After Buffy was resurrected, every few episodes she would go into a bit of a trance looking at random things. Things like the kitchen faucet, a park fountain, and the meat grinder at that fast food restaurant.
The folks with whom I watched the show and I decided that it had something to do with the Heaven dimension she had been in, and that it would be explained in due course. I just realized that they never did (either that or I completely missed it when they did).
Anyone out there have an answer for me? Either that, or just a really good guess as to what this was all about?
I never noticed that she went into a “trance” or anything. My WAG would be that it was perhaps a way to re-ground herself. Focus on something solid and concrete to distract from the feeling of unreality.
As for fixating on the meat grinder, well, meat grinders are a combination of disgustingly gross and wicked cool so who can blame her for being fascinated? Plus didn’t she think there were people being ground up in it?
It was the fairy of misdirection at work. She didn’t do this anymore, efter we (the third eye) found out that she’d been in heaven. It was the whole “did she come back wrong from a horrible hell dimension” thing at work.
Turns out it was just a mild sunburn. Go figure.
I think it was supposed to be a symptom of the massive depression she was laboring under for most of the season. I’ve had a few minor bouts of depression, and I do that a lot myself: just stand there and stare at something and just try not to think about how crappy I feel.
A lot of people talk about how they could have fixed season 6: tighter scripting, more direct input from Joss, taking Marti Noxon out back and shooting her. I say, all they really needed was to give Buffy a big crate of Prozac.
I thought maybe it had something to do with the “you’re insane and it’s all your imagination” plotline, that never got resolved. It took up one episode, and about 5 seconds of another, and then pffft.