I loved the first 3 seasons, as did seemingly everyone else. I was aware that they all shared a sort of pattern, in that Deborah would treat Ava like garbage for the first 60% of each season before they came to an understanding and did something amazing together (usually via montage and a time skip).
But the characters were so sharply written and the laughs hit so hard, I couldn’t really hold it as a negative. Until season 4.
It genuinely feels like the writers lost track of their episode count, because EVERY MAJOR ISSUE they spend the majority of the entire season setting up gets resolved in the final two episodes.
This hits you with whiplash, because it’s also the season where Deborah’s cruelty goes beyond being charming or comedic. We watch her be a genuinely psychotically awful person to Ava for the majority of the season, and then they bury the hatchet in 10 minutes like a subpar rom com.
The show literally has Jimmy POINT OUT HOW RUSHED IT ALL WAS as it attempts to lampshade what was clearly a bizarrely-paced solution to some really huge character conflicts. And then the season ends with both characters more or less where they started in Season 1.
My wife said she has zero interest in the 5th season after all that. I’m kind of surprised it picked up its Emmys and Golden Globes, all things considered. And I don’t see people bringing up S4 in the same terms as other shows that dropped the ball, but it was a SHOCKING dip in quality, and I’m not sure if the creative team sees it that way.
1 Comment
I loved the first 3 seasons, as did seemingly everyone else. I was aware that they all shared a sort of pattern, in that Deborah would treat Ava like garbage for the first 60% of each season before they came to an understanding and did something amazing together (usually via montage and a time skip).
But the characters were so sharply written and the laughs hit so hard, I couldn’t really hold it as a negative. Until season 4.
It genuinely feels like the writers lost track of their episode count, because EVERY MAJOR ISSUE they spend the majority of the entire season setting up gets resolved in the final two episodes.
This hits you with whiplash, because it’s also the season where Deborah’s cruelty goes beyond being charming or comedic. We watch her be a genuinely psychotically awful person to Ava for the majority of the season, and then they bury the hatchet in 10 minutes like a subpar rom com.
The show literally has Jimmy POINT OUT HOW RUSHED IT ALL WAS as it attempts to lampshade what was clearly a bizarrely-paced solution to some really huge character conflicts. And then the season ends with both characters more or less where they started in Season 1.
My wife said she has zero interest in the 5th season after all that. I’m kind of surprised it picked up its Emmys and Golden Globes, all things considered. And I don’t see people bringing up S4 in the same terms as other shows that dropped the ball, but it was a SHOCKING dip in quality, and I’m not sure if the creative team sees it that way.