What if Riley developed a heart condition during season 4

[Hairsprayisfab]

What if the drugs the initiative pumped Riley full of made him develope a permanent heart condition as a result. What if he had a heart attack and Buffy had to nurse him back to health?

Would it make them closer and help their chemistry? Maybe for season 5, Riley is taken out of the fight and feels like a liability to Buffy. So that's why he leaves? Like, Angel, in I'll remember you. Would it be a better sendoff.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

Watching someone nursing someone else back to health would be a colossal bore. It might give her points for character but the development of nurturing characteristics is handled adequately by Buffy's mothering of Dawn later in the series.

Riley would feel like even more of a liability then. His life was predicated on being a man of action and this would end his ability to serve in a special forces capacity. He would be unable to do the things he had always done. He would not want to see Buffy do effortlessly the things he could no longer do. It would collapse their relationship entirely.

 

[Priceless]

I could see this bringing them closer, definitely, and giving Riley a more honourable reason to leave the show in that he realises he's become a liability. But Buffy is not a nurse, she's a slayer. She can't spend her nights and days sat by Riley's bed, making him soup and plumping up his pillows. I think I am possibly in the minority of people who like Riley's send off. I liked his fall from grace, his excuses that he needed something Buffy couldn't give him etc. I thought as a storyline it worked well. I'm also not sure I care enough about Riley to be moved by him having a heart attack and Buffy nursing him back to health.

 

[Faded90]

Buffy/Riley would never work, making him even more of a sad helpless puppy would have been awful. Riley is never going to be able to accept that Buffy’s life being the way it is he’s never going to be her absolute focus - that’s not her fault, she just simply can’t be what he needs

This is Riley who on the day Joyce gets rushed to hospital Buffy ends up spending the whole day running around looking for him because he’s being a self absorbed manchild, Buffy stays there for him during his operation to see him wake up and then when she says she’d like to go check up on her Mother who was rushed to hospital that same day - who we can assume was left alone with her 14 year old sister whose likely already freaking about the last time they were alone. Riley’s reaction to this is again ‘sad puppy face’ , when you begrudge your girlfriend checking up on her sick Mother you know you’ve got some major issues

 

[DeadlyDuo]

Riley couldn't stand Buffy being the "strong" one in the relationship when he was healthy, so him being in a weakened position where she has to nurse him back to health would make the relationship implode faster than it did in the show.

 

[Priceless]

I think Riley would have enjoyed being weakened in this way because it would have been an excuse to have Buffy's full attention, and a reason to whine if he didn't get it.

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

Look, the dumbest thing in season 5 was the suggestion that Willow was going to care for crazy Tara in her dorm room for the foreseeable future, and Dawn helped. Caring for a loved one with a chronic disease or a degenerative condition is an season 7 Angel version of "The Visitor," like a girl keeps getting older, and Angel doesn't. It's not a throwaway c plot that we all know will be resolved in seven episodes. So, Riley getting Wrestler's heart, it's interesting, but it's not really something the average college student will deal with. Most of the time, Riley would move back home to Iowa, they would promise to stay together, but they wouldn't. They wouldn't.

I kinda want to see that Angel episode now.