Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Five/@comment-5102537-20140308144416/@comment-24629321-20140322170901

Fimber wrote: Merlin After wrote: As always the episode went very quickly and left a lot of questions but isn't that true of the whole series and isn't that one of the things that make it so intriguing? I agree that to some fans the open questions may be a part of their interest in the show. For me, definitely. I was always filling in answers in my own head and I do appreciate the opportunity to think creatively like that. Because I was required to fill in some details for myself, I ended up with a much more personal stock in the show than I would have had otherwise. I still would have been happy for the show to fill in all the answers if  it had boasted a higher-caliber production and writing team who'd had everything all planned out from the beginning and all their characters' story arcs straight. Too many times it felt like they were making it up as they went along (without taking a detailed look back at what they'd already laid out). I doubt that the writing team we got would have been able to answer all those open questions without contradicting themselves at least a dozen more times.

I do have to give the writers some leeway in regards to audience concerns. It seems the general consensus among opinionated viewers is that the whole Gwen/Lancelot/enchanted bracelet plot was a terrible idea, but I also remember hearing in some behind-the-scenes video or something that the bracelet was added in at the last minute because without it, younger viewers wouldn't be able to grasp the concept of Gwen having genuine feelings for both Arthur and Lancelot. So the writers didn't even necessarily want that in there, they just had to make that concession because they were writing for such a large age range. I wonder how much of the show the writers genuinely thought was a good story, and how much was constrained by audience, culture, mythology, etc.