Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Five/@comment-5102537-20140308144416/@comment-124.149.87.96-20140325021233

''To me it seemed as if there were a few ideas about certain situations and comments that the characters were supposed to make, and then the rest of the plot was created around it. ''

I often got that feeling too Fimber. I know when people are watching a show, or reading a book, there is a whole lot of "Watsonian/Doylist"  (or in-Universe vs Real Life, according to TV Tropes) that the viewer adopts to help them understand the characters motivations. And as fans we do a lot of that, this website does exactly that sort of indepth analysis and finding our own interpretations. But come season 5, pretty much starting from this episode, I just couldn't anymore. The writing and the characterisation where simply too inconsistent, and scenes (such as the final horseplay with glove scene) were shoe-horned in, simply because thats what the writers wanted to see. When the writers team isn't writing for the characters, but for scenes like that, its frustrating to watch, you're not supposed to get that feeling! The writing on Merlin was never great, but often the acting and the production values made you overlook it, but something changed in this season, and personally I couldn't overlook the bad writing any more, which is a shame.