into the room. They knock Willow and Parker unconscious and start a fire that rapidly burns out of control. Xander catches up with Buffy and when they see smoke from the Neanderthals' fire, they rush to help. Though afraid of the flames and unable to figure out how to use an extinguisher, Buffy saves Willow and Parker. In the end, Parker thanks Buffy for saving his life, and apologizes just the way she had dreamt — just to get knocked unconscious by Buffy's club. The neanderthal students become subsequently locked in a random van. Writing and acting Willow proves again that she can't be sweet-talked, something first shown in "The Pack". "Beer Bad" is written with a classic frame structure — Buffy's dream — that emphasizes her development; hitting Parker with a stick qualifies as poetic justice. Producer Doug Petrie says, despite the intensely negative reaction of the fans to seeing Buffy being "battered about by the forces of college" and being treated so callously by Parker, they had to "ride that out" until this episode because "we didn't want her to find her strength immediately in this new setting". However, the most striking feature of "Beer Bad" is the twin moral: Beer and casual sex are bad. In a BBC interview, Petrie states: "Well, very young people get unlimited access to alcohol and become horrible! We all do it — or most of us do it — and live to regret it, and we wanted to explore that." In an interview, David Solomon revealed doubts he and Whedon had about the quality of the episode: "The fourth season's Beer Bad wasn't everyone's cup of tea, especially with Buffy fans. Solomon had some doubts about this episode but it turned out to be better than he expected. "Joss wasn't entirely pleased with this story," he says. "He came into my office at the last minute with the script and said to me, 'I tried to make it better but all I did was make it funnier.' I took that to mean, 'We're not exactly sure what this is supposed to be about so just enjoy yourself.' So I actually had a ball doing it. It was a laugh to watch frat boys turn into cavemen and have Buffy affected by the same thing that was affecting them. We just let everyone go 'crazy' and nothing all bad came out of