Board Thread:Rewatching "Merlin" - Season Five/@comment-5102537-20140517082836/@comment-26827245-20150727201114

Not sure if anyone reads here anymore but here's my two, three.. ten cents on the show, the ending of the show and all things connected to story telling. (I might spend a few posts doing this because.. that's how I work at the moment)

First off: I believe in a few of things when it comes to ANY story telling activity.

1. You do what you promise to do. If you tell the reader/viewing audience that you are going to tell a story that will include certain things - YOU DO JUST THAT and nothing less. You can always do more, if the story allows you to.

2. You treat the characters with respect. This means that if you let the audience spend loads of hours together with your characters you HAVE TO tell the stories of these characters to the end and NEVER CHEAT your audience OR your story.

3. Stay true to your goal/end point. Get the story plotted/planned right from the start and work HARD towards that end.

4. Keep a VERY firm grip on your story when it comes to what you have told so far. You can not afford to forget things and put weird stuff into the story that really has no place in it because of previously told bits. This ties in to point 3.

There are more to this but I'll stop here. Now to what I feel about the story "Merlin"...

First off, I like it a lot because the creators managed to stay clear of the Crap River which consists of really lousy sci-fi/fantasy shows where the SFX and the cast just suck basketballs through garden hose. There's a very fine balance to maintain when you create story that needs more SFX than you can supply (due to cost). In some cases Merlin delivers some pretty bad SFX-sequences but for the most part the show manages to stear clear of Sea Quest or Starship Trooper 3 kind of crap.

The cast is also pretty well balanced with some really great anchor points in Anthony S Head and Richard Wilson and some  really neat guest appearances from then future Game of Thrones actors.

Story-wise. It is like most shows today. The story advances slowly and out of 13 or so episodes you get 4 or 5 shows that really give you story. The rest is adventure and such. Not bad. If you went for the story alone without taking the common detours along the central storyline the show would be over in three episodes. I like detours!

The seasons show storylione progression and the characters become more and more fine tuned. Sadly the story writers start having issues with the story here and there. Most I can live with but what I can not live with is when laziness takes the helm and stears the vessel into trouble.

When you tell your audience many times over that certain things are very important, important enough to be repeated over the seasons, you really MUST follow through here. You must deliver what you have promised. Otherwise you suck basketball.

So.. at the end of this show it feels like a lot of stuff just went unsaid. And to top that off we get to see a Merlin walking in our world, smiling rougishly at the camera as he passes it on the same type of road John Rambo walks into town on in a story from the 70s.

I ramble a bit but I've got no time to revise right now.. I'll return to my narrative later. To flesh my reasoning out...

/IttIa