Was Buffy Normal Again, or Not?

[The Zeppo]

I rewatched episode 17 of season 6, "Normal Again," the other day and as it concluded couldn't help being torn over it's implications.

I read into Whedon saying they wanted to leave the possibility available that Buffy, maybe was insane, but you can come to your own decision, Whedon saying, he likes to think what happens in the conclusion of the episode, to cure her, and return her to Sunnydale was actually the restoration of the Status quo, and she never was in a mental hospital.

This is fine and what I would hope, but my problem comes when at the end of the episode, after Buffy has been restored to Sunnydale, banishing her thoughts about being insane, we see the hospital again, and the doctor, with Joyce, and Buffy's father reacting to losing Buffy to her alternate universe. Now by illustrating these events, events which Buffy herself was not envisioning, doesn't it give an objective reality to that universe as it exists separate from her cognitive thought, so therefore is the reality??????

Why didn't they just cut the episode when she returned to Sunnydale, AHHHH !

 

[Scarlett Blade]

THis is one of the most thought-provoking episodes in buffy, and a very significant one. I think that while this ep really made you think about whether or not buffy's sunnydale world was made up, it was more supposed to be focused on buffy's reaction to the whole fiasco. I think that they put the ending scence in to help illustrate the fact that buffy had made her choice to accept the world that she was living in, and literally decided to leave her crazy self behind ( and by "crazy", I also mean depressed); of course, as well as to give some serious thought-provoking material. This ep definately has much more meaning than shown, as I belive that this was the time when buffy decided that she had to get over her depression. I mean, in this episode, she was bascially willing to give up EVERYTHING she knew to get some kind of life back. If any of you have ever seen "Inception", the ending is very similar to this one. WOW, I just realized how much i love this episode...gunna do a rewatch right now 😀

 

[spikecakes]

Gotta love Joss, leaving us fans hanging -.-

I guess no one really knows, especially with that ending; like you said. I like to think it was simply a way to get Buffy out of the way, and that Sunnydale IS real. Well, if she was in the mental hospital, ATS can't exist either 😉

Pah, she's normal as far as I'm concerned. As normal as a Slayer can be, anyway 😀

 

[JCoatsworth]

That's something I asked myself a lot!
I don't have an answer and I also don't think that anyone here has an answer since not even Joss has one.

But it's a big problem I'm having with Normal Again and I always have a really uneasy feeling after watching it, but it's gone after watching the next episode 🙂

Anyway, I always can 'convince' myself that the Sunnydale-reality is real.
That's because a big part of the plot takes place in the Scoobies' perspective. So I imagine they do exist and think and act on their own.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

No, Buffy was not normal. The normal Buffy was the one in the padded cell as she was just Buffy, whereas the 'real' Buffy was the abnormal Buffy the Vampire Slayer version. I always thought the Normal Again referred to her leading a normal life, as best it could be in her situation in the hospital. For years she said she wanted to be 'normal', so she finally was normal again. She gave the normalcy up.

 

[zobothehobo]

I have the same issue as you. I feel when I watch that episode that because they go back into the mental hospital and we see her unresponsive, they've pretty much told us it was all a hallucination. The episode is carried out well... except for that. If they wanted it to be an "is she or isn't she" kind of deal, they should have left us with the cure working and Buffy, our Buffy, being in Sunnydale.

Another issue I have with this episode... I don't know much about this kind of schizophrenia.. but if Buffy were to create Dawn to create a familial bond with someone, why on earth would her brain kill Joyce a few months later? And then have her dad not return any calls and be completely MIA. Like the psychiatrist said, she re-wrote the entire history of events to include Dawn... if it was a familial bond her mind was looking for, why not include her parents in any way she could? Again, I don't know much about catatonic schizophrenia... I know it's rare and that's about it. But I don't get it...

 

[Kana]

I have the same issue as you. I feel when I watch that episode that because they go back into the mental hospital and we see her unresponsive, they've pretty much told us it was all a hallucination. The episode is carried out well... except for that. If they wanted it to be an "is she or isn't she" kind of deal, they should have left us with the cure working and Buffy, our Buffy, being in Sunnydale.

Actually did they show Buffy having the antidote before the final scene? I don't remember seeing that, so the ambiguity still works. In other words the final scene could simply be the final remnant of the hallucination...or not.

Another issue I have with this episode... I don't know much about this kind of schizophrenia.. but if Buffy were to create Dawn to create a familial bond with someone, why on earth would her brain kill Joyce a few months later? And then have her dad not return any calls and be completely MIA. Like the psychiatrist said, she re-wrote the entire history of events to include Dawn... if it was a familial bond her mind was looking for, why not include her parents in any way she could? Again, I don't know much about catatonic schizophrenia... I know it's rare and that's about it. But I don't get it...

Perhaps her mother dying originally was about an increased sense of responsibility, or maybe it was symptomatic of her 'false reality' failing her and falling apart at the seams. Or perhaps it's a clue that it's really the asylum is the false reality and what the doctor said was the actually the inconsistency.

 

[The Zeppo]

Actually did they show Buffy having the antidote before the final scene? I don't remember seeing that, so the ambiguity still works. In other words the final scene could simply be the final remnant of the hallucination...or not.



Perhaps her mother dying originally was about an increased sense of responsibility, or maybe it was symptomatic of her 'false reality' failing her and falling apart at the seams. Or perhaps it's a clue that it's really the asylum is the false reality and what the doctor said was the actually the inconsistency.

Buffy had already had the antidote before the final scene, the end of the episode is the shot of her parents with the "insane" Buffy.

 

[zobothehobo]

Buffy had already had the antidote before the final scene, the end of the episode is the shot of her parents with the "insane" Buffy.

No they didn't. I just re-watched the final scenes when I read Kana's post. Turns out she kills the demon, says she needs the antidote and can't sit down until she has it, Willow says ok, and then it cuts to the doctor.

 

[VisionGirl]

But doesn't the antidote take a while to work? I haven't seen this ep in awhile, so I can't remember all the details.

No, Buffy was not normal. The normal Buffy was the one in the padded cell as she was just Buffy, whereas the 'real' Buffy was the abnormal Buffy the Vampire Slayer version. I always thought the Normal Again referred to her leading a normal life, as best it could be in her situation in the hospital. For years she said she wanted to be 'normal', so she finally was normal again. She gave the normalcy up.

It was also symbolic to me of giving up everything she was going through in s6: the depression, the unwillingness to face life as it was, in her post-heaven world. She started the climb out in As You Were, this was a continuation of it. It was a choice: she choose to face the world as it was, with the help & support of her friends, rather than sink back in the abyss of "normality". And who knows what would've happened in that alternate world- she might've been called as the Slayer anyway!

I don't know, the ending doesn't bother me too much. But then again, I've been watching Fringe so the idea of an alternate universe doesn't bother me. 😉 But I'm trying to remember how far the Normal Again alternate storyline goes back- to the original hospitalization that happens after the movie (as depicted in the Buffy Omnibus comics)? Because that was after she was called, after the high school gym burned down, those weren't figments of her imagination. Then again, in the comic she wasn't catatonic either.

 

[Willow My Love]

I love this episode for a few reasons. I love how much is makes you think, and I absolutely LOVE how they allude to the time Buffy was dead as her coming out of her Sunnydale world.

The thing about Joyce dying and (I can't remember her father's name right now) not being responsive, I think that was to distance herself from any real ties to the real world. It was to entrance her, and make her really believe that her friends were all she had left, along with this "sister". It's a trap her mind set for her to keep her involved in her psychosis.

I LOVED the ending. Showing her in the hospital being lost to Joyce. I don't think that took away from the "is she or isn't she?" mentality of the episode at all. I think it adds to it. This episode thoroughly confused me. I loved it. I choose to believe that she IS in that institution. That she never did leave, but that this world was so much better for her, so she stayed.

 

[The Zeppo]

No they didn't. I just re-watched the final scenes when I read Kana's post. Turns out she kills the demon, says she needs the antidote and can't sit down until she has it, Willow says ok, and then it cuts to the doctor.

I did the same, just after reading yoru post, and you're right in fact she hasn't yet had the antidote, but when she kills the demon and has the "antidote gunk" on her hand, there is the whole, majestic, backlighting glow, indicating she has been cured, and just before this within the hospital Buffy has said goodbye to Joyce and slips into a comatose state, so she has left that reality, and when we return to it, she still is comatose and not present within it, so I read that as that reality existing free of Buffy's cognitive thought, so there for existing as a real reality.

If only they had put the final scene, which closes the episode immediately prior to Buffy standing and slaying the demon, the ambiguity would still exist for "oh i wonder if it was her reality really!" but it would allow there to be no doubt for those who believed Sunnydale was the real world.

 

[VisionGirl]

I wonder if it's symbolic of us, the fans as well. Sunnydale is not real; a world with vampires, and magic and werewolves and demons and Slayers is not real. But we choose to "live" in it because we love it. We react to these characters as if they're real. This world speaks to us, and to our "real" lives.

 

[Thamior]

I honestly don't think it matters which one is real. What really matters is which one we should believe. I don't know if anyone here has read the book Life of Pi (if you haven't, you should, it is absolutely amazing), but there are some similar issues in the book. Whether or not Buffy believes (and lives as though) she is in Sunnydale is what really matters. I happen to believe that reality depends on how we view it - meaning, reality is not independent of us. If Buffy sees the world in terms of Sunnydale being real, then that is what is real for her. So, when Buffy choses to stay in Sunnydale at the end of the episode, she is, in fact, making it so that Sunnydale is real (whether or not it was real before). So, it's not about which one is true - it's about which one we should believe.

I know this is kind of confusing right now, so let me simplify it into a premise-conclusion argument:

PREMISE 1: It is not possible for something to be objectively real ONLY because someone believes it is real (IE, if I believe in God, that doesn't mean God is real; rather, it only means God is real to me)

PREMISE 2: It is not possible for something to be objectively real unless someone is experiencing - and/or believing - it (IE, if a tree falls alone in the forest, we cannot say that it is objectively true that it makes a sound)

PREMISE 3: It is not possible to know what is objectively real - rather, we can only know what we are experiencing, and believing.

CONCLUSION: We should not be looking to know what is true, but we should be looking to know what we should believe. Since the only way of knowing what we should believe is by experiencing it, our perceptions tell us what we should believe (IE, if I see a tree, then I should believe that there is a tree there. I cannot, however, say that I know there is a tree there, because it is impossible for me to know objective truths).


So, if I apply this to the episode Normal Again, I end up with this: I cannot know which of the two worlds are real; but I should believe that Sunnydale is real, because that is the world that Buffy is experiencing.

Okay, I probably didn't express myself very well, but it's late, and that's as clear as this post is going to get. Good luck deciphering it, guys!

 

[Carrrrgh]

This episode made me question to existence of Sunnydale and all things in it which made me uneasy. I did not like feeling that Buffy had made up this whole world in her head, it was like telling me there is no Santa Claus....

Needless to say, the ep was very well written and portrayed and I give Whedon kudos for this one, bigups.

 

[caitaintdead]

I believe that within the show that Buffy as we know her, and Sunnydale is real.

I mean, firstly, like others have said I find it hard to believe that Buffy managed to simultaneously create the Angel-verse in her head. Furthermore, what about all the things that Buffy never knew happened? Surely if she created the world then she would actually know about events such as The Wish, the perfect day with Angel, and even things as small as Xanders 'kick his ass'.

Also, if the crazy Buffy died at the end of the episode then whose fantasy is being lived out for us? Whose thoughts? I don't get why Sunnydale would continue on if Buffy was dead. Wouldn't the entire thing disappear as Buffy would not have thoughts?

 

[zobothehobo]

I believe that within the show that Buffy as we know her, and Sunnydale is real.

I mean, firstly, like others have said I find it hard to believe that Buffy managed to simultaneously create the Angel-verse in her head. Furthermore, what about all the things that Buffy never knew happened? Surely if she created the world then she would actually know about events such as The Wish, the perfect day with Angel, and even things as small as Xanders 'kick his ass'.

Also, if the crazy Buffy died at the end of the episode then whose fantasy is being lived out for us? Whose thoughts? I don't get why Sunnydale would continue on if Buffy was dead. Wouldn't the entire thing disappear as Buffy would not have thoughts?

I agree with all your other points, but crazy Buffy didn't die at the end of the episode. She went back into her catatonic delusional state she was in.

 

[caitaintdead]

I agree with all your other points, but crazy Buffy didn't die at the end of the episode. She went back into her catatonic delusional state she was in.

I've gone way to long thinking that she was dead. When did it come out? 8 years ago? 8 years ago is a long time to be totally wrong. It sucks. I guess I just assumed she was dead cause the doctor shined the torch in her eye and there was no response. I thought if she was alive the eyes would have shown response even her mind did not.

 

[Marisa]

I actually never thought about the Sunnydale not being real. I mean it wasn't an option in my mind it would be a waste of six seasons and the show Angel so I always looked at it as it was just a well written episode for the most part.

 

[VisionGirl]

I actually never thought about the Sunnydale not being real. I mean it wasn't an option in my mind it would be a waste of six seasons and the show Angel so I always looked at it as it was just a well written episode for the most part.

Well how much worse is it to now all of a sudden have to deal with the fact that perhaps everything pre-season 5 ATS was orchestrated by Jasmine? And maybe even some events on Buffy? (Angel's return from hell, the snowfall in Amends)