Nat

Every Thursday I watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I've seen the show before, but I was in high school so I'm basically watching it like-new with shadows of memory. Rather than watch the series from start to finish I'm just watching until the episode before Tara dies. At this point I'm largely here for the Spike/Buffy arc, not because I want them to get married or anything but because... well, Spike's there. And I'm really normal about him.

The Synopsis

In this episode Buffy decides she needs a job. Things are expensive. Bills are piling up. So she gets a job at a not-actually-literal soul-sucking fast food chain. The manager and her fellow coworkers are eerie, dispassionate people, which leads Buffy to feel like something suspicious may be going on. The frequent disappearance of employees also raises alarms, and her suspicions are seemingly confirmed when she discovers a severed finger in the mysterious meat blend used in the restaurant's burgers.

The burgers turn out to be totally fine and not at all made of people, but there is some sort of worm monster eating the employees. Unfortunately Buffy has already told all of the patrons that the burgers contain human meat, leading to her being fired. But wait! Willow to the rescue! She finds out their mystery meat isn't actually meat at all, which provides Buffy with the power she needs to blackmail management..... into getting the job she hated back.

Food 4 Thots

Season 6 really feels like they started picking trashed ideas from earlier in the series out of the bin to pad episodes. Pretty much the only redeeming thing about this episode is that the geek squad wasn't there, which is at least more than the previous one had going for it. There are times in the show where it feels like they're hamming it up a bit; instead of her work environment truly being creepy the writing kind of just screams "this is a creepy place" at you. Which is maybe the point because they want viewers to be misled the way Buffy was. But you could skip it and miss basically nothing except for establishing that Buffy now has a job.

Spike shows up at her job to be supportive, which is weird and unwanted.... largely because the writers said it should be? Every time he's on screen it's like they're trying to tell fans "stop it, stop liking him". Anyways. Unlike Buffy's friends, who think it's great that she's giving in to America's protestant work ethic, Spike says babygirl why are you making yourself miserable. A Slayer forced to work minimum wage is like a caged lion at the circus and Spike is the only one out of her friends who sees this. They love to have him make great points but then don't want to give him a real redemption, either.

As an aside: in my personal opinion it's actually incredibly romantic that the man Buffy is fucking, who is the only person she can be emotionally vulnerable with, offers to help her financially if that's why she's working a job that's making her miserable. Sure, he'd probably rob a bank or something. But he really does just want her to be happy.

This episode was also part of the "Willow's magic addiction" arc, which sees her struggle with Amy using magic on her without her consent. I understand what they're going with and think it's an interesting conflict for Willow to have, but at the same time it feels like there wasn't tons of visible escalation for a problem that has supposedly been growing for a while. This could be another one of those intentional writer decisions where the justification is that it seems sudden because the show is about Buffy, and since she didn't notice it viewers don't either. But if that's the case its execution makes it look rushed rather than intentional writing.

The end of the episode also baffles me. Buffy has found them out! We know from similar real-life cases that restaurants can get in a lot of trouble for falsely advertising products as meat when they aren't. Knowing this, Buffy could at least ask for enough money to ensure some stability while she tries to come up with a plan. Instead, however, she uses this advantage to... make them let her work for minimum wage again. Sure, the change in managers might have improved the workplace a little, but at least ask for a starting bonus!

Overall

If I had to rate this episode it would probably be a 3/10. Not only was it hammy and largely skippable, but the Buffy and Spike having sex wasn't enough to recover my lost interest. There are 5 more episodes left before I stop watching, but we'll see if I actually last that long. Ever since Once More With Feeling this season has felt like it's dragging. Doublemeat Palace might just be the straw that broke the camel's back, but I'm going to really try to watch one or two more to see if this season can be salvaged.