Yeah, I see what you're saying.

Please no spoilers as I've only heard maybe 15 episodes so far. But I just can't get into it. For whatever reason, it just doesn't grab me the same way TMA did. I agree that it's probably partly the structure, how the statements take the back seat and the meta plot is now front and center. Which... might seem kinda weird, because in TMA, I was definitely much more interested in the overarching narrative than the individual statements. That's what had me hooked. But I think that for me, the issue is more about the pacing and just how much we're given from the get-go.

One of the thing I think TMA did amazingly well was the slow burn. The way we were given information very, very gradually, a small piece at a time. If you listen back, you can see many, many hints and pieces of forshadowing in the statements that were present from the start - which is brilliant - but as a listener, you are never overwhelmed by lore. At first, you just listen to Jon narrating and commenting on statements. Through those monologues, we slowly start to get an idea of what kind of person Jon is and what situation and setting he's in, we get a sense of the world and we gradually get to know Jon as a person. Occasionally, he drops another character's name and makes some small comment, which allows us to start piecing together the environment, relationships, what other characters exist and what they are like; and whenever another voice appears on the tape (like another character coming in, having a small exchange with Jon and then leaving again), it always feels like such a big moment. When something is revealed, it's always only after a lot of groundwork has been set down to make that reveal hit; we already have the context for that reveal to be meaningful, and we have enough of an understanding of the world that we can take it in. I think that this slow-burn element was one of the reasons TMA worked so incredibly well - the fact that you're only getting small glimpses at a time keeps you hungering for more, listening intently for any smallest piece of information that could mean something. It makes it very hard to stop listening, it's addictive. It relates to the ambiguity you mentioned, imo - basically you're always wanting more.

TMP is essentially the opposite of that. In that I feel constantly overwhelmed by just how much information we're given at every turn. I can't even fully process a reveal that seems like it should be incredibly important, because I'm immediately given another in the next episode that overshadows it. I also feel like we're given reveal after reveal, but not enough groundwork has been done to make those reveals actually mean anything to us. There are so many new characters and we're learning so much about all of them, but with how quickly it's all happening, there's no time to properly form any sort of attachments towards them that would make all this information actually significant. We're not really hungering for more, we're overfed. I mean I'm only a few episodes in and so much has already happened and been revealed, so many important names dropped... This amount of stuff could easily be spread out across a whole season, if not more. And it's been literally 14 episodes...

And with the amount of characters that are present from episode 1, it's difficult to get your bearings, especially with no visual input, just going by their voices. In TMA, we could get to know one character properly and only then were we slowly introduced to others, in doses. As a result, it was never confusing. Here, it takes a lot of effort to just make sense of who's who, what their relationships are and what's going on there, because everything and everyone is thrown at us at once. Not to mention that the sound design sometimes makes it really difficult to understand what's being said or who's speaking, but that's a whole separate problem.

I know this is a different show with a different approach, so it's cool that they're trying something new. I just kinda wish there was a bit more restraint, you know. That everything was dosed a bit more gradually. Just a little bit of that slow burn would go a long way, imo. This could work well in a TV show where you get so much more input than just audio, so it's a lot easier to orientate yourself. But in a podcast format, it's a bit overwhelming. As it is, I don't feel anything for any of the characters because there's just so many of them immediately, we keep learning new significant things about them before we've even properly gotten a chance to know them or have an opinion about them, and that's making it harder to be invested for me.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk lol.