Guest Starring: 
     
 Anthony Strewart Head: 
 (Giles) 
   
 Danny Strong: 
 (Jonathan) 
   
 Adam Busch: 
 (Warren) 
   
 Tom Lenk: 
 (Andrew) 
   
 Paul Gutrecht: 
 (Tony) 
   
 Noel Albert Guglielmi: 
 (Vince) 
   
 Enrique Almeida: 
 (Marco) 
   
 Jonathan Goldstein: 
 (Mike) 
   
 Winsome Brown: 
 (Woman Customer) 
   
 Christopher May: 
 (Male customer) 
   
 David J Miller: 
 (Rat-faced demon) 
   
 Andrew Cooper Wasser: 
 (Slime-covered demon) 
   
 Richard Beatty: 
 (small demon) 
   
 James C Leary: 
 (Loose skinned demon, later Clem) 
   
 
 
  5. Life Serial.  
   
  Not knowing what to do with her life, Buffy tries out several different careers. All the time the geek trio are 'testing' her though.  
   
  Great quotes:  
   
 
"Death Star dude!"
  • Andrew: "'Death Star' dude!"
  • Buffy: "Maybe I should ease back in with some non-taxing classes like 'introduction to pies' or maybe 'advanced walking'." Mmmm, pies.
  • Anya: "There was this customer once who wanted a sapphire... er, a sapphire 'ding-dong'."
  • Buffy does sarcasm: "Yes, and them I'm going to marry Bob Dole and raise penguins in Guam."
  • Jonathan: "Stop touching my magic bone!"
  • The geek trio echo Homer Simpson: "Mmmm, free cable porn..."
  • Buffy has a hangover: "I think at one point I turned completely inside out." That's right kids, alcohol is bad for you.
  • Andrew: "We're supervillians now like Dr No." Warren: "Yes, back when Bond was Connery and movies were decent"
  • Andrew: "Timothy Dalton should get an Oscar and beat Sean Connery over the head with it!"
  
  Fantastic moments:  
   
 
The girls are back at uni.
  • Willow tries to comfort Buffy about the fact that she isn't following the class, she doesn't help her case by being able to follow the class despite the fact that she's also chatting.
  • The geeks argue over the nature of o'clock designations and whether 12 o'clock refers to the front of the van or is specific to the spatial orientation of the person giving the direction. The scene then ends with the van's horn going off accidentally, Andrew has modified it so that it plays the opening few bars of the Star Wars theme tune. Conspicuous much? As one of the Scoobies might say.
  • After Warren gives Buffy the 'speed-up' he tells his pals to "Score me." It's clearly all a game for the trio as Jonathan and Andrew award points for 'ingenuity' and compromise on a 7/10 score on the 'freak-o-meter'.
  • The whole argument over who was the best Bond is fantastic, Warren likes Connery whereas Jonathan says "... Roger Moore was smooth.", Andrew likes Timothy Dalton (Warren just slaps Andrew around the head for that comment) Warren then pulls the Moore films apart "... Moonraker?! The gondola that turns into a hovercraft? That's retarded... I mean there's a shot of pigeons doing, like, double takes when the gondola blasted by. Moonraker is inexcusable." Warren - despite any other failings he undoubtedly has - is clearly right in this case.
  
  Duff Bits:  
   
 
  • Buffy says one of my most hated Americanisations of the English language. She says 'acclimating' instead of 'acclimatising'. Even just thinking about that word makes me cringe.
  • The animated hand certainly hit the right spot in terms of annoying Buffy, it didn't do too bad a job of annoying the hell out of me either. That entire sequence could have had half its running time shaved off and no one would have cared.
  
  Dean's comments:  
   
 
The geeks test Buffy from their secret lair.
Here we go again guys; just in case there weren't enough hints in the previous episode that the real evils of season 6 will be ordinary life, we have 'Life Serial'. This is an episode in which Buffy is presented with various choices about what she can do with her life, be a student, work, be a slouch; she ultimately decides that each of these ideas are disheartening and pointless and becomes thoroughly depressed about the whole thing. But then that's life baby, you do something you don't want to do and buy things you don't need with money you don't have. This is not all that 'Life Serial' has to say about life though; people get through nadirs in a variety of ways. Buffy is no different here, she laughs and drinks and finds strength in her friends (mainly Spike). Buffy also tells Giles that knowing he'll always be there makes her feel safe, almost as if the emotional support he gives makes it easy for her to give up. Thus this episode - and the sixth season of BtVS as a whole - forms a commentary on how the fast paced 'fire-em hire-em' mantra of modern capitalism tries desperately to destroy society's humanity. 'Doublemeat Palace' follows up on these themes with extreme prejudice. Almost got to the end of my 'comments' without mentioning the geek trio. You might have guessed that I think they were the funniest semi-regular characters the writers of BtVS ever dreamed up. The scores of priceless gags about Star Trek and James Bond and X files prove - if proof were ever needed - that the BtVS production team really are nerds at heart. Plus there's the whole thing about them being the 'big bad' in this season about normal stuff being worse than evil gods or monsters etc. Enough with the metaphors!		 
   
 7/10 
 
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