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Buffy The Vampire Slayer
DoubleMeat Palace
Episode Air Date 1/29/02After an extensive recap, covering everything important from the last season, we rejoin the slayer and her Scooby gang. Buffy is still financially strapped and in need of a source of income, Anya and Xander are planning their wedding, Dawn is being standard Dawn, and Willow has given up all magic cold turkey.
In need of some quick cash Buffy gets a job at the popular Doublemeat Palace, a cookie cutter burger joint. With striped outfit and goofy hat, Buffy sits through the introductory video learning about the need for hand washing and the meeting of the chicken and the cow (meat medley), but learns nothing of the secret ingredient. As her training progresses, we are exposed to a number of goofy fast food workers - most of whom tend to stare at nothing for extensive periods of time - and learn that there is a high turnover rate at Doublemeat Palace.
Buffy suspects there is something weird going. Her friends think she's simply having trouble adjusting to the mundane life of a working stiff. Spike tries to talk her out of working there, saying that it is beneath her, and even implying he would give her money to help pay the bills. Buffy returns for her second day, and finds that her only semi-normal coworker has disappeared. As the day progresses Buffy becomes more convinced that the secret ingredient in the hamburgers is her co-worker.
At one point Buffy goes on break and has a "romantic interlude" with Spike in the alley behind the burger joint. The scene appeared to have been thrown in there to remind viewers that there's a plot line involving Buffy and Spike. It was rather blunt and the physical act looked staged. Buffy looked bored rather than passionate. The selling point to the relationship between Spike and Buffy is that he's after love and she's after sex. In the alley behind the burger joint, she looked like she was after a nap.
Meanwhile, Amy (the ex-rat) visits Willow and questions her new magic-free self. On her way out Amy shoots Willow a nice spell. This gives Willow the power to do without the responsibility for doing it. Rather than enjoy it Willow seems generally unsettled while helping the Scooby gang solve the mystery meat dilemma and making it seem like she's doing it on her own. Good thing no one else knows how to work a microscope.
Anya's wedding planning has gotten as far as sending out invitations, resulting in one of Anya's vengeance demon colleagues dropping in for a visit. Holfreck questions Anya's choice in men pointing out all of Xander's human flaws. There's nothing like a true friend to make you question true love. The dialogue with Anya's vengeance girlfriend was funny, but there wasn't much of it. It would be great if the writing team took advantage of this wedding to introduce more quirky demons.
It turns out Buffy's suspicions about the meat processing are warranted, though she never expects who the bad guy is… da da dum. Buffy battles the evil creature, but in the end Willow saves the day. (Though one might wonder how she got in the restaurant.) It was the second time since giving up magic that Willow has come to the rescue. Coincidence? Or is this a not so subtle way of teaching the viewers that magic is bad.
The scary creature was icky, but a little disappointing. And the villain was surprising, but kind of cheesy. The episode never sold a real threat. The idea that there was something fishy going on at the Palace was easily explained by Buffy's boredom. By the time we find out there was evil afoot, we stopped caring. So when the episode went as planned and the good guys one, it was even less impressive.
All and all, it was not the greatest Buffy adventure. I have to think the writers are saving up the good stuff for February sweeps. Maybe they're all off skiing, or suffering from seasonal depression. Gauging by the preview of next week's episode it looks like they are prepared to redeem themselves.
