![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookishwenchAuthor: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bookishwench aka Meltha
Summary: Andrew, Riley, and Kennedy are three of the most disliked characters in the Buffyverse. In a show filled with wonderful characters, what went wrong with them?
Spoilers: Through the Buffy season 8 comics and AtS season 5
Word count: Approx. 6,600, excluding works cited list and appendices.
Notes: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
buffyversemetathon from a prompt by lusciousxander, "Riley, Kennedy, Andrew. What made these characters unpopular?" Also, there are a few images in the text, but I don’t think they’ll be too draining on dial-up.
During its seven year run, Buffy the Vampire Slayer created a veritable pantheon of characters who were taken to the hearts of fans. Buffy herself has become part of pop culture, and Willow, Xander, Giles, Spike, and Anya all have devoted followings on the Internet who still discuss their strengths and foibles, debate whether certain choices they made in the series were in character, and write reams of fanfiction about them. Many characters who received less screentime, such as Faith or Tara or even Ethan Rayne, also inspire interest and have large numbers of loyal fans. Generally speaking, Buffyverse fans have enjoyed the vast majority of the characters Joss Whedon introduced, even the villains.
However, even in such a popular show as Buffy, things can and do go awry. Three examples of characters who have not achieved the level of popularity of their peers, and who in fact tend to make fans react to their presence in much the same way they might respond to being sprayed by a skunk, are Andrew Wells, Riley Finn, and Kennedy. While each of these three has some proponents who enjoy their characters and individual arcs, which will be discussed, a sizable percentage of the Buffyverse fandom found them too flawed to tolerate. This is unfortunate as Andrew, Riley, and Kennedy all had the potential to be interesting and vital characters. What went wrong? The answer varies in details from character to character, but a lack of specific purpose, too much screentime, and being pushed into relationships seem to be common threads between them.
I ran a poll in my Livejournal, advertising it in several different fandom-related journals, in regards to Riley, Andrew, and Kennedy and how fans reacted to them. A total of 118 people answered a variety of questions on their preferences about this troublesome trio. A few surprises did occur, but the results generally showed that something did indeed go wrong with the portrayal of these characters if we were, in fact, supposed to enjoy them.
According to the poll, 26.4% of people (31 votes) had some degree of negative feeling towards the character of Andrew Wells, which is not as overwhelming a number as might have been suspected. In fact, a full 70% (82 votes) of voters voiced a positive opinion of him. What was interesting, though, was just how strongly voters felt about him in either direction. Andrew had the largest percentage of any of three characters in the poll in the category of least favorite on the series ever with 6.8% (8 votes), and the number of people who voiced their opinion of him as “very negative” was the same for Andrew as it was for Riley, 8.5% (10 votes). In other words, those who like Andrew tend to like him moderately (35.9%, 49 votes), while those who dislike him tend to do so very strongly. This could mean his fans are less vocal as most don’t feel a particularly direct connection with him, while his detractors speak quite loudly because they do feel very upset about his character.
Andrew is regarded as an outsider from the outset. His initial appearance on the show in “Flooded” (B6.4*) is marked by his explanation that he is the younger brother of Tucker, a one-episode villain from season three:
WARREN: Oh, or else what? You'll train another pack of devil-dogs to ruin my prom? Ha! Graduated!
ANDREW: That wasn't me! How many times do I have to say it? The prom thing was my lame-o brother, Tucker.
JONATHAN: Yeah, well tell him I was at that prom.
ANDREW: Hello! Screen-wipe, new scene! I had nothing to do with the devil dogs. I trained flying demon monkeys to attack the school play. School play, dude!
While “The Prom” (B3.20) was a notable Buffy episode, Tucker is a rather forgettable villain. The point of even making the connection to the two characters might be that Andrew was perceived as so much of a social leper that even his none-too-stellar older brother was capable of overshadowing him and making people, even Andrew’s supposed friends, confuse the two of them and their demonic shenanigans. Already, we know that Andrew is supposed to be viewed as a nearly invisible nerd who has some kind of mystical power over demons, a situation quite similar to that of the Scoobies. To this end, he could be compared to Willow, with Warren as his version of Buffy and Jonathon playing Xander’s role as everyman/conscience.
The problem with this is that Andrew is played to a large extent for laughs through most of his run on the show, yet he is also seen making massive mistakes in judgment and occasionally completely perverse wrongdoings. For example, Andrew is complicit in the attempted rape of Katrina in “Dead Things” (B6.13), and when she is killed, he knowingly attempts to cover up the situation by helping to frame Buffy for her death. While his tears in Trio’s basement do show genuine remorse, he still does not seem to have learned to avoid Warren, whose moral compass becomes increasingly more warped. While both Jonathon and Warren are also guilty in this situation, Warren is a character who has already been shown to be evil and remorseless during “Flooded” (B6.4) by handing a demon Buffy’s address and phone number and telling him to kill her if he wants, and his own first appearance in “I Was Made to Love You” (B5.15) cast him as a potentially violent misogynist. In short, this is just another step down the road for Warren. Warren was never meant to be a sympathetic character. Jonathon, for his part, has been around in some form or another since the first season, almost always in a sense that is, if not exactly positive, at least sympathetic. Andrew, though, being a novice to the series still, exists in a sort of limbo-like characterization, often a buffoon, sometimes quite powerful, other times apparently a bit dim. It’s difficult to seize upon exactly what Andrew is supposed to be.
Complicating this are the strange parallels between the Trio in general and Jonathon and Andrew in particular with fandom itself. All three are shown to be avid followers of both Star Trek and Star Wars. They collect memorabilia, argue over who was the best James Bond, and go so far as to paint a schematically correct Death Star on the side of their surveillance van. Certainly, much of this is meant to be comedic, and most of the best Buffy villains are known for their humor and comic potential. As a case in point, Mayor Wilkins was capable of being, by turns, an intensely funny character and then a very dangerous one. The same can be said of Spike, Drusilla, Glory, the Master, and even Angelus. The oddity with the Trio is that the fun being poked at their stereotypical nerd tendencies seemed to also be aimed at a significant contingent of Buffy’s own fanbase. Whereas Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies had generally been the outsiders who were rejected by society until this point, suddenly they became prototypes of the “cool kids” while the outsiders themselves were viewed as potentially dangerous, socially maladapted misfits who, if given enough power, would steal, rape, and kill indiscriminately. Certainly Warren outstrips the other two by far in this regard, but both Jonathon and Andrew are implicated.
To make matters even more complicated, Andrew and Jonathon return in season 7 after fleeing for Mexico, only to have Andrew murder Jonathon while he is under the power of the First, who has, of course, taken the form of the dead Warren to tempt him as much as possible (“Conversations with Dead People” B7.7). The killing, which was intended to open the seal over the Hellmouth, fails because Jonathon was anemic (“Never Leave Me” B7.9), which does seem like a very thin excuse. While other characters also do bad things under the influence of the First during this season, including Spike’s killing and siring of dozens of people (“Sleeper” B7.8) and Chloe’s suicide (“Get it Done” B7.15), there’s something about the killing of Jonathon, a character who had been with the cast since the beginning and who was generally considered an interesting side character, by a character who often seemed to be a one-note joke character that feels like a waste. It’s been suggested that some of the problems of season 7 might have been smoothed out a bit if it had been Jonathon who killed Andrew rather than the other way around.
After this, Andrew is taken into season 7 and becomes, for all intents and purposes, a regular. One of the problems that has often been cited about season 7 is the overwhelming number of cast members who sometimes seemed to take screentime from characters and plot points we would have been more interested in seeing. There are over a dozen named potential Slayers living in Buffy’s home, as well as a variety of Dawn’s friends who are seen once and then never again. Every season added characters, but season 7 seems to have done so far more than any season since the first one. Added to this crowd of unfamiliar faces is Andrew, who suddenly and somewhat inexplicably goes from being a prisoner roughed up by Anya for information (“Never Leave Me” B7.9) to a pseudo-Scooby who produces a documentary on the group (“Storyteller” B7.16) and ends up fighting back to back with Anya during the final battle (“Chosen” B7.22); he survives, she does not. Exactly why he is kept with the group is very unclear. His main contributions seem to be making funnel cakes (“Get It Done” B7.15) and whining (umm… see almost any episode he’s in), the first of which he doesn’t do well and the second he seems to excel at.
Adding information from his two appearances on season 5 of Angel, we learn that he is now Giles’s “right hand man” (“Damage” A5.11) and is in charge of training potential Slayers, or at least this is what he tells us. Once again, we are reminded of his nerd history through his comparison of Spike to the resurrected Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, followed by his assertion that Andrew himself is “82% more manly.” Exactly how Andrew has calculated this we are never told. However, it is clear that he follows orders from Buffy very closely, including taking control of the insane Slayer Dana over Angel and Spike’s objections, essentially overthrowing them. To add insult to injury, in his second appearance, “The Girl in Question,” (A5.20) Andrew decides that he is the perfect vehicle to give romantic advice to both Angel and Spike, both of whom profess to be in love with Buffy, by telling them they need to get over her and move on. He is then met at the door by two beautiful, apparently Italian women and goes out for a night on the town with them. His advice on love seems somewhat confusing, however, when one considers that Andrew has always show strong signs of being gay, yet he is now supposedly dating two women while telling Spike and Angel, both of whom have over a century’s worth of living experience on him, that they are handling their love lives incorrectly. Added to the strangeness of this meeting is that the entire subplot with Buffy dating the Immortal is shown to be a fake in the season 8 comics, in which it is revealed that Andrew himself thought of this particular cover, apparently thinking it would be funny to aggravate Spike and Angel this way. In short, Andrew has lied to them and lied to Buffy through omission, apparently as a joke. This is not particularly endearing behavior.
This brings us to another point that is counted against Andrew, and that is his closeted sexuality. It’s never explicitly stated whether Andrew is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, but the implication for much of the series is that he is either gay or bi. Certainly, this is not considered a negative point on Buffy as Willow and Tara were both openly lesbian characters, and it’s certainly not difficult to read a bisexual overtone to the vampires in the infamous Fanged Four. Andrew, at various times, seems to be attracted to Warren (“He never really loved… hanging out with us” [“Seeing Red” B6.19]), Jonathon (sharing a bed in “Conversations with Dead People” B7.7), Spike (“He is so cool” [“Entropy” B6.18]), and Xander (various scintillating gazes in Buffy season 7), with a possible interest in Buffy (dream sequence, “Storyteller” B7.16) or Anya (“And, I mean, the girl is hot too” [Entropy B6.18]) as well. What is somewhat disturbing is that Andrew’s sexuality tends to be the source of jokes rather than character development, leading to a string of one liners, innuendos, and even fantasy sequences which suggest Andrew either has no idea what his sexuality is or is ashamed of it and is constantly trying to sweep it under the rug, up to and including the two Italian women on the other side of the door (“The Girl in Question” A5.20). Frankly, had he opened it and walked out hand in hand with another man, his advice could have been tolerable, but as it was, it felt as though, once again, the fanbase was receiving a bit of a kick in the teeth for desiring either a Buffy/Angel or Buffy/Spike relationship and being told, by the character with possibly the least self-knowledge, essentially to grow up and move on… which, sadly, the WB did by canceling the show, thus ending permanently the chance for a televised denouement to either relationship. It appears they may have been listening to Andrew.
This is not to say that Andrew’s character lacked any redeeming qualities. Tom Lenk, who portrayed Andrew, seems to have done precisely what the script requested of him, so blaming the somewhat poor reception of the character on his acting ability does not fit. There were moments when Andrew was exceptionally funny, and considering how dark much of seasons 6 and 7 were and how little comic relief we could expect from the characters who had traditionally provided it, namely Anya (who signed up again for a job as a murderer, “Entropy B6.18), Spike (who left season 6 as an attempted rapist. “Seeing Red” B6.19), and Xander (who ditched his fiance at the altar, “Hell’s Bells” B6.16, and would spend the last part of the season blind in one eye, “End of Days” B6.21), Andrew did sometimes provide a welcome safety valve of humor in the midst of the angst. The problem with the humor he was part of, though, was it often became one note. There are only so many times one can point out that Andrew is a nerd and possibly gay before it begins to become redundant.
So what went wrong with Andrew? I’d argue that Andrew was a reasonably interesting character who was simply stretched out over too much screentime; Andrew appeared in 28 episodes, which to put things in perspective is more episodes than Faith’s grand total of 26, leading to problems with two dimensional characterization that never had time to be properly resolved in the midst of the tsunami of new characters is season 7. Some of what was there was amusing and even perceptive, but other bits were insulting or too rooted in fan and gay stereotypes to produce the desired results.
Perhaps the most unusual result in the the poll on these three characters came in response to Riley. While less liked in general than Andrew, he was not as universally disliked as Kennedy. What was strange, though, were the reasons why Riley was disliked. It quickly became apparent that different viewers had wildly different takes on exactly who this character was. He was, by turns, seen as a model boyfriend, an enormous bore, a weak-willed wimp who lacked masculinity because he let Buffy walk all over him and control too much of their relationship, and a misogynistic moron who was afraid of Buffy’s strength and tried to force her into a traditionally passive feminine role like a square peg in a round hole. Needless to say, that’s a very strange patchwork quilt of impressions, and yet this might very well be the reason Riley was unpopular. He did show signs of all of these characteristics during his run on Buffy. He was a bundle of contradictions, and it was often difficult to grasp exactly what his character’s role was supposed to be.
When Riley was introduced to the program, a number of major changes were being implemented in the show’s format. Willow, Buffy, and Oz had gone on to college, while Xander joined the workforce and Giles remained an unemployed Watcher. The setting of the show was different, the season’s Big Bad would be a combination of a megalomaniac government agency and a technological version of Frankenstein’s monster rather than something mystical, and Angel, Buffy’s apparent soulmate, had left town for good (save for the occasional crossover, of course). It was perhaps inevitable that Buffy would need to have another romantic relationship, but it did seem a bit much to have him introduced in the very first episode of the season (“The Freshman, B4.1). As for me, my very first reaction to Riley was that he looked very much like a college-aged David Boreanaz, making me at once suspicious that he would be Buffy’s new boyfriend.
However, Riley needn’t really have dated Buffy in order to have a part on the show, and there was a strong possibility that the romantic entanglement was created simply to have the audience get Angel out of their collective system, a problem that to some extent appears again in the case of Kennedy after Tara’s murder. However, he was not set up as being the first person in a relationship with Buffy after Angel’s departure. Parker, the lothario who sees Buffy as nothing but another notch on his dorm room bedpost and goes so far as to compare her to a toilet seat (“The Initiative, 4.7), was given the dirty job of being the next “relationship,” if one can call her time with Parker that, for the Slayer. This may actually have been a very good move on the part of the writers. It enabled Riley to avoid being cast in the role of the guy who took Buffy away from Angel, and it presented him with an opportunity to clock Parker in the face, something much of the audience applauded and which many fans who do not like Riley at most other times still tend to like. However, many still felt that the relationship was rather rushed between the two of them, and there were varying opinions on the chemistry of the couple.
To some extent, though, the couple’s chemistry was more or less shoved down the audience’s throat during the rather infamous episode “Where the Wild Things Are” (B4.18). The plotline of this episode dwelled on repressed adolescent urges caught in the dorm which had once been the home of a sadistic, abusive, Christian fundamentalist woman who was a foster care provider. Consequently, Buffy and Riley are compelled to have sex repeatedly through the entire episode. Generally speaking, with the exception of the scenes in which Giles sings and the banter between Anya and Spike about killing their respective exes, this usually is included in almost any top ten list of bad episodes of the entire series. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly’s Mary Kaye Schilling, James Marsters revealed part of the reason behind this storyline: “When Joss was told to tone down the violence on the show last season because of Columbine, I wondered how he would take it. He ended up doing a semipornographic episode ["Where the Wild Things Are"] where Buffy and Riley basically had sex the whole time.” However, this “semiporn” registered with much of the audience as less boom-chicka-wow-wow and more I’m-going-in-the-kitchen-for-some-chips-until-they’re-done. The chemistry between them, despite the attractiveness of the two people involved, was nil.
Perhaps the reason for this was Riley’s normalcy. Not a witch, a Watcher, a vampire, or even the son of a Slayer, Riley is a good, old-fashioned, Iowa boy. He’s in a secret military project, and for a while Prof. Walsh drugs him to make his body more powerful, but in general, he’s the boy next door. The problem is, this is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not The Andy Griffith Show. Normal sticks out like a sore thumb in Sunnydale and is usually relegated to characters who wind up as vamp bait. The exception to this rule is Xander, whose role in the series is to represent the average everyman who wants to make a difference in the world despite not having superpowers. In short, Riley’s role is something of a Xerox of Xander’s, which may explain why Xander often speaks on his behalf. Generally speaking, the main character of a show usually needs to be paired with a character who is equally interesting, but in Riley’s case, the attraction for Buffy was that he wasn’t unusual or strange: he was a physical, human representation of an idealized life where she didn’t have to be a Slayer. He was an escape. When it was finally revealed that he was actually a member of the Initiative, some of that image was dented, but it was still a case where Riley was a soldier not because he was a Chosen One but because he himself chose to be one. He could, and for a while does, choose not to be involved in fighting supernatural forces as part of the military, an option Buffy was disabused of in her own life at the age of 16 (“Prophecy Girl” B1.12). The simple fact that Riley is not super-humanly powerful and is not forced by the Powers That Be to follow a life of unending battle is enough to put a damper on their relationship. They have too little in common.
There are also some unexplained aspects of Riley’s personality. He is a TA at UC Sunnydale, a position that would require high grades and great responsibility. Additionally, he is hand-picked by Walsh for her super soldier program in part for his leadership potential. Yet, in spite of this, Riley dates a student whose papers he is presumably grading. This would be an ethical violation at practically every institution of higher learning, but the issue is never raised at all. It seems as though the moral situation involved is not a purposely committed rebellion, but rather it never occurs to Riley what he is doing is grounds for immediate dismissal from his job. There are, however, odd questions about how perceptive Riley is. For example, he blunders into Spike, who hardly blends into a crowd with his bright white hair, black duster, and thick accent, yet Riley fails to recognize him as the same Hostile 17 he has been pursuing for months (“Doomed” 4.11). Unavoidably, this has led to a series of fan jokes related to Riley’s intelligence, though there doesn’t seem to be a basis to suggest he is unintelligent outside of this instance. However, his ill-considered rashness is sometimes seen in the show itself, as in his attempt to take down an entire nest of vampires by himself rather than asking for help because he feels the need to prove he can do it even though Buffy herself was nearly killed by them previously (“Fool for Love” 5.7). This competition for dominance over Buffy, which is perhaps typified here in his insistence that he could succeed where she failed, is what eventually leads to the demise of their relationship.
However, the program did go into something of overkill with Riley’s sense of emasculation at Buffy’s strength when they chose to remove him. Rather than a hero’s departure, Buffy discovers Riley has been letting the vampire equivalent of prostitutes bite him so he can feel needed (“Into the Woods” 5.10), something he believes Buffy is incapable of doing. He points out that she is physically stronger than he is and also tells her he is upset that she did not cry in front of him during her mother’s illness. From this, and from the fact that she has not said she loves him, he decided he needed to feel important to someone else and chose to be physical sustenance for vampires. Rather stunningly, he then gives her an ultimatum that if she can’t fix her problems, he is going to leave her. The number of holes in this scenario outnumbers those in a very large block of Swiss cheese, of course. It is also here that many people point out the underlying misogyny present in Riley’s character: his infidelity to her is justified in his mind because she is too strong and too independent, and for this reason, it is her fault. Buffy does actually run for the helicopter to stop him, at Xander’s (the other normal everyman) insistence that apparently the entire situation is Buffy’s fault and she needs to literally “beg him to stay.” She is (happily) too late, and the chopper takes off without Riley seeing her.
Adding insult to injury, Riley returns in “As You Were” (B6.15), fourteen months later, married to a fellow commando (for four of those months) and apparently amazingly happy. He does give Buffy a pep talk to make her get on with her life, though he seems to be ignorant of Joyce’s death, Buffy’s resurrection, and her inability to find work that will support her and her teenage sister while still slaying vampires every night. She is, however, “the strongest woman I’ve ever known,” which now appears to be a good thing to him. He then ascends into the heavens on a line dropped from yet another helicopter in a scene that smacks strongly of a deus ex machina from Greek drama, or possibly even a Christ figure. In an odd way, this parallels Andrew’s final scene, in which he gives advice to characters who are generally better received and more informed than he is while somehow he seems to have managed to iron out all the wrinkles in his own life. The condescending tones in both scenes tend to alienate viewers.
But what of life after the series for Riley? Fandom does have many fics with Riley in them, but this is where another very surprising statistic pops up. A full 51.3%, 60 of the people surveyed, state the Riley is very different in fanfiction than he was on the show, with only 2 people (1.7%) stating that Riley is depicted the same way in fanfiction and in canon . A quick search via Google shows that the majority of fanfiction involving Riley tends to fall into two categories. The first is slash. Riley showed no canon signs of being gay in the series, though he admittedly did spend time with Forrest and Graham. The other fanfiction trend is to turn Riley into a villain. Riley was never shown as physically abusive to Buffy, a practitioner of dark magic, a serial rapist, or bent on world domination. What is interesting here is that fans do realize that this does not represent the canonical Riley. In fact, the canon version of Riley is rarely shown at all in fanfic, possibly in part because 9.4% of people (11 respondents) avoid fanfic that centers around his character to begin with. Firm declarations against writing characters as OOC are often heard in fandom, but at least in the case of Riley Finn, being out of character is viewed as normal and perhaps even desirable over the canonical Riley because, in spite of a strong portrayal by Marc Blucas and even the possibility that Riley might very well make a good boyfriend for a typical girl, he simply isn’t terribly interesting as he is.
And then there is Kennedy. I wonder how many people just flipped past this section on the name alone. Far and away, of these three character, Kennedy is the most disliked, with a whopping 67% of people (79 votes) surveyed stating that had some degree of negative feelings towards her, a full 28% (33 votes) ranking their opinion of her as “very negative” while another 5.1% (6 votes) ranked her as their least favorite Buffy character ever. Paired with this, 35.3% (36 responders) disliked her from the moment she was brought on screen. I think it is safe to say that Kennedy is easily the most disliked recurring character ever to appear on Buffy, yet she is not a villain and is meant to be a positive romantic partner for Willow. Something obviously went drastically wrong here on multiple levels.
To begin with, we are not clear if Kennedy is the character’s first or last name. We’re never technically introduced to her, and so far as I know, she is the only recurring character who is not a vampire who does not have a last name (or possibly a first name as the case may be). This is pretty much par for the course with Kennedy. The bare facts of what we know about her background are as follows: she is rich, she has a step-sister, she was trained from a young age to be a Slayer, her Watcher was killed, she likes Gone with the Wind, and she is a lesbian. That’s it. After appearing in 13 episodes back to back, we don’t know anything else about her life outside her time at Buffy’s house. Yet, as stated, she is in a fairly high number of episodes, every single one from her introduction until the end of the series. Again, season 7 was often criticized for focusing more on characters who were newly introduced than on the main characters. Does anyone even remember who Kit, Carlos, Eve, Vi, Chloe, Molly, Annabelle, or Cassie were? Did they have the slightest bearing on the arc of the season when it came down to it? Most were two dimensional characters at best, or one-dimensional in the case of Eve, who had a Southern accent so horrendous that the ears of fans south of the Mason-Dixon line practically bled when she opened her mouth. Kennedy was part of this wave of new characters, and while she definitely had more personality than any other Slayer in training with the possible exception of Amanda, that personality was a problem.
Kennedy is a self-confessed brat (“Chosen” B7.22), and sadly, she is not being modest. From her first view of Buffy, who she sniffs at condescendingly as she enters her home and expects her to shelter her and keep her safe (“Bring on the Night” B7.10), to her gleeful habit of referring to the other girls as maggots (“Get It Done” 7.15), to her part in the coup to throw Buffy out of her own house (“Empty Places” 7.19) and then immediate insistence that the girls who have been there longest should be in charge (“Touched” 7.20; it should be noted Kennedy is, in fact, the only surviving girl of the first trio to arrive, hence she is actually suggesting that she be put in charge), her character is somewhat less than endearing. Among the adjectives people in the survey used to describe her less attractive characteristics are “spoiled,” “pushy,” “obnoxious,” "annoying," “whiny,” “entitled,” “rude,” and “arrogant.” One person,noncalorsedumor, went so far as to state “I hated Kennedy so much my teeth hurt,” while tx_cronopio summed up her feelings on the character by saying, “I abhor her very existence.” In short, Kennedy does not particularly sound like a person anyone would enjoy having as a houseguest or roommate for six months.
This would, perhaps, have been enough to make the character roundly disliked, but it is not the end of it. Added to this, she begins to date Willow. This would probably have been a sore point regardless of who was chosen to be Willow’s next romantic partner. Few events in the show were as controversial as the murder of Tara (“Seeing Red” B6.19), Willow’s previous girlfriend and possibly one of the most beloved characters in the series. Many fans were greatly disturbed by her death, not only because she was a general favorite and one of the few characters who had not behaved badly during season 6, but because this meant the end of one of the longest and most three dimensional lesbian relationships on television. There were rumors that Willow might return to men and that the lesbian subplot would be entirely abandoned. The writers may have felt pressured to give Willow a new girlfriend simply because of the outcry against losing Tara. Joss Whedon mentioned in an interview with IGN.com that he didn’t “want Willow stuck in typical gay celibacy on TV,” so Kennedy was created so Willow could “find somebody really hot, and we're going to make this about moving on, because that's the only option we have” (P., Ken).
However, the problem with Kennedy may have something to do with her not being like Tara. Joss Whedon has stated that “What I wanted was an anti-Tara. I wanted somebody who was as different from Tara as possible” (P., Ken). While physically they are quite different, with Tara as blonde and blue-eyed with a softer face body type and Kennedy being brunette and dark-eyed with a more angular facial and body structure, it is in personality that this dichotomy is particularly striking. Tara was shy, reserved, solicitous of others’ feelings, often felt like an outsider and wanted to fit in, stuttered under extreme stress, and carried the mental scars of a damaged childhood in which she was taught female power was coupled with evil. Kennedy was bold, opinionated, critical, felt she should lead rather than fit in, had no difficulty speaking her mind, and was the result of what seems to have been a relatively normal, though wealthy, home. While the need to differentiate Kennedy from Tara was very real, they went to such an extreme that it was difficult to see how Willow was attracted to her. Oz, her first boyfriend, possessed some of the same characteristics as Tara, so there was not a tremendous change in what she found attractive, aside, of course, from gender. Kennedy was a very radical departure from what the audience had come to expect from Willow’s choice of romantic partner.
Added to this personality was Kennedy’s “courtship” of Willow, which at times seemed to border on sexual harassment, including making innuendos about the two of them sharing a bed in the near future within five minutes of meeting of meeting the other girl “Bring on the Night” B7.10). Despite Willow clearly stating repeatedly that she wasn’t ready for a relationship again, Kennedy continues to pursue her. It seemed as though the reasoning behind the inevitability of their relationship centered on the idea that Willow and Kennedy were both lesbians, which of course meant they had to date, a theory as bizarre as suggesting all heterosexual females must date all heterosexual males on a program, or perhaps even harkening back to the old days of the Loveboat, when it was painfully obvious every time Isaac was going to have a romantic plotline because an African American female came aboard the boat. Complicating matters further, their first date comes about because Kennedy lies to Willow and the other girls about being ill (“The Killer in Me” 7.13). Kennedy does not seem to take much of what Willow says seriously, drastically underestimating Willow’s power and her level of conflict over her killing of Warren, and their first kiss is supposed to somehow magically (literally) solve Willow’s feelings of guilt and loss. Finally, in a slip that may have been entirely accidental, the airdate of the episode when the couple has sex for the first time (“Touched” B7.20, which aired May 6, 2003 in the U.S.) was exactly one day before the anniversary of Tara’s death (“Seeing Red” B6.19, which aired May 7, 2002), something that seemed in poor taste. After all, Willow was supposed to have nearly ended the world over her lover’s death (“Grave” B6.22), and she spends the anniversary exploring the wonders of Kennedy’s tongue ring.
Part of the problem was that the audience wasn’t given the opportunity to understand why Willow had fallen in love with her. Frankly, this unexplained mystery bothered me more than the gigantic floating ball of eyes that told Giles the First was gaining strength because Buffy was resurrected (“Show Time” B7.11), a plotline and bizarre manifestation that was never seen or heard from again. There might have been great things about Kennedy. Certainly, Iyari Limon is a beautiful actress who played the role with tremendous enthusiasm. However, why on earth Willow chose her over, well, anyone (frankly, I saw more chemistry between her and Anya in “Same Time, Same Place” B7.3) is quite confusing.
There is another side to this issue, though. The Kennedy fans who are out there, and they do exist, are very committed to the character, in part because she was outspoken, self-confident and challenging, characteristics that Buffy herself often possessed. Very few people would have wanted to see Willow drowning in a sea of perpetual sadness over the loss of Tara, and Kennedy does seem to have made her happy by the end of the series. Also, after a Google search for Kennedy fanfic, even with 30.5% of people (36 votes) running for the hills at the mention of Kennedy as a main character in a fic, I came across a very large number of fics about her. For example, the Kennedy Fanfic Archive has over 1100 individual stories, written by over 800 authors, in a variety of pairings, the most popular of course being Willow/Kennedy. Obviously, that’s a lot of writers and a lot of fics for a character who is generally presumed to be strongly disliked.
Eventually, it all comes down to personal taste. Could Andrew have been a bit more accepted had he been portrayed as less annoying? Very possibly. Could Riley have acquired a larger fanbase if he had been written out of the program without resorting to vampire prostitutes and ultimatums? Maybe. Could Kennedy have gone down easier with fans if she had been slightly less bratty and self-centered? There’s a chance of it. There will also always be fans who champion each one of these characters because they see a side to them that strikes a chord with the individual viewer, something that they enjoy or that intrigues or amuses them, or maybe they just plain think the actor who plays them is hot, and really, no one on this show was ever very hard on the eyes… except maybe the Master… and even he was sort cute if you squinted a lot.
Joss Whedon is a television creator who knows what he’s doing. The vast majority of the characters he has created are deep images of the strength and frailty of human nature. Many will probably still be talked about for decades in fan and academic circles for the clarity of their characterization and simply for the pure joy they instill in those who watch their stories. If these three characters fall somewhat short of their lofty fellows, it only proves that Joss has his human frailties too. Babe Ruth occasionally struck out. Shakespeare wrote the abysmal Henry VIII. George Lucas created Jar Jar Binks. If Andrew, Riley, and Kennedy are the worst Joss Whedon ever creates, I’d say he’s doing pretty dang well.
*All episodes are followed by either a B for Buffy the Vampire Slayer or A for Angel: The Series, the season number, a period, and the episode number. Episode numbers are not contiguous through the series but broken down by season.
P., Ken. “An Interview with Joss Whedon: The Buffy the Vampire Slayer Creator Discusses His Career.” IGN.com http://movies.ign.com/articles/425/425492p1.html. June 23, 2003
Schilling, Mary Kaye. “Interview with a Vampire…and One Feisty Librarian.” Entertainment Weekly. Archived at Brilliantly James: A James Marsters Fan Site. Originally published December 1, 2000.
I would also like to thank the people who so kindly responded to the survey on these characters.
Table 1:
The following is a list of the number of episodes including select recurring characters. In cases where the character occurred on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: The Series, the total number of appearances is given. This graph is provided to give a sense of how the three characters discussed stand, as far as screentime is concerned, with other minor characters. (If someone had told me Faith had fewer episodes than Andrew, I don’t think I would have believed it.)
* Tom Lenk, who played Andrew Wells, was also in an episode of Buffy in season 5, playing the vampire Cyrus in Harmony’s gang. This is not included in the list of appearances.
* Also note that Amy’s appearances do not include those when she is seen only as a rat.
Table 2:
The following is the complete list of episodes for each of the three characters discussed, along with season and episode number. Episode numbers are not contiguous.
Andrew Wells
Flooded 6.4
Life Serial 6.5
Smashed 6.9
Gone 6.11
Dead Things 6.13
Normal Again 6.17
Entropy 6.18
Seeing Red 6.19
Villains 6.20
Two to Go 6.21
Grave 6.22
Conversations with Dead People 7.7
Never Leave Me 7.9
Bring on the Night 7.10
Showtime 7.11
Potential 7.12
The Killer in Me 7.13
First Date 7.14
Get It Done 7.15
Storyteller 7.16
Lies My Parents Told Me 7.17
Dirty Girls 7.18
Empty Places 7.19
Touched 7.20
End of Days 7.21
Chosen 7.22
Damage A5.11
The Girl in Question A5.20
Riley Finn
The Freshman 4.1
Fear, Itself 4.4
Beer Bad 4.5
Wild at Heart 4.6
The Initiative 4.7
Pangs 4.8
Something Blue 4.9
Hush 4.10
Doomed 4.11
A New Man 4.12
The ‘I’ in Team 4.13
Goodbye Iowa 4.14
This Year’s Girl 4.15
Who Are You? 4.16
Superstar 4.17
Where the Wild Things Are 4.18
New Moon Rising 4.19
The Yoko Factor 4.20
Primeval 4.21
Restless 4.22
Buffy vs. Dracula 5.1
Real Me 5.2
The Replacement 5.3
Out of My Mind 5.4
No Place Like Home 5.5
Family 5.6
Fool for Love 5.7
Shadow 5.8
Listening to Fear 5.9
Into the Woods 5.10
As You Were 6.15
Kennedy
Bring on the Night 7.10
Showtime 7.11
Potential 7.12
The Killer in Me 7.13
First Date 7.14
Get It Done 7.15
Storyteller 7.16
Lies My Parents Told Me 7.17
Dirty Girls 7.18
Empty Places 7.19
Touched 7.20
End of Days 7.21
Chosen 7.22
Table 3:
The following link leads to the poll conducted for this essay.
Kennedy, Riley, and Andrew: What the Heck Happened?
bookishwench aka MelthaSummary: Andrew, Riley, and Kennedy are three of the most disliked characters in the Buffyverse. In a show filled with wonderful characters, what went wrong with them?
Spoilers: Through the Buffy season 8 comics and AtS season 5
Word count: Approx. 6,600, excluding works cited list and appendices.
Notes: Written for the
buffyversemetathon from a prompt by lusciousxander, "Riley, Kennedy, Andrew. What made these characters unpopular?" Also, there are a few images in the text, but I don’t think they’ll be too draining on dial-up.Andrew, Riley, and Kennedy: What the Heck Was Joss Thinking?
During its seven year run, Buffy the Vampire Slayer created a veritable pantheon of characters who were taken to the hearts of fans. Buffy herself has become part of pop culture, and Willow, Xander, Giles, Spike, and Anya all have devoted followings on the Internet who still discuss their strengths and foibles, debate whether certain choices they made in the series were in character, and write reams of fanfiction about them. Many characters who received less screentime, such as Faith or Tara or even Ethan Rayne, also inspire interest and have large numbers of loyal fans. Generally speaking, Buffyverse fans have enjoyed the vast majority of the characters Joss Whedon introduced, even the villains.
However, even in such a popular show as Buffy, things can and do go awry. Three examples of characters who have not achieved the level of popularity of their peers, and who in fact tend to make fans react to their presence in much the same way they might respond to being sprayed by a skunk, are Andrew Wells, Riley Finn, and Kennedy. While each of these three has some proponents who enjoy their characters and individual arcs, which will be discussed, a sizable percentage of the Buffyverse fandom found them too flawed to tolerate. This is unfortunate as Andrew, Riley, and Kennedy all had the potential to be interesting and vital characters. What went wrong? The answer varies in details from character to character, but a lack of specific purpose, too much screentime, and being pushed into relationships seem to be common threads between them.
I ran a poll in my Livejournal, advertising it in several different fandom-related journals, in regards to Riley, Andrew, and Kennedy and how fans reacted to them. A total of 118 people answered a variety of questions on their preferences about this troublesome trio. A few surprises did occur, but the results generally showed that something did indeed go wrong with the portrayal of these characters if we were, in fact, supposed to enjoy them.
Andrew: Was the Nerd Revenged Too Much?
According to the poll, 26.4% of people (31 votes) had some degree of negative feeling towards the character of Andrew Wells, which is not as overwhelming a number as might have been suspected. In fact, a full 70% (82 votes) of voters voiced a positive opinion of him. What was interesting, though, was just how strongly voters felt about him in either direction. Andrew had the largest percentage of any of three characters in the poll in the category of least favorite on the series ever with 6.8% (8 votes), and the number of people who voiced their opinion of him as “very negative” was the same for Andrew as it was for Riley, 8.5% (10 votes). In other words, those who like Andrew tend to like him moderately (35.9%, 49 votes), while those who dislike him tend to do so very strongly. This could mean his fans are less vocal as most don’t feel a particularly direct connection with him, while his detractors speak quite loudly because they do feel very upset about his character.
Andrew is regarded as an outsider from the outset. His initial appearance on the show in “Flooded” (B6.4*) is marked by his explanation that he is the younger brother of Tucker, a one-episode villain from season three:
WARREN: Oh, or else what? You'll train another pack of devil-dogs to ruin my prom? Ha! Graduated!
ANDREW: That wasn't me! How many times do I have to say it? The prom thing was my lame-o brother, Tucker.
JONATHAN: Yeah, well tell him I was at that prom.
ANDREW: Hello! Screen-wipe, new scene! I had nothing to do with the devil dogs. I trained flying demon monkeys to attack the school play. School play, dude!
While “The Prom” (B3.20) was a notable Buffy episode, Tucker is a rather forgettable villain. The point of even making the connection to the two characters might be that Andrew was perceived as so much of a social leper that even his none-too-stellar older brother was capable of overshadowing him and making people, even Andrew’s supposed friends, confuse the two of them and their demonic shenanigans. Already, we know that Andrew is supposed to be viewed as a nearly invisible nerd who has some kind of mystical power over demons, a situation quite similar to that of the Scoobies. To this end, he could be compared to Willow, with Warren as his version of Buffy and Jonathon playing Xander’s role as everyman/conscience.
The problem with this is that Andrew is played to a large extent for laughs through most of his run on the show, yet he is also seen making massive mistakes in judgment and occasionally completely perverse wrongdoings. For example, Andrew is complicit in the attempted rape of Katrina in “Dead Things” (B6.13), and when she is killed, he knowingly attempts to cover up the situation by helping to frame Buffy for her death. While his tears in Trio’s basement do show genuine remorse, he still does not seem to have learned to avoid Warren, whose moral compass becomes increasingly more warped. While both Jonathon and Warren are also guilty in this situation, Warren is a character who has already been shown to be evil and remorseless during “Flooded” (B6.4) by handing a demon Buffy’s address and phone number and telling him to kill her if he wants, and his own first appearance in “I Was Made to Love You” (B5.15) cast him as a potentially violent misogynist. In short, this is just another step down the road for Warren. Warren was never meant to be a sympathetic character. Jonathon, for his part, has been around in some form or another since the first season, almost always in a sense that is, if not exactly positive, at least sympathetic. Andrew, though, being a novice to the series still, exists in a sort of limbo-like characterization, often a buffoon, sometimes quite powerful, other times apparently a bit dim. It’s difficult to seize upon exactly what Andrew is supposed to be.
Complicating this are the strange parallels between the Trio in general and Jonathon and Andrew in particular with fandom itself. All three are shown to be avid followers of both Star Trek and Star Wars. They collect memorabilia, argue over who was the best James Bond, and go so far as to paint a schematically correct Death Star on the side of their surveillance van. Certainly, much of this is meant to be comedic, and most of the best Buffy villains are known for their humor and comic potential. As a case in point, Mayor Wilkins was capable of being, by turns, an intensely funny character and then a very dangerous one. The same can be said of Spike, Drusilla, Glory, the Master, and even Angelus. The oddity with the Trio is that the fun being poked at their stereotypical nerd tendencies seemed to also be aimed at a significant contingent of Buffy’s own fanbase. Whereas Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies had generally been the outsiders who were rejected by society until this point, suddenly they became prototypes of the “cool kids” while the outsiders themselves were viewed as potentially dangerous, socially maladapted misfits who, if given enough power, would steal, rape, and kill indiscriminately. Certainly Warren outstrips the other two by far in this regard, but both Jonathon and Andrew are implicated.
To make matters even more complicated, Andrew and Jonathon return in season 7 after fleeing for Mexico, only to have Andrew murder Jonathon while he is under the power of the First, who has, of course, taken the form of the dead Warren to tempt him as much as possible (“Conversations with Dead People” B7.7). The killing, which was intended to open the seal over the Hellmouth, fails because Jonathon was anemic (“Never Leave Me” B7.9), which does seem like a very thin excuse. While other characters also do bad things under the influence of the First during this season, including Spike’s killing and siring of dozens of people (“Sleeper” B7.8) and Chloe’s suicide (“Get it Done” B7.15), there’s something about the killing of Jonathon, a character who had been with the cast since the beginning and who was generally considered an interesting side character, by a character who often seemed to be a one-note joke character that feels like a waste. It’s been suggested that some of the problems of season 7 might have been smoothed out a bit if it had been Jonathon who killed Andrew rather than the other way around.
After this, Andrew is taken into season 7 and becomes, for all intents and purposes, a regular. One of the problems that has often been cited about season 7 is the overwhelming number of cast members who sometimes seemed to take screentime from characters and plot points we would have been more interested in seeing. There are over a dozen named potential Slayers living in Buffy’s home, as well as a variety of Dawn’s friends who are seen once and then never again. Every season added characters, but season 7 seems to have done so far more than any season since the first one. Added to this crowd of unfamiliar faces is Andrew, who suddenly and somewhat inexplicably goes from being a prisoner roughed up by Anya for information (“Never Leave Me” B7.9) to a pseudo-Scooby who produces a documentary on the group (“Storyteller” B7.16) and ends up fighting back to back with Anya during the final battle (“Chosen” B7.22); he survives, she does not. Exactly why he is kept with the group is very unclear. His main contributions seem to be making funnel cakes (“Get It Done” B7.15) and whining (umm… see almost any episode he’s in), the first of which he doesn’t do well and the second he seems to excel at.
Adding information from his two appearances on season 5 of Angel, we learn that he is now Giles’s “right hand man” (“Damage” A5.11) and is in charge of training potential Slayers, or at least this is what he tells us. Once again, we are reminded of his nerd history through his comparison of Spike to the resurrected Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, followed by his assertion that Andrew himself is “82% more manly.” Exactly how Andrew has calculated this we are never told. However, it is clear that he follows orders from Buffy very closely, including taking control of the insane Slayer Dana over Angel and Spike’s objections, essentially overthrowing them. To add insult to injury, in his second appearance, “The Girl in Question,” (A5.20) Andrew decides that he is the perfect vehicle to give romantic advice to both Angel and Spike, both of whom profess to be in love with Buffy, by telling them they need to get over her and move on. He is then met at the door by two beautiful, apparently Italian women and goes out for a night on the town with them. His advice on love seems somewhat confusing, however, when one considers that Andrew has always show strong signs of being gay, yet he is now supposedly dating two women while telling Spike and Angel, both of whom have over a century’s worth of living experience on him, that they are handling their love lives incorrectly. Added to the strangeness of this meeting is that the entire subplot with Buffy dating the Immortal is shown to be a fake in the season 8 comics, in which it is revealed that Andrew himself thought of this particular cover, apparently thinking it would be funny to aggravate Spike and Angel this way. In short, Andrew has lied to them and lied to Buffy through omission, apparently as a joke. This is not particularly endearing behavior.
This brings us to another point that is counted against Andrew, and that is his closeted sexuality. It’s never explicitly stated whether Andrew is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, but the implication for much of the series is that he is either gay or bi. Certainly, this is not considered a negative point on Buffy as Willow and Tara were both openly lesbian characters, and it’s certainly not difficult to read a bisexual overtone to the vampires in the infamous Fanged Four. Andrew, at various times, seems to be attracted to Warren (“He never really loved… hanging out with us” [“Seeing Red” B6.19]), Jonathon (sharing a bed in “Conversations with Dead People” B7.7), Spike (“He is so cool” [“Entropy” B6.18]), and Xander (various scintillating gazes in Buffy season 7), with a possible interest in Buffy (dream sequence, “Storyteller” B7.16) or Anya (“And, I mean, the girl is hot too” [Entropy B6.18]) as well. What is somewhat disturbing is that Andrew’s sexuality tends to be the source of jokes rather than character development, leading to a string of one liners, innuendos, and even fantasy sequences which suggest Andrew either has no idea what his sexuality is or is ashamed of it and is constantly trying to sweep it under the rug, up to and including the two Italian women on the other side of the door (“The Girl in Question” A5.20). Frankly, had he opened it and walked out hand in hand with another man, his advice could have been tolerable, but as it was, it felt as though, once again, the fanbase was receiving a bit of a kick in the teeth for desiring either a Buffy/Angel or Buffy/Spike relationship and being told, by the character with possibly the least self-knowledge, essentially to grow up and move on… which, sadly, the WB did by canceling the show, thus ending permanently the chance for a televised denouement to either relationship. It appears they may have been listening to Andrew.
This is not to say that Andrew’s character lacked any redeeming qualities. Tom Lenk, who portrayed Andrew, seems to have done precisely what the script requested of him, so blaming the somewhat poor reception of the character on his acting ability does not fit. There were moments when Andrew was exceptionally funny, and considering how dark much of seasons 6 and 7 were and how little comic relief we could expect from the characters who had traditionally provided it, namely Anya (who signed up again for a job as a murderer, “Entropy B6.18), Spike (who left season 6 as an attempted rapist. “Seeing Red” B6.19), and Xander (who ditched his fiance at the altar, “Hell’s Bells” B6.16, and would spend the last part of the season blind in one eye, “End of Days” B6.21), Andrew did sometimes provide a welcome safety valve of humor in the midst of the angst. The problem with the humor he was part of, though, was it often became one note. There are only so many times one can point out that Andrew is a nerd and possibly gay before it begins to become redundant.
So what went wrong with Andrew? I’d argue that Andrew was a reasonably interesting character who was simply stretched out over too much screentime; Andrew appeared in 28 episodes, which to put things in perspective is more episodes than Faith’s grand total of 26, leading to problems with two dimensional characterization that never had time to be properly resolved in the midst of the tsunami of new characters is season 7. Some of what was there was amusing and even perceptive, but other bits were insulting or too rooted in fan and gay stereotypes to produce the desired results.
Riley: Good Boyfriend, Bad Boyfriend, or Cardboard Boyfriend?
Perhaps the most unusual result in the the poll on these three characters came in response to Riley. While less liked in general than Andrew, he was not as universally disliked as Kennedy. What was strange, though, were the reasons why Riley was disliked. It quickly became apparent that different viewers had wildly different takes on exactly who this character was. He was, by turns, seen as a model boyfriend, an enormous bore, a weak-willed wimp who lacked masculinity because he let Buffy walk all over him and control too much of their relationship, and a misogynistic moron who was afraid of Buffy’s strength and tried to force her into a traditionally passive feminine role like a square peg in a round hole. Needless to say, that’s a very strange patchwork quilt of impressions, and yet this might very well be the reason Riley was unpopular. He did show signs of all of these characteristics during his run on Buffy. He was a bundle of contradictions, and it was often difficult to grasp exactly what his character’s role was supposed to be.
When Riley was introduced to the program, a number of major changes were being implemented in the show’s format. Willow, Buffy, and Oz had gone on to college, while Xander joined the workforce and Giles remained an unemployed Watcher. The setting of the show was different, the season’s Big Bad would be a combination of a megalomaniac government agency and a technological version of Frankenstein’s monster rather than something mystical, and Angel, Buffy’s apparent soulmate, had left town for good (save for the occasional crossover, of course). It was perhaps inevitable that Buffy would need to have another romantic relationship, but it did seem a bit much to have him introduced in the very first episode of the season (“The Freshman, B4.1). As for me, my very first reaction to Riley was that he looked very much like a college-aged David Boreanaz, making me at once suspicious that he would be Buffy’s new boyfriend.
However, Riley needn’t really have dated Buffy in order to have a part on the show, and there was a strong possibility that the romantic entanglement was created simply to have the audience get Angel out of their collective system, a problem that to some extent appears again in the case of Kennedy after Tara’s murder. However, he was not set up as being the first person in a relationship with Buffy after Angel’s departure. Parker, the lothario who sees Buffy as nothing but another notch on his dorm room bedpost and goes so far as to compare her to a toilet seat (“The Initiative, 4.7), was given the dirty job of being the next “relationship,” if one can call her time with Parker that, for the Slayer. This may actually have been a very good move on the part of the writers. It enabled Riley to avoid being cast in the role of the guy who took Buffy away from Angel, and it presented him with an opportunity to clock Parker in the face, something much of the audience applauded and which many fans who do not like Riley at most other times still tend to like. However, many still felt that the relationship was rather rushed between the two of them, and there were varying opinions on the chemistry of the couple.
To some extent, though, the couple’s chemistry was more or less shoved down the audience’s throat during the rather infamous episode “Where the Wild Things Are” (B4.18). The plotline of this episode dwelled on repressed adolescent urges caught in the dorm which had once been the home of a sadistic, abusive, Christian fundamentalist woman who was a foster care provider. Consequently, Buffy and Riley are compelled to have sex repeatedly through the entire episode. Generally speaking, with the exception of the scenes in which Giles sings and the banter between Anya and Spike about killing their respective exes, this usually is included in almost any top ten list of bad episodes of the entire series. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly’s Mary Kaye Schilling, James Marsters revealed part of the reason behind this storyline: “When Joss was told to tone down the violence on the show last season because of Columbine, I wondered how he would take it. He ended up doing a semipornographic episode ["Where the Wild Things Are"] where Buffy and Riley basically had sex the whole time.” However, this “semiporn” registered with much of the audience as less boom-chicka-wow-wow and more I’m-going-in-the-kitchen-for-some-chips-until-they’re-done. The chemistry between them, despite the attractiveness of the two people involved, was nil.
Perhaps the reason for this was Riley’s normalcy. Not a witch, a Watcher, a vampire, or even the son of a Slayer, Riley is a good, old-fashioned, Iowa boy. He’s in a secret military project, and for a while Prof. Walsh drugs him to make his body more powerful, but in general, he’s the boy next door. The problem is, this is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not The Andy Griffith Show. Normal sticks out like a sore thumb in Sunnydale and is usually relegated to characters who wind up as vamp bait. The exception to this rule is Xander, whose role in the series is to represent the average everyman who wants to make a difference in the world despite not having superpowers. In short, Riley’s role is something of a Xerox of Xander’s, which may explain why Xander often speaks on his behalf. Generally speaking, the main character of a show usually needs to be paired with a character who is equally interesting, but in Riley’s case, the attraction for Buffy was that he wasn’t unusual or strange: he was a physical, human representation of an idealized life where she didn’t have to be a Slayer. He was an escape. When it was finally revealed that he was actually a member of the Initiative, some of that image was dented, but it was still a case where Riley was a soldier not because he was a Chosen One but because he himself chose to be one. He could, and for a while does, choose not to be involved in fighting supernatural forces as part of the military, an option Buffy was disabused of in her own life at the age of 16 (“Prophecy Girl” B1.12). The simple fact that Riley is not super-humanly powerful and is not forced by the Powers That Be to follow a life of unending battle is enough to put a damper on their relationship. They have too little in common.
There are also some unexplained aspects of Riley’s personality. He is a TA at UC Sunnydale, a position that would require high grades and great responsibility. Additionally, he is hand-picked by Walsh for her super soldier program in part for his leadership potential. Yet, in spite of this, Riley dates a student whose papers he is presumably grading. This would be an ethical violation at practically every institution of higher learning, but the issue is never raised at all. It seems as though the moral situation involved is not a purposely committed rebellion, but rather it never occurs to Riley what he is doing is grounds for immediate dismissal from his job. There are, however, odd questions about how perceptive Riley is. For example, he blunders into Spike, who hardly blends into a crowd with his bright white hair, black duster, and thick accent, yet Riley fails to recognize him as the same Hostile 17 he has been pursuing for months (“Doomed” 4.11). Unavoidably, this has led to a series of fan jokes related to Riley’s intelligence, though there doesn’t seem to be a basis to suggest he is unintelligent outside of this instance. However, his ill-considered rashness is sometimes seen in the show itself, as in his attempt to take down an entire nest of vampires by himself rather than asking for help because he feels the need to prove he can do it even though Buffy herself was nearly killed by them previously (“Fool for Love” 5.7). This competition for dominance over Buffy, which is perhaps typified here in his insistence that he could succeed where she failed, is what eventually leads to the demise of their relationship.
However, the program did go into something of overkill with Riley’s sense of emasculation at Buffy’s strength when they chose to remove him. Rather than a hero’s departure, Buffy discovers Riley has been letting the vampire equivalent of prostitutes bite him so he can feel needed (“Into the Woods” 5.10), something he believes Buffy is incapable of doing. He points out that she is physically stronger than he is and also tells her he is upset that she did not cry in front of him during her mother’s illness. From this, and from the fact that she has not said she loves him, he decided he needed to feel important to someone else and chose to be physical sustenance for vampires. Rather stunningly, he then gives her an ultimatum that if she can’t fix her problems, he is going to leave her. The number of holes in this scenario outnumbers those in a very large block of Swiss cheese, of course. It is also here that many people point out the underlying misogyny present in Riley’s character: his infidelity to her is justified in his mind because she is too strong and too independent, and for this reason, it is her fault. Buffy does actually run for the helicopter to stop him, at Xander’s (the other normal everyman) insistence that apparently the entire situation is Buffy’s fault and she needs to literally “beg him to stay.” She is (happily) too late, and the chopper takes off without Riley seeing her.
Adding insult to injury, Riley returns in “As You Were” (B6.15), fourteen months later, married to a fellow commando (for four of those months) and apparently amazingly happy. He does give Buffy a pep talk to make her get on with her life, though he seems to be ignorant of Joyce’s death, Buffy’s resurrection, and her inability to find work that will support her and her teenage sister while still slaying vampires every night. She is, however, “the strongest woman I’ve ever known,” which now appears to be a good thing to him. He then ascends into the heavens on a line dropped from yet another helicopter in a scene that smacks strongly of a deus ex machina from Greek drama, or possibly even a Christ figure. In an odd way, this parallels Andrew’s final scene, in which he gives advice to characters who are generally better received and more informed than he is while somehow he seems to have managed to iron out all the wrinkles in his own life. The condescending tones in both scenes tend to alienate viewers.
But what of life after the series for Riley? Fandom does have many fics with Riley in them, but this is where another very surprising statistic pops up. A full 51.3%, 60 of the people surveyed, state the Riley is very different in fanfiction than he was on the show, with only 2 people (1.7%) stating that Riley is depicted the same way in fanfiction and in canon . A quick search via Google shows that the majority of fanfiction involving Riley tends to fall into two categories. The first is slash. Riley showed no canon signs of being gay in the series, though he admittedly did spend time with Forrest and Graham. The other fanfiction trend is to turn Riley into a villain. Riley was never shown as physically abusive to Buffy, a practitioner of dark magic, a serial rapist, or bent on world domination. What is interesting here is that fans do realize that this does not represent the canonical Riley. In fact, the canon version of Riley is rarely shown at all in fanfic, possibly in part because 9.4% of people (11 respondents) avoid fanfic that centers around his character to begin with. Firm declarations against writing characters as OOC are often heard in fandom, but at least in the case of Riley Finn, being out of character is viewed as normal and perhaps even desirable over the canonical Riley because, in spite of a strong portrayal by Marc Blucas and even the possibility that Riley might very well make a good boyfriend for a typical girl, he simply isn’t terribly interesting as he is.
Kennedy: Weapon in the War on Tara?
And then there is Kennedy. I wonder how many people just flipped past this section on the name alone. Far and away, of these three character, Kennedy is the most disliked, with a whopping 67% of people (79 votes) surveyed stating that had some degree of negative feelings towards her, a full 28% (33 votes) ranking their opinion of her as “very negative” while another 5.1% (6 votes) ranked her as their least favorite Buffy character ever. Paired with this, 35.3% (36 responders) disliked her from the moment she was brought on screen. I think it is safe to say that Kennedy is easily the most disliked recurring character ever to appear on Buffy, yet she is not a villain and is meant to be a positive romantic partner for Willow. Something obviously went drastically wrong here on multiple levels.
To begin with, we are not clear if Kennedy is the character’s first or last name. We’re never technically introduced to her, and so far as I know, she is the only recurring character who is not a vampire who does not have a last name (or possibly a first name as the case may be). This is pretty much par for the course with Kennedy. The bare facts of what we know about her background are as follows: she is rich, she has a step-sister, she was trained from a young age to be a Slayer, her Watcher was killed, she likes Gone with the Wind, and she is a lesbian. That’s it. After appearing in 13 episodes back to back, we don’t know anything else about her life outside her time at Buffy’s house. Yet, as stated, she is in a fairly high number of episodes, every single one from her introduction until the end of the series. Again, season 7 was often criticized for focusing more on characters who were newly introduced than on the main characters. Does anyone even remember who Kit, Carlos, Eve, Vi, Chloe, Molly, Annabelle, or Cassie were? Did they have the slightest bearing on the arc of the season when it came down to it? Most were two dimensional characters at best, or one-dimensional in the case of Eve, who had a Southern accent so horrendous that the ears of fans south of the Mason-Dixon line practically bled when she opened her mouth. Kennedy was part of this wave of new characters, and while she definitely had more personality than any other Slayer in training with the possible exception of Amanda, that personality was a problem.
Kennedy is a self-confessed brat (“Chosen” B7.22), and sadly, she is not being modest. From her first view of Buffy, who she sniffs at condescendingly as she enters her home and expects her to shelter her and keep her safe (“Bring on the Night” B7.10), to her gleeful habit of referring to the other girls as maggots (“Get It Done” 7.15), to her part in the coup to throw Buffy out of her own house (“Empty Places” 7.19) and then immediate insistence that the girls who have been there longest should be in charge (“Touched” 7.20; it should be noted Kennedy is, in fact, the only surviving girl of the first trio to arrive, hence she is actually suggesting that she be put in charge), her character is somewhat less than endearing. Among the adjectives people in the survey used to describe her less attractive characteristics are “spoiled,” “pushy,” “obnoxious,” "annoying," “whiny,” “entitled,” “rude,” and “arrogant.” One person,
noncalorsedumor, went so far as to state “I hated Kennedy so much my teeth hurt,” while tx_cronopio summed up her feelings on the character by saying, “I abhor her very existence.” In short, Kennedy does not particularly sound like a person anyone would enjoy having as a houseguest or roommate for six months. This would, perhaps, have been enough to make the character roundly disliked, but it is not the end of it. Added to this, she begins to date Willow. This would probably have been a sore point regardless of who was chosen to be Willow’s next romantic partner. Few events in the show were as controversial as the murder of Tara (“Seeing Red” B6.19), Willow’s previous girlfriend and possibly one of the most beloved characters in the series. Many fans were greatly disturbed by her death, not only because she was a general favorite and one of the few characters who had not behaved badly during season 6, but because this meant the end of one of the longest and most three dimensional lesbian relationships on television. There were rumors that Willow might return to men and that the lesbian subplot would be entirely abandoned. The writers may have felt pressured to give Willow a new girlfriend simply because of the outcry against losing Tara. Joss Whedon mentioned in an interview with IGN.com that he didn’t “want Willow stuck in typical gay celibacy on TV,” so Kennedy was created so Willow could “find somebody really hot, and we're going to make this about moving on, because that's the only option we have” (P., Ken).
However, the problem with Kennedy may have something to do with her not being like Tara. Joss Whedon has stated that “What I wanted was an anti-Tara. I wanted somebody who was as different from Tara as possible” (P., Ken). While physically they are quite different, with Tara as blonde and blue-eyed with a softer face body type and Kennedy being brunette and dark-eyed with a more angular facial and body structure, it is in personality that this dichotomy is particularly striking. Tara was shy, reserved, solicitous of others’ feelings, often felt like an outsider and wanted to fit in, stuttered under extreme stress, and carried the mental scars of a damaged childhood in which she was taught female power was coupled with evil. Kennedy was bold, opinionated, critical, felt she should lead rather than fit in, had no difficulty speaking her mind, and was the result of what seems to have been a relatively normal, though wealthy, home. While the need to differentiate Kennedy from Tara was very real, they went to such an extreme that it was difficult to see how Willow was attracted to her. Oz, her first boyfriend, possessed some of the same characteristics as Tara, so there was not a tremendous change in what she found attractive, aside, of course, from gender. Kennedy was a very radical departure from what the audience had come to expect from Willow’s choice of romantic partner.
Added to this personality was Kennedy’s “courtship” of Willow, which at times seemed to border on sexual harassment, including making innuendos about the two of them sharing a bed in the near future within five minutes of meeting of meeting the other girl “Bring on the Night” B7.10). Despite Willow clearly stating repeatedly that she wasn’t ready for a relationship again, Kennedy continues to pursue her. It seemed as though the reasoning behind the inevitability of their relationship centered on the idea that Willow and Kennedy were both lesbians, which of course meant they had to date, a theory as bizarre as suggesting all heterosexual females must date all heterosexual males on a program, or perhaps even harkening back to the old days of the Loveboat, when it was painfully obvious every time Isaac was going to have a romantic plotline because an African American female came aboard the boat. Complicating matters further, their first date comes about because Kennedy lies to Willow and the other girls about being ill (“The Killer in Me” 7.13). Kennedy does not seem to take much of what Willow says seriously, drastically underestimating Willow’s power and her level of conflict over her killing of Warren, and their first kiss is supposed to somehow magically (literally) solve Willow’s feelings of guilt and loss. Finally, in a slip that may have been entirely accidental, the airdate of the episode when the couple has sex for the first time (“Touched” B7.20, which aired May 6, 2003 in the U.S.) was exactly one day before the anniversary of Tara’s death (“Seeing Red” B6.19, which aired May 7, 2002), something that seemed in poor taste. After all, Willow was supposed to have nearly ended the world over her lover’s death (“Grave” B6.22), and she spends the anniversary exploring the wonders of Kennedy’s tongue ring.
Part of the problem was that the audience wasn’t given the opportunity to understand why Willow had fallen in love with her. Frankly, this unexplained mystery bothered me more than the gigantic floating ball of eyes that told Giles the First was gaining strength because Buffy was resurrected (“Show Time” B7.11), a plotline and bizarre manifestation that was never seen or heard from again. There might have been great things about Kennedy. Certainly, Iyari Limon is a beautiful actress who played the role with tremendous enthusiasm. However, why on earth Willow chose her over, well, anyone (frankly, I saw more chemistry between her and Anya in “Same Time, Same Place” B7.3) is quite confusing.
There is another side to this issue, though. The Kennedy fans who are out there, and they do exist, are very committed to the character, in part because she was outspoken, self-confident and challenging, characteristics that Buffy herself often possessed. Very few people would have wanted to see Willow drowning in a sea of perpetual sadness over the loss of Tara, and Kennedy does seem to have made her happy by the end of the series. Also, after a Google search for Kennedy fanfic, even with 30.5% of people (36 votes) running for the hills at the mention of Kennedy as a main character in a fic, I came across a very large number of fics about her. For example, the Kennedy Fanfic Archive has over 1100 individual stories, written by over 800 authors, in a variety of pairings, the most popular of course being Willow/Kennedy. Obviously, that’s a lot of writers and a lot of fics for a character who is generally presumed to be strongly disliked.
Eventually, it all comes down to personal taste. Could Andrew have been a bit more accepted had he been portrayed as less annoying? Very possibly. Could Riley have acquired a larger fanbase if he had been written out of the program without resorting to vampire prostitutes and ultimatums? Maybe. Could Kennedy have gone down easier with fans if she had been slightly less bratty and self-centered? There’s a chance of it. There will also always be fans who champion each one of these characters because they see a side to them that strikes a chord with the individual viewer, something that they enjoy or that intrigues or amuses them, or maybe they just plain think the actor who plays them is hot, and really, no one on this show was ever very hard on the eyes… except maybe the Master… and even he was sort cute if you squinted a lot.
Joss Whedon is a television creator who knows what he’s doing. The vast majority of the characters he has created are deep images of the strength and frailty of human nature. Many will probably still be talked about for decades in fan and academic circles for the clarity of their characterization and simply for the pure joy they instill in those who watch their stories. If these three characters fall somewhat short of their lofty fellows, it only proves that Joss has his human frailties too. Babe Ruth occasionally struck out. Shakespeare wrote the abysmal Henry VIII. George Lucas created Jar Jar Binks. If Andrew, Riley, and Kennedy are the worst Joss Whedon ever creates, I’d say he’s doing pretty dang well.
*All episodes are followed by either a B for Buffy the Vampire Slayer or A for Angel: The Series, the season number, a period, and the episode number. Episode numbers are not contiguous through the series but broken down by season.
Works Cited
P., Ken. “An Interview with Joss Whedon: The Buffy the Vampire Slayer Creator Discusses His Career.” IGN.com http://movies.ign.com/articles/425/425492p1.html. June 23, 2003
Schilling, Mary Kaye. “Interview with a Vampire…and One Feisty Librarian.” Entertainment Weekly. Archived at Brilliantly James: A James Marsters Fan Site. Originally published December 1, 2000.
I would also like to thank the people who so kindly responded to the survey on these characters.
Appendices:
Table 1:
The following is a list of the number of episodes including select recurring characters. In cases where the character occurred on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: The Series, the total number of appearances is given. This graph is provided to give a sense of how the three characters discussed stand, as far as screentime is concerned, with other minor characters. (If someone had told me Faith had fewer episodes than Andrew, I don’t think I would have believed it.)
* Tom Lenk, who played Andrew Wells, was also in an episode of Buffy in season 5, playing the vampire Cyrus in Harmony’s gang. This is not included in the list of appearances.
* Also note that Amy’s appearances do not include those when she is seen only as a rat.
Table 2:
The following is the complete list of episodes for each of the three characters discussed, along with season and episode number. Episode numbers are not contiguous.
Flooded 6.4
Life Serial 6.5
Smashed 6.9
Gone 6.11
Dead Things 6.13
Normal Again 6.17
Entropy 6.18
Seeing Red 6.19
Villains 6.20
Two to Go 6.21
Grave 6.22
Conversations with Dead People 7.7
Never Leave Me 7.9
Bring on the Night 7.10
Showtime 7.11
Potential 7.12
The Killer in Me 7.13
First Date 7.14
Get It Done 7.15
Storyteller 7.16
Lies My Parents Told Me 7.17
Dirty Girls 7.18
Empty Places 7.19
Touched 7.20
End of Days 7.21
Chosen 7.22
Damage A5.11
The Girl in Question A5.20
Riley Finn
The Freshman 4.1
Fear, Itself 4.4
Beer Bad 4.5
Wild at Heart 4.6
The Initiative 4.7
Pangs 4.8
Something Blue 4.9
Hush 4.10
Doomed 4.11
A New Man 4.12
The ‘I’ in Team 4.13
Goodbye Iowa 4.14
This Year’s Girl 4.15
Who Are You? 4.16
Superstar 4.17
Where the Wild Things Are 4.18
New Moon Rising 4.19
The Yoko Factor 4.20
Primeval 4.21
Restless 4.22
Buffy vs. Dracula 5.1
Real Me 5.2
The Replacement 5.3
Out of My Mind 5.4
No Place Like Home 5.5
Family 5.6
Fool for Love 5.7
Shadow 5.8
Listening to Fear 5.9
Into the Woods 5.10
As You Were 6.15
Kennedy
Bring on the Night 7.10
Showtime 7.11
Potential 7.12
The Killer in Me 7.13
First Date 7.14
Get It Done 7.15
Storyteller 7.16
Lies My Parents Told Me 7.17
Dirty Girls 7.18
Empty Places 7.19
Touched 7.20
End of Days 7.21
Chosen 7.22
Table 3:
The following link leads to the poll conducted for this essay.
Kennedy, Riley, and Andrew: What the Heck Happened?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 11:29 pm (UTC)It seems at least one of the three hits the "ICK!" button for nearly everybody. I agree, Riley had problems dealing with Buffy's strength... sadly, probably a very realistic portrayal of some men's response to a strong woman, but very out of character for Buffy to date him, I thought.