Buffy/Riley. Lots of meta. (I must be insane...)
Buffy and Riley... hmmm. I never understood the end of ‘Doomed’. Why did Buffy change her mind? Just because The Apocalypse didn’t happen? No one knows, because she doesn’t say. Anyway, that question was the starting point for this post - what does Buffy see in Riley that makes him worthwhile to pursue?
The thing is - Riley is a nice guy. It’s his defining characteristic. He’s honest, straightforward, smart, good at what he does, honourable - a very old-fashioned kinda guy, really.To quote Forrest:
“Granted they’re [HSTs} a little rarer than the one’s you grew up with on that little farm in Smallville...”
This makes a Riley=Superman connection, and that, I think, is one of the keys to the character: He’s The All American Hero. Straight Laced Good Guy who kills the bad guys, saves the damsel in distress and helps the old ladies across the road. We also have the reference to Adam (Riley’s ‘brother’) being part Boy Scout. There’s a lot of Boy Scout in Riley.
Basically he stands for order - and Buffy... Buffy is chaos. We see this as soon as Riley tries to approach her (intending to chat her up) and then chokes:
Riley : You don't understand. I'm good at things. That's what I do. Work hard, apply myself, get it done.
'The Initiative'
Riley in a nutshell. And also his relationship with Buffy - because when it comes to Buffy, hard work won’t get it done. He can apply everything he has, and yet it won’t work. Buffy is (unwittingly) his undoing - his downfall. She undermines everything he believes to be true:
Riley: I mean who do you believe? First it sounds like lies, then it sounds like truth.
[...]
No. Buffy. I don't know... anything. I don't know what's going on. Who the bad guys are. Maybe I'm the bad guy. Maybe I'm the thing you should kill.
‘Goodbye Iowa’
He never recovers from this, really. He needs fundamental good and bad in his life - needs order. Needs a mission. The two of them have a very interesting conversation in ‘This Years Girl’:
Buffy: Is there anything I can do?
Riley: Give me an order. It's what I do, isn't it? Follow orders?
Buffy: You don't have to.
Riley: Don't I? All my life that's what I've been groomed to do. They say jump, I ask how high? I get the job done. Just don't know if it's the right job anymore.
(We see in AYW that he finds the right job again, and is happy.)
Buffy: I know how you feel. Giles used to be a part of this council. And for years all they ever did was give me orders.
Riley: Ever obey them?
Buffy: Sure. The ones I was going to do anyway. The point is, I quit the council. And I was scared. But it's okay now.
Riley: See. Now that's where you and I are different. I just suck at the whole gray-area thing.
(Riley puts his finger on it there. Buffy was always a rebel. He never was.)
Buffy: It's a choice. Go back in there and maybe make some changes from the inside. Or you can quit the team. Fight demons in your own way.
Riley: You make it sound so simple. I don't even know what my way is.
Buffy: Well, it's time to find out.
(He tries, oh he tries so hard, but her way just isn’t his. And being 'The Mission's Boyfriend' isn't enough, when she doesn't love him....)
Riley: I'm a soldier. Take that away, what's left?
Buffy: A good man.
(But Riley cannot get rid of the soldier part of him anymore than Buffy can get rid of the Slayer part. He is as lost without his soldier identity as Buffy is without her powers in ‘Helpless’.)
Buffy of course comes at the thing from a completely different angle. She wants a nice safe relationship, something different from Angel.
Buffy: And the bad-boy thing? Over it. Okay, I totally get it. I’d be really happy to be in a nice relationship with a decent, reliable... Oh my god! Riley -
‘Something Blue’
And she thought she did with Riley, until she discovered that he was in The Initiative. Suddenly she felt like the rug had been pulled out from under her feet - like it’s Angel all over again. Angel that she thought was just a hot, mysterious guy, but who turned out to have a dark secret. And she tried to ignore the fact that he was a vampire and the fact that it could never work out, but it hurt both of them too much.
So - why does she go to Riley at the end of ‘Doomed’? Why does she change her mind? I think it comes back to this:
Buffy: “I really thought that you were a nice, normal guy.”
Riley: “I am a nice, normal guy.”
There is a lot of conflict in ‘Doomed’, mostly about the things they have in common:
Buffy: “Yeah, but you’re an amateur - fry cook and I come form a long line of fry cooks that don’t live past 25.”
Riley: “Which is exactly the attitude I’m talking about. Look, I know the risks of what we do. I also know it’s more rewarding than any other job on the planet - and fun.”
I think the reason Buffy decides to give Riley a chance is the fact that it *is* just a job to him, that he *is* just a nice, normal guy. He really, really doesn’t have a Jekyll/Hyde split at all - which we see with the whole ‘paint ball’ fiasco:
Buffy: “No offence, but you do look wicked conspicuous.”
Riley: “I do? But it’s... - Paintball! Yeah, I was playing paintball. And then the aftershocks...”
'Doomed'
It’s as far from this as you can get:
Buffy: Then why didn't you say something?
Angel: But I wanted to. I can walk like a man, but I’m not one. I wanted to kill you tonight.
‘Angel’
I think you have to compare ‘Doomed’ with ‘Angel’ from S1 to get where Buffy’s head is at - she’s so scared of dreaming and hoping, because she’s been hurt so badly before. But Riley proves to be exactly the same after his secret is out as he was before. Buffy is used to Angel, who never gave anything away and had a face that was pretty much unreadable, but Riley truly is the boy scout he says he is. She met Clark Kent, but Superman is exactly the same, except for the tights and the flying. No dark secrets. No hidden badness.
So Buffy decides to give it a try - because Riley is a good guy, without a hint of irony. The problem of course being this one:
Buffy : And the thing is, I like my evil like I like my men-- evil. You know, "straight up, black hat, "Tied to the train tracks, soon my electro-ray will destroy metropolis" bad.
‘Pangs’
See the reason Riley is such a great guy is also the key to why it goes wrong. Going with the comic book parallels again, Angel was Batman (tortured by his past, lived in the shadows), his super hero identity far from his daytime facade. Superman has no such hidden darkness, and he wouldn’t be Superman if he suddenly tried to find such darkness inside.
I said further up that Riley stands for order and Buffy for chaos. From ‘The I In Team’:
Buffy: Quite the regimental soldier.
Riley: I am how they trained me.
Buffy: They? Who they?
Riley: You know, the government. Plucked me out of special op training for this.
Buffy: What did they tell you it was for?
Riley: They didn't. In the military you learn to follow orders. Not ask questions.
Buffy: I don't understand. Aren't you curious about all the science and research stuff they're doing?
Riley: Hm. I know all I need to know. We're doing good here. Protecting the public. Removing the subterrestrial threat. It's work worth doing.
Buffy is shown as very much the Old Testament image of why women are trouble (“So, what’s up with this no-eat-apple-tree?”), but here it’s shown to be a positive - following orders blindly is foolish and dangerous. Thinking for yourself is good.
Except of course not from The Initiative’s POV:
Walsh: “She’s unpredictable.”
‘The I In Team’
Or to quote Riley:
Riley: Well, you're tricky! [...] I never know how you're going to react to something. That's why I like you so much. You're a mystery. Probably every beautiful girl in the world has some jerk telling her she's a mystery, but.. I swear. You really are. There's a lot about you that needs puzzling out.
‘Something Blue’
There is a cut line from the ‘Get It Done’ script that illustrates this perfectly:
Buffy: I am the power. Disrupting things is what I do.
I think the order/chaos theory works rather well, and it is the reason they’re attracted, but also why it doesn’t work. Riley is attracted to Buffy, but needs order to function. Slowly he comes to understand that Buffy is chaos - and in trying to find that chaos inside he destroys himself, the self that Buffy fell for in the first place. Maybe - and that’s a big maybe - they could have found a balance. But he didn’t stick around long enough to find out. ETA: What would have happened if Buffy had reached the helicopter in time? Or if they'd met at another point? Or if Joyce had never become ill? We don't know. Riley was good for Buffy, and he made her happy - the question is: Could she have made him happy? And would she have been satisfied with him in the long run?
~~~~~
The thing that bothers a lot of people, at least the thing that bothers me, is that he thinks he’s got Buffy figured out fairly swiftly. This is where the fact that he works from logic comes in - he analyses the facts and comes to a conclusion. And he’s a smart guy, because he gets it right most of the time. But this does not impress Buffy at all, because Buffy doesn’t work off logic in the same way - she works off emotions. See Spike gives Buffy a couple of speeches as well in his time, and they make a far deeper impression. Spike works from emotions just like Buffy - time and feelings and experiences all accumulate so that his words carry far more weight. We see this most clearly in the ‘You’re a martyr’ talks:
Riley: “I know that it’s not just a job thing. I’m sure that there is some good looking guy that done you wrong in there, too. But mostly I think you want to stay down in that dark place because maybe it’s safer down there.”
Buffy: “You are so out of line.”
Riley: “No. See I don’t think so."
‘Doomed’
Spike: You're addicted to the misery. It's why you won't tell your pals about us. Might actually have to be happy if you did. They'd either understand and help you, god forbid ... or drive you out ... where you can finally be at peace, in the dark. With me. Either way, you'd be better off for it, but you're too twisted for that. Let yourself live, already. And stop with the bloody hero trip for a sec. We'd all be the better for it.
‘Normal Again’
The odd thing is, that the first speech really irks people (the second one might also, but for different reasons). Because surely we should be happy that Buffy has found a guy who is smart enough to figure out her problems (‘cause he’s pretty accurate). But there are two reasons why this doesn’t work:
1) Riley (being a psych student) is able to ‘diagnose’ Buffy pretty quickly. The problem is that he doesn’t know why she has these problems. He makes a stab in the dark (I’m sure that there is some good looking guy that done you wrong in there, too), but he has no idea how deeply Buffy was hurt by Angel or what Slaying has done to her. Which brings me to point #2...
2) He hasn’t earned the right to speak up like that. Spike in ‘Normal Again’ has earned that right and more besides. If he’s right or wrong is beside the point - he knows Buffy. At this point (‘Doomed’) Riley does not. It’s what I like to call ‘The L’Oreal Factor’ - ‘because he’s worth it’. Riley is in essence saying ‘I’m a great guy, you should date me.’ It’s completely unconscious, a natural by-product of his upbringing, training and environment: He deserves good things. He really is the anti-Angel who always felt unworthy of Buffy. ETA: In one word: Privilege.
We see these two factors again in ‘As You Were’ and ‘Touched’:
RILEY: Buffy, none of that means anything. It doesn't touch you. You're still the first woman I ever loved ... and the strongest woman I've ever known. [...] You're up, you're down ... it doesn't change what you are. And you are a hell of a woman.
SPIKE: I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're a hell of a woman.
Riley in AYW is saying that he still sees the woman Buffy used to be in the woman she’s become. This is helpful to Buffy, who feels she has lost touch with everything she once was. But it is also emphatically the view of an outsider - someone taking a swift glance at the situation and coming to a quick conclusion. Riley has no idea of the depression Buffy is struggling with, or any of the events that led to her and Spike getting together. Something happened, and he brushes it aside because he’s sure it’s just a momentary thing, something she can get over. Riley sees her problems as external - something that happened to her (“I know I’m lucky right now...”). But S6 isn’t about Buffy being ‘unlucky’ - it’s about battling the darkness inside.
In ‘Touched’ Spike expresses something very different. Years worth of (intimate) knowledge come together. And he says that who she is - the good, the bad, the ugly - it’s all worthwhile, it’s all loveable. They both know that her problems are internal, that she has a lot of darkness inside, that she cuts herself off. Spike says that he loves her anyway - and not in spite of these things, but because of them - because they’re part of her. To borrow the half-remembered lyrics of a song (thanks to Rhiannonhero):
When I fell for her
I fell for her hard
From the beauty in her eyes
to every small battle scar
The battles that Buffy has had to fight have made her who she is - and that is the person that Spike loves. She wouldn’t be Buffy without her scars.
Which brings me to some of the most telling dialogue. The first is from the beginning of ‘Doomed’:
Riley: But I’m a walking bruise today. [...] I don’t see a scratch on you.
Buffy: You’re not looking hard enough.
Riley: I’m looking pretty hard.
This reminds me of ‘Something Blue’ and Spike’s effortless insight:
Giles: She [Willow] seems to be coping better with Oz's departure, don't you think?
Buffy: She still has a way to go, but yeah - I think she's dealing.
Spike: What, are you people blind? She's hangin' on by a thread. Any ninny can see that.
Riley takes things at face value. He asses situations and reacts accordingly - tallies up strengths and weaknesses. Logical. Straightforward.
Spike always looks beneath. This is partly because of his inherent poet nature, and partly because he leads a dangerous life. He’s managed to stay alive for a long time because he works out what makes people tick, not just what physical strengths they have. We see this most clearly in his fight with Nikki - logically she should have won. But she didn’t. Spike has learned to exploit his opponents weaknesses, how to get under their skin. And boy does he get under Riley’s skin. The chaos element of Buffy is what Riley can’t understand - what intrigues him - and Spike says that this is what she has in common with vampires - that there is a link there that Riley can never hope to get near:
Spike: Face it, white bread. Buffy's got a type, and you're not it. She likes us dangerous, rough, occasionally bumpy in the forehead region. Not that she doesn't like you ... but sorry Charlie, you're just not dark enough.
‘Shadow’
So Riley tries, and we all know the outcome of that. Buffy uses the chaos, but Riley gets used by it. He tries to be different, without understanding that if she can’t love him for who he is, it can never work. Spike saw this in ‘Lovers Walk’:
Spike: I've been all wrongheaded about this. Weeping, crawling, blaming everybody else. I want Dru back, I've just gotta be the man I was. The man she loved.
Buffy fell for Riley because he was a good man. Trying to be bad was never going to work in a million years.
~~~
To be honest I don’t know if they could ever have worked it out. I don’t think so. (Also Riley is dull. Oh - and does anyone have any thoughts on Sam as Lois Lane?)
But finally, just two quotes that illustrate my point perfectly:
RILEY: Hey! You want me to say that I liked seeing you in bed with that idiot? Or that blinding orange is your very best color? Or that that ... burger smell is appealing?
‘As You Were’
SPIKE: (softly) She was so raw. I've never felt anything like it.
‘Entropy’
Riley sees the symptoms. Spike sees the cause. That’s the difference. And that’s why Riley and Buffy don’t work out.
The End
The thing is - Riley is a nice guy. It’s his defining characteristic. He’s honest, straightforward, smart, good at what he does, honourable - a very old-fashioned kinda guy, really.To quote Forrest:
“Granted they’re [HSTs} a little rarer than the one’s you grew up with on that little farm in Smallville...”
This makes a Riley=Superman connection, and that, I think, is one of the keys to the character: He’s The All American Hero. Straight Laced Good Guy who kills the bad guys, saves the damsel in distress and helps the old ladies across the road. We also have the reference to Adam (Riley’s ‘brother’) being part Boy Scout. There’s a lot of Boy Scout in Riley.
Basically he stands for order - and Buffy... Buffy is chaos. We see this as soon as Riley tries to approach her (intending to chat her up) and then chokes:
Riley : You don't understand. I'm good at things. That's what I do. Work hard, apply myself, get it done.
'The Initiative'
Riley in a nutshell. And also his relationship with Buffy - because when it comes to Buffy, hard work won’t get it done. He can apply everything he has, and yet it won’t work. Buffy is (unwittingly) his undoing - his downfall. She undermines everything he believes to be true:
Riley: I mean who do you believe? First it sounds like lies, then it sounds like truth.
[...]
No. Buffy. I don't know... anything. I don't know what's going on. Who the bad guys are. Maybe I'm the bad guy. Maybe I'm the thing you should kill.
‘Goodbye Iowa’
He never recovers from this, really. He needs fundamental good and bad in his life - needs order. Needs a mission. The two of them have a very interesting conversation in ‘This Years Girl’:
Buffy: Is there anything I can do?
Riley: Give me an order. It's what I do, isn't it? Follow orders?
Buffy: You don't have to.
Riley: Don't I? All my life that's what I've been groomed to do. They say jump, I ask how high? I get the job done. Just don't know if it's the right job anymore.
(We see in AYW that he finds the right job again, and is happy.)
Buffy: I know how you feel. Giles used to be a part of this council. And for years all they ever did was give me orders.
Riley: Ever obey them?
Buffy: Sure. The ones I was going to do anyway. The point is, I quit the council. And I was scared. But it's okay now.
Riley: See. Now that's where you and I are different. I just suck at the whole gray-area thing.
(Riley puts his finger on it there. Buffy was always a rebel. He never was.)
Buffy: It's a choice. Go back in there and maybe make some changes from the inside. Or you can quit the team. Fight demons in your own way.
Riley: You make it sound so simple. I don't even know what my way is.
Buffy: Well, it's time to find out.
(He tries, oh he tries so hard, but her way just isn’t his. And being 'The Mission's Boyfriend' isn't enough, when she doesn't love him....)
Riley: I'm a soldier. Take that away, what's left?
Buffy: A good man.
(But Riley cannot get rid of the soldier part of him anymore than Buffy can get rid of the Slayer part. He is as lost without his soldier identity as Buffy is without her powers in ‘Helpless’.)
Buffy of course comes at the thing from a completely different angle. She wants a nice safe relationship, something different from Angel.
Buffy: And the bad-boy thing? Over it. Okay, I totally get it. I’d be really happy to be in a nice relationship with a decent, reliable... Oh my god! Riley -
‘Something Blue’
And she thought she did with Riley, until she discovered that he was in The Initiative. Suddenly she felt like the rug had been pulled out from under her feet - like it’s Angel all over again. Angel that she thought was just a hot, mysterious guy, but who turned out to have a dark secret. And she tried to ignore the fact that he was a vampire and the fact that it could never work out, but it hurt both of them too much.
So - why does she go to Riley at the end of ‘Doomed’? Why does she change her mind? I think it comes back to this:
Buffy: “I really thought that you were a nice, normal guy.”
Riley: “I am a nice, normal guy.”
There is a lot of conflict in ‘Doomed’, mostly about the things they have in common:
Buffy: “Yeah, but you’re an amateur - fry cook and I come form a long line of fry cooks that don’t live past 25.”
Riley: “Which is exactly the attitude I’m talking about. Look, I know the risks of what we do. I also know it’s more rewarding than any other job on the planet - and fun.”
I think the reason Buffy decides to give Riley a chance is the fact that it *is* just a job to him, that he *is* just a nice, normal guy. He really, really doesn’t have a Jekyll/Hyde split at all - which we see with the whole ‘paint ball’ fiasco:
Buffy: “No offence, but you do look wicked conspicuous.”
Riley: “I do? But it’s... - Paintball! Yeah, I was playing paintball. And then the aftershocks...”
'Doomed'
It’s as far from this as you can get:
Buffy: Then why didn't you say something?
Angel: But I wanted to. I can walk like a man, but I’m not one. I wanted to kill you tonight.
‘Angel’
I think you have to compare ‘Doomed’ with ‘Angel’ from S1 to get where Buffy’s head is at - she’s so scared of dreaming and hoping, because she’s been hurt so badly before. But Riley proves to be exactly the same after his secret is out as he was before. Buffy is used to Angel, who never gave anything away and had a face that was pretty much unreadable, but Riley truly is the boy scout he says he is. She met Clark Kent, but Superman is exactly the same, except for the tights and the flying. No dark secrets. No hidden badness.
So Buffy decides to give it a try - because Riley is a good guy, without a hint of irony. The problem of course being this one:
Buffy : And the thing is, I like my evil like I like my men-- evil. You know, "straight up, black hat, "Tied to the train tracks, soon my electro-ray will destroy metropolis" bad.
‘Pangs’
See the reason Riley is such a great guy is also the key to why it goes wrong. Going with the comic book parallels again, Angel was Batman (tortured by his past, lived in the shadows), his super hero identity far from his daytime facade. Superman has no such hidden darkness, and he wouldn’t be Superman if he suddenly tried to find such darkness inside.
I said further up that Riley stands for order and Buffy for chaos. From ‘The I In Team’:
Buffy: Quite the regimental soldier.
Riley: I am how they trained me.
Buffy: They? Who they?
Riley: You know, the government. Plucked me out of special op training for this.
Buffy: What did they tell you it was for?
Riley: They didn't. In the military you learn to follow orders. Not ask questions.
Buffy: I don't understand. Aren't you curious about all the science and research stuff they're doing?
Riley: Hm. I know all I need to know. We're doing good here. Protecting the public. Removing the subterrestrial threat. It's work worth doing.
Buffy is shown as very much the Old Testament image of why women are trouble (“So, what’s up with this no-eat-apple-tree?”), but here it’s shown to be a positive - following orders blindly is foolish and dangerous. Thinking for yourself is good.
Except of course not from The Initiative’s POV:
Walsh: “She’s unpredictable.”
‘The I In Team’
Or to quote Riley:
Riley: Well, you're tricky! [...] I never know how you're going to react to something. That's why I like you so much. You're a mystery. Probably every beautiful girl in the world has some jerk telling her she's a mystery, but.. I swear. You really are. There's a lot about you that needs puzzling out.
‘Something Blue’
There is a cut line from the ‘Get It Done’ script that illustrates this perfectly:
Buffy: I am the power. Disrupting things is what I do.
I think the order/chaos theory works rather well, and it is the reason they’re attracted, but also why it doesn’t work. Riley is attracted to Buffy, but needs order to function. Slowly he comes to understand that Buffy is chaos - and in trying to find that chaos inside he destroys himself, the self that Buffy fell for in the first place. Maybe - and that’s a big maybe - they could have found a balance. But he didn’t stick around long enough to find out. ETA: What would have happened if Buffy had reached the helicopter in time? Or if they'd met at another point? Or if Joyce had never become ill? We don't know. Riley was good for Buffy, and he made her happy - the question is: Could she have made him happy? And would she have been satisfied with him in the long run?
~~~~~
The thing that bothers a lot of people, at least the thing that bothers me, is that he thinks he’s got Buffy figured out fairly swiftly. This is where the fact that he works from logic comes in - he analyses the facts and comes to a conclusion. And he’s a smart guy, because he gets it right most of the time. But this does not impress Buffy at all, because Buffy doesn’t work off logic in the same way - she works off emotions. See Spike gives Buffy a couple of speeches as well in his time, and they make a far deeper impression. Spike works from emotions just like Buffy - time and feelings and experiences all accumulate so that his words carry far more weight. We see this most clearly in the ‘You’re a martyr’ talks:
Riley: “I know that it’s not just a job thing. I’m sure that there is some good looking guy that done you wrong in there, too. But mostly I think you want to stay down in that dark place because maybe it’s safer down there.”
Buffy: “You are so out of line.”
Riley: “No. See I don’t think so."
‘Doomed’
Spike: You're addicted to the misery. It's why you won't tell your pals about us. Might actually have to be happy if you did. They'd either understand and help you, god forbid ... or drive you out ... where you can finally be at peace, in the dark. With me. Either way, you'd be better off for it, but you're too twisted for that. Let yourself live, already. And stop with the bloody hero trip for a sec. We'd all be the better for it.
‘Normal Again’
The odd thing is, that the first speech really irks people (the second one might also, but for different reasons). Because surely we should be happy that Buffy has found a guy who is smart enough to figure out her problems (‘cause he’s pretty accurate). But there are two reasons why this doesn’t work:
1) Riley (being a psych student) is able to ‘diagnose’ Buffy pretty quickly. The problem is that he doesn’t know why she has these problems. He makes a stab in the dark (I’m sure that there is some good looking guy that done you wrong in there, too), but he has no idea how deeply Buffy was hurt by Angel or what Slaying has done to her. Which brings me to point #2...
2) He hasn’t earned the right to speak up like that. Spike in ‘Normal Again’ has earned that right and more besides. If he’s right or wrong is beside the point - he knows Buffy. At this point (‘Doomed’) Riley does not. It’s what I like to call ‘The L’Oreal Factor’ - ‘because he’s worth it’. Riley is in essence saying ‘I’m a great guy, you should date me.’ It’s completely unconscious, a natural by-product of his upbringing, training and environment: He deserves good things. He really is the anti-Angel who always felt unworthy of Buffy. ETA: In one word: Privilege.
We see these two factors again in ‘As You Were’ and ‘Touched’:
RILEY: Buffy, none of that means anything. It doesn't touch you. You're still the first woman I ever loved ... and the strongest woman I've ever known. [...] You're up, you're down ... it doesn't change what you are. And you are a hell of a woman.
SPIKE: I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're a hell of a woman.
Riley in AYW is saying that he still sees the woman Buffy used to be in the woman she’s become. This is helpful to Buffy, who feels she has lost touch with everything she once was. But it is also emphatically the view of an outsider - someone taking a swift glance at the situation and coming to a quick conclusion. Riley has no idea of the depression Buffy is struggling with, or any of the events that led to her and Spike getting together. Something happened, and he brushes it aside because he’s sure it’s just a momentary thing, something she can get over. Riley sees her problems as external - something that happened to her (“I know I’m lucky right now...”). But S6 isn’t about Buffy being ‘unlucky’ - it’s about battling the darkness inside.
In ‘Touched’ Spike expresses something very different. Years worth of (intimate) knowledge come together. And he says that who she is - the good, the bad, the ugly - it’s all worthwhile, it’s all loveable. They both know that her problems are internal, that she has a lot of darkness inside, that she cuts herself off. Spike says that he loves her anyway - and not in spite of these things, but because of them - because they’re part of her. To borrow the half-remembered lyrics of a song (thanks to Rhiannonhero):
When I fell for her
I fell for her hard
From the beauty in her eyes
to every small battle scar
The battles that Buffy has had to fight have made her who she is - and that is the person that Spike loves. She wouldn’t be Buffy without her scars.
Which brings me to some of the most telling dialogue. The first is from the beginning of ‘Doomed’:
Riley: But I’m a walking bruise today. [...] I don’t see a scratch on you.
Buffy: You’re not looking hard enough.
Riley: I’m looking pretty hard.
This reminds me of ‘Something Blue’ and Spike’s effortless insight:
Giles: She [Willow] seems to be coping better with Oz's departure, don't you think?
Buffy: She still has a way to go, but yeah - I think she's dealing.
Spike: What, are you people blind? She's hangin' on by a thread. Any ninny can see that.
Riley takes things at face value. He asses situations and reacts accordingly - tallies up strengths and weaknesses. Logical. Straightforward.
Spike always looks beneath. This is partly because of his inherent poet nature, and partly because he leads a dangerous life. He’s managed to stay alive for a long time because he works out what makes people tick, not just what physical strengths they have. We see this most clearly in his fight with Nikki - logically she should have won. But she didn’t. Spike has learned to exploit his opponents weaknesses, how to get under their skin. And boy does he get under Riley’s skin. The chaos element of Buffy is what Riley can’t understand - what intrigues him - and Spike says that this is what she has in common with vampires - that there is a link there that Riley can never hope to get near:
Spike: Face it, white bread. Buffy's got a type, and you're not it. She likes us dangerous, rough, occasionally bumpy in the forehead region. Not that she doesn't like you ... but sorry Charlie, you're just not dark enough.
‘Shadow’
So Riley tries, and we all know the outcome of that. Buffy uses the chaos, but Riley gets used by it. He tries to be different, without understanding that if she can’t love him for who he is, it can never work. Spike saw this in ‘Lovers Walk’:
Spike: I've been all wrongheaded about this. Weeping, crawling, blaming everybody else. I want Dru back, I've just gotta be the man I was. The man she loved.
Buffy fell for Riley because he was a good man. Trying to be bad was never going to work in a million years.
~~~
To be honest I don’t know if they could ever have worked it out. I don’t think so. (Also Riley is dull. Oh - and does anyone have any thoughts on Sam as Lois Lane?)
But finally, just two quotes that illustrate my point perfectly:
RILEY: Hey! You want me to say that I liked seeing you in bed with that idiot? Or that blinding orange is your very best color? Or that that ... burger smell is appealing?
‘As You Were’
SPIKE: (softly) She was so raw. I've never felt anything like it.
‘Entropy’
Riley sees the symptoms. Spike sees the cause. That’s the difference. And that’s why Riley and Buffy don’t work out.
The End