Guest Starring: 
     
 Elizabeth Anne Allen: 
 (Amy) 
   
 Pat Crawford Brown: 
 (Wig Lady) 
   
 Brent Hinkley: 
 (Manny the Manager) 
   
 Kirsten Nelson: 
 (Lorraine Ross) 
   
 Kali Rocha: 
 (Halfrek) 
   
 T. Ferguson: 
 (Gary) 
   
 Marion Calvet: 
 (Gina) 
   
 Douglas Bennet: 
 (Phillip) 
   
 Andrew Reville: 
 (Timothy) 
   
 
 
  12. Doublemeat Palace.  
   
  Buffy resolves to become a useful, waged, member of society; so she gets a job in a local burger joint.  
   
  Great quotes:  
   
 
Buffy lives the American dream.
  • Willow: "Hey, respect the narrative flow much?"
  • Buffy: "Why the 'doubleshiftiness'."
  • Buffy is being taught how to cook burgers: "Repeat until insane."
  • Buffy: "Got it, variety is the spice of bad."
  • Anya: "By the way, I'm opposed to using demon meat no matter how much money it saves. Does that surprise you?"
  
  Fantastic moments:  
   
 
Manny the Manager.
  • The burger-flipping guy tells Buffy how the grease gets stuck in his "... skin, hair, eye-lashes, ears, nostrils!" His story about having to get the doctor to syringe his ears of grease is especially disturbing.
  • The video that Buffy watches when she joins the Doublemeat 'experience' is an utterly hilarious parody of corporate BS. The same goes for Manny the Manger, his character does a lot to debunk the American dream in the modern age and fast food with his talk about being a 'lifer', describing the meat medley as containing "... a slice of processed chicken product" and how the employees "...start to look the same to me..."
  • All of the horror spoof stuff about the Double Meat palace building brought a smile to my face. Manny tells Buffy about the 'secret ingredient', the 'high turnover' of employees and how she mustn't go in the freezer. The old woman tells Buffy that "... suddenly you never see them [employees] again" while Spike says "This place'll kill you." And the best moment is when Buffy says "They could be anywhere..." and a huge block of meat is dumped in front of her.
  
  Duff Bits:  
   
 
  • We didn't really need there to actually be a demon-coming-out-of-head old woman monster in the Doublemeat Palace, it would have been better if there was no demon and just life (as Xander says).
  
  Dean's comments:  
   
 
The Scooby gang isn't quite what it used to be...
BtVS lives the 'Scream' / 'Cabin Fever' spoof horror genre and in doing so has a dig at consumerism USA-style and the fast food industry while exploring the alienation of paid work. Buffy decides that it's finally time to get a job, but instead of finding a horizon-expanding career she encounters a depressed and alienating workplace in which her colleagues are indistinguishable from the zoned-out extras in a George Romero film. This is why the horror spoof fits so seamlessly into 'Doublemeat Palace', from Manny the Manger's stone-faced "... that's not a joke, it's my name" to one of the workers telling Buffy: "You're funny, you better stop that", the message that comes out of the episode is that for all the good working does you, you may as well be in a teen-slasher movie. When Buffy is first shown around the restaurant her co-workers are shot at bizarre 'X-files' style camera angles and speak in guarded monotones about what happened to the previous employees "She's gone." Interesting that Joss Whedon says the sponsors of BtVS were more worried about him debunking the institution of fast food than the excess of sex this season. Meanwhile the major arcs of season 6 bubble under the surface of the plot, Xander and Anya both start having pangs about their marriage, Dawn worries about her estrangement from her sister and Willow struggles against her own addictive personality. When all is said and done though, Buffy goes back to work in the very restaurant that she hated so much because she realises that she's a woman with responsibilities who has to survive in the real world. The distinctly unglamorous and gritty themes of season 6 bite the audience on the bum again.		 
   
 8/10 
 
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