Template:Buffyepisode
"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.
Synopsis
Xander gets a job bar tending at the college pub. Buffydrinks with some upperclassmen at the pub and the group turns into cavemen.
Summary
Buffy fantasizes about Parker.
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 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. 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.
"You're not thinking about leaving are you? Because we have a strict policy against you leaving."
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. 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.
Regression.
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.
Buffy: Fire bad!
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.
Quotes and trivia
- Willow: As my best friend you need to stop thinking about Parker. He's no good. There are men, better men, wherein the mind is stronger than the penis.
- Xander: Nothing can defeat the penis! Too loud, very unseemly.
- Oz: Hey, you got a table.
- Willow: I had to kill a man.
- Oz: Well, it's a really good table.
- Xander: And was there a lesson in all this, huh? What did we learn about beer?
- Buffy: Foamy!
- Xander: Good. Just as long as that's clear.
- Buffy: Fire bad!
- -- recalls Buffy's statement to Giles (when she was physically and mentally exhausted and didn't want to have to think too hard) in "Graduation Day, Part Two": "Fire bad. Tree pretty."
- Giles: I can't believe you served Buffy that beer.
- Xander: I didn't know it was evil.
- Giles: You knew it was beer.
- Xander: Well, excuse me, Mister "I Spent the Sixties in an Electric Kool-Aid Funky Satan Groove."
- Giles: It was the early seventies and you should know better.
- -- Xander refers to Giles' "Ripper" days (see, eg. "The Dark Age").
- Kal Penn, who plays Buffy's drinking buddy Hunt in this episode, also appears in the Angel episode "That Vision Thing" as the fez-adorned mystic Lilah Morgan hires to attack Cordelia. He is best known for his role as Kumar in the Harold & 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".
- 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."
Music
- Ash - "I'm Gonna Fall"
- Collapsis - "Wonderland"
- Gale Music - "Some people say"
- Kim Ferron - "Nothing But You" - This songs appears on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Album.
- Luscious Jackson - "Ladyfingers" (Remix)
- Luscious Jackson - "Ladyfingers"
- Paul Trudeau - "I Can't Wait"
- Paul Trudeau - "It Feels Like I'm Dyin' Inside"
- Smile - "The Best Years"
- T.H.C. - "Overfire" - played by Shy at The Bronze