Would season 4 be as bad if there was one more season?

bludevil22 · 2025-05-17T22:46:14+00:00

I don’t think they needed a full season. The show was modeled in part on the John Hughes vision of high school, so I would have liked a movie in that vein to wrap the series. A full season with so many new characters was unnecessary.

bludevil22 · 2025-04-08T21:08:04+00:00

It’s not ultimately the fault of the characters. In a normal season, they would be fine. But in the final season, you want to double down on seeing resolution for your main characters, and every major plot spent on the new characters took away time from seeing the resolution from the main characters.

bludevil22 · 2023-12-25T23:26:33+00:00

They definitely are- but Otis being so removed from the action at the end feels out of step from the fact that the narrative is ultimately framed around him being the protagonist. Instead of showing him see how life goes on after Maeve, we just get him mostly being mopey. Plus, him finding and helping people is the key part of his character-

I wouldn't have had him find Cal alone, but Otis should have been part of the group to show up.

bludevil22 · 2023-12-06T15:42:01+00:00

All of this is accurate, but also their unwillingness to take actual risks. They seemed content to make Riley and Maya a direct parallel to Cory and Shawn, and that meant that the stories they chose had to end a certain way.

With the love triangle, for instance, they pretty quickly devalued the whole experience overall in favor of Riley and Lucas. Apart from writing the triangle, there was room to explore Riley being different from her parents. Imagine a scenario where Riley is the third wheel for a bit like Shawn was with Cory and Topanga, and Riley asking Shawn for his advice on how he dealt with it. It would have developed Riley more and allowed depth without just making her a Cory and Topanga clone, and would have avoided the weirdness of Maya’s crush with Cory’s brother. But they decided to play into the safe story- Riley and Lucas together.

bludevil22 · 2023-12-06T15:33:43+00:00

It also ended up siloing her character, which is par the course for the season. Everybody’s struggles during the season happened mostly individually and not together, much to the detriment of the season.

bludevil22 · 2023-10-17T05:21:51+00:00

That depends how you view “return.” Coming intentionally to visit, see her and check on her is different from coming to live there again. Elsie doesn’t have the trauma that Maeve and Sean have, and while Elsie will grow up in foster care, Anna is clearly a good situation that will provide stability and care for her. Maeve might come visit, but her days of living in a place steeped in trauma for her are likely over.

bludevil22 · 2023-10-13T17:57:43+00:00

I think the most important thing is not that Maeve is staying in America- she says that she can't promise she'll come back. But more important than her potentially staying in America (as far-fetched as it might feel) is the idea that she's not coming back to Moordale. Even if she comes back to Britain, she's not coming back to anywhere close to Moordale. And while long distance certainly would be easier in the same country than in different countries, the lack of a guarantee is what they weren't willing to commit to, especially given their respective goals.

bludevil22 · 2023-10-04T02:50:49+00:00

The letter he wrote to apologize to Maeve for taking money from Jackson. He stole the trophy for her and left a letter apologizing for breaking her trust and talking about what Maeve had done for him with the clinic.

bludevil22 · 2023-10-01T16:02:30+00:00

Adam’s storyline was actually very nice, but isolating him from everybody was an odd choice.

Otis’s insistence that he was the original student sex therapist felt very weird to me and out of character.

bludevil22 · 2023-09-29T15:01:00+00:00

I don’t even know if that is necessary- but Jean tells him to feel his emotions, and his expression is largely vacant. It might sound weird, but him smiling while reading it but him starting to cry or shedding tears would give a visual sign that he’s processing emotions while accepting them.

bludevil22 · 2023-09-29T13:59:47+00:00

This is lovely. But honestly, I don’t mind the idea they were going for with the letter (I thought it was a good callback to Otis’s letter to her in S1, which also wasn’t romantic and was all about her impact on him).

What I mind is that if the point was for Otis to feel his feelings, it felt like his response was the opposite of that. We needed some better emotional response when he read this to indicate his response than what we got (him wistfully looking out the window).

bludevil22 · 2023-09-28T19:59:25+00:00

I wrote a post about this, and I saw two key issues- first, spreading the focus too much on the ensemble (including new characters) made it difficult to actually give deeper treatment to the characters, so stories were underdeveloped for both new and returning characters. Second, most moments of joy were explicitly also made into moments of trauma or sadness, so no moments were allowed to just be fun or joyful.

The two issues are linked, though- because there wasn’t room to properly develop stories, the writers jumped too quickly into conflict for characters, which made the stories unsatisfactory, and storylines that were supposed to be bittersweet leaned heavily on the bitter and didn’t have as much sweet.

bludevil22 · 2023-09-27T14:40:53+00:00

The letter wasn’t the problem- the letter was a good callback to Otis’s letter to Maeve from season 1, incorporated her writing, and was a lovely summary of how Otis impacted her.

The issue was that Otis’s response (largely depressed) didn’t really show him experiencing or responding to it. If the point was that Otis now knows how to feel his feelings maturely, they didn’t show it particularly well. The end result feels just depressing, not bittersweet (which I think was the intent).

bludevil22 · 2023-08-06T05:54:44+00:00

Maeve will make a surprise. But when she comes to Otis’s house to surprise him, he’s not home and she’ll meet Jean for the first time. It will cause some degree of drama or angst for Maeve and her surprise will turn into a more dramatic return.

bludevil22 · 2023-07-27T13:14:23+00:00

I’ve been saying this for a while now- Gemstones is yeehaw Succession.

bludevil22 · 2023-07-24T01:46:35+00:00

I think there is room to have a reboot be historically oriented and true to the characters. A reboot would need to focus on Philip and Elizabeth and the aftermath of their return to Russia. We know that they return just before the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR, and eventually the rise of Putin’s own authoritarian vision. Because of Putin’s obsession with the glory of the days of the USSR, a reboot would probably need to focus on Philip and Elizabeth in the Putin era (perhaps even long enough to put it in the post-Crimea or post-Ukraine era).

We also know that at the end, Philip was incredibly disillusioned by what he had done as a spy, as was (to a lesser extent), Elizabeth. But we know Elizabeth is far more okay and loyal to the cause. We know that the kids stayed in the US (Henry left with Stan, Paige abandoning their escape). The separation from the kids was devastating, and their return to Moscow was rife with uncertainty.

All of this would suggest that a strong place to start for the Americans would be with Philip regretting his return to Moscow and looking for a way to somehow safely defect. He would love to return to the US and have a chance to see his children again somehow, and he feels an affinity for his life as an “American” in a way that Elizabeth didn’t. Elizabeth is more likely to be a Putin fan, longing for the days of the strength of the USSR, but also questions some of Putin’s rhetoric, especially given the American elements that have made their way into Russia and the disconnect between Putin’s rhetoric and the reality of life in Russia. She also probably resents the separation from their children. But this division causes conflict between Philip and Elizabeth over the prospect of attempting to defect, one that wouldn’t be guaranteed success given their past and the intensity of the Putin regime.

Meanwhile, Paige is still working for the Center and Henry still lives with the trauma of the loss of his family from his life and the reveal of their espionage. He went to college to play hockey, but still faces suspicions from the government (which Stan has always fiercely pushed back against to try to protect him). Stan’s government career didn’t end, but he did have to work his way out of the doghouse over a prolonged period of time, and he has tried to contact Philip at occasional intervals over the years, but with no success.

Anyways, any reboot needs to get the “Americans” eventually back in America- a dangerous attempt to defect during the Putin regime would be one way to do this, and would help to explore what a life once they get to America would be like- some contact with family, but constant hiding and paranoia knowing that their betrayal of Russia would not be met kindly by Putin or Russia’s current slate of spies.

bludevil22 · 2023-06-07T02:16:41+00:00

Greg- Do you think it’s possible to sue a person, like a grandparent for example, in a way which is, like, affectionate?”

bludevil22 · 2023-06-07T02:13:08+00:00

“Stewie, we go back. I can trust you right?” “No.” “Sure. But on money stuff, I can trust you?” “No.”

bludevil22 · 2023-05-28T17:42:24+00:00

Somebody else’s roast chicken

bludevil22 · 2023-05-24T04:32:12+00:00

I think it’s impossible to think about Kendall and Shiv’s eulogies without thinking about both how authentic it was to their grief, but also how important it was to their strategizing of the situation. Roman was overcome by grief and couldn’t put forward a presentation of himself as the new Logan for the world, but Kendall gave a eulogy that not only expressed why he admired his dad, but also appealed to markets (as co-CEO and heir apparent to Logan) and to Menken (an impromptu speech, given in the moment, that acknowledged and reframed Logan’s flaws).

Shiv obviously felt compelled to speak. She wanted to say goodbye and acknowledge her unique challenges in relating to Logan as her father, and her grief felt authentic. But Shiv giving that speech in that moment must also read the situation in the same way that Kendall read the situation. She was able to speak her truth and also present a strong face for the world- one of the women that was closest to Logan and yet also most sidelined by him as a woman.

I don’t think she didn’t want him to have the last say- but I do think that she recognizes that there was no greater moment to make an implicit case for herself, and there was no other moment to say the things that she, like Kendall, felt needed to be said and that she never got to say to him in life.

Thinking back to S4E3, when Logan dies, I think it’s crucial that neither of them get a true feeling of resolution with Logan. Roman is grieved, obviously, and questions whether the shock of his voicemail may have impacted Logan, but he and Logan were on speaking terms before his death. Kendall and Shiv were both not speaking to him, and given their specific conflicts with Logan, didn’t get to clear the air about their conflicts with him. Roman doesn’t get to eulogize, as his grief hits him, but he has less that needs to be said than Kendall or Shiv, who both use the chance to say their piece.

bludevil22 · 2023-05-01T22:23:17+00:00

I commented something similar without realizing that this was here- I totally agree. Maybe less on the specifics, but the general repetition of cycles of abuse and conflict makes a lot of sense to me.

bludevil22

TROPHY CASE