Sam has got to be the best wife ever. God! I just couldn't find one thing wrong with her!
That's what made me suspicious of her in the first place. She's TOO perfect. She claims to be a former Peace Corps worker who had been rescued by Riley and his team (if you recall, that was why Riley left Sunnydale in the first place. To join an Army unit that was going to South America to rescue the group) Then, just a few months later, that little Peace Corps girl is GI Jane, who somehow outranks Riley (Buffy: "So, you take orders from him?" Sam: "He wishes!" The only way that Sam could not be required to obey Riley's orders would be if she had equal or greater rank than his own, which would be impossible if she were the new recruit that she claims to be.
Then Peace Corps/GI Jane comes to Sunnydale and meets the girl who basically turned her new husband into an emotional basket case and she's all smiles and charm. ("There's no bad guys in this, Buffy...") She's the military version of a Stepford Wife.
My greatest problem with this episode is that everything "just" happened too quickly and too conveniently. Just when Buffy is at her emotional rock bottom from the combined responsibilities of being a parent and having to do minimum wage work just to pay her bills while Dawn, Willow, and Tara all sit comfortably under her roof contributing nothing. Just when Captain Cardboard shows up unannounced at her workplace with a demon emergency and a full set of BDU's. including boots, body armor, and even gloves in just her size. Just at the precise moment when the dreaded Suvolte beast arrives in Sunnydale (except that, despite the fact that Riley and Sam have been in hot pursuit of said beast, it has been in Sunnydale long enough to lay a cave full of eggs which are already to the point of hatching which, coincidentally, have already been found and stolen by a mysterious character named the Doctor, who has clients waiting to buy them. Just when Buffy begins to realize that her relationship with Spike is destroying her because she "can't love him" (not shouldn't or doesn't want to, but CAN'T. Does that mean that she doesn't feel anything for him, or that she IS beginning to feel something, and can't allow those feelings to fully develop, because he is supposedly a soulless monster?) Just when she and Spike are enjoying the aftermath of a passionate interlude. Just when Riley comes bursting into Spike's crypt. Just at the precise moment that the dreaded eggs are beginning to hatch prematurely.
This whole story should have been the subject of at least two, or even better, four episodes, giving things time to play out in some logical manner without having to rely so much on a mountain of coincidence and just in the nick of time action, but there obviously wasn't time for that, because the Three Nerd Corps was doing too good a job of disrupting the demon community and robbing museums. As it was, one of the major elements, the real identity of the mysterious "Doctor" was never revealed, or even mentioned again. If it wasn't Spike, then who was it? If it WAS Spike, why did Buffy allow him to remain in a non-dusty condition. It couldn't be because she had ant feelings for him, of course, because she had already denied any and all such feelings. And whoever it was, why did he, she, or it pose no further threat?
"As You Were," to me, just depended entirely too much on coincidence, a crutch for good story telling at best. It was too much story to develop properly in a single episode. The return of a former lover; the former lover's new wife; the advent of a new demonic threat;the introduction of a new, mysterious villain. All of that serving no real purpose than to herald the end of a love affair ("I can't love you, and it's killing me.") Okay, not a love affair, more of an exercise in self destruction. But still, something that could have been handled perfectly well without the whole Return Of Riley story to clutter it up.
