Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5102537-20140217120328/@comment-203.217.90.230-20140307030539

''it's hard for me to fully rationalize Merlin's decisions. I don't know why he wouldn't at least try, but if he made a decent effort to directly influence Arthur's opinions''

I agree with you 100% other Lurker!

The main reason I watched this show was to see Merlin learning to become the great mage, and Arthur learning to become the greatest King (the Once and Future King), as we were repeatedly told this was the "before they were famous" time. When writing a story, especially one with such a specific end in sight, you need to move your characters along, and have them behave in a believable way to their characters. (have them learn and develop!)   I would have loved to have seen disagreement and conflict between the two of them. I would love to have seen Merlin storm off and perhaps live away from Camelot for a time. (even 1 episode!)  I agree, it would not have weakened their friendship (in the long run) if they could unite in a satisfactory way.

Unfortunately the endless resetting, the lack of character development for Merlin and Arthur, the time jumps,  keeping the status quo (but having Gwen and Morgana getting character development off-screen - such as it was), but none of the other characters changing at all,  (and the insistence of keeping the magic a secret, until the last possible minute) resulted in those characters not behaving in a way we would expect, or can rationalise or have explained. We have an expectation, and a build-up of what was supposed to have happened, (they sometimes dropped hints, but never followed through on any of those)  but no pay-off. A whole raft of things could have happened on this show,  but for some reason, TPTB held back, and then gave us an ending where we are still left scratching our heads and trying to make sense of it all.