Beer Bad

"Beer Bad" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the television series ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer''. It is written by Tracey Forbes and directed by David Solomon. It was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Hairstyling in a Series.

Plot synopsis

Buffy is still hurting because Parker dumped her after a night together. In a daydream during one of Professor Walsh's classes (pointedly, 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 gets a job as a bartender with a fake ID, and has to endure the insults from students. He gets to test his empathy skills with none other than Buffy who then proceeds to get drunk on "Black Frost" beer with four college boys. Oz and Willow are in The Bronze together, but he feels a strange connection to the pretty singer Veruca when she gets on the stage with her band ''Shy''.

The next morning, Willow not only has to cope with Veruca having called her a "groupie", but also with Buffy, who seems to be suffering from "Black Frost." That evening when Buffy drinks herself further and further, it is soon revealed why: somebody has a chemical lab set up and is putting more into the beer than just malt. Xander finally sends Buffy home. When her four drinking buddies turn into violent Neanderthals, he finds out that the owner of the pub has been brewing the beer as revenge for 20 years of college kids taunting him. Despite the pub owner explaining that the effects wear off after a day or so, Xander heads off, knowing the damage that could be done in that time. 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. When he turns his charm on her, she plays along then asks how gullible he thinks she is, before going into 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, Buffy saves Willow and Parker. In the end, Parker thanks Buffy for saving his life, and apologizes just the way she had dreamt — just to get knocked unconscious by Buffy's club. The neanderthal students become subsequently locked in a random van.

Writing and acting

Willow proves again that she can't be sweet-talked, something first shown in " The Pack".

"Beer Bad" is written with a classic frame structure — Buffy's dream — that emphasizes her development; hitting Parker with a stick qualifies as poetic justice. 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".

However, the most striking feature of "Beer Bad" is the twin moral: Beer and casual sex are bad. In a BBC
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