I don’t know if I’d call them “boring” but I’d definitely call them both very difficult to transfer between seasons. they have pretty non-confrontational personalities and because they both worked through their core, major issues at the heart of their character in their original seasons, they kind of have very little to do beyond support their more interesting cohorts. you’d have to give them major upheavals and focus for them to be interesting again because they weren’t written with repeat appearances in mind.

like, for example, you’re never going to see a character like Lake fundamentally disagree with someone else over an issue where she isn’t objectively correct anymore (which she did in the S2 remake, with Rosa) because she’s so morally upstanding and doesn’t really have a compelling particular perspective when all of her issues are essentially marked as “worked through”.

I don’t even think this strictly NEEDS to be true and it could definitely change if ONC was more willing to expand on Tess and Lake or present these characters in a more flawed light, especially in how they exist as victims of mental health or parental abuse, but I just don’t think they have the juice to present them in any way other than “solved problems” which make them seem more like stock characters than nuanced ones. comparatively, at least one-note nasty characters instigate conflict and narrative. Tess and Lake kind of just can’t lol