To anyone who is concerned that the asylum reality is the real one consider this.....
if everything is part of Buffy's mind and a figment of her imagination than how do you explain the tv show Angel? There are characters and events on that show that Buffy would have no way of knowing about so they can't be part of her dream world. To me this is definate proof that Buffy's vampire world is real and the insane asylum was a cruel attack from the Trio.
EDIT: (Sorry. I somehow missed where Five By Five makes the same point in an earlier post.)
Hi there. Great question. Because, I suppose, Buffy doesn't have to be at the center of all of her imaginings. I can sit here and fantasize about another life, somewhere else, lived by other people, and I'm nowhere in the mix. Like, perhaps, how I think about what happens with Buffy and her crew in the summers between seasons. I can also sit here and think about what's going on with people I might have once known, but haven't seen in years, like she might be doing with Angel.
I think it's great we all have different opinions about what's real and what's not on the show. I just know that, for me, what compels me more in this episode is the other side of the coin. And in the end, it's all good, right?
Like I said, though, even though I'm inclined to believe that Buffy's actually sitting in a hospital eating jello through a paper straw, doesn't mean that I don't look at her fantasies as the reality. I know that seems contradictory and confusing, but... the best way I can explain it in a sentence is that they are the reality for Buffy, and they are the only reality I've known while I've traveled with Buffy, and therefore while I might feel like on some level that she's actually back in that ward, my gut feeling is to move toward the familiar setting in Sunnydale, with the Scoobies, and the vampires, and everything else. And like Buffy, I just choose to shut out the hospital, and go with the friends. But unlike Buffy, a part of me still thinks that "reality" rumbles just below the surface of fantasy. There's such a blur between these two things sometimes in life, that sometimes people
do slip over the edge and don't come back.
There's a question in physics where you're asked to prove that a chair is real, or provide proof that you exist, and that you're not merely in a complex fantasy, and that things really are happening all around you in reality - but the fact still remains that there's no real way to prove it's the reality of everyone you meet, and that it's not just your reality. To put it in a pop culture reference, check out "The Matrix". For such a kick-ass action flick, it sure gives you a lot to think about.
I think Joss is a genius. He must've known that fans would wrestle with this in exactly the way Buffy wrestled with it. Is it real? What's not real? Is the ward real, or are the friends real? We each have our own opinions. The man has managed to bring even deeper empathy to the character, just when you might've thought you couldn't get any more into her head and her feelings. It's definitely a good sign when the audience begins to experience the same feelings and wrestles with the same issues that the characters do. In some way, he puts a macrocosmic mirror up for us with this, and we're all not sure about what we're seeing.
