Life Serial

by Jerry

Life Serial, episode 5 of season 6, was co-written by David Fury and Jane Espenson. Concerning itself with the aimlessness of the twentysomething without a purpose, it follows Buffy's efforts to rejoin the mainstream of human life after her summer of contentedly pushing up daisies.

Unsure of what she wants to do, but sure (after the events of Flooded) of the need to do something, Buffy returns home from her offscreen meeting with Angel. We get few details (it was 'intense', but it's 'not important, in the past'), but it would appear Angel was the first in what will be a pretty long series of people who can't solve Buffy's problems for her. Giles asks Buffy what she wants to do. She's been thinking about that, but more in terms of a shell game for appeasing her creditors. Giles asks about her long-term plans, and it's clear she has none.

At Willow and Tara's suggestion, Buffy decides to audit some classes at UC Sunnydale, while waiting for the proper time to reapply for next semester. She accompanies Willow to a Sociology class, where we get a discussion of 'Social Constructs of Reality'. The fast moving discussion among the improbably participatory students leaves Buffy's head spinning, but perhaps contains a few nuggets to file away for later episodes. Does reality exist objectively? Or is an individual's perception of it an inherent part of that reality? And if it is, are there as many different realities as there are individuals perceiving those realities? Are these thoughts outtakes from Oz's brain in Earshot? My brain is full now, so I don't have the answer, but I think this may become oddly familiar during Normal Again.

Buffy attempts to move on to an Art History class with Tara, but at this point, she begins to be sidetracked by her not-so-formidable archenemies. Warren, Jonathan, and Andrew (with Warren now pretty clearly the boss of Nerds, Inc.) have decided to conduct a series of tests to explore the Slayer's strengths and weaknesses. What follows is a series of events that showcase Buffy's failed attempts to try on the lives of her friends, and the Nerd-induced failures of those efforts that show up problems with Buffy's current condition.

On the way to class with Tara, Buffy is bumped in the hallway by the unnoticed Warren, who plants some sort of time-disrupting device on her. She tries to talk to Tara, but loses ten or twenty minutes at a time. Soon, the whole campus is whirling around her at breakneck speed, mirroring and exaggerating Buffy's inherent disconnection from everyday life. Ultimately, she finds Warren's 'evil lint', which self-destructs, but her efforts to rejoin the college world have been sidetracked for the moment.

In our next installment, Buffy takes a crack at living in Xander's world, donning a hardhat for an entry-level construction job. This time, her Nerd-related bugaboo is a demon attack, courtesy of Andrew (a reminder of Buffy's lot in life - she can't control when or where the demon world is going to require her attention). It's quickly apparent that there are some worlds not so receptive to diminutive female superheroes, and an all-male construction crew is probably one of those. One worker who seemed fairly friendly turns hostile rather than admit that he needed 'Gidget' to save his life. Xander is politely firm in ejecting Buffy from his work world - he needs to earn a living in a field as Hellmouth-free as possible, and Buffy as a co-worker isn't helping.

After a brief break to appeal to the demographically desirable among us, we return to find Buffy attempting to try on Anya's world with a job at the Magic Box. Not surprisingly, given that Buffy and Anya aren't too close, this is one world she's not too eager to fit into, even before it goes haywire. Go haywire it soon does, though, thanks to a Jonathan-induced time loop, that traps Buffy in a 'Groundhog Day' scenario until she can figure out how to satisfy an especially demanding customer in search of a troublesome Mummy-hand. Whether it was meant to or not, this now resembles Buffy's emotional progress throughout the course of the season, where whenever she seems to suddenly be ready to 'get it', she instead goes back to jail, never passing Go and collecting her two hundred dollars. At least this time, it's funny, complete with Python-esque narration from the bickering Nerds.

After Adventures in Retail comes to an end, we find Buffy in Spike's world, sitting on a coffin, inexpertly slamming down shots, but seeming oddly at ease. Spike is surprised at Buffy's lack of initiative in hunting down the 'demon' that's after her. He thinks he knows the problem - she's not a schoolgirl or a shopgirl, she's a creature of the night, and once she accepts that she'll be okay. Is Spike right? Yes and no. Buffy isn't a normal girl, and she never will be, but she's part of the normal world and can't just reject it. Since Spike shows occasional signs of wanting more than just the darkness himself, he should realize that won't be enough for Buffy. She's not the only one who needs to accept what she really is. At any rate, after some drunken Buffy antics, and Spike cheating at kitten poker, we get Buffy venting the truth about the whole escapade - she wanted Spike to fix her life for her. Spike can't do that, not because he's Spike, but because he's not Buffy.

In our last scene, we get a 'worse-for-wear' Buffy back home with Giles. He tries to reassure her that all will be well, and she can do what needs doing. He gives her what seems to be a large check to tide her over her financial woes (perhaps the back pay she extorted on his behalf in Checkpoint). Buffy grabs onto it like a drowning man to a life preserver. She runs off to tell Dawn, who 'likes it when things get easy'. It's pretty clear Dawn isn't the only one, and Giles knows it.

Life Serial is, first of all, All About Buffy. Willow, Tara, Anya, Xander, and Dawn only appear here to advance Buffy's arc. Giles and Spike are brought along a bit in their own stories, but are still subservient to Buffy's development. The Nerds are agents of change in Buffy's life, although we also get some amusing insight into their existence as well. Buffy is no wiser at the end of the episode than she was at the beginning. But, in addition to a few laughs, we are a bit wiser about the ways that Buffy isn't.

-- Jerry

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