Buffy fans: Why was Adam received so harshly?

[Ethros]

I agree with what Forbin says about it making no sense, but going in-universe for a sec, I always thought the Initiative in Sunnydale was set up as a result of the Graduation Day event, which I imagine must have gathered some sort of news interest. I'm sure it was all covered up, but maybe then, esp with the death of Mayor Wilkins (who had been covering things up before), the government thought they better step in and try to get things under control

 

[Trent Roman]

Also, Spike being 'Hostile 17' implies the thing hasn't been going on very long at all, but from it seems a completely established unit.

I figured they wouldn't bother assigning designations to any vamps/demons they killed, only captured. Spike being the seventeenth captured doesn't jar with when it occurs in the season.

(Alternatively, it refers to a cell number--in which case he was simply the latest 'Seventeen' after all his predecessors vanished into Room 314).

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Forbin]

^I was gonna say the cell-number thing too.

Like our security badge numbers at work - some new hires have lower numbers than me. i assume old numbers being freed up by exiting employees.

 

[DS9Continuing]

Yeah, you are.

The whole concept was fairly ludicrous. A military unit to study the supernatural could have existed in secret with a full-time staff that did NOT use secret identities that occupied 50% of their waking hours.

That's the part that made no sense to me - why disguise your agents as college kids and a college professor, both of whom need as much time as possible just to do those things? When did Maggie work on her curriculum? When did Riley have time to grade papers AND do his courses? When did they sleep?!

Why have a secret entrance in a dorm and then have parties? Plenty of secret government labs are just in plain ol' office buildings. Nobody knows what goes on in there, and there's no risk of a drunk teenage girl finding the secret elevator.

When did the government excavate the huge underground complex underneath an active college? It clearly hadn't been there a year bofore; our gang would have noticed the soldiers and disappearing demons.

Was Maggie a military officer? No one ever called her anything other than "professor," yet she clearly had some kind of command responsibilities and people followed her orders.

It was just a mess.

All of that was to create the metaphor of the Initiative as the dangerous frat boys, like the Skulls or the Brotherhood or whatever. The group that seems like the happy, hunky, friendly men about campus in daylight, but who the hell knows what kind of freaky shit they get up to behind closed doors.

That was his focus with this, and that was what he put the creative effort into. As you say, he cared less about how a military actually works and more about his metaphors. As to whether it was executed satisfactorily is up for debate, but that was the intent.

 

[exodus]

That's the part that made no sense to me - why disguise your agents as college kids and a college professor, both of whom need as much time as possible just to do those things? When did Maggie work on her curriculum? When did Riley have time to grade papers AND do his courses? When did they sleep?!

With an entire government funded staff working for them, why assume Walsh & Riely actually were the ones creating a curriculum or grading papers. Why wouldn't that job be deligated to someone else working under them?

Why have a secret entrance in a dorm and then have parties? Plenty of secret government labs are just in plain ol' office buildings. Nobody knows what goes on in there, and there's no risk of a drunk teenage girl finding the secret elevator.

When did the government excavate the huge underground complex underneath an active college? It clearly hadn't been there a year bofore; our gang would have noticed the soldiers and disappearing demons

Didn't the elevator require vocal identification to use it?
9 out of 10 drunk kids are to ripped to remember anything clearly they did or saw the night before & druck slurred speach wouldn't activate it. Isn't that why Buffy had to break in after Walsh removed her access codes?

Are we sure it wasn't there the year before?
Too create Adam alone took lots of time, longer that the Buffy gang had been in college for. Plus, Buffy went missing and was in LA for a while. The gang wouldn't notice such things while they were scrambling to keep up doing Buffy's job in her absence. Buffy and the crew didn't even know what demons were in town until they phyically stumbled across one.
The folks of Sunnydale weren't even completely aware their town was full of vampires and demons anyway.
So they wouldn't play any mind to much of anything, such as base being built or the soidiers.

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

yea, they were hinting at the initiative's existence back in S2 with snyder saying it was a bunch of kids on drugs

 

[saturn5]

yea, they were hinting at the initiative's existence back in S2 with snyder saying it was a bunch of kids on drugs

They were hinting at The Initiative as long back as season 1 with Out of Sight, Out of Mind. Remember Sunnydale has it's own army base (Innocence) so it would have been fairly easy to conceal additional military activity, people were used to seeing Humvees driving around

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

ya, that's true.

i remember reading adam some inbuilt magic resistance? that was how he wasn't affected by jonathan's spell. but then he got destroyed by magic in the finale?

 

[DS9Continuing]

I wouldn't say he got destroyed by magic. He got destroyed by someone who had been magically enhanced, sure, but it was Buffy's very corporeal hands that punched through his chest, not anything the magic did directly.

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

yah, you're right.

i dunno, he just seemed so underused in the show.

would have loved to see warren try and create something similar.