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sydmarch · 2 years

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I've been wanting to ask you this for a while, what do you think of the season finale? And who do you think is at fault? And how would you have written that fanfic you said you'd write in a post?

hi i finally have access to my laptop & have had a chance to clear my head enough to get around to answering this!! first off THANK YOU for asking bcus this is the kind of thing i could talk about for hours lol so let's get into it.

i think the s4 finale was a godawful ooc mess of poor writing & forced drama. even as just a season finale it's bad but as a SERIES finale?? worst series finale of all time and i say that as a fan of supernatural lmao.

in terms of who's at fault, this might not be the answer you want to hear but personally i felt like for a significant part of s4 (ESPECIALLY the finale) the characters were so ooc that my brain isn't able to engage with who's at fault in a watsonian/in universe way - the only ones i can see as at fault for all the bullshit that goes down are THE WRITERS because the characters started acting in ways that completely contradicted everything we knew about them.

quick sidebar from the characters to add that i feel like it was stupid to go for yet another version of the whole "team breaks up then reconciles" thing because they had already done that before.. although never with that big a split, so i guess it had the potential to be compelling if the spit hadn't felt so forced & if we had actually gotten a s5 to watch them reconcile.

pretty much everyone felt out of character to me in the finale but ESPECIALLY walter, paige, and sly. oh and FLORENCE it absolutely didn't make any sense for her to develop feelings for walter & that's not just the part of me who had hoped she would end up with sly talking.

the arguments and drama just felt so forced and unnatural like, you're really telling me the same walter who said to sly "your refusal to let go of the wonderment of childhood, how you look at the world with open eyes, your innocence is your brilliance, and anyone who tries to tell you any different is dead wrong" in a christmas car roll said in the finale "if you were a real man instead of a comic book reading baby boy you would’ve asked florence out ages ago"??? it does NOT make sense & i see no explanation for it other than poor writing & the writers trying to just force a conflict.

in earlier seasons it felt like when there was conflict between characters it MEANT something, it made sense with their characters, & it was satisfying to watch how it played out. an example sticking w the walter/sly dynamic for now - when sly was afraid to tell walter he was dating megan & walter was upset when he found out, only for it to turn out that walter was upset because he was worried about sly getting hurt and not because he didn't think he was good enough for megan like sly was worried about. THAT was conflict that's actually GOOD and MAKES SENSE, not some bullshit that doesn't fit with the characters we know and love like the finale split.

getting back to ooc moments in the finale tho - walter was totally justified to call out sly for bringing megan into the whole mess, but like sly would never do that in the first place?? i was floored that they had him bring up megan like that it was honestly disrespectful sly and megan. i remember in my liveblog while watching the finale i literally said "were the writers on crack" regarding that part and i still stand by that lmfao. they really just shit on sly's character to throw more drama into this mess.

i have to talk about paige as well here... in early seasons i always loved paige & felt like she got a lot of undue hate from the fandom in back then but come season 4 i can definitely see where some of that negativity was coming from. imo part of what made her go downhill was her already established negative traits coming out more often (like from the beginning paige has always had a tendency towards jealousness, pettiness, & idk if i should call it internalized misogyny or the writer's misogyny showing through her (like the "we should give it to a scent tracking dog who specializes in finding sluts" directed at stella in s2)) so those things i can fault paige the character for in the finale. even if i wish they hadn't chosen to exaggerate those traits, they do align with paige as we've seen her at her worst.

what i do fault the writers for completely wrt paige is how just like, mean they made her for no reason? and mean towards walter that just don't make sense when compared to how she acted with him in the past. watching paige go off on walter saying shit like "I wanna go to the beach without hearing marine biology facts or go to dinner without hearing about the inefficiency of putting parsley on the plate" had me feeling like who IS this woman and what did you do with paige? it didn't make any sense for her to be so frustrated with always having to do "genius stuff" and wanting to just do "normal stuff" sometimes when they had already known each other for years before they started dating, so like what exactly did you expect? their relationship was SUPPOSED to be grounded on the fact that while she wanted to help walter better himself, she loved him and understood him, and accepted his genius traits in a way no other non-genius really had before. but then throughout all of s4 it felt a lot more like paige was trying to change walter and turn him into someone she wanted him to be than it felt like she actually loved him for who he was.

of course to some extent paige was always working to change walter i mean, that was basically her job description, but in early seasons it never felt like she wanted to change him so much, or so selfishly, or in ways that weren't just to help him be more well-adjusted without actually changing him fundamentally. s4 largely left me feeling like what happened to the paige that wanted walter to be the best version of himself he could be while also embracing himself and everything that made him different? where's the paige who ordered fermented fish? my feelings about waige at this point are basically "they were one of the most ships of all time until they actually started dating, then it all went downhill". they had so much potential as a couple but the writers kept fucking it up & the finale was the ultimate fuck up on that front.

i don't really have many issues with walter's characterization in the finale other than what i've gone over already in this post but one thing that consistently frustrated me with his late seasons writing was how the writers would just let him stagnate. we'd have a whole episode about walter learning a specific lesson then episodes later he'd be acting exactly like he was before he'd learned said lesson. it felt like SUCH a disservice to his character especially with all the growth we'd seen from him in earlier seasons.

to name just one example - looking at a christmas car roll as an episode i love it & it's a very fun watch (despite the fact that to me it marks the point where the season starts going downhill because of the stupid dream that everyone made way too big a deal about lol) but it didn't really feel like it fit with season 4? it's something that really would've felt more at home in season 1 or 2. "walter learns to appreciate his team" is already a lesson that's been learned multiple times by now, it doesn't make any sense for him to even be in a place where he NEEDS to be relearning this lesson in s4. he should've been far past that but it's like the writers never allowed most of his character development to stick long term. i wish s4 had allowed him more room for actual growth instead of the same lessons repeated over & over again - it felt like he was more developed in earlier seasons & the writers brought him backwards which is such a waste of potential with him.

anyway that's enough about that because this is getting long & a bit off topic from the finale itself but i kind of had to go into my thoughts on s4 in general since they shape my thoughts on the finale so much lol. as far as fic, i had a few vague ideas planned about something with a canon-divergent retelling of the events of s4 tackling a lot of the things i mentioned above.

the most fleshed out idea i'd had in mind tho was one that, for the most part, stuck w the canon of s4 & still had the team split into scorpion 2.0 and centipede with the same people choosing the same sides. the idea started purely out of spite lmao in my mind i had to prove to the writers that ok, you really need the team divided? here's how to do that while writing it in a way that made sense, keeping the post split-teams the same, and WITHOUT fucking up everyone's characterizations. i never really wrote a rough draft but did come up with a bunch of bullet points and a kind of general outline for what i had in mind:

-paige is still upset with walter because yes - she can be petty irrational and jealous. so i'd let her get a little jealous, but i'd cut all of the stuff about "not wanting to do genius stuff all the time" and "emotionally you'll never be more than 16". basically i'd allow her to be jealous & petty but cut all the meanness & the end goal would be for her to actually ADDRESS her pettiness and jealousy by the time they reconcile.

so they would still break up but it would be partially about the jealousy and partially paige being upset/disappointed about walter lying more than anything else. instead of thinking that he'lll never mature emotionally, she'd feel like he isn't mature enough to handle their relationship yet. once we get to the part where the team/waige reconcile it can be based on both walter gaining some more perspective (i don't want it to sound like put all the blame on him here or anything - paige did a pretty shit job explaining the whole white lies thing and was pretty hypocritical about it but i blame that more on the writers trying to force drama than on her) and paige working on her issues too, especially jealousy. so by the time they get back together they're both more mature & prepared to be in a relationship with each other. i'd like to have him write her another love song & have him sing it for her right before they get back together.

-sly still gets rejected by florence & some part of him still blames walter but much less so than in canon. i'd get rid of all the "you made her fall in love with you/you stole her from me" nonsense and make it more like he's projecting his own issues with self worth onto being upset with walter. considering his primary arc throughout the season was around his self worth, what am i really doing with my life, will i ever find some after megan, etc, it would make sense for him to take the rejection poorly and lash out but not so much out of direct jealousy towards walter but more in a sense that he feels overshadowed by him, and envious of the fact that walter has paige while he doesn't have anyone.

the aftermath/reconciliation arc i imagine for sly would be more about finding his own sense of self worth without feeling like he necessarily needs to "find someone". but then i think i'd still have him find someone anyway because it'd be nice and he deserves it. as much as i shipped him and florence during early s4 i don't think i'd have it be her, more likely i'd invent a character for this.

-florence isn't romantically interested in sly OR walter. she sticks with walter on scorpion 2.0 purely because they're friends and they work well together (this would probably be something paige gets EXTREMELY jealous about & would be one of the things she spends a lot of time working through.) also because it'd be pretty awkward to join centipede after turning down sly. i never really figured out what i'd do with her after that, i feel like we didn't really get enough info in s4 about florence as a character rather than just like, florence as a plot device/source of drama. to be fair it's been a while since i last watched s4 but even looking through my old notes i don't have anything about like an arc i'd like to see for florence so i feel like i'm remembering correctly & there's just not a whole lot to go on.

i also wasn't able to come up with any reasonings for toby & happy to leave that i'm truly satisfied with lol. all throughout s4 i was just waiting for them to decide to adopt WAY sooner because i mean. it's the OBVIOUS choice for happy & absolutely ridiculous that they jumped through so many hoops & did all these fertility treatments. should NOT have taken her so long to realize she wanted to adopt.

if it were up to me i would've had happy decide she wanted to adopt as soon as she decided she wanted kids. so in this scenario maybe i'd have them already with an adopted kid & they decide to leave & be part of centipede because they're just stressed out from all of the drama. i don't feel like there's much i'd need to change with cabe here, it's obvious he'd stand by walter.

i was never able to really wrap my brain around ralph in this scenario maybe bcus i'm not good with kids lol but i was LIVID that they just left him out of the finale completely when he should've been one of the most important characters to take into consideration for something like this?? yes obviously ralph has grown up a lot since s1 but when the team split in the past how it would impact ralph was ALWAYS a big thing that was taken into account. he wanted paige & walter to get together so badly, he always wanted walter to be his dad (personally i always thought it was kind of dumb how that stuff was written - imo walter WAS his dad from early on. he doesn't have to be dating paige to be ralph's dad. the found family show needn't be so beholden to the nuclear family but that's a whole 'nother post!) and they just did not include him in the episode or even bring him up.

anyway this post kind of got away from me but that's pretty much the gist of my thoughts on the finale & what i would have done differently!

#sorry it took me so long to respond to this one i've been going through some shit but genuinely appreciate you asking & giving me the #opportunity to go off about all of this. much needed distraction to switch my brain into hyperfixation mode #cbs-scorpion-coffee-shop #ask #scorpion #cbs scorpion

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