster

[ RETURN TO APRIL FOOLS DAY INDEX ]