Saturday, September 04, 2010

Wait, what?

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.

3 comments:

ShellyS said...

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.

LurkerWithout said...

Given 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...

mrjl said...

I have no idea why people dislike Riley. Presumambly they want Buffy stuck in Romeo and Juliet plots