A few S4 thoughts.

[elisi]

Main problem with S4: Adam. Secondary problem with S4: Adam & Riley. I'm thinking about 'Goodbye Iowa' specifically, with the big scene where Adam confronts Buffy and Riley, doing his big revealing speech and calls Riley 'brother'. It's supposed to be a big moment - the Big Bad sees himself as akin to Buffy's honey - but it just falls so woefully flat.

*sigh*

I really, truly try to like everything - heck I even found the positive sides to Caleb - but Adam is pretty much hopeless. He's dull and ugly and never does anything interesting. I'm going to attempt to look at him through my meta eyes however, because I think he has something to tell us about Slayers.

But first, Buffy/Riley...

Buffy/Riley
“It’s just doomed! And I can’t do doomed *again* right now. Sorry.”
Now I wrote a long post about these two already, so I'm not going to go over that again. But I think I've pinpointed the moment things begin to go wrong, and why:

BUFFY: I have to tell you some stuff... about my past. And it's not all
stuff that you're gonna like.
RILEY: You can tell me anything.
BUFFY: I think so. I think I can.
'New Moon Rising'

But - she doesn't tell him the whole truth. Xander accidentally fills in the blanks Riley didn't know were there the next day, and then draws his own conclusions when Buffy rushes off to LA.

Which leads to this conversation:

Buffy: Have I ever given you any reason to feel that you can't trust me?
Riley: No.
Buffy: Then why with the crazy?
Riley: Because I'm so in love with you I can't think straight.
'The Yoko Factor'

And right there is the problem: He trusts her - he's left his friends and job because he trusts her. But she doesn't trust him - not on the same level. She didn't tell him the whole truth about Angel which led to Riley jumping to an erroneous conclusion.

More telllingly still is her dream in 'Restless'. Riley's first words to her are:

“Hey there, killer!”

And he's sat with Adam - the two of them looking very much like brothers now - drawing up plans for world domination:

BUFFY: World domination? I-is that a good?
RILEY: Baby, we're the government. It's what we do.

Subconsciously, Buffy never really lets Riley in. A moment later they meet again - and Riley might look different, but he still sounds the same:

RILEY: (offscreen) Thought you were looking for your friends. Okay, killer...
(Shot of Riley wearing regular civilian clothes)
RILEY: ...if that's the way you want it. I guess you're on your own.
(Walks off.)

Buffy was right - they are doomed. It takes a little while before Riley leaves, but the game was already up.

Buffy and Adam
“You could never hope to grasp the source of our power.”
But now I'm going to look at something far more interesting - the parallels between Adam and Buffy:

Adam: Aggression is a natural human tendency. Though you and me come by it another way.
Buffy: We're not demons.
Adam: Is that a fact?

Because the whole Initiative story line is a mirror of Buffy the Slayer - again and again we see the two tackle the same situations, but it's not really ‘Military vs. Slayerhood’ that's the main opposite here. It's Maggie and Adam who parallel the Watchers and Slayers. Maggie Walsh tried to harness the powers of demons, just like the Shadowmen did long ago - but Maggie came at the idea from a scientific/human angle, taking bits and pieces from demons and humans and putting them together like a quilt. This is in stark contrast to the Shadowmen, who decided to fight the demons on their own turf - they used magic to create the Slayer, and took the spirit of the demon to imbue a girl with super strength, leaving her with a mind of her own to make moral judgements, rather than Maggie’s ‘programming’. Of course both Adam and Buffy were supposed to be guided by a 'parent' - but where the Council was always a very strict and distant, seeing emotions as weakness, Maggie deliberately developed a strange, twisted mother/son relationship with Adam and the rest of the soldiers.

Also - in 'Restless' - we see the importance of names:

RILEY: Buffy, we've got important work here. A lot of filing, giving things names.
BUFFY: (looks at Adam) What was yours?
ADAM: Before Adam? Not a man among us can remember.

This goes back to Genesis - Adam (the first man) naming all the creatures of the world, man (human) as the ruler of the world. Which again is a contrast to The Slayer who has no name:

First Slayer: I have no speech. No name. I live in the action of death, the blood cry, the penetrating wound.

The Slayer is more like a weapon, or a force of nature, than a soldier. S4 shows how although a Slayer isn't perfect (and we've seen the prime example of that with Faith), how the Watchers didn't get it quite right, it is the Slayer’s humanity that is important. It is what stops Buffy from being Adam:

Adam: I have a gift no man has. That no demon has ever had. I know why I'm here. I was created to kill. To extinguish life wherever I find it. And I have accepted that responsibility.

The First Slayer is closer to that than Adam thinks:

First Slayer: I am destruction. Absolute ... alone. [...] No ... friends! Just the kill.

Maggie orders Buffy's death because she's 'a liability', because she thinks for herself. It is what sets Buffy apart from her fellow Slayers, and what will in the end change the world:

BUFFY: I talk. I shop, I sneeze. I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out. And I don't sleep on a bed of bones. [...] You're really gonna have to get over the whole ... primal power thing. You're *not* the source of me.

Riley uses the word ‘killer’ twice. Dracula will go on to use it - and unsettle Buffy. The darkness and demonic origins of the Slayer will be the major theme for the rest of the show - but Buffy will again and again prove how a Slayer is so much more than a ‘killer’. Her powers are a part of her - but not the source! It's an important distinction, and one that Buffy makes instinctively.