Should Riley Have Seen Something Was Wrong With Buffy?

[Priceless]

Should Riley accept some blame for not recognising Faith was Buffy in Who Are You? Faith was acting very differently to Buffy and Riley even comments on it. Should he have guessed there was something seriously wrong, as Buffy was acting very much out of character, or is that expecting too much?

He knows about Faith, and he lives in a world of demons and witches etc., and Buffy is acting so strangely so I think he should have questioned her more. He was initially surprised, but he doesn't follow through with his first intuition that something was off. This is a flaw in his character, he doesn't ever think too deeply about things or listen to his intuition.

 

[Spanky]

Should Riley accept some blame for not recognising Faith was Buffy in Who Are You?

No.

He knows about Faith,

Just knowing something about her doesn't mean he should automatically assume Buffy isn't Buffy just because she's acting different. People do act differently from time to time, especially when you haven't been together that long or around one another that much, that doesn't mean someone else has mytically jumped into their body. Maybe she had a few drinks and loosened up a bit.

and he lives in a world of demons and witches

Does he though? I thought the only thing he was familiar with was monsters. Buffy wasn't acting like, nor did she look like a monster. There wasn't anything to really show Buffy wasn't Buffy so there was no reason he would assume it. People trust their eyes and their ears. She looked and sounded like Buffy, ergo, she was Buffy.

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

No, not really. First, The Initiative seems to have very selective knowledge on the Supernatural, and doesn't seem to know about magic. Or I should say, the grunt in Walsh's group doesn't know about magic. If they get any explanation at all, they are classified as entities that originate from extra dimensional space. Like "Schisms," but without the clicking. They also "fell" for Jonathan in Superstar, so, I'm guessing their understanding of the Supernatural is lacking. But I think your underlying concern is correct, Demon hunters operational security would need to have anti-posession procedures.

I disagree with the cheating analogy that the series presents. I really don't want to get into that, and I wish they went with Buffy having a general sense of violation over feeling wronged by Riley. Body swaps in weird fiction are almost impossible to detect, and aside from Tara, who has sight beyond sight, the series never presented someone as deducing one. And if your girlfriend starts acting like Kathryn Merteuil, you kind of just go with it.

 

[Faded90]

Riley isn’t at fault as he showed at the end of the episode he really just didn’t understand magic. I think he see’s demons etc as being just rarer animals. We see in Doomed the difference between the Initiative and the scoobies as Riley didn’t understand the mystical side of the supernatural world. Even Buffy’s existence has previously been dismissed as a myth. He clearly thinks Buffy’s acting odd but I
Think he just see’s it as his new girlfriend wanting to try something different - remember he’s also always seen Buffy as a mystery as he doesn’t know what he’s going to get from her

Having said all that I always cringe at that line when Faith says ‘oh you wouldn’t have liked Faith. She’s not proper and joyless like a girl should be’ and I always think Riley must or should have found it odd that Buffy is basically calling herself boring while saying how fun Faith is. That’s the major warning sign but I am uncomfortable in placing any blame on Riley for that whole situation

 

[Faded90]

No, not really. First, The Initiative seems to have very selective knowledge on the Supernatural, and doesn't seem to know about magic. Or I should say, the grunt in Walsh's group doesn't know about magic. If they get any explanation at all, they are classified as entities that originate from extra dimensional space. Like "Schisms," but without the clicking. They also "fell" for Jonathan in Superstar, so, I'm guessing their understanding of the Supernatural is lacking. But I think your underlying concern is correct, Demon hunters operational security would need to have anti-posession procedures.

I disagree with the cheating analogy that the series presents. I really don't want to get into that, and I wish they went with Buffy having a general sense of violation over feeling wronged by Riley. Body swaps in weird fiction are almost impossible to detect, and aside from Tara, who has sight beyond sight, the series never presented someone as deducing one. And if your girlfriend starts acting like Kathryn Merteuil, you kind of just go with it.

I think they went down the ‘is it cheating?’ route (which it clearly isn’t) as they planned to redeem Faith. If they had Buffy acknowledge onscreen that she feels sexually violated or if Riley had it would make it next to impossible to redeem Faith in the eyes of the viewers. They definitely put some hints in there that Buffy IS feeling violated though, there’s a moment when Riley touches her shoulder and she squirms away from his touch in obvious discomfort and she tells Willow (I think) that she’s been feeling like Faith’s constantly in the room - but mostly they very much try to go down the cheating route

 

[Priceless]

I am probably being too harsh on Riley but I can't help thinking that if the person you are in love with, the person you supposedly know more intimately then anyone else, is suddenly and completely different, you should notice. His job is to protect the world from monsters, plus he's a student of psychology, I would just hope he'd take more notice of this change in Buffy's character.

Riley does know all about magic. He saw Giles turned into a Fyarl demon, so he knows changing bodies is completely possible in this world. I'm not suggesting he should automatically know Buffy and Faith have swapped bodies, but he should notice something and he should be more in tune with his girlfriend and perhaps talk to her a bit more, maybe tell Giles, or even Willow, that she seems a bit off.

Maybe she had a few drinks and loosened up a bit.

Maybe, but is this like Buffy? They've been together a while now, and he must know she's not a big drinker, especially when he knows she's in the middle of a hunt for Faith.

 

[white avenger]

Actually, I think that it would have been much stranger if Riley, Willow, Xander, or any of the others had realized that "Buffy" wasn't really the Buffy that they all knew and loved. People usually see what they expect to see, even when it isn't actually there. This was, to them, their Buffy, just not acting normal. She's upset. She's mad. She's drunk. It's that time of the month. Any of a hundred excuses to explain her weird behavior except the real one. This isn't Buffy, it's someone else wearing Buffy's body for awhile.

It's no coincidence that Tara was the first one to recognize the real problem. She had no preconceived notion of what Buffy should act like. She was able to look objectively at the girl in front of her and see that she was just...wrong. The aura thing was a lot of help, of course, but I keep asking myself why, if Tara could see that it was out of whack, why couldn't Willow have seen the same thing? Or maybe she did, but it just didn't occur to her to realize that an out of whack aura might be an indication of something much more serious than just a drunk, upset, or angry Slayer

 

[Myheadsgonenumb]

No - as Buffy herself says, what was he supposed to do? say "hey that isn't your body, come out of that body with your hands up?'
Riley is absolutely terrible in so many ways, big and small,, but trying to pin the blame on him for not recognising that someone had swapped bodies with someone else (and none of her friends did either - and they knew her far better and for far longer. Her mum didn't notice) is a reach and a half.

 

[Priceless]

It's not that Riley didn't notice Buffy and Faith had swapped bodies, of course that's asking a bit too much. It's that he notices something is wrong, but does nothing about it. The woman he loves is behaving very strangely and although he knows anything is possible in this universe, he does nothing about it. Buffy suggests they leave the door open during their make out session, she asks if he wants her to be a bad girl, do whatever he wants with her body. She is acting weird. I just think an Initiative soldier with a background in psychology who professes to love Buffy, would notice something and should do something.

I think the writers are trying to show a flaw in Riley's character, that as @white avenger says, people like Riley see what they want to see. Where Buffy goes with her instincts and trusts them, Riley does not.

 

[thrasherpix]

Wasn't Riley recovering from an injury? And wasn't he on drugs, both for the transformation, and perhaps painkillers? (It seems so, but I also remember him going into a church fighting soon after so I'm not certain.) Add yet another reason why he'd be confused rather than realizing something supernatural was afoot.

 

[Spanky]

I think the writers are trying to show a flaw in Riley's character,

people ... see what they want to see.

I agree with that. I think you're really reading too much into it, honestly. No one noticed a difference at first, not even her own mother.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

There is an old saying: "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras."

He had not known Buffy for long. He may have thought she was willing to make things interesting - after all, most romances go from the social to the sexual in some way and this was as logical a way as any. Don't forget that even male psychologists don't know much about women. It is also said that When Adam was presented with Eve, he also got the owner's manual, but being a typical man, he threw it away. Not that it would have mattered - the first page said, "If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you."

 

[Athene]

I don't think Riley deserves any blame because it could easily be written off as Buffy being out of sorts- especially because Riley puts an end to that weird behaviour before they have sex so to Riley it looked like Buffy was just having a weird moment because Buffy stopped it and came around quickly. He wouldn't think that Faith would do that.