I wanted to like it. I really did. I liked the first episode- I thought it had enough charm to sell me. And so many people kept praising the writing as so good and the queer rep as good.
It's a sharp downhill after that. I tend to ride shows out for a season and dip after if I don't like it. I gave up after Episode 4. I'm... actually mad about how painful the writing is. It's bad. Like... "was this even a first draft?" levels of bad. "People were paid lots of money for these big of mistakes?" bad...
The characters just instantly started acting in stupid or dumb ways that contradict their characters. Or would suddenly make an informed or very smart decision... that also completely contradicts the character who happens to be coming to that conclusion?
Entire scenes will have dialogue that is all but staring directly at the camera... and then the very next scene with said character will contradict it and I don't know how you possibly make that stupid of a writing mistake.
In Episode 4, The Night Nurse scares the crap out of Jenny, tries lying saying she's a relative of Crystal, but quickly gives up and just extracts the info she wants from Jenny magically. The Night Nurse then says that Jenny will forget she was there. Night Nurse leaves and Jenny briefly wonders where she went while in a panic, but the sound-cue and her acting indicates when she suddenly forgets the Night Nurse was there. Jenny, outloud to herself for no other reason than for audience benefit wonders why she came upstairs in the first place at all.
This line has only ONE REASON TO EXIST and it is to tell us "SHE DOES NOT REMEMBER THE NIGHT NURSE".
On a subjective level, I don't particularly love this scene out of- well, it's a bit boring: Powerful character walks in, steals the info she wants, presses the reset button on the way out, and it's as though it never happened. Having a character traumatically subjected to the masquerade or coming away with something at least makes it feel like something in the plot actually moved besides "pure function" and you could arguably cut the scene and lose nothing else. But that's a "I disagree with this choice" criticism.
BUT THE VERY NEXT SCENE WITH JENNY HAS JENNY INFORM CRYSTAL THAT HER AUNT WAS LOOKING FOR HER. AS IN, THE VERY EVENT WE WERE EXPLICITLY TOLD SHE DID NOT IN ANY WAY REMEMBER, SHE SOMEHOW REMEMBERS THIS.
Ex-fucking-scuse me? I kept waiting for the shoe to drop on why she remembered it- a camera shot or a sound cue or something to justify "Hey, isn't it odd that we're contradicting that one thing we explicitly told you?". Nope. None of it. And looking up spoilers, that in no way comes up again as far as I can tell.
This is just one example of the painfully broken writing. Not shitty- broken. This is writing that doesn't serve it's base purpose of being functional. I'm sorry. If I can think of a dozen errors with a line of dialogue in the time the actor can speak it, the show had months of planning and editing to also catch the issue.
Another one I can think of off the top of my head; one of the cats in I think Episode 3 says something to the extent of "I hope the light haired one kisses the girl" or whatever... the two leads both have the exact same hair color so, wow, I don't know how you fuck that one up.
There are just so many easy fixes to that single line of dialogue alone. No one caught this? The director of the episode? The ADR director working with the voice actors in the booth? The editor who had to synch the line with the episode??? No one caught this???
Before someone "Well aChTuAlLy"s me, yes, I know one of the characters is blonde in the comics. Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to have that line in an early script draft when you have yet to cast your actors. But it is someone's job to edit the scripts and, y'know, edit these moments to correct the problem. And since it's a voice over line, you have way late into the process to catch this issue.
How is this show getting praised for it's writing??? Am I crazy? Am I missing something?
Queer Rep was boring and lame and cliche. I'm painfully tired of the stereotypes and I'm exhausted of begging for scraps. Yawn and move on in my book.
For this to be the hyped spin-off of Sandman, a show I had minor disagreements with but praised the fuck out of the writing and adaptation... this is like looking at two siblings and going "...One of y'all is adopted, right?"
Sorry to do a long post, but I had to get my feelings out and, if I just said "I hated it" and left it at that, I think I would have had pitchforks considering the rather frothing praise I've seen for the show so far.
Edited by InkDagger on May 4th 2024 at 4:03:16 AM
The spinoff of The Sandman (2022) premieres today. It’s about the two detective ghost boys from the sandman comics. Neil Gaiman executive produces, and Steve Yockey from The Flight Attendant develops. I went ahead and made a page.
The Owl House and Coyote Vs Acme are my Roman Empire.