Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Doublemeat Palace" Review (6x12)

Brief Synopsis: “Strapped for cash, Buffy gets a job at the Doublemeat Palace, where the odd manager and high turnover of employees has her more than a little suspicious. When co-workers start disappearing, the mystery behind the ‘secret ingredient’ comes into question. Meanwhile, Willow works on staying clear of magic, but she’s forced to make a big decision when Amy gives her an unwanted gift.”


"Gone" (6x11) quick link here                                                                                                                                "Dead Things" (6x13) quick link soon

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Just when I thought the Buffyverse was done with mediocre episodes, both “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” deliver two of the absolute worst from either franchise. Ironically, they both revolve around the main protagonist trying to earn money to provide for their younger family. In Buffy’s case it’s her sister Dawn and in Angel’s it’s his son Connor. “Doublemeat Palace” is widely considered to be one of the weakest episodes of the show and for good reason. It’s not completely without merit and it’s certainly superior to “I Robot...You Jane” due to character development, but it’s easily the weakest episode of the season. It’s not just that the plot is largely uninteresting, it’s also the weird, unique atmosphere of the episode. Lots of slow scenes, lots of stares, lots of slow camera work, lots of long scenes. These unorthodox methods are obviously intentional. The episode is trying to pull you into the characters’ heads, ala “Breaking Bad”. They want you to feel what Buffy’s feeling. The boredom of mundane shift work, the lack of caring, the way time seems to stand still, the fact that most of the employees have given up on life. I’ve often wondered if this episode is intentionally boring for this very reason. It’s definitely an interesting attempt at something different, but the problem is that it comes across as rather, well, lame. “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” has attempted episodes like this before to some degree, such as “After Life” earlier in the season, but this episode struggles with a rather lame plot before you throw these experiments into the mix, which aid to bring the excitement down even further. I don’t need excitement or action act-to-act to enjoy an episode. Hell, if that was true I’d have disliked a great portion of “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” because the pace on those shows is definitely slower than the average. However, if you’re going for a methodical pace, you better have a great plot and a terrific payoff, which this episode lacks. Yet, this episode isn’t entirely throwaway, as some decent character development is apparent for most characters.

Every character on the show is struggling right now. Everyone is facing adult obstacles and internal wars. Luckily, pretty much every character gets their story furthered in some way here. Buffy? Check. Spike? Just about. Willow? Check. Xander and Anya’s looming nuptials? Check. As I’ve mentioned repeatedly by this point, I’m very proud and impressed that the show is confident enough in itself and its characters to take them down such dark paths and not lose the audience or the integrity of the characters. Choosing to make season six the season where the Scoobies encounter relatable adult problems was a wise choice. Buffy’s facing depression, Dawn’s facing loneliness, Willow’s facing addiction, Xander and Anya are facing insecurities in themselves and their relationship...how many people reading this have battled with one (or all) of those things? Almost everyone, I’d imagine. That’s why we’re so connected to these characters in the first place! High School is Hell, we’ve all experienced that. College makes you question yourself and your identity, we’ve all experienced that too. Struggling to adjust to adult life? It’s the next logical step for the show. Due to Joyce’s death and her financial difficulties, Buffy takes a job at the Doublemeat Palace. I love that Buffy is forced into taking a normal, coma-inducing job, but, once again, the episode lacks reasons to keep my interest. Oh, also, Buffy’s “THE BURGERS ARE PEOPLE!” meltdown was ridiculously over the top and not needed whatsoever.

Dawn: “Uh, when have you waitressed?”
Buffy: “That summer in L.A.”
------------------------------
Xander: “It’s fast food. I have swum these murky waters, my friend. There’s the assorted creepiness, there’s staring, there’s the enthusiastic not showing up at all. I think you’re seeing demons where there’s just life.”

Ahh, financial complexities. Gotta love ‘em. As far as being independent and having a job goes, Xander has a full two years experience over Buffy and Willow, and I’m glad that gets referenced above. In fact, I love it whenever anything from the past gets referenced. My inner fanboy flails. It’s so rare that Xander is better at something than Buffy or Willow, so it makes a nice change of pace to have Xander giving work advice here and later in the season. After desperately struggling for a year and a half to find his place in the working world, he’s pretty well settled now.

“Gone” concluded with Buffy confiding in Willow that she doesn’t want to die. She’s not overjoyed to be alive, she’s not magically fixed and free of her depression, but she’s no longer suicidal and wishing to be dead. That’s a start. However, this realisation comes with consequences and one of those is starting to build a future. When you’re suicidal, you don’t really give a shit about financial woes or anything like that because you’re not intending to be around for long enough to care. With Buffy discovering that she’s happy to not be dead, she needs to plan a future. The most immediate problem in her life is a lack of funds, so Buffy gets a job at the local fast food restaurant. Is it repetitive and boring? Yes, but it’s a necessity. I think most people in the world who don’t work in their desired area work because they have to. Buffy didn’t just wake up and decide that her calling in life is to grill burgers, she’s doing it because her sister needs food and a roof over her head. It’s a very mature and admirable thing to do...but it leaves her mind-numbingly bored. Buffy is once again simply going through the motions of life. She’s trying to feel better now, which she wasn’t before, but she’s still numb and cut-off emotionally. Hell, she even seems bored by her current form of escapism, Spike, in this episode. “Doublemeat Palace” does do a good job of visualising Buffy’s feelings in this episode. Look at the way she spaces out when staring at the meat grinder, look at the way she takes no joy in anything at the Doublemeat Palace. When Spike appears, looking dead under the florescent lights, he tells Buffy that she doesn’t belong there. He tells her that working there will kill her. He doesn’t mean Wig Lady will kill her, he means that the mundane grind of tedious work will kill her. Buffy’s a super-human. She’s not bred for fast food work. It was rather admirable of Spike to tell Buffy to quit and that he’d find her money, but Buffy’s trying to better herself right now and part of that includes avoiding Spike. Spike’s her path to escapism, darkness, and neglecting her sister. Like Willow with magic, Buffy’s trying to go ‘cold turkey’ on her need for escapism with Spike. The paralysis that Wig Lady inflicts upon her victims is the perfect poison for the episode and it’s entirely intentional. Buffy is paralysed by her life and by having to take this mundane job in the first place. It’s the perfect metaphor.

Gary: “Fill this while I get the fries.”
Buffy: “Fill this? I didn’t know there was gonna be drug testing on this job.”

Spike’s nobility in this episode is greatly diminished by once again referencing that Buffy came back wrong. This is without a doubt Buffy’s biggest insecurity and problem right now. Due to Spike’s ability to hit Buffy, Buffy believes him when he says that she came back wrong. She feels dirty and different. Like something alien is crawling under her skin. This belief is the convenient excuse she can fall back to whenever she’s feeling guilty about sleeping with Spike or doing something else that her friends wouldn’t understand. It’s acceptable in her head because the real Buffy isn’t doing these things, the incorrect, abnormal Buffy is.

Dawn: “My friend Janice? Her sister’s a lawyer.”
Xander: “You think I should sue over the burger? That’s interesting.”
Dawn: “No, I just mean...Buffy’s never gonna be a lawyer or a doctor. Anything big.”
Xander: “She’s the Slayer. She saves the whole world. That’s way bigger.”
Dawn: “But that means she’s gonna have, like, crap jobs her entire life, right? Minimum wage stuff. I mean, I could still grow up to be anything, but for her...this is it.”
Xander: “Okay, but maybe you’ll be a lawyer or a doctor, and you can use all your money to support your deadbeat sister.”
Dawn: “Oh, that’s terrifically better. Thanks.”

This is where the episode picks up some important points: character development. The Doublemeat plot is lame, the villain reveal is lame, Manny the Manager, lame, however, Buffy’s growth, Willow’s growth, and Dawn’s growth are important to some degree. Dawn shows real maturity here by understanding that her sister is going to be screwed for the rest of her life (minds out the gutter, people!). Not only is Buffy’s fate set, leaving her unable to decide something else for herself, but she’s also going to be stuck earning very little money because she doesn’t have the free time to train to become something else. Slaying and protecting the world is Buffy’s entire life, but it doesn’t come with a hefty pay check from the Watcher’s Council...but why doesn’t it? I don’t think Buffy gets paid at all. How is the Slayer supposed to protect the Hellmouth if she can’t afford food? The Watcher gets paid (as we know from “Checkpoint”), but as far as we’re aware the Slayer doesn’t. That seems like a double-standard. Why don’t the Watcher’s Council cover Buffy’s bills so that she doesn’t have to take this job in the first place?! Surely she’s more likely to succeed in protecting the world if she isn’t exhausted from working a double shift before patrolling! In season six, Dawn has had little in the way of development. We’ve barely seen her post-Key adjustments to life. Small moments like these are key (pun-believable!) for Dawn’s character at this juncture.

Buffy: “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the video that’s freaking me out. With the cow and the chicken, all swirly together.”
Xander: “Mmm, make me hungry, why don’t you? How’s about one of those delicious Medley meals?”

Xander and Anya get some small, but much needed development here too regarding their wedding jitters. SO MUCH of this season is dedicated to Buffy, Willow, and Spike, that I often forget that Xander and Anya are doing anything. Same goes for Dawn. Seriously, post-Buffy’s return and pre-wedding, what do they do? Nothing. They’re just in the background researching and making quirky comments. Even after their inner fears and insecurities regarding their wedding in “Once More With Feeling”, nothing was done to follow up on it, just tiny moments here and there, which is why I feel some people were so shocked that Xander left Anya at the altar. If “Once More With Feeling” was directly before “Hell’s Bells” nobody would have been surprised at all. In this episode, Halfrek (A.K.A. Cecily from Spike’s past) comes to visit Anyanka. At first she thinks she’s there to punish Xander, but soon discovers it’s because Anya and Xander are getting married. Halfrek proceeds to ask a lot of questions. A lot of questions. The most common of which is “why?”. It’s clear from Anya’s dialogue here and Xander’s nervousness in general that they need to discuss these fears. Alas, they don’t. They never do until the wedding day, which is too late. They keep avoiding having the awkward talk, just like Buffy and Willow were pre-“Wrecked”. Some of Xander’s comments regarding her former demonness are hurtful, Xander is scared about turning into his father, Xander is nervous about Anya’s former occupation of scorning unfaithful men...it’s a clusterfuck. A clusterfuck that sets up “Hell’s Bells” nicely.

Willow: “What you did to me was wrong. Do you have any idea how much harder that makes, just, everything?”
Amy: “You know what I notice? You’re not denying that you had fun.”
Willow: “Shut up.”
Amy: “Oh, yeah. Sharp argument you’ve got there. Were you on the debate team? I forget. I forgot a lot while you were failing to make me be not a rat.”
Willow: “Amy, if you really are my friend, you better stay away from me. And if you really aren’t...you better stay away from me.”

I miss Tara. Growth and maturity are finally coming back to Willow for the first time this season. Even without Tara’s shiny, exuberant personality around to keep Willow in check, Willow does the right thing here. Amy’s descent into bitchdom has always irked me a little because it seems to have come out of nowhere. She was always awesome and friendly in Sunnydale High, and she was still friendly in “Smashed” and “Wrecked”, just a little reckless and a bit of a junkie. Now, at the end of this episode, she’s suddenly uber bitchy. I was beyond angry with Amy for what she did to Willow in this episode. If your friend’s trying to get off drugs (which is the metaphor that’s being used repeatedly for Willow in regards to magic), you don’t give them drugs as a gift. You support them. The reason given for Amy’s behaviour is that it took Willow 3 years to turn her back from being a rat. Firstly, it’s Amy’s own fault she was a rat for three years. She cast the spell on herself that turned her into a rat in the first place! Secondly, she didn’t show the slightest bit of resentment towards Willow for this when she first came back. Even so, I’m proud of Willow for the first time in ages. Willow is starting to understand why she was dependent on magic in the first place (insecurities and because it made everything quick and easy). Even with Amy’s ‘present’, Willow commits to her rehab and doesn’t use the magic. Even more impressively, she talks to Buffy about it. She opens up. Voluntarily! Granted, she opens up via a drive-thru speaker while Buffy is being attacked by Wig Lady, but she opens up nonetheless. Willow chose to come clean and talk to Buffy, which is something she hasn’t done in almost a year. Furthermore, she tells Amy to stay away from her so that she’s not tempted to use magic again, showing even more growth. I’ve always adored Willow and she’s always been one of my favourite characters, so hating her for much of this season has been difficult. I’ve been so frustrated by her choices time and time again, so it’s nice to see her heading in the right direction. Finally, Willow grinds down Wig Lady, which is pretty badass (and gross) as well.

Quote Of The Episode

Buffy: “I try to do the simplest thing in the world, get an ordinary job in a well-lit place, and look, I’m right back where I started. Blood and death, and funky smells. Look. Look what I found near the grinder.”

Dawn: “Eww. Whose is it?”

Buffy: “I don’t know. It might be this guy named Gary, the only one in the whole place who didn’t seem all brain-dead. He didn’t show up this morning. Except now I think he was there the whole time as the secret ingredient. We need to analyse that burger. We need to find out if it used to be people.”

Xander: “What?! People?!”

Buffy: “Xander, you ate the burger?!”

Xander: “Well, first you say it’s cat, then you come in and hand me a burger, blah, blah, blah, five minutes later, ‘oh and by the way, it happens to be hot, delicious human flesh!’”

Buffy: “I needed that burger to analyse it. Now I’m gonna have to get another one.”

Xander: “That’s your problem with this scenario? You getting seconds?”


FINAL SCORE: 4/10

What are your thoughts on "Doublemeat Palace"? Did you enjoy this episode? Dislike it? Let me know all your thoughts in the comments section below!

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