Who had right? Maybe both, maybe noone...

[buffymods2]

Y'all know how the Buffy/Riley relationship ended. This week's poll is mainly centered on the how of it . How two seemingly happy people broke up like that?
Have fun! :)

Your Mods,

Tabi and Pam

Comments

[angearia]

I disagree that Riley is OOC. By the beginning of Season 5, he's lost everything but Buffy. He's not in school anymore. He's not in the Initiative. He's not a superpowered human. All he has is Buffy and he freaks out.

As for Buffy, the end of Season 4 shows that she's backing away from being all about Riley and that her being solely focused on him was unhealthy. Primeval reaffirms her relationships with her friends, then Restless ups the ante on her conflict and confusion over her Slayer identity. Season 5 opens with Buffy tasting the darkness within her and being freaked out herself, so at the end she goes to Giles wishing to learn more about what it means to be the Slayer.

Buffy learned that ignoring all her life responsibilities and her duty as the Slayer for Riley led to badness, so she's working to balance it. It just so happens that her other responsibilities get extraordinarily time-consuming in Season 5 and Buffy has to put her mother and her sister's safety first. When Riley is in danger of losing his life, he's Buffy's priority. But she has to put her mother and sister surviving first (remember how Faith taunts Joyce that Buffy hasn't been home? Buffy wasn't around b/c she was all wrapped up in Riley and school) and Riley doesn't handle it well because she's the only person he has in his life and the only source of self-worth for him atm.

Basically, Riley needed to get a life (harsh, but true) and some outside interests to rebuild his own sense of self-worth and stop overrelying on Buffy. He needed more forms of social support than his relationship with Buffy.