Drinking alcohol in Buffy the Vampire Slayer has always been frowned upon, though the rules were relaxed slightly as the Scoobies got older. The general rule is: if you have a drink, something bad is going to happen to you. Here are some examples of this rule:
- In 1.04 Teacher’s Pet, Xander is the first of the Scoobies to drink alcohol. He has a sip of Martini given to him by Natalie French who is really a giant preying mantis in disguise. The drink has been drugged and he passes out. When Xander awakes he only narrowly escapes mating with and being killed by the mantis.
- In 2.05 Reptile Boy, Buffy and Cordelia go to a frat house party where they drink alcohol which has (again) been spiked. They pass out and awaken in a basement, ready to be sacrificed by Machida.
- In 2.08 The Dark Age, Giles gets busy with the whiskey and then his girlfriend gets possessed by Eyghon the Sleepwalker.
- In 3.08 Lover’s Walk, Spike returns to Sunnydale and gets extremely drunk, he awakes in the morning when sunlight touches his hand, which goes up in flames.
- In 4.09 Something Blue, Willow’s friends freak out a bit too much when they see she’s drinking - GASP! - low-alcohol beer. She’s reminded by Buffy that when she got drunk she turned into a cave woman (in 4.05 Beer Bad). Willow later does a spell which makes her will be done, causing havoc for her friends.
- 4.05 Beer Bad: the episode title says it all. Buffy drinks beer and literally turns into a Neanderthal.
- In 6.05 Life Serial, Buffy and Spike go drinking together and Buffy is really ill. She then tells Giles about how she’s messing up (though in fairness this started before she was drinking!)
- The Bronze serves alcohol but the rules are very strict about the age limit. Underage people have to wear a stamp on their hand so they won’t get served (Dawn in 5.06 Family) and when Anya tries to get a beer in 3.16 Doppelgangland, she’s asked for ID.
- The rules are later relaxed and finally, in 6.14 Older And Far Away, Buffy celebrates her 21st birthday, meaning she can now legally drink alcohol, though we saw her previously drinking beer in 6.13 Dead Things.
Related episodes: 1.04 Teacher's Pet, 2.05 Reptile Boy, 2.08 The Dark Age, 3.08 Lover's Walk, 4.05 Beer Bad, 4.09 Something Blue, 6.05 Life Serial, 6.14 Older And Far Away
Comments on this trivia
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anniec on May 27th, 2005 at 6:19 pm
Doesn’t Xander take more than a sip of the martini? I thought he downed the whole thing out of nervousness.
anniec
Rozzi on June 5th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
I thought that too!!!
Flint on July 30th, 2005 at 11:12 am
Correct me if I`m wrong, but I think that the “alcohol is bad”-rule is repeated in the episode A New Man on season four, when Giles gets drunk with Ethan Rayne and is turned into a demon the next day.
mairceridwen on July 30th, 2005 at 3:04 pm
yep. great example. Giles is such a lush. I love how he drinks all through Something Blue, and The Yoko Factor. There’s a part when it comes out that Tara is Willow’s Girlfriend:
Xander: Tara’s your girlfriend!?!
Giles: (drunkenly) Bloody hell…
It always makes me laugh
emlem25 on November 19th, 2005 at 11:16 pm
i dont know if im alone on this one, but i hate this ep. it is probably the worst ep of buffy EVER!!!i think doublemeat palace is a better ep and that is saying just how bad it is.
NotFadeAway on November 20th, 2005 at 10:15 am
I don’t mean to sound dumb, but which one are you talking about emlem?
Jess on November 20th, 2005 at 10:16 am
I assume ‘Beer Bad’?
Angel242 on November 20th, 2005 at 10:20 am
I think the worst episode ever was Doublemeat palace but I actually think Beer bad is pretty good…diffrent,
slightlyembarrased on November 20th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
I vote for Where The Wild Things Are for worst ep. zzzzzzz.
Jess on November 20th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
As You Were: Worst. Episode. Ever
Angel242 on November 20th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Uuu.. Forgot about As You Were.
Not too high on my “dearest episode list” yuk..
mairceridwen on November 20th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
Where the Wild Things Are. Yes, bad. Doublemeat, Yes, another bad. I always skip those. Another episode I can’t stand to watch is All the Way because I can’t stand that many teenagers in one episode and because when they kill that old man it makes me SO SAD.
mairceridwen on November 20th, 2005 at 5:43 pm
Oh, and I love Beer Bad because there are so many things going on in that episode besides the beer thing: buffy daydreaming about parker at the beginning (it’s not fun to watch, but i know many of us have been there), the whole Willow-confronts-Parker, making fun of pretentious college kids, and oh so many good lines.
Jess on November 20th, 2005 at 5:49 pm
Plus Xander with a Tom-Selleck-moustache. That’s worth sitting through the episode alone.
Angel242 on November 20th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
haha yes really.
But the thing I laughed the most about was when Cave-manBuffy spinned on the chair and in the end when she knocks Parker down.
Abby M. on November 20th, 2005 at 11:20 pm
For some reason (and I honestly can’t figure out why), the episode Inca Mummy Girl has always bugged me. It seems good, I mean it introduces Oz, we see Willow in an eskimo suit, what more could you ask for? But I just do not like it for some reason.
BTW: At the risk of asking a stupid question: Jess, why do you hate As You Were so much?
mairceridwen on November 21st, 2005 at 2:43 am
Is it because Empata is so annoying and not all that sympathetic? But Willow in the eskimo suit is worth the whole episode.
I find As You Were kind of boring, personally.
TwoToGo-Grave on November 21st, 2005 at 4:53 am
As You Were is boring (and seems like it’s too short, even though it obviously isn’t), but I do like the first act of the episode. The way that Buffy’s life is shown here seems to best illustrate why she so unhappy with everything.
Aside from Normal Again, the worst episode, in my opinion, has to be Beer Bad. I don’t get these posts that support it, but everyone has their own opinions, thankfully.
Angel242 on November 21st, 2005 at 5:01 pm
Very true.
and As You Were really buggs me a lot because I hate Riley. Some may like him and that’s just fine, but he is so god darn needy. So that’s why I don’t like the episode; He comes back and everyone is so impressed with his situation, job and wife.
Really sickens me.
mairceridwen on November 21st, 2005 at 11:11 pm
Riley is a lot of things, annoying, totally wrong for buffy, insecure about Buffy’s strength…but I would not call him needy. I don’t really see what he “needed” that most normal people don’t need. If anything, he needed things to be normal, so he could be Joe Regular, and ultimately that makes him wrong for the Buffy-verse and so he goes…but that doesn’t make him needy.
DarthRosenberg on July 19th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
I don’t like Riley so my vote for the worst episode would be As you were. I was so happy when he left and then I had to see his “mommy’s favorite, good-boy” face again…. Grrr…
Altough I do like Beer Bad (but only for some of the quotes: “Buffy want beer. Buffy strong. Buffy get beer!”) and Normal Again (which has a well-written script and a good-playing actress, the idea was a little bit sticky and crazy, but the ending… there was an exciting last 15 minutes!)
Anyway, I don’t know how you feel about it, but I don’t like neither season 7’s epi, Lies my parents told me…
Lilwenn on July 31st, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Well, most episodes I dislike aren’t completely horrible. They all have good quotes or great moments.
I hate As you were because :
1 I hate Riley so much. Why did he have to come back ?
2 His love story with Sam isn’t credible at all.
3 I didn’t think the storyline with Spike as “the Doctor” was believable. It’s just not his style.
It’s worth watching because :
1 Buffy sings the Doublemeat medley tune.
2 Willow acts “bestfriendly” by hating Sam.
3 The Buffy quote : “My hat has a cow.”
I don’t like Listening to fear because :
1 Riley’s in it. (Ok, ok, petty.)
2 It sort of lacks energy in general.
3 The idea of a demon cleaning up Glory’s leftovers is kinda neat, but I think it could have been used better.
It’s worth watching because :
1 The Tara / Willow scene on the roof. (Especially the “Japanese commercials are weird” quote.)
2 Buffy’s crying scene.
3 The Willow / Jewish Santa / beer hat scene.
In fact, this episode has many good points, I just feel weird about it, like something’s missing.
I don’t like Go Fish and All the Way (a little bit to green for me, and I’m sixteen, so hum…) either.
Danielle629 on March 4th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Is it just me or did Giles drink more BECAUSE things were bad? It seemed that way to me, with the exception of A New Man where he drank and turned into a demon…But I didn’t think he started drinking in The Dark Age, Something Blue or The Yoko Factor until things got kinda icky.
Abby M. on March 26th, 2007 at 12:39 am
I agree. It seems like with Giles when things get bad, he visits Whiskey-Land. His drinking doesn’t cause the problems, his problems cause the drinking.
Oh, and I think it was the season 5 episode “Family,” at the end of the episode when they are having Tara’s birthday party at the Bronze, Dawn is at a table with I think Giles, Buffy, Xander and Anya. Xander comes back with some plastic cups and they all go to take a drink when Dawn says something along the lines of “Alcohol is for losers” and they all hesistate to take a drink and look guilty. I guess the Bronze doesn’t have such strict drinking rules after all.
hypersk on March 29th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
I just noticed that no one made mention of the “badness” of alcohol on Buffy season 7.
The lair of the ultimate evil, The First, was a wine cellar, and bad things happened down there (deaths of potentials, Xander losing his eye…), alcohol is evil indeed!!!
hypersk on March 29th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Leaving Buffy aside, I think the producers wanted to do the same “Alcohol is bad for you” thing on Angel, at least only in the first season. Here are my reasons to think that.
On the series premiere “City Of we can see Angel’s drunk and comparing Buffy to a bald man because they had “the same hair”, pretty funny.
On “In The Dark” we get to see Doyle with a really bad hangover, even wishing to have a vision and Cordelia mentioned that he did pretty silly stuff while drunk (although we didn’t see him drink on screen).
On “Eternity” there’s this actress who wants to be a vampire, so she spikes Angel’s drink, and when drugged, he becomes the sadistic Angelus for a short time.
There’s also a few tragedies where alcohol itself isn’t the evil trigger, but it gets blamed anyway.
For example on “Sense And Sensitivity” some warlock hired by Wolfram & Hart brainwashes the police with a magic staff to make them more sensible. All of them start getting emotional, sensitive and stuff like that while on a bar. And at the end of the episode, the police says someone at the bar had spiked the drinks.
I guess it’s the only Angel season that has this theme.
cardboardy on March 30th, 2007 at 8:37 am
I have two points:
First to add that Willow and Kennedy drink cocktails on their first date and then things go awry. But their date was very cute and I’m not convinced the alcohol was the catalyst for bad. What do you think?
Second, regarding Giles’ whiskey drinking, I believe that he drinks whiskey because he likes it. He drinks an 18yo Glenmorangie single malt when at home, a very fine drop for the discerning whiskey lover. If he had a drinking problem I’m sure he’d take it down a few notches and settle for a cheap American blended whiskey.
drewgoddardismyhero on April 18th, 2007 at 1:11 am
I think Giles’ drinking is completely out of the alcohol is bad realm seeing as he is old enough to drink responsibility (not that he always does, but sometimes he does just have the one “after-dinner drink”).
And I would say as Willow and Kennedy are old enough to drink, that the mere fact that bad things happen afterward is do the fact that it is Buffy… something has to go wrong in the second act, if not the first, or there would be no conflict to resolve! So coincidence…although having just said that it has just occurred to me that Kennedy isn’t of age is she?
HarFang on April 14th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Showing drunk people acting out of character and getting into stupid situations is one of the oldest comical devices, I think -so maybe we should not see too much in the fact that every time someone drinks too much, they end up in trouble.
As for Kennedy’s age, I think that somewhere she mentions that under normal circumstances, she would have been too old to be Chosen to be the next Slayer. That explains why she is often put in charge of the Potentials… and it should also rescue Willow from a rather uneasy situation if her girlfriend had actually been underage.