I gotta hand it to you, it never would've occurred to me that Bonnie was already being used by Ryan before we met him.  But I can totally see them going in that direction if there'd been a Season 3 in order to keep her around to cause more havoc.  And it would've been fascinating, I think.  Especially if they made her sympathetic, like you have.

The original Adam from the Bible is my case in point:  Eve, tempted by Satan through a snake made the wrong choice and then led the first Adam astray.   Did she have to take the Apple?  Did he have to take the apple?  No, they both chose wrongly.  The temptation though was brought on by Satan.  They both had a choice whether or not to give in to the snake and they both made their own choice to take the apple.  That's all I'm saying.  No wishes for an argument and no one has to agree with me.  This is just the way I see it. 

And I bet if you asked Adam Rove himself, he would consider what he did with Bonnie to be a mistake because of all that he lost because of it.  He even says the words, "if I could take it back"  when she's confronting him after the trial.  If he wants to take it back, that means he is remorseful and considers it a mistake.  He loved Joan.  He was dating Joan.  To do what he did was the worst kind of mistake or betrayal that you can do when you are in a relationship with someone that you say you love.

Did Barbara Hall herself not have some say in the progression of the story?  Have a hard time believing that she was on board with how the second season ended up, I mean with Adam cheating on Joan and all.   Just curious.

The only silver lining for me was that afterward, God made a real effort for Joan to very quickly deal with her anger in Spring Cleaning, and then he started working on her heart to forgive him in the one where he goes missing.  I'm always reminded of the moment right before he came to see her at the bookstore when God talks to her about persion rugs.  How they always leave one flaw to show that only God his perfect.  It was like he was telling her to understand that Adam is human and not perfect and therefore he made a mistake.  That doesn't mean she shouldn't forgive him.  That doesn't mean he's not worthy of her forgiveness.  Interesting that he would expect that of her over something that most people, especially most women, would consider an unforgivable mistake.  But to me thats just further proof that Adam was special to Joan and her relationship to him was important....and maybe his mistake was more to do with an effort on the part of the enemy of God, aka Satan, to destroy Joan's effectiveness by destroying her heart than it was about Adam being a jerk.  To put him in a tempting situation over something he was obviously struggling with anyway, sex, is something that Satan would do to someone.  He knows our weaknesses and he tries his best to hit us in our weakest place.  Not sure if that made sense to anyone, but this is just my effort to make sense of something that really made no sense.

There were so many moments I noticed:

From the second episode....she meets Adam and not only does that connection help Kevin, but it also helps Adam because Joan gets to visit his shed and find out that he's not the person he's led everyone to believe he is.

That show where God tells her that she's going to be in a position to help someone...yeah, Rocky's mom.  But I think God also wanted her to notice Adam's obvious pain.  When he told her that he hates November...that was his cry for help, so to speak.  Finally, at the end of the episode she figured that out and was able to give him the help he needed.

In Recreation, when God tells her to invite Adam and make sure he knows he's invited.  Basically, God was telling her not to confuse him...or to play with his heart.

In The Gift, when God tells her that Adam needs something from her that was God telling her to get closer to him so she could help him with his difficult situation.  Sometimes a gift isn't about a thing.  Sometimes it's about giving something from your heart.

So many more examples I could come up with.  The point is...I know that Adam wasn't supposed to be a full cast member from the get go, but once they started building his storyline and his character it seemed to me that they realized how important Adam needed to be for Joan so they continued to build on that.   Such a shame that once they developed this sweet character and had found this amazing young actor to breathe life into Adam in such a unique and wonderful way, they didn't respect it for what it was.  They ruined it.  Such a shame.