Season 2 Has Serious Writing Issues

*Warning: A Very Long Post Ahead!*

Look, I know this is a very unpopular opinion but I hope that you guys engage in good faith. I have adored this show since 2022 so please be aware that I have these critisms because I want to see this show at it’s best. It’s themes on “who are you”, autonomy, satire of modern business culture are delivered on a truly unique premise that I don’t think I’ll find in any other work for a long time. The fact that it isn’t living up to its potential is in my opinion, a bit disappointing.

From some of the writing decisions, to the pacing, and the characters just not acting like actual people leads me to believe that the news of production troubles weren’t unfounded. Of course there’s the added effects of the strikes, but with the reports of frequent script rewrites and last minute set design changes, it gives the impression that the writing team was not at all unified. And this is very apparent.

1.        There’s just too many storylines – has a negative impact on pacing

Season 1’s formula was a brilliant one and allowed the writing to feel tightly plotted. There was a perfect balance of seeing the MDR crew at work and then catching up with oMark to see the outside world from his POV. Having to only focus on two different settings in each episode allowed the writers to have easier control of their narrative and set up the characters where they needed to be in a natural, character driven way  – they essentially only needed to fit 2 big puzzles pieces together. With the season 1 finale, there was no way the show can return to what it once; it had to open up the world and of course that means to add more characters. Issue is that they’ve added so many plot lines that they are now having trouble weaving them together seamlessly and now are relying on plot driven tactics instead of character driven narratives. Some parts of the story are moving at a snail’s pace, while some are being rushed to the detriment of natural character development:

Slow Plot line: Reintegration – I’m not sure what exactly is going on with Mark’s reintegration at this point. He started the process in Ep. 3 and with the latest episode, he won’t be fully reintegrated even in the finale. I don’t understand why this process was started so early in the season if there’s no actual payoff on the plot in the finale? What was the point of flooding the chip? Regabhi said it would make the process faster and yet we have essentially gone backwards because Mark is now relying on a severance barrier to interact with his innie. Was flooding the chip just a way to knock him out to transition to Ep. 7 at this point? Also, the opening animation seems to suggest Mark will have to choose Helly/Gemma in the finale – are we really not going to get a rMark to make this decision? If it’s iMark, then we already know he’s likely going to chose Helly. If oMark, he’ll definitely choose Gemma. I feel like we’re losing the potential to see a horrific conflict being played out here that has to be decided by rMark but now probably won't be.

Fast Plot Lines: The stuff happening with Irving and Bert in Ep. 9 feels very rushed. We know from what we’ve seen of oIrving that he’s an intelligent, observant guy who’s attuned with his surroundings. It’s also true of his innie with the whole Helena reveal. And knowing that he’s been doing some painstaking espionage work to uncover atrocities at Lumon, does it make sense that he’s become so trusting of oBert? He only had dinner with him once, knows he worked for Lumon, knows Bert is afraid of some part of him being banished to hell, and now, after seeing that Bert has broke into his apartment and is looking through his notes, is just going to go on a drive with him. At the station, he apparently proclaims that he serious feelings for Bert now. This sudden depth of love here makes no sense to me. You can’t say that love transcends severance to explain this away – even oMark didn’t suddenly feel this way towards Helena. Sure there were hints of a deeper connection forming that even oMark himself was weirded out by but he quickly snapped back to reality. We needed more time with these two characters in order for the scene at the train station to parallel well enough with the scene in season 1 that it felt earned. Not to mention that we didn’t even get to learn anything more about Iriving compared to season 1 and now he’s left kier. The only payoff we saw was getting his message to his innie.

In addition, there's just too many subplots that it feels like no one has really accomplished anything. For example, take Helly. She's only been present for around 3 episodes. All she has done is come to terms about her autonomy, which is important, and be intimate with Mark. Ep. 9 has her state that Mark has been out of the office for 2 days. She is just now going to go and look for Irving's note? What did she do the day before - nothing? That's not at all like Helly. Again, its the plot driving the characters to where they need to be.

2.      Cliffhangers not being resolved efficiently

Again, this is another problem that affects the pacing. Worst example of this is Mark’s reintegration. Since the end of episode 3, we keep wondering about whether or not Mark has fully reintegrated in the next episode. Since they never explicitly told us how slow/fast reintegration is going to go, this question keeps popping up till this day and its been 9 weeks. It’s been at its worst since the ending of Ep. 6/7, because we had this huge turning point with flooding the chip; I’m sure that a lot of us thought that he’ll finish reintegrating while he’s down from a seizure. It would be a creative way to have us audience members go on a journey with him as he recollects his memory of Gemma, while we get to learn about her. Of course we now know that this isn’t the case at all. Again, we have essentially halted the plot of reintegration altogether now and have gone backwards to depending on severance barriers. There is legit no payoff here. And Regabhi unfortunately comes off as clueless, which contradicts her personality, behavior, and presumable background. If we always intended to use the severance barriers, then there was no need for reintegration in the first place. Or, have the birthing cottage idea fail so that reintegration was Mark's only choice.

Besides this plot point always hanging over us, the 2 isolated character backstory episodes being placed back to back has killed the momentum of the main plot point to save Gemma. A lot of the cool character work is present in Ep. 9, even if it felt rushed to me, but Mark’s storyline was just more set up with some further exposition for him to learn that Gemma will be killed soon enough. We already knew this as an audience member so nothing new was really revealed here.

3.        Characters don’t act like real people to prolong the mystery

This personally is the most egregious part of this season for me. I don’t think season 1 was flawless in its writing – lack of consequences of Graner’s death and the cop out of the untraceable keycard stick out – but what that season nailed was the characters, which are the most important aspect of this story to me. Almost every character, main or side character, were all compelling characters in their own right and kept true to their characterizations. They drove the plot. In this season, characters get dense inexplicably because the plot requires them to; they are being essentially puppeteered by the writer for the plot.

Regabhi and Mark: Regabhi comes out of nowhere and proclaims to Mark that Gemma is alive; besides asking how she heard about the OTC and why she didn’t tell him about Gemma earlier, he asks nothing else. No “where did you see her? How do you know she’s alive? Where in Lumon is she? What’s happening to her? How is she even there?”, etc. He asks if Gemma is being hurt in Ep. 5, presumably after Regabhi has been in his basement for a couple of days. It’s unrealistic to not ask anything of the above when we know how desperate Mark is to be reunited with his wife. Why am I asking more questions as an audience member than Mark is about his own wife? At least have either regabhi say she doesn't know much or indicate to the audience that she's lying about how much she doesn't know. We know that regabhi is on the run and would only share vital info as necessary. Your solution is right there - easy fix!

Devon and Cobel: I know this has been heavily debated on this sub for almost 2 weeks now but with the way Devon is confident that her plan with Cobel will work out in Ep. 9, I cannot find myself believing that this is true to Devon’s character. Despite the fact that Cobel has stalked Mark, that she became close with Devon and committed “lactation fraud”, that she didn’t treat Devon’s baby with care, the most egregious thing she’s done is hide the fact that she works at Lumon, that she’s Mark’s boss, and worst thing of all – knows his wife has been alive this whole time. She’s crossed multiple lines and boundaries and yet, Devon believes she can trust this woman with sensitive information like Mark's reintegration? Cobel can turn on them anytime she wants because she’s already been proven to be manipulative. How is Cobel of all people her first option of who to trust? I get that Devon may be scared to trust regabhi after the seizure, and it makes sense she can’t rely on the police/hospitals for help because of potential Lumon connections. Choosing Cobel still makes no sense. I’m just glad that oMark was at least acting with suspicion.

Solution: have Cobel (after Ep. 8's revelations) call Devon and insist upon a meeting; regabhi freaks out that cobel could barge in anytime and she has to leave. Now Mark and Devon are stuck with Cobel as their only option.

Most Recently – Mark, Devon, Cobel in Ep. 9: Cobel reveals to Mark and Devon that a completion of a file called Cold Harbor will kill Gemma. How can there be no follow up questions to this? Mark and Devon don't want to know what the hell that means or why it matters? More importantly, what exactly will happen to Gemma that causes her to die? The way the scene plays out, they had hours hanging around waiting for dusk to fall and no more conversations took place?

All 3 of these scenarios take me out of their respective scenes because you can see that the writers are forcing these scenarios to play out this way rather than having the characters develop in a way to naturally find themselves there. They have so many plot lines to handle that they have not figured out a way to get all these pieces to fit together well enough in a cohesive way. Rather, they'll forcing these plot lines to fit together whenever needed to move the story along.

If you’ve made it all the way, thanks for taking the time to do so. I know it’s a very long post but wanted to take the opportunity to discuss what aspects of this season have not been working well for me. Hopefully I was able to summarize my main points well enough. I was enjoying the season through episode 7 while having some issues along the way but Ep. 9 has just exacerbated them. However, I find great value in getting to take in other’s perspectives as they may perhaps change how I look at certain things. I also understand the finale hasn’t aired yet but the final episode isn’t going to magically resolve these issues here. What I can hope for is that there is a payoff that justifies some of the writing we got here.  

There's a lot to love about season 2 too. These writers could have been timid and stuck to season 1's formula but tried to go for something new and I appreciate that they took risks. The actual ideas they have to develop these characters are great, but unfortuantely only in their isolation. There's just no seamless narrative that was found in season 1 here. They either needed to cut down on the various plot lines they wanted or needed more episodes so all these storylines are allowed a chance to breathe. All I can hope is that some of this criticism can make its way back to them so that they are able to come out with a stronger season 3.

Edit: Thank you for your awesome posts and contributing to the discussion. This has been going better than I expected, so I'll probably post this on the main sub too once the lock-down period is gone so the discussion can continue. I'll try to answer as many posts directed towards me if I can. Thank you again for taking the time to read all this out! Very much appreicated. Here's to hoping the finale delivers next week!