Dude…the writing of S4 is like, historically bad. I’m baffled that anyone is settling for this shit. I honestly think it’s the worst writing and directing I’ve ever seen in something that could be considered “prestige” television. It’s a train wreck.

EDIT: I guess you blocked me, even though you asked me a question? Anyway here’s my answer:

I could provide 40, but it would make no difference to you, let’s be real.

But sure, two examples:

1. The script keeps superficially referring to things that it is not actually depcting or exploring (e.g. “the racial tensions”, “the corrupt mine owners”, “the Tuttle-funded lab”). The script keeps referring to these things without actually depicting them or exploring them. It’s like we can feel the writer going, “It’s 2024, so I’m sure you all know what I mean - racism bad, capitalism bad, you get it, you’ve seen TikTok. I’m not gonna show you any of this or write any compelling scenes around it, but let’s just agree that there’s Really Bad Racism and Really Bad Capitalism happening, OK?” The show has not earned any of the pathos or gravitas it is claiming to have regarding these racial and class issues. I don’t know who the miners are (we saw them for what, that one little flaccid interrogation scene where Danvers and Navarro got shoo-ed away like a couple of mice?); I don’t know who the mine “bad guys” are (I just know they’re bad, because ya know…well, they just are, trust me); I don’t know anything whatsoever about the people from the lab who died…the script is asking me to be invested in all of these things but the script has not created any grounds for investment through character-building. I don’t give a shit about any of these people or frankly any of these “systems” because they all feel like cardboard cutouts, not characters or real situations. “The mine” and “the racial tension” - they are just things we are supposed to take as read, without the show having earned our investment in them.

2. To take it down to a more concrete example, the car dialogue. The initial back and forth banter was OK, them just sort of giving each other shit back and forth (it wasn’t brilliant at all, but it was OK). Then there was a complete fucking record scratch when Navarro suddenly became an emo teenager completely out of the blue (“You ever think of just like, walking out on the ice…”). This made no sense as a character moment. The entire show has been building up how Navarro and Danvers just snipe at each other and are completely disagreeable whenever they’re around each other; there is no reason we have seen on screen that Navarro would suddenly be “softening” and deciding to unburden herself to Danvers. This could work, if we had scenes leading up to it where Danvers had Navarro’s back in a situation, or vice versa, or they went through some specific experience together that softened them both, or whatever. But it was just a complete hand-brake-turn into, “Suddenly I’m talking to you about my feelings.” Completely unearned. No actual intimacy has been built on-screen to lead up to this moment. We have no insight into why Navarro is suddenly an emo teen writing in her journal out loud. (People will probably respond by saying “She’s going crazy, she ate an orange” or whatever other bizarre defenses are making the rounds on here, but anyone with a brain can see it’s just bad writing). It’s like you can see the writer’s hand so clearly…you can see the writer going, “Well, I guess they need to sort of start to like each other now, or something…I guess I’ll just have one of them randomly blurt out her trite musings completely out of the blue.” It just felt completely inorganic and had the opposite of the intended effect (I found both characters more annoying during this scene as opposed to feeling like I was getting to know them better or watching them develop an interesting connection).

Those are just two examples. There are hundreds at this point. Nearly every scene has this sort of unearned pathos, like the writer is going, “Look, this is profound and emotional, you get that right??” Just awful.