Adam: Hit me already!

[Yang dodges.]

Adam: What does she even see in you?!

[Yang gets knocked back. Blake continues her climb.]

Adam: You’re just a coward like her!

I find this part of Seeing Red very interesting, and not just because of how curiously extreme Adam’s jealousy of Yang is. No, I totally understand why that’s the line that people focus on here, but I want to look at the other things Adam says before and after it.

By this point in the episode he’s slowly losing what mental stability he had left, but everything he says is still very telling. Because the act that Adam put on to convince those around him that he was someone he wasn’t is finally crumbling— the mask that he wore to hide his true personality is finally gone. Which means that what we’re hearing is what he genuinely thinks.

This makes his initial command for Yang to “hit [him] already” all the more telling, or more specifically the fact that it comes right before he wonders “what [Blake] even sees in [Yang].” When Yang dodges his attack instead of striking back, he becomes even angrier, to the point where it’s the thing that prompts his jealous outburst.

What that tells us is that Adam simply could not conceive that Blake would be attracted to someone who wasn’t violent, who wasn’t aggressive— he couldn’t conceive that Blake could be attracted to someone who wasn’t like him. Because that would mean that Blake was right—that he was the problem in their relationship—and he can’t possibly accept that.

This gets shown even further when Yang takes the damage from his next blow head on and lets herself get pushed back. Adam doubles down on his disbelief, ranting that Yang is “just a coward like [Blake],” because he can’t comprehend that Blake never actually wanted the person he was, she wanted the person he pretended to be. It’s a hugely damaging blow to his already fragile ego and it’s one of the things that pushes him past all reason and logic.

The fact that Yang herself even points out that the promise Blake made was based on the façade Adam presented rather than his genuine self, and the way that he directly asks Blake if he “just wasn’t good enough for [her]” also serve to prove this point to the audience.

And then Adam’s question is answered for him when Yang chooses to accept the burden of helping to take a life in order to protect Blake.

“Oh.”

Oh, so that’s what it is. That’s what she sees in her.

He finally understands that Yang is the person Blake really wanted all along— that he never was the person Blake really wanted. He finally understands that Blake and Yang stand as equals—as true partners—but it’s too late. He already made his choice a hundred times over.

tl;dr: the layers of Yang and Adam’s connection as foils are actually incredible, and every time I think I’ve noticed every important detail in the show I find something new that I’d missed before.