Nancy Drew

[olivermoss]

I don't think anyone here is watching it, but I will cut anyway. The show is on it's planned final season right now.

And boy is this season going weird. There are two main problems.

First, like a lot of shows set in present day, they had to make a call about covid. No-covid AU? Time skip? Nope, they went with everything is pre-Covid. So far, so good. Since they have referenced dates on the show, this means compressing the time line the show takes place over. Again, fine, it might make for some hot takes if anyone goes over the show in a very detailed orientated way. But, they decided to make the one year anniversary of Nancy's mom's death a major plot point and man that shreds the continuity and relationships. Ryan is in good with the team mere months after what happened with him and George? People got together, nearly got married, broke up and moved on to new committed relationships within weeks?

Making the choice to accelerate the timeline? As good a choice as any. How they implemented it? Holy trash fire.

Second, the show's overall theme is about letting go and moving on. Time only moves forward, etc. This puts Nancy's amazing and tragic love affair with Ace where they are cursed to stay apart in a very weird place. First, as dramatic and moving as it feels at times, placed over the accelerated timeline it becomes kind of a joke, especially since Nance can move on enough to date in like 3 seconds. Two, them getting together or even risking the lives of others to try goes against the overall themes of the show. Everyone else has had an arc of letting go, moving on, building a new life.

If they get together in the end, it will feel weird and kinda like Nancy could actually have taken or left the relationship. How long Nancy has been 'the only one' for Ace is borderline creepy and she is clearly able to move on even if he isn't.

If they don't, if they go with the theme of the show it will make all the effort to fight the 'stay apart' curse feel dumb. There are earlier times on the show when breaking them up for good would have felt good, interesting. But at this point it's kind of like both options suck. Also, her getting what she wants when every other character has had to let go, deal with accepting serious shit and things that can't be fixed no matter what? It's not great vibes.

Ironically, it being a show about people accepting loss, certain life plans becoming impossible, etc, made the earlier seasons a great show to watch during Covid.

There are some great things about the show. They don't just hand-wave people noticing paranormal stuff and how it effects their lives feels very realistic. Ace, Nancy's two dads, Ace's dad, etc all have a surprising amount of depth and nuance both to their characters and also to their family relationships. Scott Wolf as Carson Drew is amazing. He's a fantastic actor. I haven't seen him in other things, but I assume he's somewhat well known because of how good he is. But man this last season is a train wreck.

Also, I couldn't even finished one of the early episodes this season. A curse turned Nancy into 'a typical guy' and... yeah I dropped the show until a few days ago. I've read other people's statements on that episode. Some of the people defending it said that it's meant to highlight how good the male characters on the show are in compared to normal guys. Can't judge it without seeing it, but I am never going to see for myself how that played out. Everything I read makes me not want to.

There isn't a ton of talk about the show online, but from what I've seen my takes are not super hot takes. A lot of people seem to feel how I do about the time dilation. Since audiences are trained to expect 'will they wont they' as the main plot, a lot more people are on board with 'both options feel wrong' than I thought they would be.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

I haven't seen this show (and don't know that I ever will), but it's a shame that this season is such a mess. :/

The "how to deal with Covid" is very much a real concern for anything with real-world settings, and any method has its drawbacks. But... yeah, compressing the timeline that drastically makes plotlines that *feel* like they should be more of a slow burn come across as a bit silly.

[olivermoss]

It's like we went from 'genre shows never get an ending' to 'they have endings but maybe it would be better if they didn't'. It was never a big show, but it seemed to be a passion project for those making it.

It's amazing how that one plot point of drawing attention to it having been a year has just shredded how a lot of people view the show. A lot of serious moment now seem comical. Everyone sort of assumed that each season took place over a year, until they made it clear each was over 3 months.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah... I theoretically really LIKE the idea of planned endings, where the plotline is intended to wrap, where there isn't just an "oops, no renewal, uh... sorry 'bout that" OR an interminable slog of declining quality. Unfortunately, it seems like things are even more prone to surprise cancellation, and the endings that wind up happening feel rushed or otherwise weird.
I guess I haven't watched a TON of genre shows - in part because of the whole "if I get invested, I'll just be disappointed when it gets cancelled" issue - but I definitely see that sentiment regarding how the ends often feel weird instead of natural, and that's not better than no end.

Yeah... compressing the timeline THAT much does make it a bit hard to take big emotional arcs terribly seriously... not that short timeframes can't contain feelings, but a lot of things really rely on the passage of time to give weight to the feelings and relationships. You can get away with a lot from episode to episode by only *implying* the time passing... but drawing attention to it all happening so quickly? That's hard to reconcile with the seriousness it seems to want some of these plotlines to have.

[olivermoss]

The other show where the planned final season involved a nosedive so bad the buzz died, it was so bad it wasn't even fun to talk about, was the Roswell reboot, also a CW show.

I love genre TV but it is a minefeild. Darn you Roswell songvids full of actual gay kissing that played at Escapade! I could not resist!

[mistressofmuses]

Oh god, Roswell.

I still want to see it based on the "good parts" that I've heard about, but it's hard when I know the ending was terrible!

I want to watch more genre TV (complicated by my very general inability to find time for things, lol), but often by the time I have a chance to think about it, the show I was interested in has already been cancelled, or else I do find out that it ended badly.

Why can't I have good quality genre shows that end neither prematurely nor on a terrible whimper of a final season!?

[olivermoss]

The good parts were good and genuinely refreshing, but I ditched the finale season mid-way through the first episode. So far, everyone's told me I made the right call.

Yeah, it's a mess. As I've said, part of why I love Stranger Things so much is that if things go south I can always pretend it was a one-season show because that's so solid. I loved Person of Interest, but it's painful to have good reason to thing that my OTP was maybe supposed to become a couple but one of the actor was... Jim Caviezel. Fuck, I wish I had some reccs. Sadly, I have serious issues with how SG-1 wrapped up. OG Leverage ended good at least?

[mistressofmuses]

I basically completely stopped hearing *anything* about Roswell once the final season started and everyone realized it was... kinda bad. A lot. I'm glad that at least there was a consensus that it was not worth watching, heh.

It seems like genre shows are just plagued with issues to an unfair degree. OG Leverage at least had a good ending, it's true!

[olivermoss]

The way the hype died was almost eerie. It was so bad people weren't even bothering to bash it.

Yeah. Most genre shows need a set overall length, but if they do well they wind up like Supernatural or X Files and if they don't they wind up like Firefly.

[mistressofmuses]

You know something has gone horribly wrong when people won't even hate-watch it!

Agreed... watching something limp on long after it should have ended, like X Files sucks. Having things end far too soon seems like the more frequent issue now, with streaming platforms nixing anything that doesn't do insane numbers regardless of marketing etc.

Why can't we have reasonable middle ground!?

[olivermoss]

Stuff gets dumped or milked, it's never left to do a plotline in a coherent way. The plan for Stranger Things is that while there will some more stories in the universe, that plot and those characters are cooked after S5. Their next original show, not counting The Talisman adaptation, was going to be totally different. Hopefully, that all still happens some day and Netflix doesn't put the squeeze on that IP.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? It's extremely frustrating.

The whole "golden age of streaming" *should* have allowed for more things like Stranger Things, where there is a planned story, with a planned end, and the shows should be given the chance to get there.

Instead things get zero promotion and then get dumped a week after the first season drops because they didn't turn into a viral sensation. (I think a similar fear is behind seasons that wind up feeling painfully rushed, like S02 of Shadow and Bone. It seems like there's an understandable concern that a series may not get renewed, so they can't "save" anything for the future, or plan out arcs and plotlines over multiple seasons, and have to instead try to throw all of it in with no breathing room.)

OR something does get popular, and that means they're afraid to ever let the property go. I am afraid that's what could happen with Stranger Things. I hope they don't decide to drag out any extra seasons beyond what the story is intended for. (I'm sure they'll try to milk the fuck out of spinoffs, but at least that's easier to take or leave based on whether they're good or not.)

[olivermoss]

Everyone, including me, did seem to think that the new model was going to mean complete shows with Netflix rescuing so many shows and... the whole 'finally an ending to X Files' thing but then the new season did nothing to finally end the show.

Stranger Things seemed to be in a good place, but with the current everything who knows? But, as I always says, SThings season 1 as a stand alone is still one of the best genre shows ever

[mistressofmuses]

That was definitely one of the things I most hoped for and believed would be the case with the streaming model. I'd hoped it would solve the problem of premature cancellations, and instead just wildly worsened it, holding things to impossible metrics. (To say nothing of the worsening of the way the creatives involved are treated, etc.)

It IS extremely true - SThings S01 is absolutely AMAZING as a stand-alone. Fortunately, nothing they ever choose to do with the property changes that.

I honestly did not know this show existed.

[disgruntledgirl]

But I guess it was trying to be Buffy meets Dawson's Creek?

Re: I honestly did not know this show existed.

[olivermoss]

I haven't seen Dawson's Creek, but it was trying to be a pretty tight, cohesive mystery show that kept getting more supernatural. There are definitely some good aspects, it did go four seasons and might have gone longer if not for disruptions. But sadly I cant recc it overall and a lot of fans of the overall franchise were not happy about it. It had only a passing connection to the IP it was allegedly part of.