Beer Bad

[Updated April 30, 2013]

There are worse episodes than Beer Bad, but not very many. If you ask a random Buffy fan to name the worst episode in the series off the top of his/her head, Beer Bad will come up pretty often. The problem is not that the point is obscure, as was true of, say, IRYJ. To the contrary, the episode beats us over the head with the message, even more than Buffy beat Parker. Emotionally satisfying that may be for her, but less so for us. At least I can discuss the point of the episode instead of stretching to find one as I did with IRYJ or Go Fish.

Immediately after Buffy’s dream, the camera panned to a shot of Parker and his next conquest-to-be chatting in Prof. Walsh’s class. We then hear Prof. Walsh tell us about the id, the ego, and the superego:

“These are the things we want. Simple things. Comfort, sex, shelter, food. We always want them and we want them all the time. The id doesn't learn, it doesn't grow up. It has the ego telling it what it can't have and it has the superego telling it what it should want. But the id works solely out of the pleasure principle. It wants.”


This all sounds very familiar from S2, and it arises in the same context: sex. The transition from the shot of Parker to the lecture hammers home the point that Prof. Walsh is talking about Parker here. He’s a slave to his id; sex is all he wants. “Willow: This isn't sharing. This isn't connecting. It's the pleasure principle. That's right, I got your number id boy. The only thing you're thinking about is how long till you can jump on my bones.”

The episode’s metaphors, heavy-handed though they may be, reinforce the message. Beer, even if not enchanted, strips us of our inhibitions, that is, our superegos. The “cavemen” represent the stereotypical instance of that. They’re pure id. CaveBuffy wants too, but not sex. She wants revenge on Parker. She gets that metaphorically in three different ways: when her metaphorical spirit exposes the shallowness of his pick-up routine, revealing his true self; when the metaphorical ids (the cavemen) hit him over the head immediately after Willow finishes; and when she herself hits him over the head at the end.

You might have sensed another case of id on display. We’ll see that play out next episode.

The episode also fits in with the seasonal theme of identity theft. The beer robbed Buffy and the other students of their true selves. This was similar to the identity theft we saw in Living Conditions, in that something essential was taken away. Keep in mind that there may be other ways to steal someone’s identity.

Trivia notes: (1) Xander may have seen the movie Cocktail, but perhaps that wasn’t the best model. (2) A fugue state (Xander’s description of Buffy’s mopey sadness) basically involves temporarily forgetting who you are. (3) The arrogant guy who wanted to conduct sociometry was looking to use numbers to describe social relationships. The scene is an homage to the movie Good Will Hunting. (4) In case you missed it, there was a very brief scene with Veruca in Living Conditions. Veruca’s band, Shy, was actually the band T.H.C. Sarah Folkman was the lead singer – Paige Moss, who played Veruca, didn’t sing. (5) Thomas Aquinas was probably the most important Catholic theologian. He lived in the 1200s. His theory of divine providence – what one of the students wanted to discuss – states that God actively supervises Creation rather than just creating the universe and then sitting back and watching it. (6) Buffy was watching Luscious Jackson on MTV when Willow thought she’d had group sex. (7) Xander described the boys affected by the beer as “questing for fire”. Quest For Fire was a 1981 film about the discovery of fire by archaic humans. (8) Xander described Giles as “Mr. ‘I spent the sixties in an electric Kool-Aid funky Satan groove’”. The “electric Kool-Aid” refers to the book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.