"I don't really care" about Riley. The problem is that a whole chunk of the fandom didn't either as I recall. I always felt Riley and SMG didn't have great on screen chemistry. Maybe because he was the guy immediately after the whole Angel drama and he had big shoes to fill, but I just think even though Riley is a nice guy as a character overall, he isn't right for Buffy.
@@Nexusofgeek I hear you, however IMHO he is highly insecure about himself not so much due to Buffy but because all the worth that he saw in himself came from him working under Walsh. So with Walsh out of the picture he sees himself as worthless. And this is one of the main reasons why I don't like Riley, I saw so many similarities between him and me when I first saw the show so when those insecurities kept on coming I felt that he let us both down.
@Peter from NZ Buffy's been fetishizing "normalcy" for over three seasons now. Riley's issues in this season *are* Buffy's issues: they're an illustration of precisely where the strict adherence to the conformity to institutional power that lies at the heart of 'normalcy' leads you. A focus on that particular aspect of Buffy's character was long overdue, IMO. This is the season where it finally gets addressed.
This is the episode where it's usually good to know the following, although I'm sure someone has said this already: the original idea for the villain of this season was going to be Maggie Walsh, which is why the show was building her up so much in the first half. But then the actress asked to be let out of her contract unexpectedly so they killed her off to accommodate for it, and replaced her with Adam. Some of Adam's monologues in this episode can come across as the writers just trying to find ways to justify him being the main threat when they didn't have much to go on. It wasn't really their fault that they had to rapidly rewrite half of the season's main plot, but it never really worked for me, although it could be my personal preference for the main plots of other seasons of the show coming through.
They basically copied the PS1 Resident Evil games in this Season, the experiments storyline was like RE1 and the characters were copying RE3 that came out months earlier. Riley is like Carlos Oliviera and Forest looks like a character called Sullivan and there was another character actually called Forest and Adam is like the Nemesis.
People use to write that, but I have never found any hard evidence for it being this way. If one listens do Dough Petrie she was never under any long-term contract and they had always planned to kill her off: BBC : The I In Team was a pivotal moment in season four. Had it been the intention all along to do away with Maggie Walsh at this point and bring Adam to the fore, or had there been a longer-term plan for the excellent Lindsay Crouse which didn't see fruition for whatever reason? Doug Petrie: We knew from the beginning that we would switch over. It's very much a Frankenstein story wherein someone creates a monster and then the monster is out of their control. That's what this was. We knew from the beginning that Maggie Walsh was going to be killed by her own creation. Then we got Lindsay Crouse, the great Lindsay Crouse. This is the episode where sadly she shines the most and this is her best episode. As often happens, just when things really start cooking, they've got to go. She's one of the bigger names that we've gotten on the show and we know that we had her for a limited time, so there was a practical consideration as well. It's very much in the vein of Frankenstein's monster and we felt it essential that the first thing the monster do is kill its creator - to hand over the baton as it were and give someone else the villain's mantle for season four.
@@Henrik_Holst SPOILER: ………….. Well, if it was planned from the beginning why couldn’t they do better with the transition from Maggie to Adam? Like Adam barely gets any screen-time to develop his character and the whole motivation for being the Big Bad: “I want to find out who I am” would have been so juicy if they had just stuck with it instead of just made it about demon-human hybrid building. Like the ending is just so underwhelming. It could have been great. The only thing that saves the end of this season is ‘Restless’. That’s season 4’s saving grace.
@@Girl4Music All good questions, too which we probably have too little data to say anything definitive about. The main problem is that IMHO this interview from Dough is the single data point that we got on the subject from any one on the inside. Now is he telling the truth or is he trying to sell the show by telling people that everything is as it should and there is no need to worry? Perhaps, but we don't know. I also don't see him saying that it was 100% planned from the start, just that they knew that they had only limited access to Walsh so the decision could have come later that say "this thing with limited access don't really pan out so lets kill her off". Or it's just a side effect of Angel being the new baby. I mean most agree that the episodes in season 4 are all great, the problem is the arc. And that to me sounds like management issues, and if you go from a very hands-on initial creator that makes adjustments to close to every single script to that same creator being busy with a completely new show then it takes time for the organisation to transition from chaos to order again.
The 'code' between the demons must have a ton of caveats as there are a lot of stories of demon clans killing each other and we saw the Scourge in Angel trying to wipe out half breed demons and we've definitely seen various demons fight and kill each other. I've always assumed what the mean demon that punches Spike really means is hunting demons for the sake of helping people or killing demons for no reason that is justifiable to a demon.
Buffy (talking about Riley in a serious moment): "He's alone. He has nothing to hold onto." Lexi: "He does have something to hold onto....it's your scarf or whatever you call it. Headband? Handkerchief." Me: SAVAGE!!!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🤣🤣🤣🤣
I think to Forrest, Riley is all he really has in his past, present and future. Riley's team created a bond and the drugs probably enforced that dependency on each other and Prof. Walsh. It might have turned into a crush from Forrest, but it was probably born from the artificially induced brotherhood/ family based on a drug-controlled possessiveness of each other to make them both a better combat team and better boys for the Professor to control.
The Riley thing is rough. Angel and Spike have both physically hurt Willow but are generally much more beloved characters. I’m not sure if it’s the actor not having the best chemistry with SMG, or if the writers were not sure how to make him a compelling love interest (when they made Oz very compelling so they have no excuse), or if trying to make the kind of people who want to watch this show identify with a bunch of jacked up military macho men just was too big of a project or what.
There are so many interesting plot points to build on this season, regardless of the voluntary/forced (pick one depending on whose version of events you choose to believe) departure of Lindsay Crouse: Adam's quest to find out who and what he is, Tara and Willow's magic friendship, Xander and Anya's developing relationship, Spike's newfound demonfighting and manipulating skills, Giles' continuing midlife crisis....take your pick! Unfortunately, for some reason the writers thought that Riley was an extremely interesting character in desperate need of a lot more screentime, hence this disappointing snorefest of an episode. Don't worry though, there's a lot more great stuff to come in the rest of season 4 despite Blandy McBlandface's continuing presence.
BtVS episodes recently: Character A speaks to/looks towards/yells at/glares at/laughs at the jokes of/is annoyed by/punches/tries to kill/otherwise interacts with Character B. Lexi: "Oh? Ohhhh? I think they might be in love with each other!" :P
I like the actor who played Riley Mark Blucass. I don't think the character of Riley was bad and in fact I really liked him but I think there were critical mistakes in the stories that they chose to tell. I have seen the actor in other roles and I have found him to be very good. There were stories I wish the show had wanted to tell. I would love it if you could open a forum and maybe speak about stories that you might have wanted to see in The Buffy / Angel universe. Thank you for all your reactions and I wish you all the very best. With respect to everyone who views your channel. Big hugs!!! Brant Heavner 😁👋👋
Goodbye Iowa a very average episode, but sets up the later half of S4 now we have established that Walsh was planning something very sinister with her creation Adam, and not only experimenting on the HSTs, but also the Commandos of The Initiative, as Riley is having symptoms of poisoning. Some great little comedy moments with Xander again, and of course to homage to the original Frankenstein when Adam meets the child.
“I hope you don’t think I’m just coming over for [the spells]…” They have such funny slang in the Buffyverse. Possibly just to get that past the censors or something.
“I hope you don’t think I’m just coming over for the sex” would be too obvious in text but they certainly don’t have a problem with showing the sexual tension.
While there is subtext, that line obviously is not to get past the censors, as there is no way the line was going to be "coming over for the sex". Even considering the subtext and the metaphors, it's still the same as the fact that none of the other metaphors were originally going to be the non metaphor or subtext version and changed to get past the censors. The Witch was not originally going to literally be about a mother trying to live vicariously through her child, and the Witch part was put in to get it past the censors.
@@Logan_Baron Well, I was poking fun at the use of magic as a euphemism in the show. Spoilers… I think the sexual tension was intended to make the subtext approach the intended text. At the time the network was timidly in favor of pushing the boundaries of their relationship but the show wanted to go so much farther. As edgy as the show was, the only real “intimacy” allowed was doing spells. Compare Buffy and Reilly in “Where the wild things are” with Willow and Tara not even being able to kiss or hold hands. It took Joyce’s death a season later to get a kiss on screen. It’s obvious, in hindsight, from their looking into each other’s eyes in their first episode together what was intended. However, I completely missed their relationship for several episodes the first time through. It didn’t click for me, I think, until “I am you know,… yours.” After that the progression just felt kind of frustrating. I didn’t know they were fighting “Kirk/Uhura kiss” level battles behind the scenes.
@@zemoxian SPOILER: …………. Yep. Just like Xena there was constant interference and struggle with the network. The censoring however for me just made the writers work that much harder and they inadvertently gave us better representation. At least with Xena they did. Willow and Tara are given much more leeway mostly because one of them isn’t a main character I think.
I didn't see this show until shortly after it went off the air, late 2003/early 2004 was when I was doing my watch through. Even by then, that disk drive in Adam's chest was horribly dated. Just one of those choices I bet they wish they had back.
i believe windows 95 was the first version of windows that was available on cd, and windows 2000 was the last version that was available on floppy. so the floppy drive on adam was certainly never cutting edge.
In 1999 when the show was filmed close to every single PC sold had a floppy drive (except the iMac G3 which where the first mac without a floppy released in 1998). Dell was the first major PC vendor to not include a floppy by default in 2003.
@@sirmoonslosthismind That's because Windows is a bloated pig. Windows 8 would require over 2307 floppies :). Office 97 came with 55 floppies, was a real charm to install that one...
First, I is the dominant syllable in Iowa, o and a are minor. Second, no one really likes riley, iit isn't just you. I believe the killing a kid to look inside the body is something Frankenstein did. Your other questions will be addressed by the show, i promise. This isn't the best season, but i think it's fun. Enjoy it.
Yep, I called it, Tara's a demon. I bet she swallows Willow, head first next ep. I'm doing my "I told you so" dance. Too bad you can't see it, cuz it's epic.
This season could be the best with a better villain and arc about Initiative. I liked it but weakest compared to the other narrative arcs. This season aged well and is still good
Ah Riely, it is hard to get behind a love interest that does not have decades of debauchery, womanizing and violence in thier past...and then bacame a vampire and added coutless other attrocites to the list. I think that is the point (counterpoint actually). How does one go from an abusive relationship to a decent one? The next bit may be spoilery so I will drop it below the line... This will be the unpopular opinion about Willow+Tara. Willow is not finding herself with Tara, she is totally losing herself. Her decisions and motivations are based on a life of neglect (parantal), rejection (Xander, Oz) andabandonment (Oz) fueld by a building drug addiction (magi=drugs) fueled by Tara's (the enabler) own desire to have acceptance. I see her as the most tragic character in the series.
“It didn’t work, but they’re all upset anyway.” Anya, aka The Best.
I suppose Spike could become a rogue demon hunter. He would need a motorbike though.
What’s a rogue demon?
@@bfdidc6604 can't tell if this is a joke going over my head or a genuine question. Lol
@@that.ll_do_pig Both the OP and my comments are both from Angel.
nice one : )
Yeah, I'm convinced about Forrest crushing on Riley. It pretty much explains everything. ^_^ As for Adam...Yeeeeah.
"I don't really care" about Riley. The problem is that a whole chunk of the fandom didn't either as I recall. I always felt Riley and SMG didn't have great on screen chemistry. Maybe because he was the guy immediately after the whole Angel drama and he had big shoes to fill, but I just think even though Riley is a nice guy as a character overall, he isn't right for Buffy.
It's his insecurity, extreme need to be needed and him being boring as cardboard that is why the fandom never cared :)
@@Henrik_Holst well to be fair, it would be hard not to feel insecure if you are dating someone as amazing as Buffy
@@Nexusofgeek I hear you, however IMHO he is highly insecure about himself not so much due to Buffy but because all the worth that he saw in himself came from him working under Walsh. So with Walsh out of the picture he sees himself as worthless.
And this is one of the main reasons why I don't like Riley, I saw so many similarities between him and me when I first saw the show so when those insecurities kept on coming I felt that he let us both down.
@@Henrik_Holst for me it's the superficial "he isn't Angel!" 🤣🤣 I never moved past that to actually think about whether I like him haha
@Peter from NZ Buffy's been fetishizing "normalcy" for over three seasons now. Riley's issues in this season *are* Buffy's issues: they're an illustration of precisely where the strict adherence to the conformity to institutional power that lies at the heart of 'normalcy' leads you. A focus on that particular aspect of Buffy's character was long overdue, IMO. This is the season where it finally gets addressed.
This is the episode where it's usually good to know the following, although I'm sure someone has said this already: the original idea for the villain of this season was going to be Maggie Walsh, which is why the show was building her up so much in the first half. But then the actress asked to be let out of her contract unexpectedly so they killed her off to accommodate for it, and replaced her with Adam. Some of Adam's monologues in this episode can come across as the writers just trying to find ways to justify him being the main threat when they didn't have much to go on. It wasn't really their fault that they had to rapidly rewrite half of the season's main plot, but it never really worked for me, although it could be my personal preference for the main plots of other seasons of the show coming through.
They basically copied the PS1 Resident Evil games in this Season, the experiments storyline was like RE1 and the characters were copying RE3 that came out months earlier. Riley is like Carlos Oliviera and Forest looks like a character called Sullivan and there was another character actually called Forest and Adam is like the Nemesis.
People use to write that, but I have never found any hard evidence for it being this way. If one listens do Dough Petrie she was never under any long-term contract and they had always planned to kill her off:
BBC : The I In Team was a pivotal moment in season four. Had it been the intention all along to do away with Maggie Walsh at this point and bring Adam to the fore, or had there been a longer-term plan for the excellent Lindsay Crouse which didn't see fruition for whatever reason?
Doug Petrie: We knew from the beginning that we would switch over. It's very much a Frankenstein story wherein someone creates a monster and then the monster is out of their control. That's what this was. We knew from the beginning that Maggie Walsh was going to be killed by her own creation.
Then we got Lindsay Crouse, the great Lindsay Crouse. This is the episode where sadly she shines the most and this is her best episode. As often happens, just when things really start cooking, they've got to go. She's one of the bigger names that we've gotten on the show and we know that we had her for a limited time, so there was a practical consideration as well.
It's very much in the vein of Frankenstein's monster and we felt it essential that the first thing the monster do is kill its creator - to hand over the baton as it were and give someone else the villain's mantle for season four.
@@Henrik_Holst
SPOILER:
…………..
Well, if it was planned from the beginning why couldn’t they do better with the transition from Maggie to Adam? Like Adam barely gets any screen-time to develop his character and the whole motivation for being the Big Bad: “I want to find out who I am” would have been so juicy if they had just stuck with it instead of just made it about demon-human hybrid building. Like the ending is just so underwhelming. It could have been great. The only thing that saves the end of this season is ‘Restless’. That’s season 4’s saving grace.
@@Girl4Music All good questions, too which we probably have too little data to say anything definitive about. The main problem is that IMHO this interview from Dough is the single data point that we got on the subject from any one on the inside.
Now is he telling the truth or is he trying to sell the show by telling people that everything is as it should and there is no need to worry? Perhaps, but we don't know.
I also don't see him saying that it was 100% planned from the start, just that they knew that they had only limited access to Walsh so the decision could have come later that say "this thing with limited access don't really pan out so lets kill her off".
Or it's just a side effect of Angel being the new baby. I mean most agree that the episodes in season 4 are all great, the problem is the arc. And that to me sounds like management issues, and if you go from a very hands-on initial creator that makes adjustments to close to every single script to that same creator being busy with a completely new show then it takes time for the organisation to transition from chaos to order again.
@@Henrik_Holst those are all good points for explanations. Thanks.
The 'code' between the demons must have a ton of caveats as there are a lot of stories of demon clans killing each other and we saw the Scourge in Angel trying to wipe out half breed demons and we've definitely seen various demons fight and kill each other. I've always assumed what the mean demon that punches Spike really means is hunting demons for the sake of helping people or killing demons for no reason that is justifiable to a demon.
Or those other demons are not welcome to the bar either :)
When the Initiative is after and attacking Buffy, I'm just waiting for Adam to say, "me."
Buffy (talking about Riley in a serious moment): "He's alone. He has nothing to hold onto."
Lexi: "He does have something to hold onto....it's your scarf or whatever you call it. Headband? Handkerchief."
Me: SAVAGE!!!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🤣🤣🤣🤣
Adam is 50% demon, 50% robot, and 50% human. Oh wait, that adds up to 150%. Bad math equation!
I think to Forrest, Riley is all he really has in his past, present and future. Riley's team created a bond and the drugs probably enforced that dependency on each other and Prof. Walsh. It might have turned into a crush from Forrest, but it was probably born from the artificially induced brotherhood/ family based on a drug-controlled possessiveness of each other to make them both a better combat team and better boys for the Professor to control.
You're back! I've missed your Buffy universe vids since I finished binging all of them on your channel
The Riley thing is rough. Angel and Spike have both physically hurt Willow but are generally much more beloved characters. I’m not sure if it’s the actor not having the best chemistry with SMG, or if the writers were not sure how to make him a compelling love interest (when they made Oz very compelling so they have no excuse), or if trying to make the kind of people who want to watch this show identify with a bunch of jacked up military macho men just was too big of a project or what.
Thank you for getting the "retinal scan" joke, none of the other reactors I watch get it
There are so many interesting plot points to build on this season, regardless of the voluntary/forced (pick one depending on whose version of events you choose to believe) departure of Lindsay Crouse: Adam's quest to find out who and what he is, Tara and Willow's magic friendship, Xander and Anya's developing relationship, Spike's newfound demonfighting and manipulating skills, Giles' continuing midlife crisis....take your pick! Unfortunately, for some reason the writers thought that Riley was an extremely interesting character in desperate need of a lot more screentime, hence this disappointing snorefest of an episode.
Don't worry though, there's a lot more great stuff to come in the rest of season 4 despite Blandy McBlandface's continuing presence.
Omg the beginning of the video 🤣😂🤣🤣 love it haha
BtVS episodes recently: Character A speaks to/looks towards/yells at/glares at/laughs at the jokes of/is annoyed by/punches/tries to kill/otherwise interacts with Character B.
Lexi: "Oh? Ohhhh? I think they might be in love with each other!" :P
"I'm so sorry if you're a Riley fan."
J. Jonah Jameson laughing gif
We've met Doyle on Angel, right? Maybe Tara is like Doyle, a good person who just happens to be part demon! It is a possibility...
Forrest is jealous of Buffy and Reilly? Interesting that you say that.
They were going for this Captain America vibe for Riley and it did not work.
I like the actor who played Riley Mark Blucass. I don't think the character of Riley was bad and in fact I really liked him but I think there were critical mistakes in the stories that they chose to tell. I have seen the actor in other roles and I have found him to be very good. There were stories I wish the show had wanted to tell. I would love it if you could open a forum and maybe speak about stories that you might have wanted to see in The Buffy / Angel universe. Thank you for all your reactions and I wish you all the very best. With respect to everyone who views your channel. Big hugs!!! Brant Heavner 😁👋👋
Goodbye Iowa a very average episode, but sets up the later half of S4 now we have established that Walsh was planning something very sinister with her creation Adam, and not only experimenting on the HSTs, but also the Commandos of The Initiative, as Riley is having symptoms of poisoning. Some great little comedy moments with Xander again, and of course to homage to the original Frankenstein when Adam meets the child.
Brace yourself, a hurricane is on the way next ep!
“I hope you don’t think I’m just coming over for [the spells]…”
They have such funny slang in the Buffyverse. Possibly just to get that past the censors or something.
“I hope you don’t think I’m just coming over for the sex” would be too obvious in text but they certainly don’t have a problem with showing the sexual tension.
While there is subtext, that line obviously is not to get past the censors, as there is no way the line was going to be "coming over for the sex". Even considering the subtext and the metaphors, it's still the same as the fact that none of the other metaphors were originally going to be the non metaphor or subtext version and changed to get past the censors. The Witch was not originally going to literally be about a mother trying to live vicariously through her child, and the Witch part was put in to get it past the censors.
@@Logan_Baron well said.
@@Logan_Baron
Well, I was poking fun at the use of magic as a euphemism in the show. Spoilers…
I think the sexual tension was intended to make the subtext approach the intended text. At the time the network was timidly in favor of pushing the boundaries of their relationship but the show wanted to go so much farther. As edgy as the show was, the only real “intimacy” allowed was doing spells.
Compare Buffy and Reilly in “Where the wild things are” with Willow and Tara not even being able to kiss or hold hands. It took Joyce’s death a season later to get a kiss on screen.
It’s obvious, in hindsight, from their looking into each other’s eyes in their first episode together what was intended. However, I completely missed their relationship for several episodes the first time through. It didn’t click for me, I think, until “I am you know,… yours.”
After that the progression just felt kind of frustrating. I didn’t know they were fighting “Kirk/Uhura kiss” level battles behind the scenes.
@@zemoxian
SPOILER:
………….
Yep. Just like Xena there was constant interference and struggle with the network. The censoring however for me just made the writers work that much harder and they inadvertently gave us better representation. At least with Xena they did.
Willow and Tara are given much more leeway mostly because one of them isn’t a main character I think.
Honestly killing me with that intro pfff!
So is is Zandley or Rilder?
I didn't see this show until shortly after it went off the air, late 2003/early 2004 was when I was doing my watch through. Even by then, that disk drive in Adam's chest was horribly dated. Just one of those choices I bet they wish they had back.
i believe windows 95 was the first version of windows that was available on cd, and windows 2000 was the last version that was available on floppy. so the floppy drive on adam was certainly never cutting edge.
In 1999 when the show was filmed close to every single PC sold had a floppy drive (except the iMac G3 which where the first mac without a floppy released in 1998). Dell was the first major PC vendor to not include a floppy by default in 2003.
@@sirmoonslosthismind That's because Windows is a bloated pig. Windows 8 would require over 2307 floppies :). Office 97 came with 55 floppies, was a real charm to install that one...
I think the floppy thing wasnt suppose to be cutting edge technology look, I think they intentionally went for silly retro design.
9:05 You have a long wait ahead of you for the answer to that question, but it will get answered..... eventually.
That's a spoiler!
First, I is the dominant syllable in Iowa, o and a are minor.
Second, no one really likes riley, iit isn't just you.
I believe the killing a kid to look inside the body is something Frankenstein did.
Your other questions will be addressed by the show, i promise. This isn't the best season, but i think it's fun. Enjoy it.
Yep, I called it, Tara's a demon. I bet she swallows Willow, head first next ep.
I'm doing my "I told you so" dance. Too bad you can't see it, cuz it's epic.
This season could be the best with a better villain and arc about Initiative. I liked it but weakest compared to the other narrative arcs. This season aged well and is still good
bc the murder always returns to the scene of the crime😮. Hello 👋
Ah Riely, it is hard to get behind a love interest that does not have decades of debauchery, womanizing and violence in thier past...and then bacame a vampire and added coutless other attrocites to the list. I think that is the point (counterpoint actually). How does one go from an abusive relationship to a decent one?
The next bit may be spoilery so I will drop it below the line...
This will be the unpopular opinion about Willow+Tara. Willow is not finding herself with Tara, she is totally losing herself. Her decisions and motivations are based on a life of neglect (parantal), rejection (Xander, Oz) andabandonment (Oz) fueld by a building drug addiction (magi=drugs) fueled by Tara's (the enabler) own desire to have acceptance. I see her as the most tragic character in the series.
The start was like gay gay gay (gaygaygay).
You meant to say bi bi bi, surely.
This reminded me of Yellowjackets! Haha! (A very enjoyable series if you have not seen it yet.)