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This season, aka "The Transition Period", has been so badly written.
They set up the main arc all the way back from the middle of last season, in that we have a whole season to hammer out the details of the "ongoing relationship". There's so much scope for gains and losses, alliances and betrayals, careful strategic plans and then chance opportunities for quick tactical advances, all kinds of good stuff. Then they decided to do fuck all with that whole idea for the first three-quarters of the season and go for a rushed scramble punctuated with "the final deadline is only hours away - oops, no it isn't, tune in next week for exactly the same cliffhanger all over again" for, what, five episodes in a row now?
What did they fill the rest of the season with instead? A pandemic?! That's so... random! I mean, they've got some good drama out of it, and some pretty dark satire about the incompetence, cronyism and corruption of governments if they're not kept in check. But the twist in the penultimate episode is so stupid! Having Keir point out again that the Christmas rules aren't viable and need to be severely limited, pushing Boris to call the idea "inhumane" 3 days before he does that very same thing? It's totally broken my suspension of disbelief.
It's been such a trope this year. Keir spots the obvious and terrible danger, warns Boris about it, Boris ignores and insults him, and then realises a few episodes later that Keir was right and does the thing. Once or twice would have been enough to highlight Keir's competence next to Boris' perpetual bumbling, but at this point it just looks like his character has had a peek at the script. Even his name, Keir Starmer, is a bit too on-the-nose for my liking; why didn't the writers actually just call him Kassandra if they were going to be that obvious about it? (Bold choice with the F->M gender swap for that archetype in this day and age though - anyone saying that media production is totally controlled by SJWs is going to have a hard time explaining that decision!)
Definitely going to check out the season finale next week though. I'm invested enough that I want to know how it turns out, no matter how bad it is. Can't be any worse than GoT or WestWorld season 3.
Not sure if I want to tune in next season though. The food-shortages-amidst-disappearing-industries dystopia storyline idea that's been leaked (but not confirmed) sounds terrible. If it's set in 2021, can't the dystopia at least be of the cool cyberpunk variety? Even if today's Cyberpunk dystopias are crappy rehashes of the Cyberpunk dystopias we were always promised (or so I've heard), they still sound more promising than the next season of Brexit.
I'll probably watch it more out of habit, and a lack of anything else to do, than anything else. Roll on the finale!
They set up the main arc all the way back from the middle of last season, in that we have a whole season to hammer out the details of the "ongoing relationship". There's so much scope for gains and losses, alliances and betrayals, careful strategic plans and then chance opportunities for quick tactical advances, all kinds of good stuff. Then they decided to do fuck all with that whole idea for the first three-quarters of the season and go for a rushed scramble punctuated with "the final deadline is only hours away - oops, no it isn't, tune in next week for exactly the same cliffhanger all over again" for, what, five episodes in a row now?
What did they fill the rest of the season with instead? A pandemic?! That's so... random! I mean, they've got some good drama out of it, and some pretty dark satire about the incompetence, cronyism and corruption of governments if they're not kept in check. But the twist in the penultimate episode is so stupid! Having Keir point out again that the Christmas rules aren't viable and need to be severely limited, pushing Boris to call the idea "inhumane" 3 days before he does that very same thing? It's totally broken my suspension of disbelief.
It's been such a trope this year. Keir spots the obvious and terrible danger, warns Boris about it, Boris ignores and insults him, and then realises a few episodes later that Keir was right and does the thing. Once or twice would have been enough to highlight Keir's competence next to Boris' perpetual bumbling, but at this point it just looks like his character has had a peek at the script. Even his name, Keir Starmer, is a bit too on-the-nose for my liking; why didn't the writers actually just call him Kassandra if they were going to be that obvious about it? (Bold choice with the F->M gender swap for that archetype in this day and age though - anyone saying that media production is totally controlled by SJWs is going to have a hard time explaining that decision!)
Definitely going to check out the season finale next week though. I'm invested enough that I want to know how it turns out, no matter how bad it is. Can't be any worse than GoT or WestWorld season 3.
Not sure if I want to tune in next season though. The food-shortages-amidst-disappearing-industries dystopia storyline idea that's been leaked (but not confirmed) sounds terrible. If it's set in 2021, can't the dystopia at least be of the cool cyberpunk variety? Even if today's Cyberpunk dystopias are crappy rehashes of the Cyberpunk dystopias we were always promised (or so I've heard), they still sound more promising than the next season of Brexit.
I'll probably watch it more out of habit, and a lack of anything else to do, than anything else. Roll on the finale!
