10C’s problems aren’t because of no plot progression

So there’s a lot of debate surrounding the 10C episodes. I personally haven’t disliked any of them in that I thought they were bad, but it’s fully understandable to say they’ve (especially the last two) have been boring. A lot of people are using the excuse that people are expecting plot progression and are disappointed, and while I think that could be true for some people, I think it’s just because the episodes in general haven’t been great. The most negative received episodes appear to be “Splinter” and “Diverged”, and what these have in common is that very little to almost nothing happens, and it’s not really about more than one character at a time. “Splinter” is almost all Princess, with a few interactions with other characters, while “Diverged” is basically just Carol and Daryl doing completely mundane tasks apart from one another. The best received episode seems to be “One More”, which doesn’t progress the plot either, but the story and interactions were entertaining and had ramifications for the characters.

What I’m really just saying is that the show has had plenty of fantastic episodes that did not progress the plot, but they were great because of the characters. “18 Miles Out” gives us amazing interactions between Rick and Shane, while “Here’s Not Here” explored Morgan and Eastman’s dynamic really well. “One More” has been the closest in this vein. As “Splinter” and “Diverged” have showed that while isolating characters can give you opportunities for us to learn about them, it’s ultimately boring to watch when the plot can’t really progress. And I’d say “Diverged” is worse because there isn’t even much meaningful character focus, at least I learned things about Princess in “Splinter” I hadn’t known previously. I think it definitely would have worked better to just combine “Find Me” and “Diverged” into one episode, and dedicate that extra episode to other characters in desperate need of development. The episode could have starred Jerry, we could have gotten an episode focused on Rosita, or how about giving Alden a reason to exist? Spreading the Daryl and Carol conflict over two “filler” episodes is just unnecessary, especially when they already take up most of the screen time.

I’m most looking forward to “Here’s Negan”, and I think this easily has the chance to be the best 10C episode. It’ll be nice to see Negan’s origin and focus in on his relationship with Lucille and I think that’s where the entertainment value will come from.

Tl;dr: Lack of plot progression isn’t the problem with 10C episodes, it’s just that they can be boring when they don’t provide meaningful/entertaining character development or interaction.

Submitted April 02, 2021 at 03:54AM by LongjumpMidnight https://ift.tt/3fv2K70