History Recap / BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E17NormalAgain

* ActorAllusion: Sarah Michelle Gellar would appear as a guest star in the final few episodes of her former soap opera 'All My Children'. She plays a well dressed, coiffured and otherwise coherent young woman (even wearing her wedding ring) brought in for observation/fresh medication for claiming to see vampires. The implication being that this is actually Buffy who recovered her sanity after the end of the series but has temporarily suffered a slight relapse.

* TeensAreShort: Buffy notes that she should be taller than her 'little' sister.

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: A demon stabs Buffy with a weapon that is a part of it. Said weapon is also poisonous and causes vivid hallucination. Buffy believes she is in an asylum being treated for her delusion that she is the Slayer. After 6 years of watching the show, we the audience automatically assume that the Sunnydale scenes are real and the asylum scenes are delusion until the final reveal, which has one final "hallucination" that she's gone catatonic to cast doubt in the viewer's mind.

* OrWasItADream: Since the last thing we see is the insane asylum where Buffy had spent much of the episode "hallucinating" that she was a patient, accompanied by a doctor pronouncing that she's lapsed back into catatonia, it's left to the viewer whether the previous six seasons were real, or a psychotic hallucination. Bear in mind, however, that Buffy has still not yet taken the antidote as of this final scene. And that no real-life psychiatrist would think it was a good idea to encourage a mental patient to kill their imaginary friends. Creator/JossWhedon personally believes that the events of the series are real.

* MindScrew: Buffy is poisoned by a hallucinogen-producing demon and is torn between two realities: being a Slayer and being an insane girl in an asylum, with parents who love her and are trying to make her sane again with the help of a psychiatrist. But then, when the episode ends, it does so with an image of Buffy in her normal-crazy-girl reality, not as Slayer Girl, leaving you with the impression that the entire show, including the later seasons, are all a product of an insane girl's overactive imagination unless you bear in mind that Buffy hasn't taken the antidote yet as of the final scene and this moment could just represent her choosing not to respond to the hallucinations. Joss Whedon said he considers the series to be actually happening, but put that in just for fun, and if people want they can consider the whole series to be the delusions of Buffy. Which would also make the entire ''Series/{{Angel}}'' series part of that hallucination, too.

* TheEndingChangesEverything: The Trio tries to convince Buffy that her life as a vampire slayer is delusional, and she is really a patient in a mental hospital. The episode ends on Buffy in the Mental Institution going catatonic. (Joss Whedon claimed this episode was ambiguous, and the show snaps back in the next episode.)

* AlternateRealityEpisode: Buffy, under the effects of a demon's venom, flashes between the normal Buffyverse, and an alternate universe where she had spent the last seven years catatonic in an insane asylum in Los Angeles, where they have been trying to treat her for her insane delusions about fighting vampires. The episode makes no attempt whatsoever to clarify which, if either, of Buffy's perceived realities are the real thing.

* LotusEaterMachine: PlayedWith. Usually, finding oneself in a mental institution is not anyone's idea of "paradise" — but it might as well be, in contrast to what all Buffy had to contend with at that point in the series. Dawn even accuses Buffy of not caring about her — when it's revealed that Buffy's parents are still together and alive, but Dawn doesn't exist. To be certain, the institution seems like a decent enough place — albeit with the doctors being a bit amoral and unprofessional (They practically encourage Buffy to kill her friends).

* PsychoPsychologist: A competent therapist in real life would most certainly ''not'' encourage a patient to kill their imaginary friends, which serves as a big indication that the asylum reality is a hallucination caused by the demon's venom.

* ActorAllusion: Sarah Michelle Gellar would appear as a guest star in the final few episodes of her former soap opera 'All My Children'. She plays a well dressed, coiffured and otherwise coherent young woman (even wearing her wedding ring) brought in for observation/fresh medication for claiming to see vampires. The implication being that this is actually Buffy who recovered her sanity after the end of the series but has suffered a slight relapse.

* ActorAllusion: Sarah Michelle Gellar would appear as a guest star in the final few episodes of her former soap opera 'All My Children'. She plays a well dressed, coiffured and otherwise coherent young woman (even wearing her wedding ring) brought in for observation/fresh medication for claiming to see vampires. The implication being that this is Buffy who recovered her sanity after the end of the series but has suffered a slight relapse.

* SummonMagic: How Andrew summons the demon -- by playing some kind of big flute.

* DescriptionCut: Willow says that Xander has help finding the demon; cut to Xander and Spike stalking through the woods. The doctor's description of this years BigBad as "just three pathetic little men who like playing with toys" to the Trio in their lair.

** The BelligerentSexualTension between Xander and Spike is lampshaded in a DeletedScene where Creator/JamesMarsters gives Nicholas Brendon a mock kiss right after calling him a "pathetic poof" in their graveyard fight.