Normal Again

POSTED BY: Gorramreavers
UPDATED: Monday, May 9, 2005 21:40
VIEWED: 10435
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DIETCOKE

Wednesday, February 16, 2005 5:06 PM

I liked the episode. It was a interesting, twisted plot. (I like twisted...) Season six is my favorite season for a lot of reasons. It was interesting that the real demons were things that plague all of us. Making a living, finding our purpose, dealing with family, and in this episode, dealing with our own inner demons and trying to understand reality.

I know most people disagree with me, but what can I say? Art is something that you have a personal connection with.....and I liked season six!

AX

Wednesday, February 16, 2005 7:34 PM

No problems for me, I always love stories that question reality. And after all, when you're going through a hard time in your life isn't that exactly what all of us do? I'd be suprised if there's anyone out there who hasn't thought to themselves "I wish such and such had never happened to me." It's a tempting thought--to imagine other possibilities. "Normal Again" is interesting because it poses Buffy with an actual choice between what she wishes the world was like, and what it actually is like.

SHAMBLEAU

Wednesday, February 16, 2005 7:51 PM

Another S6 fan here. It was hard to watch sometimes, but I think it deepened the hell out of the Scoobies, by putting the hell into them. We saw their respective dark nights of the soul and some really ugly character traits. I admire the writers for going there, for being writers and wanting to explore their creations fully, not just doing what would make the fan base happy.

As for Normal Again, I don't see it as negating what went before. It added another layer. Buffy's full of the most sophisticated ambiguities I've ever seen on tv. It's only fitting that the writers would eventually apply that ambiguity to the entire narrative itself. I love it that there's now another way to read the events of the show. It even explains all the plot and continuity goofs. Institutional Buffy can't always keep her dream world straight!

There are conservative and Marxist takes on Buffy. There are Christian and Buddhist, feminist and mythic takes too. Now there's a another way to look at the show. None of them get at everything that's great about it, but they all enrich my understanding and enjoyment. And, as Dawn said about the music and dancing in OMWF, what's wrong with that?

ODDNESS2HER

Wednesday, February 16, 2005 8:40 PM

I saw this episode as mainly a variation on the show's recurring theme of Buffy Rededicates Herself to Her Hero's Calling at Great Personal Sacrifice. In this case, she gives up "normality" to retain her Slayerness even if it is imaginary. The old choosing-one's-own-destiny chestnut.

EMBERS

Wednesday, February 16, 2005 9:02 PM

BTW Gorramreavers: thank you for the thread...
reading everyone's comments has deepened my own understanding and appreciation of this episode!

I think Season 4 will always be my favorite, but I do like Season 6 more all the time...

now if I could just get a handle on the whole Glorificus thing.....

IAMZOE

Thursday, February 17, 2005 10:44 AM

thought I'd respond just because this was one of the episodes I particularly enjoyed. I don't have much new to add on interpretation though: I agree with Ax's comment (further up the page). I liked the stories that took you out the arc a little and let you question the whole thing. It's like when you try and explain to someone who hasn't seen the show: "well, there's this sister, but she wasn't there all along, she's a key, and, well..." - it keeps the humour in!

Although partly this episode is memorable for me because I saw it with two non-Buffy fans, and I think they just didn't get it at all - apart from being really scared. I'd just moved into a new flat with two girls whose regular TV watching was 'Country Music Television', and we were trying to bond.

So maybe that shows it is an episode for fans after all... On that note, I'm always hoping I'll meet someone who saw the Buffy episode 'Superstar' about Jonathan first.

GORRAMREAVERS

Thursday, February 17, 2005 2:16 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by embers:
BTW Gorramreavers: thank you for the thread...
reading everyone's comments has deepened my own understanding and appreciation of this episode!

I think Season 4 will always be my favorite, but I do like Season 6 more all the time...

now if I could just get a handle on the whole Glorificus thing.....

Thanks for the thanks. :)

I also have a better understanding of the episode after reading this thread. I shut my DVD player off when I noticed it was the next episode because of my first reaction to Normal Again. Now I actually want to see it again.

PS. I loved Glorificus's minions!

"..it is my very favorite gun."

THIEFJEHAT

Thursday, February 24, 2005 1:48 PM

Normal Again is an episode that explores a theme that other Sci-Fi writers have touched upon before...the question of reality and what is the "real" reality. If you are a Star Trek TNG fan you might recall that an episode was made in that series were Wil Riker was in a play playing a character who is imprisoned in an insane asylum and tortured. He then reverts to a second "reality" where he is actually insane in an asylum being tortured while his captors tell him that part of his insanity is a fantasy that he is a starship commander.

Another example of this juxtaposition is Total Recall (BTW, the book is way way better than the crappy Arnold S. Film). In this story a normal guy goes and asks some folks to play with his brain to make him think he's a secret agent. Then just before the process completes events begin that lead this man to learn that he really IS a secret agent. Or is he really? Maybe it's the fantasy or maybe it's not. By the story's end we never actually find out.

Personally I believe that the star trek episode served as the inspiration for Normal Again, there's just to many similarities. In both episodes the main character bounces back and forth between realities. The only difference is that by the end of the TNG episode we learn that the "real" reality for Riker is on board the enterprise. By the end of Normal Again we never actually know (similar to Total Recall).

I like the mystery of not knowing 100%. With Normal Again I can make firm cases why each reality is the true reality. It's completely plausable that buffy is suffering a hallucination brought on by a demon influence. Conversely it's also completely plausable that sometime in the middle of her freshman year of high school she was diagonsed as schizophrenic and created a fantasy world where she named herself the "one girl in all the world" then proceeded to fill this world with Vampires, demons, Watchers along with a social support net of scobies and a vampire love intrest. The entire "Dawn as the key is an illogical storyline" issue suddenly seems logical now too doesn't it? Buffy wanted a sister and created her and made up a flimsy reason why.

Normal again is just another episode in season 6 that adds value to the extreme nature of the season. (I said extreme, not good or bad) With themes like hopelessness(buffy), addiction(willow), kleptomania(dawn), lust(spike) meglomania(geeks), and death(Tara&Katrina) it's clear that buffy fans are going to split 50/50 regarding the merits of this season. I like season 6 for it's boldness to take us to the flip side of human nature. I know many others loath it.

However one thing I can say about Normal Again that I believe everyone can agree on is this: It's in the right season. Love it or hate it.

MAUGWAI

Thursday, February 24, 2005 5:27 PM

Good points, Thiefjehat. I love season 6 because one of the things I liked most about Buffy was not being able to count on the hero to be heroic all the time. The writers were nto afraid to put their people through the wringer, just like life. That's why I hate what Smallville has become - a safe world where the hero always gets there in time.

Buffy was never that world, and season six made sure we knew it, thanks to episodes like "Normal Again." I love most the episodes that leave me open-mouthed, crying, or disturbed. This was one of those episodes. I couldn't change the channel when it was over because I was still lost in thought about what it all means. How do we know we're not all in a world of our own creation? If we could choose, would we go into a fake world if we liked it better? Most shows on television these days don't give you that much to think about.

"Dear diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy."

EMBERS

Thursday, February 24, 2005 6:20 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by thiefjehat:
Personally I believe that the star trek episode served as the inspiration for Normal Again,
there's just to many similarities.
In both episodes the main character bounces back and forth between realities.

It would be great to know of Joss' influences,
and of course the additional influences of the writer of that particular episode,
Diego Gutierrez.
I know that back in Victorian time,
the Wizard of Oz novels got very dark,
and Dorothy actually ended up in an asylum

so I would argue that it is just as likely that the influence was from there...
but unless the writers/creator tells us it is all speculation.

eta:
Joss has said that he steals from EVERYWHERE
so probably both are true...and several other stories as well

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