Smashed (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

"Smashed" is the 9th episode of season 6 of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Plot synopsis

Willow, sad and lonely without Tara, figures out a way to turn the metamorphosed Amy from a rat back into human. Feeling newly liberated, they decide to go out and have some fun. At The Bronze, a couple of guys try to intimidate them. They perform a spell on the boys to make fun of them, but soon they begin to perform more and more complex spells, filling the Bronze with strangely dressed people, sheep, mutations and so on. Willow is beginning to have a taste of her real power and she likes it.

Warren, Jonathan and Andrew steal a large diamond from a museum, in a comical scene resembling a famous sequence from the Mission: Impossible films, leaving its sole guard frozen by their freeze-ray.

Spike discovers that the chip in his head gives him no pain when he punches Buffy. After verifying, with Warren's help, that the chip appears undamaged and still causes him agony when he harms humans, Spike tells Buffy that she "came back wrong" and that she "has a little demon" in her. In furious disbelief, Buffy assaults Spike and they battle until Buffy unleashes her desire and kisses him, initiating such passionate sex that the abandoned house in which they were fighting collapses around them.

Production details

Steve Tartalia, James Marsters' stunt double, says he knocked himself out during the last scene, in which Buffy and Spike fall through the ceiling. "On that fall," he says, "our legs got tangled in the breakaway ceiling, and it caused us to tilt at an angle so that my head would be the first thing to hit the ground. And it did, and it knocked me out. Basically, I came to with some flashlights and smelling salts."^[1] Stunt coordinator John Medlen also hurt himself during this episode, while demonstrating how Spike should swing from the chandelier. The chandelier broke, he fell 7 feet, and the chandelier landed on his face, breaking his nose.^[1]

A longer, more intense lovemaking scene was originally filmed for the finale of the episode, but was cut out.^[2]

Writing

In his DVD commentary, writer Drew Z. Greenberg says that in his original conception of Willow's confrontation with the homophobic men at The Bronze, he intended for Willow to cast a spell on the men so that they couldn't stop kissing each other. Joss Whedon vetoed the idea because he did not want to portray people's sexual orientation as changing in an instant and he did not want to portray same-sex kissing as a punishment.

Euphemisms

Three consecutive episode titles in the sixth season are euphemisms for drunkenness or being under the influence of narcotics in American English: "Smashed", "Wrecked", and "Gone". Willow's descent into her addiction to magic becomes dizzying and frightening.

Cultural references

• Star Wars: Spike forces the Trio to help him by threatening to break their Boba Fett action figure.
• Star Trek: Spike tells Warren that he can "play Holodeck another time." He also says to Warren, "Help me out here, Spock, I don't speak loser."
• Murder, She Wrote: When Spike tries to attack the muggers, Buffy says, "Yeah, way to go with the keen observiness, Jessica Fletcher."
• James Bond in film: It is claimed that a James Bond musical cue enters the soundtrack as police officers wheel Frozen Rusty out of the museum on a dolly.^[3]
• Doctor Who and Red Dwarf: When commenting on Spike's English nationality, Andrew remarks that he has seen every episode of Doctor Who, but none of the episodes of Red Dwarf, because the latter has not been released on DVD yet. These references elicit little response from the confused Spike.
• Amy mentions the 2001 divorce of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, asking Buffy, "... and did you hear about Tom and Nicole?"
• A rude young man at the Bronze calls Willow "Ellen," referring to Ellen DeGeneres.

Continuity

• Willow's comment to Amy about sewing her name in her clothes before doing any forgetting spells references the previous episode, where ID and clothing labels told most of the gang who they were.

Arc significance

• This episode marks the beginning of Spike and Buffy's sexual relationship, which would very likely never have happened if she did not truly believe Spike when he says she "came back wrong" (if she's somehow wrong, then she can allow herself to do wrong things).^[3]
• Amy is returned to being human after being a rat since the middle of the third season. Amy provides Buffy with a recap of events that she has learned occurred while she was a rat, marveling, "Snyder got eaten by a snake, high school got destroyed... Willow's dating girls..."
• Spike learns that he can hit Buffy without his chip activating.
• Foreshadowing: When Amy is watching television downstairs, a commercial talking about a doublemeat medley can be heard. Buffy winds up working at "Doublemeat Palace" three episodes later.
• After Willow and Tara's breakup, Tara's conversation with Dawn echoes many typical conversations between a divorced parent and their child. Willow and Tara's quasi-parental relationship with Dawn will later be mentioned in Buffy Season Eight when Dawn says that "Willow is like a mom (to her)."

Reception

• In an unscientific poll, readers of the Television Without Pity's recap gave the episode a B-.^[4]
• Kevin Fallon cited the sex scene as one of "TV's 13 Dirtiest Sex Scenes" in a column for The Daily Beast.^[5]

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Smashed

• "Smashed" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Smashed" at TV.com
• Full-text transcript