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Life Serial (Ep. 6.5)"Standards and Practices" Buffy... the Construction Worker! Buffy... the Sales Clerk! Buffy... the... what the hell is she doing with her life? As of "Life Serial," Buffy has arrived at a point that few or no Slayers ever reach. Not only has she died (twice) and come back to tell the tale, but she is now faced with grown-up, mundane problems such as home repair, mortgages, and the need to hold down a steady job. That doesn't sound like much compared to fighting a god to save the world from being sucked into hell, but just like high school, it's harder than it sounds... and the adult world plays by different rules. . . . The episode opens with Buffy returning from her visit to Angel... "somewhere in between" L.A. and Sunnydale. (In the space between networks, no doubt. Running gag?) Which she doesn't want to talk about. "It's... not important. It's past," she says plaintively. Okay, so, no clues on the big meeting with Angel. "Intense," she says. Okay. She doesn't look happy. Okay. Right away, Giles wants to know what she wants to do with her life. First lesson of adulthood - the waiting is over. Suddenly, life is happening now. Understandably, Buffy isn't really ready to answer this question. With the past year she's had (Glory, etc.) and the fact that her most recent address was six feet under, I can believe that she hasn't exactly spent much time thinking about her future. But she tries gamely to come up with a spur-of-the-moment battle plan on request. Having left school during her mother's illness, she says that she'd always planned on going back, but she's missed the enrollment cutoff thanks to her "busy being dead and all." Willow suggests that she come to classes anyway and get caught up while waiting for the next enrollment date. Buffy hesitantly agrees to go with this plan. "The Slayer always knows what she's doing. Sharp, decisive, always with a plan," Jonathan lectures his friends. Seeing the Slayer as the largest threat to their plan to become crimelords of Sunnydale, the geek trio has decided to mess with the Slayer, to see if they can find her weaknesses and test their own supervillain quotient along the way. They've even set it up to be a sort of competition among themselves, complete with point scores. Buffy does her best to get into the swing of things, without success. She can't even begin to keep up in her first class, a sociology discussion group on the "Social Construction of Reality." The students rapid-fire theories back and forth, and Buffy is immediately lost. The discussion concerns the idea that, "social reality is actively constructed and restructured by individual actors" and "each individual participates fully in the construction of his or her own life." In short, reality is subjective, not objective. Individuals change society, and they in turn, change it. And reality is different from person to person, depending on how they interpret it. The rules define those who make them, and thus, define society. Hm. I would say this is probably a fancy way of saying that your choices matter. No man is an island, as the saying goes. Overwhelmed, Buffy grouses to Willow, who dismisses her concerns airily before animatedly jumping into the debate herself with far too many multisyllabic words. Thanks to pretentious student-speak, this "social reality" is cutting Buffy out of the loop.. just as Warren's challenge to follow will. Using a pickpocket's classic shoulder-brush technique, Warren plants a tiny device on Buffy that can alter up time, speeding it up in spurts, leaving her even more confused and disoriented than before. Just like the class, conversations leave her feeling like she's missed large segments (in fact, she has). The clock whirls. Class is about to start, then it's over. Buffy tries to hold onto her own "subjective reality," chasing after Tara, who's left her behind, only to be nearly run over by other students rushing across the campus quad. Injured and panicked, Buffy crawls under a table to hide. As the speeded-up reality whizzes around her, she reasons that since she's the only one that's affected, whatever it is must be on her. She finds the device attached to her sweater, but before she can inspect it too closely, the trio, watching from their technologically tricked-out survelliance van, self-destructs it. Buffy is left with no evidence of her "subjective" experience. "Score me," Warren says smugly to his pals. They assess his cruel trick on Buffy in videogame-like terms, coming up with an "objective" total. "Beat that!" he exhults. The trio's rules are now defining Buffy's reality. Undeterred, Buffy moves on. Her next stop is construction work, courtesy of Xander, who managed to pull some strings to get her added temporarily to his crew. Buffy works up a head of enthusiasm and thanks Xander for getting her the job. "You saved me from having to accept Giles' offer to work at the magic shop," she says with a shudder. "I mean, retail...? I'd rather be dead. Again." Apparently, Giles' reaction to her weird experience was to comment that it might have been "stress related," which is as good a theory as Buffy's "evil lint." The crowd of workingmen guffaw when they see Buffy. "Give her a chance - she's stronger than she looks," Xander offers in support, before making himself scarce to work in another part of the site. Admittedly, the petite Buffy does not look particularly butch in her pigtails and hardhat. (The workingmen's nicknames of "Britney," "Gidget," and "princess" prompt her to proclaim "it's Buffy," reminding us all that yes, the heroine does indeed have a silly, girly name.) But Buffy is no shrinking violet - she fields the sexist comments with as much grace as she can muster and gets down to business toting steel I-beams, which, thanks to her Slayer strength, she can toss around with ease. Weirdly, this actually works to her disadvantage - a union worker nastily points out that they get paid by the hour and she might want to slow down. This could easily be read as a comment on the glass ceiling many women face at male-oriented jobs, but mostly it just reads as Buffy just can't catch a break. And that's not even counting the Slayer thing... which isn't long in coming up. The survelliance van is back. Andrew's turn. Pulling out a Zanfir-style pan flute, he summons a group of demons to attack her. Buffy promptly disposes of the demons with her usual kicky-punchy flair (she crushes the head of one using a motorized hoist), only to be rewarded by getting fired for wrecking the worksite in all the mayhem. Like the time-distortion device, the demons also self-destruct when killed, leaving only Buffy's word for what happened, and the workingmen she rescued refuse back up her story for fear of looking like wusses. Buffy can't believe it. Like the loan officer from "Flooded," we're seeing once more that saving someone's life doesn't necessarily guarantee you will get credit, a thanks very much, or even the support of your friends. Xander leads her aside, advising her to go see Giles. Buffy sees the ax falling, sighs, and hands over her hard hat. Now Buffy's desperate. It's time to bite the bullet - and fall back on retail. Attired in a floaty two-piece dress of public service, she prepares to do time at the Magic Box under the tutelage of capitalist shark in the waters Anya and Rupert "what do you wanna do with your life" Giles. But the horrors of counter-clerking alone aren't enough - it's Jonathan's turn, and he's magically fixed it so she has to satisfy a particularly picky customer, or the task just repeats itself. Over, and over, and over... And she does indeed try everything to make the horror stop, from strangling the customer to ripping the entrance bell off the door to stamping on Giles' glasses. No dice. Lady wants a mummy hand. Won't leave until she gets it. Again. And again. In all three of these sequences, every problem Buffy faces is simply an exaggeration of fears and problems everyone has with their day-to-day lives. Who hasn't worried about not being able to keep up in school? Or not knowing the unspoken rules? Or had a job where it seemed like the the customer would never be happy and day would never end? Poor Buffy. It's like that old saying about Ginger Rogers having to do everything that Fred Astaire did on high heels and backwards - she has to deal with the same day-to-day problems as everyone else, but she has to do it while being messed with by supernatural forces at the same time. That said, the repeating hour problem is damn funny to watch, partly because of the sheer sight-gagginess of Buffy trying to trap and capture a living mummy hand (it leaps for her throat, menaces her with salad tongs), but also because it's intercut with the nerds and their snarky commentary on her performance, Mystery Science Theater-style. Having planted a mini-camera in the eye of a skull on the shelf inside, the trio can watch Buffy's indoctrination in the retail arts from the safety of their van. "This mummy hand has ceased to be!" they chuckle as they watch the monitors showing Buffy's progress. The nerds are hardly in a league with villainous master vampires, transfigured demons, or hellgods, but they do strike a chord with their squabbling. They're trying to figure out where they fit into the adult world just as much as Buffy is. Are they harmless goof-offs? Or are they really on their way to becoming evil? Their stunts here prove that they can indeed present a threat to Buffy - it's only their lack of a real goal (so far) that prevents them from being serious menaces. Buffy finally does solve the problem - by going for a special order so the mummy hand will become the friendly UPS man's problem instead of hers. The customer leaves satisfied, and the spell finally ends. Bravo for Buffy... although again, no one knows what she had to go through to get the job done. (Tellingly, the trio argue about how to score this - since the spell involved time looping, they can't decide if it should be judged by their "objective" reality or the "subjective" reality of everyone else.) Then Anya notes that Buffy forgot to charge for delivery and decides to deduct it from her pay. Giles, for some reason, agrees to this. Calmly, considering the day she's had, Buffy leaves her nametag on the counter and gets the hell out of Dodge. At her wit's end, Buffy decides the best way to cope with her terrible day is to settle in at Spike's crypt and trade whiskey shots. "This is gonna be great," she says as she regards her shotglass, just as she has before every new venture this episode. (I note that she is still wearing the blouse from her retail outfit, implying that she only stopped home long enough to shove her legs into a pair of jeans before deciding to pour out her troubles to the undead.) Season 4's "Beer Bad" notwithstanding, Buffy is not much of a drinker - she makes a cute "bleeargh!" face after every shot. We join the proceedings at the point where they've nearly killed a flask. Spike is speaking with the slightly overprecise diction of the I-feel-quite-buzzed-but-I-am-certainly-not-drunk stage of inebriation; Buffy is considerably farther along. "You have had so too much to drink at this point," she slurs, "I am cuttin' you off." She pours herself another hefty shot. Spike just watches her, amused, then suggests that they hit the underworld for clues to her mysterious tormentors. "You're not a schoolgirl," he tells her, "You're not a shopgirl. You're a creature of the darkness. Like me. Try on my world. See how good it feels." She looks back at him, thoughtful. "Are there drinks in your world?" she lilts. Cute, coy, drunken behaviour. Curious, actually, that Spike doesn't choose make a move on her at this point. Dark, private place... drunk, pliable girl. Either Spike is being a particular gentlemen (odd thought, that) or doesn't relish the idea of ruining their developing friendship by becoming Buffy's morning-after hangover regret (or resultant dust pile). So instead of embarking on something likely to end with ohmigod-who-did-I-just-wake-up-next-to, Buffy's walk on the dark side turns out to be a trip to one of Sunnydale's seedier bars (not Willy's either - Sunnydale has one nightclub and how many demon bars?). She is now in the talking-too-loud-and-swaggering stage of drunkeness, and makes a quick grab for what looks like a bottle of tequila. Spike seems to have sobered up, probably because his information-getting technique involves getting into a card sharp poker game (for kittens!) with some of Sunnydale's less impressive demons. Buffy is eager to start pounding faces, but settles for sitting in the corner pouting and nursing her bottle. The card game turns into a argument, then an impending fight. Given how eager she was to fight earlier, Spike fully expects Buffy to back him up, but now she's feeling contrary. "I'm not getting in a bar fight!" she blarts. "I'll beat 'em up for information, great, but not to defend your right to gamble for kittens! I'm not playing by everyone else's rules anymore." She sets the kittens free, bursts out of the back room, then turns to vent her frustrations at Spike in one big rush. "Tonight sucks!" she sobs. "Look at me! Look at stupid Buffy! Too dumb for college. And freak Buffy, too strong for construction work. And my job at the magic shop? I was bored to tears even before the hour that wouldn't end! And the only person I can even stand to be around is a neutered vampire who cheats at kitten poker!" She storms outside. Spike follows her, brow furrowed as if he has slight headache, patience wearing thin. Outside, the nerds have been distracted by their own arguing about which James Bond was the best ("I like Timothy Dalton!" chirps Andrew, earning him a smack in the head) and barely notice Buffy advancing on their anonomyous black van until the last second. Panicking, the group mounts a defense in which Jonathan disguises himself as a demon (a red-horned devil parody) and faces off against the Slayer. Buffy, now in the can't-walk-straight zone of the unconsciouness countdown, windmills a punch then manages to drop him with a kick before landing on her ass. "I am well struck!," the demon moans, bent over in pain. "I call upon the misty portal to my demon dimension, there to lay my head and gently die," Jonathan hams it up, before using a smoke bomb to get away. "He blew up," Buffy says fuzzily, waving away the smoke. "Gotta love that. Makes you feel strong... powerful... kinda sick..." Uh-oh. Cue barfing. Jonathan limps back to the van. "She touched you!" the nerds murmur appreciatively. "Yeah, it was real sexy the way she touched me real hard with her fists," Jonathan grumbles. Warren can barely contain his excitement at the results of their experiements. "We took on the Slayer... We tested her, faced her, and we survived." He reminds them that with the information they have, they can pose a real threat to her. Buffy's trials aren't over yet. Back at the Summers house, Buffy ends the evening by vomiting her guts out and pouring out the last of her misery to Giles. "I'm really screwing up," she moans. Giles is sympathetic. "You don't need to figure it out all at once, a job and all," he says, telling her she's pushing herself too hard. Taking pity on her, Giles produces a large check to provide a short-term solution for her financial woes. After a feeble protest, she accepts the check. "This makes me feel safe," she smiles. "Knowing you're always gonna be here." Giles looks sad. I think we all know what's coming next....
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