No clue what this is? Read the first post in the series.

There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice - patched, retreaded and approved for the road.

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 20

We're reaching near the end of the season, however there's still plenty of material to discuss. I know it may not seem like much happens with regards to Buffy's depression arc after Normal Again, but I hope to be able to point out some things for you guys.

As usual, I want to stress that this meta has a very narrow focus. S6 is multi-layered and has many, many different, valid, interpretations. By detailing this particular viewpoint, I'm not in any way attempting to negate other ones. Also, as a result of the narrow focus, a lot of truly fascinating things will just not be covered, especially as concerns Spike's side of the story in these few episodes.

This meta is not to excuse anything Buffy does during S6, but is intended to explain her mindset so that a greater understanding of her character and her depression can be available.

Now let's get on with it!



Normal Again aka I'm done with this shit...



As always, it's necessary to set the stage as to where we are in Buffy's arc. Dead Things was a significant episode for her in that she recognized that trying to escape into the darkness with Spike wasn't a viable - or healthy - option. Since then, we've seen her begin to embrace Dawn (Life) again in Older and Far Away. We've also seen her call things off in As You Were when Riley's visit prompted her to attempt to regain who she'd been previously. Then we get to Hell's Bells, which isn't directly about Buffy, but has a huge impact on her nonetheless.

Buffy's scrabbling up to the top of the hole, and she's attempting to use Xander/Anya as something of a model of inspiration. When their marriage doesn't go through, Buffy finds herself sliding backward. Knowing that someone else out there is capable of making it gave her hope. Xander leaving Anya at the altar took that hope away.

This episode deals a lot with Buffy's friendships and how important they are to her. Her relationships with her friends have been strained this season, with good reason. However, her friendships have always been of central importance to Buffy, as best represented in S4's Restless. Her distance from her friends in this season is both a cause and a symptom of her depression.

Does Buffy have legitimate grievances against her friends? Absolutely. However, it's also important that she be able to let that go and move on, which she'll start to do in this episode. The process by which she'll come to an understanding with her friends will take several episodes, and it does require amends on both sides.

We begin this episode with Buffy actively hunting the Trio. For the first time this season, we see Buffy proactively dealing with them. Remember the Trio as representing Buffy's depression. They'd been absent through the past several episodes (since Dead Things), but now they're back.

Normal Again (NA) acts as something of a medication metaphor. If you pull back from it, it's very allegorical of Buffy's struggle during this season, as a whole. I hope to be able to detail that convincingly for you guys. :)

As noted, we first find Buffy seeking out the Trio. The Trio, themselves, are falling apart since the murder of Katrina. Buffy's depression is losing cohesion.

In an effort to drive Buffy away, the Trio summon a demon to fight her off. It poisons her during the struggle and gets away. As soon as she's poisoned, Buffy flashes to a mental hospital where she's being forcibly medicated.

Let's give a little legend here to make it easier to follow the metaphor.

The demon and poison: Buffy's depression.
The mental hospital hallucinations: The death that Buffy had yearned for. Her embracing her depression.
Reality: Reality.

This set-up makes explicit the interpretation of depression that Riley had given Buffy in AYW: That depression is something in addition to who she is. It's a foreign illness that she can't help. Setting up Buffy's depression in such a fashion will make it much more apparent for her friends, and we'll see that their support of her is very different in this situation.

We'll skip past the Willow scene to go to Buffy at the Doublemeat. She's kind of out of it, and she flashes to a hallucination when her boss tries to talk to her.



I've written before about how depression can affect work performance. Consider the poison-induced hallucinations as just super-saturated bouts of depression for Buffy. It makes it impossible for anybody to ignore.

The next scene involves Buffy, Willow, and Xander. Buffy is able to be supportive of Willow with regards to Tara, and she's able to talk to Xander about his problems. She's coming out of the depressive shell and beginning to interact with her friends again. This is a good.

We next get Buffy on patrol running across Spike. They manage to have a civil conversation until the other Scoobies come along.

It's interesting that we're now seeing Willow and Xander patrol when we haven't seen it since Buffy was resurrected. Either we were just not shown it previously, or they're taking it back up again, possibly in response to their own problems.

In any case, once her friends come, Buffy shuts down on Spike.

It's something of a survival instinct. Her friends have proven fairly unsupportive about her depression in the past. Now that she's finally reconnecting with them, she's trying to hide any indication of what she's been through - and what she's still going through. Spike still represents Death to Buffy (and will through the end of the season). She can be friendly with him alone, but when her friends come along, she feels compelled to distance herself from him.

As Spike and Xander come to blows, Buffy flashes to the mental hospital.

As noted above, in this episode, the hallucinations represent what Spike usually represents: an escape. In times of conflict (as is happening between Spike and Xander), Buffy retreats - unwillingly - to the other world.

In that world, she's assured by the doctor that Sunnydale isn't real, never was real, and that she's in a mental institution. It's then that Joyce and Hank enter.



This is an interesting exchange when looked at in the context of the depression arc. Spike (and his crypt) have season-long been symbolic of death. Spike's offering to take Buffy back there when her hallucinatory depression strikes, but Xander refuses.

Instead of going along with death, Buffy's friends are actually helping her in a way we haven't seen at all this season.

NA uses the demon in order to metaphorically 'heighten' Buffy's depression symptoms to the point where her friends just can't ignore them. What's more, having a outside source as explanation (the demon poison) allows them to bypass the whole, "Buffy's just wrong" thing and actually help her.

After all, these flashes are stand-ins for what we'd seen before. Buffy hallucinates in during work at the Doublemeat Palace; Buffy had been in a depressive malaise during work at the Doublemeat Palace. Buffy hallucinates during a time of conflict; Buffy seeks out Spike for escape during a time of conflict. However, the hallucinations give Buffy's depression a legitimacy that her illness, on its own, hadn't had with them. If Buffy's acting vaguely out of it or disappearing a lot (to be with Spike), that's just Buffy in a funk. However, if she's having hallucinations, then something's fucking wrong with her and they must help!

Xander and Willow get Buffy home, and Buffy explains about the demon attacking. They immediately go into Scooby Mode, researching and hitting demon bars to help Buffy.

At this point, Buffy flashes to another hallucination. Forgive the long excerpt, but it's pretty important.



Her hallucinations act as a commentary to her depressed viewpoint of her own situation. Her world is "coming apart", her friends aren't as comforting as they once were. She used to have grand villains to fight, but now she 'just' has ordinary guys.

We see so many indications of where Buffy is. Her entire world has fallen apart, still in the process of trying to come back together. Her distance from her friends. And then, the minimization of her own struggles as she 'just' has three pathetic little men to fight. As noted before, the Trio represent her own depression, and this shows how Buffy views it: As something that shouldn't be a big deal, but somehow is. The fact that it is proves that there's something wrong with her.

This is a mix of just about everything Buffy's gone through this season. This is why NA is best thought of as an allegorical episode, much in the sense of Restless.

Just as Buffy is shown falling apart, we get a scene that also shows how the Trio are falling apart. Buffy's depression is self-destructing.

We then get a scene between Willow and Buffy. Buffy's staring at a family photograph.



Buffy knows that what she's feeling isn't all directly attributed to the demon. Willow wants to push the blame over to it, but Buffy knows better. Willow's response, that they've all been slumming, sounds good on paper, but it's actually kinda cringeworthy.

When I was trying to explain to a friend about the depressive episode I was currently in, I poured my heart out about the misery and despair I was in. Her response was, "Yeah, I've had my bad days, too."

It never works when people without depression attempt to compare their experiences 'feeling down' with actual depression. All it does is further alienate the depressed person. It affirms their loneliness at the same time it shames their suffering (because everybody has their bad days).

Buffy's choice of phrasing, she tries to "snap out of it", is very reminiscent of what many depressed people are told to do by others. They often internalize it, much like Buffy appears to have.

Buffy confides in Willow, then, that she had been in a mental institution at one point before the series started. This bit of new canon helps to convince Buffy that her world is the hallucination. Everything's falling apart. Nothing's real. Reality must be the mental hospital.

As Buffy and Willow talk, Spike has been recruited to help hunt down the demon with Xander.

Spike's reaction to Buffy's depression has soured by this point.



There are reasons for Spike's shift in attitude, but it's outside the bounds of this meta. At this point, though, Spike becomes a harmful presence above and beyond what he had been before because of his accusative attitude towards Buffy's mental state.

Xander and Spike manage to snag the demon, and Dawn brings some tea to Buffy. In the meantime, Buffy's hallucinations are working to convince her that Dawn doesn't exist. Remember that Dawn represents Life for Buffy. As Dawn goes, so goes Buffy's spark for life.



It's interesting that Dawn appears to believe that this is Buffy's "ideal reality". I suppose it can be taken as her mind's perfect escape hatch. She has the past experience in a mental institution to fool her brain into thinking it's plausible. It has both her parents, alive and together. It doesn't have any of the Slayer duty or responsibility that ended her up in her current position. That, of course, precludes Dawn.

In any case, she's naturally taken aback by Buffy's declaration and leaves, as she often does at this point of the season.

Willow makes with the chemistry and cooks up an antidote for Buffy.



The antidote in this episode acts as a metaphor for antidepressants, or mental health meds in general. The promise attached to them is that things will go "back to normal". We'll see that there's still often some hesitation in their actual usage.

It's interesting to see Buffy's expression of gratitude to Willow here. At the beginning of the season, Willow lamented that Buffy didn't thank her for the resurrection. In fact, part of Buffy's descent into badness was fueled by her bitterness towards her friends, Willow included. The fact that she's now thanking Willow suggests that she is on an upswing. However, it also suggests that she's fully blaming herself for everything rather than holding the others accountable for their actions. She's begun to internalize and take responsibility for everything in this season.

In some ways - twisted ways - this is essential for Buffy being able to reconnect with her friends, as this episode will show.



Going with the antidote as antidepressant metaphor, it's often viewed as a quick fix by friends and family. Willow's gonna run to Dawn to let her know everything's gonna be okay. Cause Buffy will be instantly cured as soon as she takes it. Boom! No more depression.

Of course, antidepressants don't work like that. They can take a few months to have full effect, and a person can often backslide before ultimately improving. Likewise, even though Buffy started her recovery from depression back in Dead Things, it takes her until the end of the season to actually recover. There's no quick fix.

Once Willow leaves, Spike and Buffy have a conversation. For Buffy's part, she's half out of it. For Spike's part, her confused response only further infuriates him.



Just as Buffy ostensibly has the cure to her depression in front of her, Spike reiterates the viewpoint that she is just intrinsically wrong. That the antidote won't help. That the only thing she can do is just snap out of it, get over it, (and be with him).

As Spike (Death) is losing his hold over her, he starts to lash out in an attempt to regain it. This will culminate in Seeing Red, but for this episode, the damage is done.

Buffy pours the antidote into the trash.



Spike's words act as the final push to Buffy seeking out the escape of the mental hospital.

Let's talk about the antidepressant metaphor here. Antidepressants are intimidating. You don't know if they're going to work. You don't know if the side effects will be bearable. You don't know if they'll make you flip out and try to kill yourself. What's more, you know that this is a pill that you will have to take every day. Possibly forever. Something that's gonna alter the chemistry of your brain.

That's scary stuff. It's a scary step to take. It's an especially scary step to take when you've internalized that your depression is just a part of you. Riley prodded Buffy in the right direction by correcting that belief, but it's still taking a while to seep in. In the meantime, Spike manages to direct Buffy to the mindset that she's best off just snapping out of it.

This does a couple things. For one, it sends Buffy running to that escape hatch. She embraces the hallucinations, much like she'd embraced the decision to turn herself in for Katrina's death in Dead Things.

I think it does something more, though. It actually makes Buffy believe the hallucinations. Spike's words hit close to home because they resonate with her depressed mindset. It reminds her of how much everything is falling apart and how screwed up she is.

She decides that can't be real.

That's something of a thing, there. The depressed mindset has become to foreign, Buffy starts to believe that a poison-induced hallucination is reality.

Depression does make you a stranger in your own mind. It sufficiently warps your perceptions to the point where reality often seems...off. Alien. I'd often think that I was going to wake up in some futuristic sci-fi world and this whole life of mine was some sort of VR experiment or something. Everything I was feeling, everything I was doing, it became too much for me to accept as normal.

If given the right hallucinations, I can't say I wouldn't have started believing them, either.

Back to the show, Buffy appeals to Joyce and the doctor in her hallucination. She wants to get better and go home with her parents.



The doctor and Joyce urge Buffy to rid herself of her friends.

Let's zoom out and take this in the context of the larger season allegory. Depression does rid a person of their friends, though often in subtler ways. I've lost friends thanks to my depression. What's more, I thought I was better off without them.

This episode makes this fairly explicit with Buffy hunting down her friends and tying them up to be killed by a demon in the basement. It shows the harmful effects of her depression on others. Not just as a friend, but as the Slayer. She's the one who's supposed to kill demons, and yet she's using them as a weapon against her own friends.

It's strange, though, that this episode stresses her friends as a support structure when...they haven't been through most of the season. What they have been, though, are Buffy's motivation for almost everything. They're the reason that she initially didn't tell anyone (except Spike) about where she was. They're the reason she put aside her own well-being to keep going rather than killing herself. She was brought back to be the "warrior of the people".

Like it or not, her friends have kept her going. They're essential, even when they're being inadvertently harmful. By rescuing them at the end of this episode, Buffy is coming full circle and reasserting her duty and responsibility that she had attempted to reject earlier in the season.

Back in reality, Buffy runs into Willow and promptly knocks her out and takes her to the basement. Xander meets the same fate when he returns. Dawn is the last that Buffy goes after. When Buffy approaches her, Dawn is packing her things to stay the night at Janice's. Buffy subdues her and takes her down to the basement.

All the while, her hallucinations are encouraging her as she looses the demon on her friends. Things start to get dire in the real world, when figment!Joyce gives Buffy an inspiring speech.



While Joyce's words are meant to appeal to Buffy to stay in her delusion, they end up doing the opposite. They crystallize which is reality and which is not for Buffy. What's more, they urge her not to give in.

"I know the world feels like a hard place sometimes, but you've got people who love you." That's Buffy's friends. For better or for worse, regardless of mistakes made, her friends love her. Watching her friends being attacked while having the image of her mother assure her that she has a "world of strength in [her] heart" allows Buffy to snap out of it.



When Buffy says, "Good-bye", she's not just talking to her mother. She's talking, also, to her depression. To her method of escape, whether it be Spike or jail or hallucinations. She's accepting responsibility as a Slayer, a sister, and a friend and taking up her duties. In doing so, she has to say farewell to that which had been holding her back - the safety nets, the coping mechanisms.

She promptly dispatches the demon.



Where does this leave Buffy? Normal Again marks the concrete end of her actual depression. She defeats the demon (depression) and gets the antidote (the meds). "Everything's gonna be okay".

However, just because the depression is "officially" over doesn't mean that its effects still aren't being felt. The rest of the season is integral to Buffy's depression arc. She's still at odds with Dawn, who feels she's not wanted in Buffy's life. Accepting Dawn is absolutely essential to Buffy's final emergence from her depressive funk. And that's something we won't see until the end of Grave

So stick around, because the next several episodes are very important, if not as intensely focused on Buffy's depressions as the previous ones had been.

Entropy aka I'm making amends...



The beginning of this episode shows Spike (Death) attempting to help Buffy. Buffy, for her part, completely refuses to accept his help. Or anything to do with him. After her progress in Normal Again, we're seeing her cut ties with Spike and what he represents.



After the events of NA, Buffy's friends have finally seen the depths of her depression (and felt its effects). And they're still sticking around. That means something. My closest friends are the ones who stuck with me through my depression, because I know that they will accept me no matter what.

However, it's interesting to see this in light of Xander's reaction to the Buffy/Spike affair. Just as he has issues with Buffy and Spike, he had issues with Buffy's depression. It took time for him to come to terms with both. It's not as sitcom-y easy as a big group hug. It takes time and understanding, and it's going to hurt sometimes.

We also see Buffy taking Dawn on an outing. They directly address Dawn's prior stealing. This is a nice metaphorical way of bringing up the past life issues Buffy has had and how she's dealing with them now.



She's playful and confident and secure that things will work out. This is a Buffy who is heads and away in a better place than she had been previously.

A later scene shows Buffy making an elaborate breakfast for Dawn. She'd previously been unable to manage to make a decent meal for her sister, but she's going above and beyond now. She's also proactively attempting to take Dawn out.

Dawn quickly points out that it's because of the basement thing.



In part, this is probably true. The poison and delusions in NA were a stand-in for Buffy's depression and her behavior. After having been depressed for so long, she's eager to reforge her old connections.

However, Buffy assures her that she just wants to spend time together.



Dawn brings up what will be the main issue for the next several episodes. Dawn wants to help slay. She wants to be a fully active partner in Buffy's life. Buffy...not too fond of that idea.



Think about this in the context of the depression metaphor where Dawn is representative of life. After her struggle with depression, Buffy is a bit gun-shy. She's scared to fully embrace and expose herself (and her life) to everything, especially the potentially dangerous stuff.

"I work very hard to keep you away from that stuff." She does work very hard. She works probably harder than she needs to to control herself and her life.

Okay, let's use a bit of a cliche example here. My first major depressive episode was because of a guy (*rollseyes*). I was in love, it was unrequited, drama happened. Drama like I'd never had before.

I got over the depression eventually, but I was still reluctant to go through that experience again. I attempted not to expose myself to situations wherein I might, again, end up in such an unequal romantic relationship. I did so to the point of hindering my own development.

That's where Buffy is now with Dawn. Buffy's depression centers around Dawn as a catalyst in some ways. Once her mother died in S5, Buffy had to toughen up in order to help Dawn. In The Gift, she jumps in part in order to save Dawn. When she's resurrected, she hides her own pain so that Dawn can feel better. Buffy's drive to protect Dawn at all costs is admirable, but it's also ultimately harmful to her. Being able to get rid of this drive and instead embrace Dawn as an equal partner is very important.

The rest of the episode deals with Anya and Spike (and Buffy and Xander). Most of this is not related to Buffy's depression arc, so I don't have much to comment on. It's natural that Buffy's depression coming to an end would signal the end of Spike's function as Death. He still plays that role from time to time from here to the end, but he spends much more time being Spike now.

There is another exchange between Buffy and Dawn near the end that deserves to be highlighted. After the gang spy Spike and Anya getting it on, Buffy retreats to the back yard and presumably tells all to Dawn.



Dawn is attempting to take the place of Buffy's confidant, a role that Spike had filled at the beginning of the season. However, because of Buffy's reluctance to expose Dawn to the darker stuff, she's hesitant to take her up on it. We'll see this progress in later episodes.

Oh, look. Time for Seeing Red.

Seeing Red aka Now my friends have problems...



I know that there are a couple of controversial events in this episode (the attempted rape scene and Tara's death). Neither of these scenes are particularly relevant to Buffy's depression arc. As such, I do not want comments about either of them unless you do connect them to her depression arc in some way. If an off-topic comment about either one of these is posted, the thread will be frozen.

Let's get on with the episode, then. :)

There's an interesting part to the Willow/Tara conversation at the beginning of the episode.



This will be important later on during the Dark Willow arc. Buffy's depression has left her at a distance from her friends. She's managed to repair some of the damage but not all of it.

Buffy is busy investigating the Trio and getting the group together to help.



She's still maintaining her distance from Spike, which is a necessity after his role in her depression arc. Spike was an enabler for her self-destructive behavior. He represented Death, which is what Buffy is now not even desiring.

In a continuation of Buffy's attempts to repair her damaged relationships, she visits Xander to try to smooth over the ordeal of Entropy.



Oftentimes, it's easier to discuss one's depression with friends after you're on the road to recovery. During, everything is too immediate and intense. Buffy is able to talk about it in retrospect, however. Xander's also able to accept it in retrospect. As Buffy tells Xander, he didn't want to know. We saw in Tabula Rasa that Xander was determined to keep seeing the good in Buffy's resurrection, even after finding out that she'd been in heaven. It's not until this point in the season that he's willing to accept what Buffy went through.

The bathroom scene between Buffy and Spike is much more about the two characters outside the depression arc than anything else. It's noteworthy in that it's Death, again, attempting to force itself back into Buffy's life. Outside of that, though, it's not especially relevant to this meta.

For the rest of the episode, Buffy succeeds in getting two of the three nerds arrested. After the milestone of Normal Again, Buffy is able to effectively take out her depression. Nifty.

However, Warren, in a fit of anger, shoots Buffy. Of course, a stray bullet hits Tara.

Buffy will end the season the way she began: with death. We'll talk a lot more about her being shot in the next installation of the meta, as well as touching on how it connects up to the Dark Willow arc.

For now, let's look at the confluence of events. Buffy is shot by the last remnant of her depression just after Death attacks her. This is Buffy not surrendering anymore, and yet she's still being attacked on all sides. She's attempting to rectify her actions in drifting apart from her friends and isolating herself. She's also trying to make amends for ignoring Dawn. This is where we leave off for this time.

Next up: Villains, Two to Go, and Grave

Buffy Came Back Wrong: Bargaining and Afterlife
Buffy Came Back Wrong: Flooded and Life Serial
Buffy Came Back Wrong: All the Way and Once More, With Feeling
Buffy Came Back Wrong: Tabula Rasa and Smashed
Buffy Came Back Wrong: Wrecked, Gone, and Doublemeat Palace
Buffy Came Back Wrong: Dead Things and Older and Far Away
Buffy Came Back Wrong: As You Were and Hell's Bells
Buffy Came Back Wrong: Normal Again, Entropy, and Seeing Red
Buffy Came Back Wrong: Villains, Two to Go, and Grave
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