10 Most Depressingly Realistic Lessons From Buffy The Vampire Slayer

10. College Roommates Sure Can Suck

Episode: Season 4, Episode 2 - "Living Conditions" College. It's the start of a whole new world for many a recently graduated high school kid. It's also the first experience living with anyone other than family for a lot of young adults. It's the real beginning of "growing up" - forget the early teen years, forget high school, growing up really starts in college, and the process often begins with learning to co-exist in close quarters with another, unrelated human being who you often get no choice in. Dorm life isn't quite real life, but it still teaches you some important social skills. Enter Buffy Summer's new roommate Kathy. Kathy has some annoying habits. Some boundary issues (borrowing clothes without asking, for example). She also happens to enjoy blasting Cher's "Believe" (honestly, that's a strike against anyone). She's overly perky. In short, she's a bad match for Buffy. And Buffy does not cope well with it, getting annoyed, focusing on every little misstep, and just generally losing her focus on other, more important things (starting school, slaying vampires). Being a supernatural show, Kathy turns out to be a demon - but the real lesson of the episode is that living with someone requires a lot of give and take, and letting little things go. By the end of the episode, Kathy is banished, and best friend Willow is Buffy's new roommate - but Buffy has the exact same reaction to Willow's transgressions as she did to Kathy's, and that exact moment is depressingly close to how things can go in real life.