Episode no. Season 6
Episode 9 Written by Drew Z. Greenberg Original air date November 20, 2001 | Directed by Turi Meyer Production code 6ABB09 | |
"Smashed" is the 9th episode of season 6 of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Contents
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." 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.
A longer, more intense lovemaking scene was originally filmed for the finale of the episode, but was cut out.
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.