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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Doublemeat Palace

Buffy: "It's like Sleepless in Seattle, if Meg and Tom were, like, minced."

With "Gone," we had Buffy Lite; this time, we got Buffy gross out. It's hard to laugh when you're gagging. No, that's unfair to a clever episode. I actually laughed a lot before I started gagging.

The Buffy Powers That Be get points for even attempting to satirize fast food employment, urban legends and all; they put some serious thought into it and did a great job. Loved the grease in the ears, the bugs in the oil; the parody of the training video had Dan, a former Wendy's employee, in stitches. Buffy's cow/chicken uniform was a hoot, too. The whole vegetable secret was cool, too, although I was fairly certain throughout that the burgers did not contain either Gary or cats. (Although I started wavering when the body parts began showing up.)

Good for Willow, resisting Amy's nasty little present and putting an end to their friendship. This is the second time in a row that Willow has figured out the big bad and saved the day. Go Willow, it's your birthday. (Except it wasn't.) Bad for Amy, though. De-ratting her might have been a bad idea; Amy was making some pretty negative sounds about her time in the cage. Did she take the cage home with her so that she could look at it and stay mad?

Developments on the Xander/Anya front were overdue, and we finally got some as Anya, with the help of her demon friend Hallie, realized that Xander criticizes her constantly — and Xander realized that Anya's current face isn't the real Anya.

On the Buffy/Spike front, Spike was really very sweet to Buffy, wasn't he? He showed some real concern for her, telling her that she was "better than this." And we got another sex scene, although it was certainly an odd one. Why was her face almost expressionless while they were doing it? Did you notice that every time that Buffy tells Spike repeatedly to go away, she ends up having sex with him? Buffy, that strategy for getting rid of Spike is obviously not working.

If the Buffy/Spike relationship continues (yes, yes, let it continue please), I may have to put in a weekly double entendre section. The best one here was "You chose to be in the consumer service profession, and I'm a consumer. Service me."

The big surprise was that Buffy was still a DMP employee at the end of the episode. I think Spike should pull off a bank job or rent himself out as an attraction, and support her.

Bits and pieces:

-- Absolutely loved the incredibly, preternaturally loud *thonk* of the timeclock.

-- Spike's wardrobe is expanding. Is he trying to look better for Buffy? Or is James Marsters tired of wearing the same tee-shirt every week?

-- On the Nerds of Doom front, their "natural habitat" has now been busted; wonder where they'll set up next. (Loved the bit about "pictures of the Vulcan woman on Enterprise.")

-- The other Buffy gross out episode was "Go Fish" in season two, and did you notice that it got mentioned?

-- The next time you watch this episode, take a close look at the wig lady head monster and notice its strong resemblance to a certain male body part. Unless you noticed it the first time; I didn't. Dan said that having Willow cut it off was way too symbolic.

Quotes:

Willow: "You should have seen their headquarters. It was like the nerd natural habitat."

Willow: "Hey, respect the narrative flow much?"
Anya: "Please continue the story of failure."

Anya: "When I was a vengeance demon, I caused pain and mayhem, certainly. But I put in a full day's work doing it, and I got compensated appropriately."
Xander: "Welcome to today's episode of 'Go Money Go!' I hear it daily."

Buffy: "You hit so many buttons, it's like, button-palooza."

Anya: "We're here to support your subsistence-level employment."

Buffy: "Order something or go."
Spike: "Give a bloke a chance for his eyes to adjust. Damn fluorescent lights. Makes me look dead."

Buffy: "Repeat until insane."
Philip: "It eliminates variation. Every burger at every DoubleMeat Palace is the same. People don't like variation."
Buffy: "Got it. Variety is the spice of bad."

This was another hard episode to rate. There was cleverness and grossness, good writing and gratuitous grue. The story really didn't work, though, and I'm flailing around for a rating,

Billie
---
Billie Doux reviewed all of Buffy and Angel, so she knows the plural of apocalypse.

6 comments:

  1. Currently on a rewatch (season 3 currently). As this is at least my 6th or 7th full rewatch since the series ended I feel no shame for skipping ahead on reviews. I always try to dig out new ones for a fresh perspective and have been thoroughly enjoying these:-) I did wonder why the comments suddenly started vanishing though? I'm persevering with the watching and the reading of the reviews, thanks for posting them!

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  2. Hey, Donna: We were doing a group rewatch and had to stop at the end of season five. We're planning to do season six this coming summer, if you'd like to join us. Thanks for your comment.

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  3. That makes sense, I assumed there must be a reason as comments suddenly dropped off, as I was planning to add to the comments it confused me, hence the previous message! Sounds good, I'm slowly working my way through earlier seasons so might save the last couple for a group rewatch:-) Thanks for the reviews Billie, and for the quick response!

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  4. And I should add that we never did get back to the group rewatch. But comments are always welcome. My reviews were posted a bunch of places when the show was airing, and were posted here much later.

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  5. "Gone" and "Doublemeat" must be the worst back to back episodes of BtVS since... I don't know... "Inca Mummy Girl" / "Reptile Boy"?

    You know, "Doublemeat" is a on/off episode for me. I like it, then on the following rewatch I hate it, then on the next turn I'm back to liking it. Unfortunately, this time I didn't enjoy it.

    It was so boring. God... I know the point is to capture the boredom of that workplace, but, Jesus, it was too much. There are some good moments, and the episode improves on the second half, but as a whole it doesn't really work. And the writing for Amy is terrible.

    Well, maybe on the next rewatch when I'm back to liking it I'll post a more positive comment.

    Oh, Halfrek! Ok, that works. It's so overdue that someone shows Anya how Xander dismisses her over and over. Thank you, Hallie.

    Did you notice that every time that Buffy tells Spike repeatedly to go away, she ends up having sex with him?

    I think that's the reason why her face was expressionless. She didn't want it, she's only there because of her own lack of self-control and Spike's I-don't-care-what-you-say abusive approach.

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  6. "Did she take the cage home with her so that she could look at it and stay mad?"
    Lol, what even was that? Who in their right mind would want it back after finally being restored? Was the point that she needed an excuse for 'rejuvenating' Willow? But... why?

    "The big surprise was that Buffy was still a DMP employee at the end of the episode."
    Yeah that was cool, I didn't remember that (did remember the penis monster, and immediately seeing it as such).

    Hallie pissed me off, even if I can see the humor in her pseudotherapist approach. There are any number of instances of Xander's dismissiveness they could've brought up and they go with the one that's actually pretty defensible (the money-grubbery)? I like seeing the show defend Anya, so this was a waste to me. Speaking of waste, there's what they did with Amy too, although honestly I was already down on her back in Wrecked when Buffy was grilling her about her baggie of sage. I could feel the sinking disappointment in the writing.

    I liked the weird ambience of the first half of the episode. There's this surreal feeling to it that still somehow made me feel like I was watching early Buffy. Like an episode of Goosebumps or something. Not even 'Gone' could evoke that. I lost interest when they got into the mystery of the missing employees though.

    I don't think it's the worst episode of the show, just a boring one. Still more engaging than Beer Bad. It does make me feel a little ill will towards OMWF... It kind of invalidates Joss's at-the-time inspiring quote in the commentary about how you could do something this magnificent with just an episode of TV. Not without eating up a lot of the season's budget and exhausting actors who didn't sign up to do a musical, you can't..

    Finally, I like what the writers are doing with Spike and Buffy at least. It feels right on the money.

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