Excellent points as always, and agreed on all of them. Glad to see your elegant, rational thoughts and views are getting out to a larger audience who will appreciate them. :)
It is simply incomprehensible to me that a show as complex as this one doesn't have a writer's bible for timelines, names, and a very basic backstory for each of the main and recurring characters. To brag about the lack of one tells me a lot about the attitude in the writers room: they're making it up as they go along. Okay fine, do that, but KEEP TRACK OF THINGS FOR GOD'S SAKE. I've endangered the well-being of our television set on numerous occasions because of simple mistakes obviously made because no one's paying attention. On a show that prides itself for its technical brilliance, that's just crazy. The writing should match the physical production and nowadays, it just plain doesn't.
I think another mindset that's causing all sorts of problems is the idea that every story arc/cliffhanger has to be bigger than the one before it. Newer! Better! With more explosions! as they used to say on South Park. While I'm sure that's great fun for the writers and the production crew, it leaves fans bewildered and angry when characters are turned into one-dimensional cardboard cutouts to be moved around the set and made to speak lines that either get the writers out of a corner they've painted themselves into, or advances the plot without pushing the characters to move forward in any realistic way. Yeah, it looks good in the script but on screen, not so much.
IMO, first season got it right: intriguing medical mysteries, brilliant and often troubling insights into medical and personal ethos, little glimpses of character backstory, and plenty of witty snark. It worked then; it could still be working now. I'm suggesting the writers use the formula as their template and have fun experimenting. The template's been broken for several seasons now, and it really shows. Quality writing has, for the most part, been replaced with grandstanding and big crude tropes drawn with crayons.
Thanks for the brilliant comments, RR. Much appreciated. :)
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It is simply incomprehensible to me that a show as complex as this one doesn't have a writer's bible for timelines, names, and a very basic backstory for each of the main and recurring characters. To brag about the lack of one tells me a lot about the attitude in the writers room: they're making it up as they go along. Okay fine, do that, but KEEP TRACK OF THINGS FOR GOD'S SAKE. I've endangered the well-being of our television set on numerous occasions because of simple mistakes obviously made because no one's paying attention. On a show that prides itself for its technical brilliance, that's just crazy. The writing should match the physical production and nowadays, it just plain doesn't.
I think another mindset that's causing all sorts of problems is the idea that every story arc/cliffhanger has to be bigger than the one before it. Newer! Better! With more explosions! as they used to say on South Park. While I'm sure that's great fun for the writers and the production crew, it leaves fans bewildered and angry when characters are turned into one-dimensional cardboard cutouts to be moved around the set and made to speak lines that either get the writers out of a corner they've painted themselves into, or advances the plot without pushing the characters to move forward in any realistic way. Yeah, it looks good in the script but on screen, not so much.
IMO, first season got it right: intriguing medical mysteries, brilliant and often troubling insights into medical and personal ethos, little glimpses of character backstory, and plenty of witty snark. It worked then; it could still be working now. I'm suggesting the writers use the formula as their template and have fun experimenting. The template's been broken for several seasons now, and it really shows. Quality writing has, for the most part, been replaced with grandstanding and big crude tropes drawn with crayons.
Thanks for the brilliant comments, RR. Much appreciated. :)