Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Normal Again

"What, you think this isn't real just because of all the vampires, and demons, and ex-vengeance demons, and the sister that used to be a big ball of universe-destroying energy?"

Wow. This episode is right up there with the very best, with Hush and Once More with Feeling. It really is that good.

And the idea isn't even intrinsically brilliant. A demon that makes Buffy think she's in a mental institution and her vampire slaying life is just fantasy. It could have gone very, very wrong. Instead it's a real highlight of the series.

It all happens because Buffy gets a little too close to the Three Nerds, who panic and send after her a demon with a complicated name that is going to have her "tripping like a Ken Russell film festival". But her alternate reality is cleverly done; instead of playing up the horror of being stuck in a psychiatric institution we her her loving parents, Kristine Sutherland is back, and she gets the chance of a normal life instead of one from which she's recently become very, very detached.

It's fitting that we finally get an episode that's all about Buffy, although Xander somewhat sheepishly returns to slot back into his role convincingly enough, Anya is troublingly missing, and Willow continues to pine adorably over Tara. But we also get some superbly metatextual touches, as the doctor describes Buffy's delusion as "grand overblown conflicts against an assortment of monsters" and, in a nice touch, not only does Dawn not exist in the other world but the doctor refers to the "inconsistencies" caused by her being retconned into Buffy's reality. We even have it pointed out that, with all the gods and monsters that Buffy has faced and fought in the past, her current nemeses seem to be a trio of pathetic teenage boys.

It's all very real to Buffy, because she actually was briefly put into such an institution before, when she first encountered vampires. It's all very real how much she comes to question which reality is the true one and, by the time she is persuaded to lock Willow, Xander and Dawn in the cellar so the demon can eat them, the episode feels like a horror film with Buffy as the baddie. That's brilliantly done.

And yet the final scene is best of all, as the episode pulls back to suggest that, actually, maybe the institution was real...? Absolutely peerless telly.