Beer Bad

"Beer Bad" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is the sixty-first episode altogether. It was written by Tracey Forbes and directed by David Solomon. It originally broadcast on November 2, 1999.

Xander gets a job bar tending at the college pub. Buffy drinks with some upperclassmen at the pub and are transformed into cavemen.

Synopsis
Buffy is still hurting because Parker Abrams dumped her after a one night stand. In a daydream during one of Professor Walsh's classes (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 dialogue with Willow later shows how much Buffy is not over him yet.



In the real world, Xander uses a fake ID gets a job as a bartender at the on-campus pub. Buffy stops by the pub and sees Parker entertaining a girl at one of the booths. She bumps into Riley, who gives her the lowdown on Parker's womanizing habits. Buffy pulls up a stool at the bar, where Xander is having some difficulty getting into the groove of the job. Fed up, Buffy is getting ready to leave when she is stopped by several college boys who insist that she join them in enjoying some beer. Meanwhile, Oz and Willow are in The Bronze together, but he seems to have a connection to the singer Veruca when she gets on the stage with her band Shy.



The next morning, Willow doesn't just 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 just sitting watching a Luscious Jackson video. 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 twenty 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. He turns his charm on her, and she seems to be swayed by it, 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 daydreamed it — just to get knocked unconscious by Buffy's club, much to the approval of the rest of the gang.

Continuity

 * Buffy's statement "Fire bad!" refers back to a previous statementmade to Giles where she says "Fire bad. Tree Pretty."

Music

 * Ash - "I'm Gonna Fall"
 * Collapsis - "Wonderland"
 * Gale Music - "Some people say"
 * Kim Ferron - "Nothing But You" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Album)
 * Lauren Christy - "Perfect Again"
 * Luscious Jackson - "Ladyfingers" (Remix)
 * Luscious Jackson - "Ladyfingers" (Buffy watches the video on television)
 * Paul Trudeau - "I Can't Wait"
 * Paul Trudeau - "It Feels Like I'm Dyin' Inside"
 * Paul Trudeau - "People will Talk"
 * Smile - "The Best Years"
 * THC - "Overfire" - played by Shy at The Bronze

Pop Culture References

 * Xander thinks he has enough bartender knowledge, because he knows how to perform the hippy-hippy shake from Cocktail. He finds out it takes a lot more effort though.

Other

 * Kal Penn, who plays Buffy's drinking buddy, Hunt, in this episode, also appears in "That Vision Thing" as the fez-adorned mystic Lilah Morgan hires to attack Cordelia Chase. He is best known for his role as Kumar in the Harold &amp; Kumar movies.


 * Producer Doug Petrie says, despite the intensely negative reaction of the fans to seeing Buffy being "battered about by the forces of college" and being treated so callously by Parker, they had to "ride that out" until this episode because "we didn't want her to find her strength immediately in this new setting".


 * The most striking feature of "Beer Bad" is the twin moral: Beer and casual sex are bad for you. In a BBC interview, Petrie states: "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."


 * This episode is considered by some fans to be the worst Buffy episode. A BBC reviewer complained about its "American puritanism" and Slayage criticized writer Tracey Forbes for delivering a trite and obvious message in a series containing "such an abundant feminist subtext". However, Todd Hertz of Christianity Today used this episode of an example of the show's honest portrayal of consequences.


 * This plot was written with the plan to take advantage of funds from the Office of National Drug Control Policy available to shows that promoted an anti-drug message. Funding was rejected for the episode because "[d]rugs were an issue, but ... [it] was otherworldly nonsense, very abstract and not like real-life kids taking drugs. Viewers wouldn't make the link to [the ONDCP's] message."