 Marti Noxon said about the episode Normal Again:
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| Source: | › SFX Year End Collector's Edition, written by Edward Gross |
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| Suggested by: | › Jess |
| Added: | › 17th May 2005 |
| Updated: | › 17th February, 2006 |
| Hits: | › 1177 |
27 Comments about “Marti on Buffy’s hallucinations”
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August 21st, 2005 at 10:08 am
For the record. I loved this episode. I just watched it again and was almost in tears. The idea that Buffy might be imagining this intire series was heart breaking and really believable. A friend once suggested that a way to end the X-files would be to have David DeCovney as a crazy old janitor telling wild stories to high school students. Thats what this episode reminded me of. Quite frankely it would have been a much better ending than the one we got.
August 21st, 2005 at 10:30 am
Sorry cant help it. Its Duchovny.
August 21st, 2005 at 11:06 am
lol i never said i could spell. or use capitol letters apparently
August 21st, 2005 at 11:15 am
Thats ok my boyfriend and I just had a 5 min argument about how to spell imagery and we still do know if its right.
August 21st, 2005 at 6:52 pm
If we take into account the fact that, as someone pointed out elsewhere, Buffy’s past has been completely altered by the insertion of Dawn, this epidoe is quite an interesting commentary on that.
Because the audience is now in the position that Buffy’s in, in a sense. Everything that has happened in the preceding four series is no longer “real”, or at least as real as fiction ever is.
So this is an even more meta metanarrative than it appears at first.
So how many “alternate” versions of the Buffyverse have there been now? I make it five (not including real life!)
p.s. that IS how you spell “imagery”, marvin21st
August 23rd, 2005 at 9:30 am
sorry ment “dont know if it is right” and we eneded up using spellchecker
October 28th, 2005 at 4:24 pm
Other alternate dimensions or whatever: the place underneath Famlily Home in Anne where time went really fast, Land of Trolls, Arashmahar where D’Hoffryn lives, the land with nothing but shrimp.
Angel has a few too like Pylea and Quar’toth.
December 13th, 2005 at 4:43 am
i always wondered about whether or not buffy was making it all up or it was just something about the poison. i’ve decided on the poison. not that i really matters since it is a TV show, but it matters within the show.
andrew summons the demon after warren tells him too. he obviously knew which demon to summon.he had it ready. they also comment on how she’s drooling(heh) so they knew the affects. i think the poison was to make someones nightmare real to them. and if she really was in the mental hospital then this could be one of her fears. or a bad memory expanding or something. forgetting about the nightmares episode of course, but i think she got over that fear. deep down she knows dawn really wasn’t there so she’s not. i think the poison is used to make the person destroy themselves.
this could be a far leap. i do have more examples, i just forgot them.
December 13th, 2005 at 11:00 am
This is one of my favorite all time episodes. These sorts of mind/logic traps and associated symbolism are interesting.
It’s not really dissectible by logic or what happened in past episodes; the sort of deep schitzophrenia a person she was playing would have many different ‘flaws’ and inconsistencies in their artificial created reality. To my mind it’s the kind of episode you have to take on faith and make your own decisions about if she really is just a “sick girl in an institution”; in that sense, I guess you can believe whatever you like.
So, the logical flaws in her recollection or statements could just as easily be attributed to flaws in her self-created version of reality (which they mentioned in the episode) as errors on the part of the folks who wrote the episode.
That’s the nefarious part of this episode I love; you can’t apply logic to a reality invented by a schitzophrenic paranoid person. The realities they construct have flaws; when you point out the flaws, they come up with alternate explanations and new constructs to explain those flaws. It really does make more sense (as she said) that she is just a sick girl in an institution, instead of a vampire fighting superhero.
Taking the potion to my mind was just a symbol of her mind not being ready to cope with ‘reality’ and escaping back into her fantasy.
In my opinion this was a truly wonderful and ‘real’ episode; I love the fantasy world but this was just too compelling to dismiss because a few logic flaws in a schitzophrenic’s self created reality;) the concept was so brilliant it more than made up for any dialogue type issues.
Each to their own though!
PS - If you liked this episode, you should check out “12 Monkeys” and possibly “Memento”
December 13th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
Even if you didn’t like this episode you should watch “memento.” Everyone should watch memento and then read Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis
December 13th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
(…and she likes Martin Amis…why couldn’t I have met mairce BEFORE she got engaged….??)
December 13th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
I find this to be the most disturbing of eps. I get a pit in my stomache whenever I think of it.
Yes, maybe I belong in an institution.
December 13th, 2005 at 6:34 pm
I get a pit in my stomach from it, but only because of my distaste for the episode in general.
December 13th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
It makes me sad and sick to my tummy as well, but I had not seen all of the previous seasons when I first watched it. I like it the first time I saw it just because I wasn’t emotionally invested in the previous 5 seasons.
December 29th, 2005 at 12:08 am
I’ve always thought that Dawn’s creation really didn’t change anything of the past. I never thought of it as an alternate reality either. I just imagine her pretty much being with Joyce most of the time, away from the action (though it’s clear she knew about Buffy’s secrets before Joyce did - She knew all about Angel). So I kinda thought it was all the same, seeing as her arrival didnt particularly change any of the group’s feelings, personalities, or dynamics.
December 29th, 2005 at 2:46 am
Didn’t change anything of the past? Yeah…because life with a sister is NOTHING like life without one. of course it changed things… probably it couldn’t account for a sudden trip to the psych ward, but it definitely changed things. i mean, she may not have had as much graveyard/highschool-library time, but it must have changed things…I mean, that whole coming *coming out* scene must have at least included a part where Joyce tells Dawn to go to her room.
A good comic book that would make, rewriting all the past episodes/seasons but accounting for Dawn’s presence.
December 29th, 2005 at 2:47 am
Isn’t that what the animated series was going to do?
December 29th, 2005 at 2:49 am
I thought so
December 29th, 2005 at 7:55 am
I guess I like the idea that not much was changed because if it were, then the first 4 seasons would be pointless. I can see how Dawn would always be around and would indeed effect things, but I think she must have effected the events and happenings towards the same conclusion that was saw, because of what I said before.
April 30th, 2006 at 10:04 am
SMG’s performance in this episode is nothing short of stellar. She brilliantly captures the terror and uncertainty of psychosis: as anyone who has ever experienced psychosis, or cared for someone in psychosis, can attest to.
This episode is amazing (writing, acting, directing): I don’t watch it often, but when I do, I can barely move.
When Buffy says to Willow, “you never stop coming through” I just lose it. Shortly afterwards, Buffy loses it too.
Definitely in my top 10.
May 1st, 2006 at 9:28 am
Sorry Cardboardy, but I just don’t see how anyone can love this episode. It may just be me, but this episode just seems horrible. I personally think that it’s the worst of the series, as it’s dull, pointless, and simply ridiculous in every way. The only part of the episode that I like is when The Trio shows up, but other than that, it’s terrible. At least this is my opinion on the episode.
May 1st, 2006 at 1:31 pm
No need to apologise for having a different opinion, NotFadeAway… I also love Doublemeat Palace, so go figure!
May 1st, 2006 at 2:13 pm
It’s strange, because as a whole I like Season Six (it had a lot of intereting storylines and good character arcs, as well as some great episodes), but I really didn’t like most of the episodes between “Smashed” (which I simply can’t stand) and “Normal Again” (which I think is the worst episode of the series). However, I just love the beginning and end of the season.
May 1st, 2006 at 8:30 pm
You think Normal Again is worse than “Doublemeat Palace” or “As You Were?” I don’t like “Normal Again” very much, but I think those other two episode are worse.
May 4th, 2006 at 7:16 am
Wow! How did I miss this discussion before? I love Normal Again. At first I wasn’t happy about the writers calling into doubt the “reality” of the entire series, but then I realized that they weren’t. Despite the implications that were made, I was eventually left with the sense that the Slayer’s world was real and the institution was inside Buffy’s head. I can’t even really explain why I feel that.
The best I can figure is that it’s a philosophical question about what is “real.” Let’s assume that reality is based on perception. Buffy has to determine reality based on her perceptions, and we as viewers have to determine reality based on our perception of Buffy’s perceptions. It hurts my head to think about it too deeply, but you could study this episode for a long time and still not grasp the full implications. I think it’s brilliant!
May 4th, 2006 at 11:50 am
OK, well throw this into the mix: the fact of the spin off series Angel. Angel Investigations, and the spectrum of events in the Angel series, exists outside Buffy’s perception/ awareness, but still exists. So Sunnydale, vamps, Slayers, Watchers, demons and other worlds are all as real as fiction ever was.
May 5th, 2006 at 1:25 am
I actually do think that both “Doublemaat Palace” and “As You Were” are better than “Normal Again”, although that certainly doesn’t mean that I think that they’re good (in fact, I agree that they’re both very poor.) It’s not just the idea of everything being fake that I don’t like (although that story is stupid, since the viewer already knows that what the writers aren’t going to say that everything’s fake in the middle of a mediocre epsiode in the middle of the season), but also the fact that I have to believe that the episode is simply poorly made. There are problems with the writing (namely some bad sounding dialouge), as well as the fact that the story is not just stupid, but also incredibly boring, at least in my opinion, although I realize that many people disagree.