i have many complicated feelings towards taylor kelly and let me explain why... she is a dick. that much i will say right now to get it out of the way. she's a dick and i distrust her implicitly but that does not mean i hate her (i mildly dislike her at best). i don't think she's the worst person in the whole world, i mean... the show has murderers and rapists that i think deserve hate way more than she does. this doesn't make her a Good person though, just because there's a lot worse doesn't mean she isn't flawed. and that's what she is: deeply flawed, selfish, fake most of the time (and i think that's why a lot of her scenes in s5 felt off, because she was roleplaying as sweet girlfriend when she's nothing like that). and hear me out: i think that's great. i dislike her and that's great!!! because here she is: a woman allowed to be a person. and guess what?? people can be dicks!!! not that she's some great feminist statement from the show or whatever, she just happens to exist as a character with a determined set of characteristics: selfish, ambitious, fake, calculating, cold, opportunistic. and she uses her past hurt as an excuse for her behavior, claiming to have some higher purpose when she steamrolls over everything and everyone to get what she wants. and once again: that's great!!! she would have made a great antagonist for the 118 to bounce off of and i guess she still can be. making her just a love interest definitely did not play out her potential (but i do fear that if they bring her back it's just going to feel stale and like beating a dead horse. mostly i think everybody just wants her gone. which... you know, fair). but there's still some parts of her that i wish we could see a bit more. like the fact that she is probably the loneliest person on the show and that's why she clung so badly to buck. that definitely was the reason they were together for so long: their respective loneliness -which is not something you should base a relationship on. despite the fact that they were so ill suited for each other, despite the fact that i definitely believe taylor doesn't really want a romantic relationship of any kind, they felt so lonely that they stuck together. though there is a hard line between their two types of loneliness, that line being the 118, buck's support system. because taylor doesn't have anything like that, doesn't have family, doesn't have actual friends. the only thing we know she has is her job. and i think she saw buck on one of the worst days of his life and saw the way he loves people so completely and i believe she wanted to be loved like that... to have someone who cared for her like that. she saw buck's unending capacity for love and she was so lonely that she thought maybe if she could make him love her it would make the loneliness go away!!! this is how i interpret her actions in 4x14 and onward, this is why she kissed buck after he said he was done chasing people, because without buck then she truly is alone!! and she thought that if he was done chasing her then he would just leave her behind and she couldn't let him. which is a horrible reason to start something with someone!!!! they were doomed before they even began!!!!!!