every system has a flaw

It's funny that people are so mad about POI not being procedural anymore. They are pretty much admitting that they are not smart enough to follow the story line. The reason NBC/CBS get so many viewers is because they pick up shows that are procedural so that the average American can watch any episode, at any time, and pick up the story line. Which explains why POI /had/ such high ratings. The more the story expanded, the less people watched it. That girl is literally upset that she's too dumb.

Well, I wouldn’t call anyone dumb for liking procedurals. I definitely think procedurals have a place in television and especially since everyone watches/enjoys tv for different reasons I would begrudge anyone their comfort shows. Like I want to write tv, and since I’m not in school right now it’s the closest thing I can really get to literary analysis (and any sort of mental stimulation tbh) so I get really really overly analytical about it, but I absolutely don’t expect everyone to experience television that way and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to watch something that’s just easy, because sometimes that’s what you need.

But that being said I am still really upset about their reaction to it, because they’re literally pointing out the fact that there are dozens of shows like that on the air right now, and highly formulaic episodic shows have dominated the history of series that have enjoyed the longest runs for precisely the reason you said. Which means if that’s the kind of television you’re looking to watch, you have so many options, especially if you want to watch a show about two white dudes tbh. But PoI as it exists right now is one of the only shows of its kind on television—for people who want to watch a complex scifi show with a deeply developed mythology and two complex and dark and challenging female protagonists who straddle the line of morality in a way that traditionally only male protagonists (ever-popular grizzled antiheroes) are allowed to, and who also form the most significant romantic relationship on the show, there’s literally nowhere else for us to turn.

The writers don’t owe you anything (they don’t owe us anything either). This is they story they want to tell, and if that has turned out to not be the story you want to watch then you don’t have to watch it. You can say, hey wow I really liked this show before, but it’s changed a lot and it’s not my cup of tea anymore so I’m going to stop watching it. Or if you can figure out a constructive, well thought out way to criticize the show, sure, fine, go ahead and do that. But the thing that just makes me want to scream is the fact that pretty much the only thing they know how to do is tear down the female characters (and the actresses who play them, and the writers who created them… and also by extension all the neurodivergent gay/bi girls who identify so strongly with them and for whom this is so intensely personal because this may be the very first time they’ve seen certain aspects of themselves reflected in any character ever, much less in the heroes of a story).

Literally all they ever do is tear down Root and call her an irredeemably horrible person (when they jump through hoops to humanize and sympathize with male characters who do things that are objectively much much worse), and they tear down the writers for “blatant favoritism” (which is hilarious because when has anyone ever accused writers of favoritism for focusing on male characters more than female characters? never, because that’s not favoritism that’s just the way things should be apparently). But anyways, it’s just. so hurtful but not at all surprising that they can’t think of anything real to criticize about this show, so they fall back on attacking and blaming the women on it for “ruining” something that was so ~perfect~ before. I mean this is the way it’s been since literally the beginning of time, since fucking Eve in the garden, since the women in Greek Myth and all the way back to the fucking Epic of Gilgamesh, and at this point it’s just exhausting. So yeah. That is something I’d call dumb—tearing down female characters (and tearing down the girls who don’t just view them as their ‘favorite characters,’ like those people might view the male characters, but as possibly the only thing that is keeping them alive) because you can’t come up with anything real or substantial to criticize.