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waterberry-strawmelon · 1 year

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dungeons and daddies season 2 rant!

this is mostly a vent post bc i’m just not a huge fan of the way the stakes in this story have been handled in the 2nd season so far! obviously i love the podcast so this is no hate on it, but i just wanted to get this out there and see if anyone else feels similarly, or if perhaps season 2 gets a little less messy and forcibly dramatic later on!

*Note: As of right now, I just finished Episode 13—aka the huge lore dump episode lmao! So maybe things get better after this and i just dont know it yet!

This is a lot of word vomit cuz I wrote down all my thoughts in my notes app on my phone stream-of-consciousness style, so if something doesn’t make sense, that’s why!

My problem with season 2 is that the rules of the world and of the story keep changing. The rules of the GAME aren’t changing, but the verisimilitude of the story itself is—they’re playing Calvin Ball with our suspension of disbelief, and it’s not working for me.

It’s like the Steven Universe Future thing of suddenly going against the previously-established rules of cartoon logic; suddenly we’re NOT supposed to laugh at cartoon slapstick and instead supposed to now see it as REAL INJURY that just…healed. But that breaks the audience contract!!

In Dungeons and Daddies, we’re supposed to believe that a lot of these jokes in season 1 don’t really matter. So when they DO in season 2, that’s not what had been implicitly agreed upon by the audience and the creators/writers about the story.

So with this in mind, that we are now supposed to believe that these characters’ actions have real consequences. Willy Stampler is an abuser. If we’re trying to do a redemption arc, we need to fucking SEE that.

For this season to represent growing up and realizing that adults are fucked up and make fucked up choices and can grow and change and get better or get worse or maybe weren’t ever as great as you thought it was. Those are cool ideas! But for us to take them seriously, they’ve got to be handled with care; we can’t just be told these adults made fucked up choices and when it was posited as a joke, only for it to actually be SERIOUS (i.e., if for example, henry and darryl kissed in season 1 and it was played as a joke that may or may not have actually happened, it’s never addressed again, so it’s really not heavily staked in canon—then you cannot in season 2 say that actually, darryl and henry had a lot of tension after they got back to earth and it was awkward for the rest of their lives, but we didn’t see it it just happened off-screen, trust me. BECAUSE THAT’S NOT HOW IT WAS TREATED IN SEASON 1!!! YOU CAN’T REWRITE WHAT’S ALREADY HAPPENED—IT DESTROYS OUR BELIEF IN ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE STORY. SHOULD I TAKE THINGS AS JOKES, OR LITERALLY? If I took all the stupid shit in this podcast as real and genuine and serious, then this would not be a story i wanted to watch, because literally every character is an asshole. But that’s not how the story is sold to us!

It’s kind of like how ultimately, all the dads in S1 were kinda shitty, because they were played by actors playing Dungeons and Dragons as a comedy podcast. If the podcast had treated that stuff seriously, it would’ve been an ENTIRELY different tone, and no longer comedic. But now suddenly we’re supposed to take all that shittiness as if it WERE serious fact! But that wasn’t the implicit contract we’d agreed upon by engaging in this “comedy podcast” story!!!!!!!

I think it’s cool how the new dads/S1 sons are essentially acting just like the dads in S1 did, only we’re seeing from the kids’ perspective how it actually affected them.

But at the same time…idk. It’s like you’re mixing metaphors. It doesn’t resonate with me, because i can’t be invested in any of it. Are the jokes real? I can’t get a feel for what kind of emotional weight i should be granting any and all of what the characters say and do.

The best thing about S1 is that it didn’t have to be believable; but in S2, they’re trying to make us believe in this stuff that’s not believable. So you’re losing my trust and interest in this narrative, y’know?

AND FURTHERMORE!!!!! I hate that Willy’s character has now been reduced to “narcissist = bad (which on its own is…not a great narrative to deliver about ppl with personality disorders), but he was in prison for a long time and realized he was mean so now he’s a nice guy! forgiveness <3.”

As if he didn’t abuse his son. ajskfmxghgjk. idk what kinda shit anthony’s trying to tell with this. it doesn’t have to have a moral or soapbox moment or whatever, but it almost erases the POWER of Ron’s arc in Season 1. by getting forgiveness from the narrative, without getting forgiveness from his actual victim.

This feels like a Rian Johnson movie just trying to be quirky and “subvert expectations ooooooooOOOoOoOoo” without that subversion actually feeling REWARDING or EARNED or JUSTIFIED.

In my personal opinion, I think it’s just not as strong a choice to try and get into character work this early in the story, as compared to the pacing of Season 1. Sure, we did get some good Ron growth for an episode at like… episode 14? But the dads didn’t get actual ARCS until after the halfway mark!!!!!!!! Sometimes they really didn’t even resolve themselves until episode 66—three episodes before the final episode.

and it feels like a lot of these story beats are trying to do the work of character arcs without setting up a sturdy enough character foundation to begin with.

i saw a lot of fans online praising the choice to have such important plot stuff happen so early, and while i agree the previous monster-of-the-week formula was getting a little dull, i also don’t think the characters have really felt fleshed out enough yet to get thrown into this sort of thing. like, i personally dont really care about scary’s complicated feelings because i havent had 30 episodes to get to know her yet (and more importantly—neither has BETH. the actors themselves are still figuring out their characters!) the characters’ emotional beats it feel much more rushed and much more forced, imo. which makes the foundations of this story feel unsteady, bc i dont have any handholds to come back to and connect with. i havent been able to connect with the characters OR the story yet, so having all this thrown at me as if it’s really meaningful just falls flat.

Overall, timeskips need to be handled with care. If we jump forward in time and suddenly everything’s different—just for the sake of uncomfortability and subverting expectations—you’ve really got to justify those character changes within the narrative. And so far, nothing’s feeling particularly justified. At least—you have to do this if you want your story to be meaningful and/or SAY something about TRUTHS in OUR WORLD outside of this fictional narrative.

I can tolerate all this nonsense if it’s not actually trying to reflect anything in real life, but if I’m supposed to take this story seriously as a funhouse mirror representation of real world themes, then you’ve got justify your narrative choices. Otherwise, you’re just confusing your actual motive.

Basically, to try and be comedic AND have real world dramatic tensions and significance and themes to connect with an audience, the drama and comedy cannot come from the same place.

Here’s an example: In Jojo Rabbit, the comedy comes from pointing out and emphasizing the ridiculousness of the Nazis’ ideology. The film does not derive its comedy from the most dramatic, real-world-reflective moments: the human connection between Elsa and Jojo, or Jojo and his mom; the danger Elsa found herself in under Nazi oppression; parental death; etc.

And vice versa, the comedic moments are not the emotional crux of the story. Even Jojo’s violent accident is played more lightheartedly; if they were to make THIS event (the grenade exploding and almost killing Jojo—a ten year old child) the driving tension of the film, then for us to feel actually INVESTED, it could not have been played as comedic as it was (i.e., the scene where they’re rushing him into the hospital on the gurney and his bloody thumb’s up pops into frame).

Dungeons and Daddies Season 2, on the other hand, takes these emotional beats that have already been established for COMEDY, and tries to turn THAT into the dramatic, emotional crux of the show. And i as a viewer am just not as likely to be invested in that conflict or dramatic tension or to find the messaging about real life to be saying anything particularly resonant or meaningful.

TLDR: Dungeons and Daddies Season Two suffers from GENRE CONFUSION!!!!!!!

If ultimately Anthony and the rest of the gang are trying to say, “This is what life is like sometimes!” (which is, imo, what EVERY dramatic story is trying to say), then they’re not actually doing that, because they’re manufacturing these situations to fit what they want to say, rather than presenting the narrative first AND THEN ALLOWING THE MEANING TO DEVELOP NATURALLY FROM THE RESULTING EMOTIONS!!!!!!! Fuck!!!!!!

So basically, it’s still easy for me to enjoy the show—but the narrative does not provide me with enough material for ANY EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT, and that is really disappointing :(

#this goes all over the place so again sorry if it makes no sense!#also its fine if you disagree but please dont reply to this post or send messages to my inbox trying to change my mind #if you think these problems maybe smooth themselves out as season 2 continues then thats cool and id love to hear about it!#i'd also love to hear if anyone else has noticed anything similar; and even if u havent im happy to clarify any of this if ur curious about #my perspective (or if any of my examples didnt make sense. like i said—i wrote this in my notes app impulsively to just process my own #thoughts cuz i was feeling overwhelmed. so my primary audience is me here lmfao!)#dungeons and daddies #dungeons and daddies season two #dndads #dungeons and dads #dungeons and daddies s2 #dungeons and daddies season 2 #mine #just some thoughts #vent //#media analysis #kinda!

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