Beer Bad (Buffy episode)
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"Beer Bad" is an episode of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer that packs a double moral. It was written by Tracey Forbes and directed by David Solomon.
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Plot Outline
Episode 5 of season 4, "Beer Bad", starts out with Buffy still hurting because Parker dumped her after a night together. In a daydream during one of Professor Walsh's classes (pointedly, about the role of the Id in Freudian psychology) she saves Parker's life and he swears to do anything to get her back. A dialog with Willow later shows how much Buffy is not over him yet.
In the real world, Xander gets a job as a bartender with fake ID, and has to endure the insults and taunts of the students. He gets to test his empathy skills with none other than Buffy who then proceeds to get drunk on "Black Frost" beer with four college boys. Oz and Willow are in The Bronze together, but he feels a strange attraction to the singer Veruca when she gets on the stage with her band Shy.
The next morning, Willow doesn't only have to cope with Veruca having called her a "groupie" when Oz introduced them and the feeling that Oz is mentally absent, but also with Buffy who seems to be suffering from "Black Frost" in more than the usual way: She seems to be dumbing down more and more. That evening when Buffy drinks herself further and further into idiocy we get a glimpse why: somebody has a chemical lab set up and is putting more into the beer than just malt. Xander finally sends Buffy home, and when her four drinking buddies turn into violent Neanderthals, he finds out that the owner of the pub has been brewing something as revenge for 20 years of college kids taunting him. While the boys escape to the streets of Sunnydale, Xander gets Giles to help. They find Buffy drawing cave paintings on her dorm wall saying "Parker bad!". Giles and Xander are unable to keep Buffy in her room when she gets a craving for more beer.
Meanwhile, Willow confronts Parker with what she says he has done to Buffy. When he turns his charm on her, there is a moment when we think he has turned her, too, but then she reveals she has been playing along with a rant about how primitive men are — just when the four Neanderthal students burst into the room. They knock Willow and Parker unconscious and start a fire that rapidly burns out of control. Xander catches up with Buffy and when they see smoke from the Neanderthals' fire, they rush to help. Though afraid of the flames and unable to figure out how to use an extinguisher anymore, Buffy saves Willow and — after hitting him — Parker. In the end, Parker thanks Buffy for saving his life, and apologizes just the way she had dreamt — just to get knocked unconscious again, much to the approval of the rest of the gang.
Importance
"Beer Bad" is the episode where Buffy gets over Parker: At the beginning, she is pining for him, at the end, she is hitting him over the head with a branch, thus clearing the way for Riley. In a fashion similar to "Tabula Rasa", Buffy's descent to a more primitive state lets us see aspects of her core personality: courage and willingness to face danger to defend her friends. Oz' attraction to Veruca is built up further, setting the stage for the following episode "Wild at Heart". Willow gets a few things about men off of her chest in a way that gives us more clues that she will be giving them up for good sometime soon.
Writing and Acting
Willow proves again that she can't be sweet-talked, something we first learned in "The Pack".
"Beer Bad" is written with a classic frame structure — Buffy's dream — that emphasizes her development; hitting Parker with a stick qualifies as poetic justice. The college students are crude sketches at best.
However, the most striking feature of "Beer Bad" is the twin moral that has made it one of the least liked episodes of the series: Beer and casual sex are bad for you. Though there are attempts to put a humorous note on it — in the end, Xander asks Buffy what she has learned about beer, and all she says is "foamy!" — but there is no escaping the fact that the writers are laying it on with a trowel. In an interview (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/interviews/doug/bad.shtml) with the BBC, producer Doug Petrie admits this freely: "Well, very young people get unlimited access to alcohol and become horrible! We all do it — or most of us do it — and live to regret it, and we wanted to explore that."
Quotes and Trivia
- "My mother always said that beer was evil" — Buffy giving us the moral
- "I can't believe you served Buffy that beer" — Giles repeating it
- "Freshman girl not able to hold the beer. Shouldn't have it. Get into trouble" — Xander making sure we got it
Cast
- Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
- Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
- Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
- Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
- Daniel 'Oz' Osborne as Seth Green
- Lindsay Crouse as Maggie Walsh
Other Languages
"Beer Bad" only gets worse when translated, mainly because American attitudes towards alcohol are not shared in most other countries. In cultures where binge drinking is not the endemic problem it is in the US and where you don't have to be 21 to drink like in California (the reason Xander has to fake his ID card), the episode is widely seen as a heavy-handed morality play and an example of how American Puritanism is transported even in shows that otherwise dare to defy the norm.
Music
Kim Ferron's "Nothing but You" is played on the jukebox, one of the songs on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Album
External links
- BBC episode guide to "Beer Bad" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/indetail/beerbad/)
- BuffyGuide.com episode guide to "Beer Bad" (http://www.buffyguide.com/episodes/beerbad.shtml)
- Buffy Body Count synopsis of "Beer Bad" (http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/Episodes/405_BeerBad.html)