Total Rip Of Buffy!

[WallofWeird]

This episode made me frustrated because of how similar to Buffy's "Normal Again". BtVS is my all-time favourite show, and I've noticed this isn't the first time SV has
been similar to Buffy.

Of course there's "Thirst", let's just get that out of the way...
The end of Season 2, Clark runs away from home and into the city. So does Buffy at the end of Season 2.
Season 3 opens with Clark finally returning home and is depressed and stuff. So is Buffy at the beginning of Season 3.
Clark's father dies in Season 5. Buffy's Mom dies in Season 5.
Clark goes to another dimension/"Phantom Zone" at the end of Season 5. Buffy goes to Heaven.
Clark brings back Phantoms from the Zone in Season 6. Buffy brings back a demon in Season 6.
Clark/Lana. Buffy/Angel.

There's many similarities, and I find it obvious that they get lots of their ideas from Buffy. Sure, Buffy isn't always the most original, but Joss was at least able to make his own twist on things which made it more original. Smallville seems to just play out their ideas with their own characters and using Kryptonite or whatever as excuses, rather than making it their own.

[DJ Doena]

There are simliarities, true. Especially the running away at the end of season 2. But most of the ideas are much older than Buffy. For example, having Jonathan die or Lana as Clark's high school girlfriend has been an established gact in the Supermanverse long before Buffy came around.

Also the Asylum idea wasn't something Buffy came up, compare for example Frame of Mind

[jon-el87]

As others have noted, this premise was done long before Buffy did it (or was even created). The oldest that I can think off, is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), where the film ends with everything being revealed to have been in the mind of a mental patient. St. Elsewhere famously ended with the entire show being implied to have taken place within the mind of an autistic kid. Dallas famously had Pam Ewing wake up and discover that the entire previous season had been a dream. Heck, there is a 1985 Superman story, where Superman gets trapped in an alternate dream world, by a creature.

For this episode to count as a rip-off of "Normal Again", it would've had to have blatantly imitated the Buffy episode. As already established, this premise is not original to Buffy. As for the plots of the episodes:

"Normal Again": The Trio summons a demon, that infects Buffy with a venom, that causes her to jump between this reality and one where she's a patient in a mental hospital (and her dead mother is still alive). She moves between the two, throughout the episode. She becomes a danger to her friends, who she captures and unleashes the demon (risking their lives). The whole thing ends ambigiously. Leaving it up to the viewer to decide which is the real world (the world where Buffy is the slayer, or the one where she's a mental patient).

"Labyrinth": Clark is attacked by a phantom, that wants to take over Clark's body, and wakes up in a mental hospital. Unlike Buffy, Clark stays in this world for most of the episode (until the phantom is defeated). He doesn't do anything that might harm Chloe or anyone of his other friends. There is also nothing ambigious about which is the one true reality. "Normal Again" ends with the very real possibility that everything that we've seen (and will see in the Buffyverse) are merely the delusions of a mental patient. "Labyrinth" ends with Clark really being the superhero, that he believes himself to be. He is real (Buffy as the slayer might no be). Clark defeated the phantom by being strong (in the mind, not just body). Jonathan Kent is still dead in the alternate universe, he isn't still alive (unlike Joyce Summers, in the Buffy episode).

So, the plots and how everything plays out in the episodes are different. If Joss Whedon would've tried to sue the Smallville writers for plagerism, he would've been laughed right out of the court. The claim that this was his original idea can easily be disproven (through plenty of examples from earlier fiction (pre-dating the Buffy episode). Heck, "Labyrinth" was probably a loose adaptation of the 1985 Superman story). Been ages since I watched "Normal Again" (in fact, in recent years, I've come to regard it as one of the moments that killed that show for me. I liked it, once (which might also be the number of times that I've actually watched it, come to think about it), but then I thought about the implications), but as I recall it, it isn't exactly identical to "Labyrinth". The connective tissue is "protagonist wakes up in a mental hospital, and is told that their whole lives have just been a delusion, brought on by mental illness". A premise that Buffy did not invent. It dates back to, at least, Dr. Caligari.