For a moment there I wasn't sure if you were talking about Joss or Riley! Because they sure sound the same - the big wounded egos, etc. Joss acts like a baby when he doesn't get his way.

I'm not sure if I'd define Riley as "good or bad"; I think he's far more morally ambiguous than he wants to think he is. He wants to see himself as a white hat, but neither does he want to question the system or think about it to hard. As long as he can put things in neat little categories he feels safe. To me in that way he isn't heroic in the way that Buffy and Spike are.

And isn't that at the heart of fascism?