Unfortunately, it's Pakled-level Machiavellian: just convincing enough to be dangerous if you aren't paying attention, but won't stand up to even basic scrutiny.
Most people aren't up to writing that kind of thing well. This trend needs to go back to being "when it's appropriate", instead of being applied to every show.
There was no part of what we see here that required his death. It was a cheap death for the sake of upping the bodycount and pulling on an emotional beat with the audience. I was dreading his appearance because the show had already said this was how it was going to operate, and I was almost relieved when we were leaving him behind the previous week alive... only to have Elnor stay behind with him, ensuring new opportunities for death, and that was the death-sentence. It's completely illogical, and didn't follow from anything we'd seen (and thus far serves no purpose in the plot). It's there because they know the audience is invested in the character, and making people feel something regardless of context is a good way to pretend the episode had emotional weight.Worffan101 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 09, 2020 1:07 pm Also, there's *two* minor characters that the show has brutally killed off now for basically no reason, they tortured and killed Icheb ON-SCREEN solely to give Seven something to cry over (a storytelling device that I DESPISE, if you're going to torture an established character you had BETTER make the torture and recovery from it part of that character's ongoing story, that's just basic respect for your characters), and they murdered Hugh to provide an excuse for Seven to return to the story after they put her on a bus, which is flatly bullshit and a waste of a perfectly good character.
Some people really need to learn that a character left alive has story potential, while a dead one is just killing a thousand future plot threads. You'd better make sure it's important and make it count when you do kill someone.
In that scene, I wasn't sad about his passing. I wasn't angry at Narek's sister, who at this point is more of a plot-device stereotype than a Sailor Moon villainess or ATLA's Azula. I was angry at the writers. I was angry at them for planting an existing, interesting character with emotional weight into their story for no purpose other than to benefit from someone else's character-building in the reunion, and then kill him off and pat themselves on the back for the "payoff" they orchestrated through a contrived sequence of events that serve no other purpose in the story except to remove him from it.
This sort of thing immediately destroys all suspension of disbelief and I'm seeing the show as television and not a place with living, breathing people. Somehow, this show constantly does this, and that's probably the single biggest thing preventing me from being able to even enjoy it on its own terms; it's too often bringing attention to the performer holding the strings, and all I can see now are puppets.
