I like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," but I was a latecomer to the series, only really starting to watch it in the last several years. I really enjoy it, but I still haven't watched the last two and a half seasons or so. Now that I have both the complete sets of "Buffy" and "Angel," I figure I'll go back and watch both all the way through (with all the appropriate tie-in episodes and whatnot) at some point in the near future, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Avoiding the show as I did means I also avoided a great deal of Whedon fandom; my first real encounter with him was "Astonishing X-Men," and I'm pretty sure I watched the entirety of "Firefly" before I saw a single "Buffy" episode. So while I haven't exactly been entirely untainted by spoilers, I've been mostly untainted by prevailing fan opinions.
Which is why I was surprised by a throwaway line in a recent Blog@Newsarama post, referring to Riley as "the character’s most-loathed ex-boyfriend." I actually quite liked Riley, and generally enjoyed the whole Initiative storyline.
So now I'm curious: why is Riley the "most-loathed" of Buffy's boyfriends? Why does he provoke the wrath of Whedonite fandom so much that his getting a one-shot comic is cause for controversy?
And is there any chance that we could see Whedon's proposed TV series prequel about young Giles done as a comic? Has it already been done? Because that would be the thing that gets me buying Buffy comics.
I always liked Riley and I never understood all the negativity about him. I also think Marc Blucas who played him to be a good looking guy and a good actor, which helped me like him. But I also liked the character. I did have a preference for a boyfriend for Buffy and since you haven't seen the entire series yet, I won't mention him, but no, not Angel. Buffy and Angel might've seemed like a good idea, but I was never fond of them together.
ReplyDeleteGiven that Buffy sleeps with like four guys total thru the entire show run and is really only in a relationship with three of them, most disliked isn't a very high bar. But I never had a problem with Riley, though I could see the point in his fandom nickname of Captain Cardboard. The first season with him his character is pretty bland...
ReplyDeleteI have no idea why people dislike Riley. Presumambly they want Buffy stuck in Romeo and Juliet plots
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