Season 6, Episode 12 | Aired: 29 January 2002 | Written by: Jane Espenson | Directed by: Nick Marck
Buffy gets a job at the Doublemeat Palace — a fast food restaurant with a distinctive meat smell, a suspicious workforce, and an alarming rate of employee disappearances. The episode is Jane Espenson doing horror-comedy set in a minimum wage workplace, and it is a solid entry in a dark season: the burger joint as the mundane hell Buffy is living in, its horror both literal (there is a monster) and metaphorical (this is her life now). Also: Halfrek (Kali Rocha) appears as Anya’s vengeance demon friend and makes a pointed remark about Xander.
What Happens
Buffy investigates employee disappearances and finds that the “Doublemeat medley” ingredient is human flesh. It is not. The meat is all vegetable protein — the secret and the smell. The actual monster is a Sluggoth demon with a penis-shaped head that secretes poison. Buffy defeats it with a hairnet. The horror is real, just not the horror she anticipated. Willow is tempted by the magic shop.
Key Moments
Buffy in the Doublemeat uniform, blank-faced, working. The episode doesn’t exaggerate the deadening quality of the work. It just shows it. And Halfrek’s comment to Anya about Xander — a planted seed for Hell’s Bells.
Monster / Villain
The Sluggoth demon. And, more diffusely, the economy.
Notable Quote
“A man who can never leave his basement… to a woman who can never leave her basement.” — Halfrek, to Anya, with a precision that Anya doesn’t quite hear.
Where It Fits
Doublemeat Palace is about the indignity of the life Buffy is living — not dramatic suffering, just the slow grind of financial necessity and work that doesn’t fit. It is not the most exciting episode of the season but it is honest.