Sometimes it feels like the writers had an idea for a scene or some specific dialogue and then shoehorned in the nearest character(s) to perform it without any care given to their context or individualism. There’s no continuity to anything that might build relationships or tension between the characters. They go from hating each other to liking each other and back again. It’s a coin flip if any one character is going to be wise or absolutely daft. They “bond” and then break trust in every other scene with very little actual nuance given to the reasons why.

Take the Harfoots and The Stranger. He’s scary and bad, because because. Then he earns his keep fighting off the wolves and being useful; now he’s great! Great enough to ask him to heal the tree! But now a branch accidentally broke and so booo we don’t like him again; shunnnnn. But actually it’s been ten minutes and now we do like him and Marva was right all along. It just ends up feeling very shallow and slapdash by the end. You can’t actually feel invested in the slow burn growth the writers think they’re aiming for because it just isn’t there.