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DoubleMeat Palace (Ep. 6.12)"Having it All" In "Life Serial," we saw Buffy give the work world a try. In the best networking tradition, she started out by working connections to her friends' jobs, first by tagging along to Xander's construction site, then clocking in counter time at the Magic Box. Neither gig worked out very well, and Buffy subsequently abandoned the attempt. But thanks to the social worker's visit in "Gone," gainful employment has once again moved to the top of Buffy's agenda. This time, she's gone for exactly the sort of starter job people with short employment histories often end up with early in their resume - fast food. . . . Having worked at not one, but two fast food jobs, I went into this episode with a mental bullet list of experiences that I thought might come up. Jane Espenson, writer of this episode, has pretty obviously worked at least one of these jobs herself, for every item on my list made an appearance, from the introductory video to the excess grease quotient to the walk-in freezer to the mysterious bubbling fryer to sneaking out back on one's break to have sex. Not that I ever did that. At Buffy's house, the gang is getting the update from Willow on the culmination of last week's invisibility drama, imparting the news that the nerd trio has gone on the lam, cleaning out their lair pretty thoroughly. Willow wistfully recounts some rare magical items the troika left behind. Having a little trouble with the cold turkey, Willow is. Her friends notice the longing sound in her voice. Anya uses the moment to enlighten the group on her theory that supervillains are the enemies of capitalism. "Welcome to this week's episode of 'Go Money, Go!'," Xander quirks. As an example of a tool of capitalism, Buffy appears, attired in her new work uniform. Woof. And I though the outfits from Hot Dog on a Stick were bad. The orange and brown color scheme is downright nostalgic - my first job had a similar theme. Buffy's hat is far worse than the golfer's-caddy-style polyester cap I had to wear, however (gah, it's got a rooster tail!) and I can't imagine what kind of sizing scheme this place uses if even petite little Buffy ends up in flood pants. Buffy's new place of employment is the DoubleMeat Palace, an esoteric little burger den that gets its specialness from the meat process which combines beef and chicken - "double meat," get it? The intro video Buffy has to watch had me howling with laughter - I can tell you that the McDonald's video is nowhere near this funny, and it certainly does not give you the slaughterhouse scene. Hyuk. The DMP video comes off as one of those Troy McClure-hosted filmstrips from The Simpsons crossed with Faces of Death. Actually, the fact the DoubleMeat Palace grinds its own meat makes it a bit of a class act as far as fast food chains go. I remember lots and lots of preformed patties frozen into frisbee-like discs. Not that I ever actually threw them like frisbees or anything. That I recall, anyway. I just remember having to lug a lot of boxes of frozen meat ("quarters" or "regs," as the lingo went) or catch them being thrown off the back of trucks. Built a bit of arm muscle at that job, let me tell you. Buffy watches the video with that puzzled blank-slate look that she tends to wear a lot recently. I still think her new haircut is cute, but I finally realized what looks so funny about Buffy this year - she usually comes back from the summer break with a tan. This year, she spent her best tanning months six feet under and is therefore pretty pale. She still hasn't gotten around to highlighting her hair to its usual blond either, and the dark red lipstick she's been sporting looks really severe. Gosh, dye your hair dark and go goth, why don'tcha, Buffy? Her interview with Manny the manager is consistent with every meeting she's had with an authority figure in the series so far (from Giles to Principal Flutie on up) - she tries to lighten the mood with jokes to cover the fact that she's feeling overwhelmed. Her comment on the video - "The cow and chicken coming together even though they never met... It was like Sleepless in Seattle if Tom and Meg were, like, minced" - is met with a humorless response. Shades of the bank loan officer from "Flooded." Then, when he asks "Why do you want to work here, Buffy?" she gives him a straight answer, which is something a person with a little more job experience would know better than to do: "Well, I need money pretty quickly so I didn't want to go through a whole big interview process, and I'm supporting my younger sister, and we've had some expenses..." Manny stares at her blankly until she gets the idea that she's just supposed to rote the company slogan. "I want to be part of the DoubleMeat experience?" she says plaintively, earning a nod of approval. Well, whatever else you can say about fast food jobs, they do tell you a lot about the scary adult work world, and that is defintely something Buffy still needs to learn. Get a grip, Buffy. Learn that lesson. Smile and lie. Manny takes Buffy on a tour of the place. The set for the DoubleMeat Palace is correct to the last detail. Location shot at a real fast food joint, maybe? I'm trying to imagine a set decorator putting together all the colored wall tiles, slicing implements, chrome counters, industrial sinks, grubby timeclock, walk-in freezer, plastic tubs of ingredients, registers, laminate seats, and so forth, on a TV budget. If they did, high marks indeed. Aw, there's the breakroom with its lockers. I remember always leaving a dedicated pair of shoes in my locker, and changing before I left for the day. Ground-in grease. They could skate across tile floors. I threw them out when I left the job. The manager introduces her to a couple of the creepy "lifers" - two grill guys who look pretty much like I remember grill guys looking. He assigns her a locker that still has someone's stuff in it. "They probably left it. We have a lot of turnover here," he says blandly. Buffy looks troubled. Day one, and already she's hearing about mysterious disappearances. Buffy never gets a break, does she? Now Manny hands her a hamburger, a "DoubleMeat Medley," and proudly describes its constituent parts. Yay for the product. "Eat it," he instructs. She hems and haws, but in the interest of looking like an enthusiastic new hire, she gamely takes a bite. You see Buffy eat burgers not once but twice in this episode, and it's a strangely disturbing picture. Maybe it's just that as thin as she is, I can barely imagine her eating at all, much less burgers and fries. Buffy plods through her training, not exactly enthusiastically. She wisecracks with the other employees, who warn her about it ("You're funny. You should stop that"). Gary, a pleasant-looking young man, walks her through training on the register. See, there's a picture for each item. A cocker spaniel could do it. Buffy does her best to prove him wrong. She gets confused easily by the little pictures. Kee-ryst Buffy, what's with the dumb blonde act? I actually had to read the keys before they upgraded to the see-and-spell register model and a cocker spaniel could do it then. A little old lady shows up for her daily coffee and pie. Now I know the writing staff is drawing on real experiences. If Buffy works the morning shift, maybe she'll see the retiree crowd that comes in for the breakfast platters.
Xander, Anya, Willow, and Dawn show up in a group, eager to support Buffy's new "subsistence level" job. She tells them that she thinks something weird is going on. People disappear. They act funny. The mystery of the secret ingredient. Xander dismisses this as piffle. "I've swum these murky waters," he says. "There is assorted creepiness, there is the staring, there is the enthusiastic not-showing-up-at-all. Maybe you're seeing demons where there's just...life." Reasonable, but you'd think at this point they would trust Buffy's instincts on this sort of thing, no matter how loony it sounds. Then again, she's hard to take seriously wearing that hat. Willow seems itchy, drumming on the counter with paper-wrapped straws. More magic withdrawal? Sigh. Anya starts to wonder about what kind of food they should serve at the wedding reception. "Time is getting very short," she complains. "After Willow did the instant engagement party, I got slack on the planning 'cause I figured she'd help, but now that's all blown to hell." Bwha ha ha - okay, that's funny. God, I love Anya. Turning out the perfect wedding certainly would be easier with magic help. Maybe that's what the "Martha Stewart is a witch" line from a few episodes back was all about. One real revelation from this scene is Buffy's offhand mention of her waitressing job in L.A. the summer after she sent Angel to hell. From their reactions, it's the first time she's ever talked about it. A sign, maybe, that she's finally opening up to her friends? Or a reminder of how her typical response to stress is to shut down? Night shift. Buffy is manning the counter alongside a spaced-out retiree. Back when I worked these jobs, it was always high school kids or people in their early twenties who were still figuring out what they wanted to do with their lives... a lot like Buffy, now that I think of it. The vibe is so different now. Buffy takes off her silly hat. It's slow, so she figures an extra break is in order. "We're not allowed," the woman tells the ceiling. Her meds are obviously at a little too high a dosage. "C'mon, there's no one here," Buffy sighs. But there is - she wheels around to see Spike, in a nice new striped sweater, studying the menu. After a joke about her working in the service industry ("so service me," he leers) and a funny comment about how the flourescent lights "make me look dead," he mentions that some demons like the way the lights make "their skin twitch," and wonders if that's the kind of demon she might be. Buffy insists she's not a demon, but we get no further speculation on what might actually be wrong with Buffy. Spike then gets sincere. "You're not happy here," he says quietly. "You're better than this." Buffy looks at him. "Please don't make this harder," she whispers, and reminds him she needs the money. "I can get money," he says, reaching for her hand. "Walk with me, now." Spike here is speaking to her pride, encouraging her to walk away rather than degrade herself. It's actually no wonder that her plight would speak to him particularly - Buffy's everyday job strips away her strength, her uniqueness, everything that makes her special. When you consider that Spike's entire persona as a vampire - the rebellious, shove-it-up-your-arse bad boy - was created from the need to wipe away just this sort of humiliation and "mediocrity," it makes sense that he'd be uncomfortable seeing her like this. Spike has shown himself more than willing to jettison his pride for love, but it hurts him on her behalf to see Buffy drop her dignity for cash. That Buffy is able to resist this invitation - with some distress - shows either a growing sense of responsibility or simple despair on her part. Does she really think she can't do better? Next day. The nice guy who trained Buffy on the register didn't show up today, so Buffy's moved to grill work. She's shown the ropes by a red-faced "lifer." He looks like the sort I remember as having few interests beyond fixing up cars and snowmobiles. The guy goes off about the grease. How it gets in everything. Skin, hair, ears. Again, I'm marveling at the use of fresh meat. Not frozen. No wonder they have such a grease issue. Manny pops up to tell her that they're shorthanded, so she's doing a double shift. "On top of these eight hours? That's so many hours!" she whines. "You get another DoubleMeat Medley," the manager tells her. Yes, the wonderful comp meal you get for your full-time hours. Well, it's overtime (doubletime after 12 hours, as I recall - not a bad deal) plus dinner thrown in, and she needs the cabbage. She hangs on like a sad-faced little trooper. House of Xander. Buffy calls to tell him she'll be working late. The man of the house hangs up the phone and turns to see a full-on vengeance demon, complete with cape, materialize in his living room, heralded by smoke effects. "Cower, masculine one! Tremble as you face my wrath!" she booms. Xander is suitably freaked until Anya shows up squealing with glee. The demon, Halfrek, is an old pal from his fiancee's vengeance days, invited for the wedding. Xander quickly makes himself scarce, and the two settle in for some girl talk. "Hallie" is surprised to hear Anya is getting married. "I guess the message got garbled," she bubbles. "You know how it is, half the time I have no idea if I'm maiming the right guy." They laugh. Then Halfrek quizzes Anya some more. Why's she marrying that "man with the large upper arms"? Because she loves him of course. The demon's response is a puzzled "Hmm." Night shift again at the burger joint. A spooky employee explains the mystery of the phantom fryer - it bubbles with nothing in it. I can assure you that this is a real piece of fast food phenomena. Observe it for yourself at any local mystery spot food chain. "They say flies fall in there," says the guy. That's the version I heard too. Never saw the flies, though. It's weird. The guy tells Buffy she can go on her break, and we see her gaze lock on Spike as he drifts by the window, looking in on her. She slides the silly cap off her head and meets him out back for a quiet quickie against the wall. (As I remember it was also a good idea to listen first before entering the storeroom, or the manager's office.) The Buffy/Spike relationship is developing along really interesting lines - it's turning into a mirror of how she's dealing with her return from death. In "The Gift," Buffy brought her life as hero to its logical conclusion - she fought the good fight, died young, and left a beautiful corpse. The stuff of ballads and legends. But resurrected, she is stranded in a disturbing gray zone, a new world she's not sure how to cope with, and never expected to have to. Likewise, having spectacularly resolved the long-standing sexual tension between them, both Buffy and Spike are stranded together in a sort of relationship end zone. The consummation scene of "Smashed" worked beautifully as a microcosm of their entire history together (I want to kill you, no fight you, no talk you to death, no tease you, no kick you around, oh shut up and kiss me you idiot, ohgod I want to screw your brains out). A romance would have simply ended with that. But since this isn't a fairytale, or a the stuff of musicals ("life's not a song"), both are now struggling to find ways to deal with each other in a place they never expected to be. Buffy is trying to jolt herself back to life with a relationship she knows is dangerous, unhealthy... and somehow necessary. She has stopped bothering to deny their attraction. On some level, she must know that the guy you'll screw on your fifteen-minute break is, if not your boyfriend, then at least something to you, if only the something you cling to to keep from drowning. But it's the heat of passion, the "fire" she knows he can give her that she wants - emotions are an off-limits topic. Spike is on the opposite side of this fence - he wants something deeper, sublime. He wants her to "see him," to want him for himself. That he keeps accomodating her even though this isn't likely to happen shows the depth of his own desperation and loneliness. Like he told her in song, he can't walk away from her or deny her, even though he knows he should. He's a "traitor" to his own feelings. In "Wrecked," he claimed he wasn't going to be her "whipping boy" any more, yet he continues to make himself available to do just that, offering "service" whenever she wants it. But in the face of her indifferent treatment, the intense passion he's nutured for her for so long is unlikely to survive. Ultimately, if this dynamic continues, neither is going to get what they want. Back at Casa de Summers, Willow lies in her bed studying. She's still twitching with nervous energy. Amy appears, claiming she wants to have her old Habitrail home for sentimental reasons. Then she asks Willow how her cold turkey regimen is going. Willow admits that it's "frustrating," having to do everything "the slow way," but claims she's making progress. Amy smiles at this. "So this is gonna be your life from now on? You're never gonna feel how it made you feel?" Willow isn't sure what Amy's getting at until the former rat gives her a blast of energy as a "birthday present." Suddenly Willow is all super spelled up again, with obsidian black eyes and hands crackling with energy. Things she touches distort and disappear. "It didn't come from you," Amy tells the shocked Willow. "It came from me. Completely legal. Enjoy." She picks up the cage and leaves. Now Amy has now become Willow's pusher, come calling with magic-crack take-out. Willow is left standing there, panting hard, struggling to contain herself. Back at the DoubleMeat Palace. Buffy zones out watching the meat grind. That's actually one of the pluses to this sort of job - it doesn't require a lot of mental energy. Once you've gotten into a work rhythm, you can kind of vague out and live in your head for awhile. I remember having a really rich fantasy life. Anyway, in the noodles of oozy meat, Buffy finds a - gasp! - severed human finger! Except it looks a lot like a Halloween Superstore novelty gag prop. Maybe the crew did spend their budget on the set after all. But I guess Buffy would know the real thing when she sees it, right? She promptly barges into the Manny's office, brandishing the plastic digit, demanding to know what's going on. Manny stammers through a lame guess that maybe Gary had an accident, and that's why he didn't come in today. Maybe he's at the hospital. Or maybe, Buffy theorizes, he's in the grinder. She races into the restaurant and starts spilling customers' food trays. "Stop eating! It's people! The DoubleMeat Medley is people!" And To Serve Man is a Cookbook! Nothing like a little Soylent Green gag. Just the idea of Buffy in the Charlton Heston role made me giggle. What's next - Omega Man? Which is, now that I think of it, a vampire movie. Okay, I'll stop now. Buffy gets canned for this little stunt. No surprise there. Anya and her demon galpal continue their talk, Anya finds herself having to defend Xander - more specifically, his treatment of her. Does he correct her? Well, technically he does, but..."Why do you keep asking about him?" Anya asks nervously. "Do you think I'm making a mistake?" "Do you?" her pal quizzes. Anya looks worried, like she's never considered the idea before. To be honest, they did make their decision to get married in the face of impending doom (Glory) and in the throes of gushy love, all without undergoing any serious scrutiny from adults or peers outside the Scooby gang. Given that group's own history of monster-dating means they can't really throw stones, the wedding is going to be Xander and Anya's first public test as a couple, and we'll likely hear more questions come up as the date grows closer. Has Anya even met Xander's parents? He clearly has no idea what her demon circle is like. "The way she looked, with the face - that wasn't what you used to look like, was it?" Xander asks Anya at the Scooby meeting Buffy calls to go over the DoubleMeat-Medley-is-People issue. Anya frowns. "Is there something wrong with that? Did you think she was unattractive?" There's a gulf of understanding between them that they've never discussed, and as the musical pointed out, they don't really want to - "I'll never tell." Coming to terms with big differences such as upbringing, language, culture, or religion are hard on any couple, and that's not even entering demons into the mix. A tired Buffy, looking much the worse for wear and (according to Dawn) smelling like she just got off the grill shift, gets the gang mobilized to look into the mystery of the doublemeat. Willow says she'll analyze the meat - with chemistry, not magic - to see if it's human. She herself heads back to the restaurant, now closed, to see what else she can find. While waiting for the results of the test, Dawn has an epiphany. "My friend Janice - her sister's a lawyer," she muses to Xander. "Buffy's never gonna be a doctor, or a lawyer, or anything big. She's gonna have, like, crap jobs her whole life." What a realization. Dawn, who up until this point probably had as severe a case of hero worship for a sister as anyone could have has finally come to the understanding that Buffy is not infallible. She can't do everything. Being the Slayer, the one who saves the world ("way bigger" than a laywer, as Xander tries to point out), may indeed mean that she won't have a lot of energy left over for a career. "Maybe you can be the doctor or lawyer and use your money to support your deadbeat sister!" Xander says brightly. Dawn looks a little sick. Buffy creeps around the darkened restaurant. She stumbles over a severed, shoe-clad foot. Manny the manager apparently found out whatever happened to the owner of the severed finger the hard way. The culprit turns out to have been the coffee-and-pie lady, who is really a bald-headed demon with a huge penis-like snake creature that comes out of her head, Hellraiser II-style. The penis-monster also spits liquid in her face - a paralyzing venom. As a metaphor, this is right up there with the snake creature living under the frat house. Buffy falls to the floor and tries to wriggle away. The snakey thing tries to find her under the steel tables, and squeals, revealing rows and rows of sharp teeth - it's a very Jurassic Park sequence. Or else it's very disturbing. Or both. Meanwhile, Willow has finished her tests and, finding the door locked, tries calling to her friend via the drive-thru window microphone. First revealing that the secret ingredient is actually vegetables, not people (and doesn't this dovetail sweetly with the old rumor that McDonald's burgers are actually soy?), Willow then begins talking as if the drive-thru window were a church confessional, spilling her guts about what Amy did to her. "I feel so bad about it. It was Amy's power, but it felt like I was doing the stuff myself, and I couldn't stop it... and now it's gone and I'm kinda shaky and it really feels like I need it..." She rambles on until she hears a crash inside, and breaks in to investigate, finding Buffy in the process of getting munched by the penis-monster. Willow severs the snaky appendage with a slicer blade, and pushes it into the grinder. "I got it Buffy! I killed it!" she chortles. Woo - how 'bout that castration image? Both look in the grinder and see technicolor demon guts spinning and make identical yuck faces. Next day, Amy arrives again at the Summers house. This time, Willow refuses to let her in. Amy doesn't understand - she thinks she's really given Willow a good time, but Willow insists that she's just made everything that much harder. She stares back at Amy, jaw set. "If you really are my friend, you better stay away from me," Willow tells her grimly. "And if you really aren't...You better stay away from me." Amy smiles - it's not a good smile. She walks off. I'm really starting to wonder if Amy might be one of the season's major villains. Given how many magic users are in play this season (Willow, Tara, Amy, Jonathan), a big mojo battle is a distinct possibility. Buffy goes back to work to turn in her uniform, but ends up talking to the new manager, passing off her freakout as a practical joke and leveraging her knowledge of the secret process to keep her job. "I want you to start thinking of this," the manager says, pointing to her 5-years-of-service badge. I somehow doubt that Buffy will still be working at the DoubleMeat Palace for the next five years, but irregardless, I'm kinda touched she kept the job. As I can personally attest, fast food work is hard, tiring, and plenty humbling (nothing like being treated like a faceless robot by snickering college grads), but it's hardly a fate worse than death either. It's also a confidence builder - or at least that's what I remember from my high school and college employment. When the world around you felt like it made no sense, at least there was the comforting familiarity of the job, and the simple accomplishment of carrying out a task that fulfills a basic need. I remember at the end of the day, you could at least think "this, I can do. I can do it good." Which is worth something, at least, especially to Buffy right now. More to the point, Buffy is being told to think of her future. What does she really want out of life? Again, it's probably not slinging burgers, but you can only take things one step at a time...
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