User blog comment:LokiIsAwesome/THE NEW MULTI-STRANDED APPROACH TO STORYTELLING- BE EXCITED/@comment-5102537-20120708131225

Well thanks for referring to my blogs, Loki :-)

Multi-stranded storytelling sounds good. I agree with you on the plotholes and the inconsistency of season four.

I for one have lost my faith in good storytelling in "Merlin" because when they announced season four and how mature it will get and whatnot, I had expected a great season with connected storylines and great and deep character descriptions. Instead we got a rushed season with just broached stories and huge plotholes, most of all dealing with only the Arthurian legends, killing off important characters and silly banter.

The reason why I think that even a multi-stranded storytelling could fail here on the show is the fact that they have only 13 epsiodes and are obviously zealous to put in the rest of the entire Arthurian legend in this probably last season. To connect the storylines they probably need to ignore other storylines and/or characters. We could see that in season four even Merlin was almost reduced to a supporting character in order to show the Arthurian legend. And even the Arthurian legend was done very rushed - we didn't even get to see much of the knights (and I'm not sad about it because I'm not a bit interested in the knights and the Arthurian legend at all). Now they have to put it all into the next season and I wonder how it's supposed to work when the show is actually supposed to be about Merlin and his magic. I also doubt that they will refer to all the open questions concerning Morgause, Igraine, Vivienne, how Arthur learnt of the true circumstances of his birth (which he already knew in the beginning of season four, completely out of the blue) and other things.

I know, I'm quite negative about it all and also prejudisted. I really don't want to see Arthur confessing in tears, blaming his father for everything and suddenly be best friends with his enemies or opponents within just two minutes. If all the dead characters were still on the show and if it wasn't only about uniting Albion, something which doesn't interest me because we haven't seen any tension between Camelot and other kingdoms, I would be looking forward to the next season. But according to what I have read so far about the storylines I assume it will be similar to season four. And in case they want to explain why Morgana went wacko, they have to think of very good reasons. Maybe they will blame Uther for it even more and subsequently pin even worse things on him.

But maybe 'm completely wrong about everything and season five will be much better. Time will tell.