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hopevalley · 3 years

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Like it's great they are actually doing stuff with their characters rather than focusing on boring Elizabeth or giving all the storylines to Abigail or wasting time trying to honor a character that just wanted out from way back when (talking about you Jack) like I can't decide if its lazy writing or badly planned or if they have just had a run of bad luck constantly trying to work out their cast dramas - Daniel Lissing leaving, Lori Loughlin in prison blah blah - but i feel we deserve more

I also find Elizabeth pretty boring. I feel like part of the reason for this is that they intentionally make her...kind of bleh just because it makes her more easily relateable for the fans, but I cannot get into her character. I have never liked her very much.

I was always a bigger fan of Abigail (after all, this blog used to be named abigailscafe), but after S4 she just went off the rails and the character became a self-insert for the actress and all the fun was sucked out of her.

Jack was always just “okay” to me. He didn’t add a whole lot to the show in my opinion, but he played his part well enough and sometimes delivered charming scenes.

As to the writing being lazy, I love tearing it to shreds (as you all know very well by now, probably lmao), but I do have to give the writers credit where it’s due. How do you write the male lead out of a show without pissing off the fans? Like, they didn’t get the choice to recast, and let’s not pretend the fans in general would have been happy with a recast anyway. They spent 4 seasons building up to this big love story, so writing Jack off the show by...giving him a new posting (and having him break up with Elizabeth) would have felt...bad. I think the fans would have been livid. Realistically would it work? Yeah. I could see Jack having to leave and Elizabeth not being willing to go with him, having to struggle with the fact that her friends are here, her Found Family... how could she leave it all to go to a new posting where there might not be hardly any women? Or even other people? What about the kids she’s come to love and care about? But the fans would say, “The writers have a choice, though, and they CHOSE to break the characters up like this. They CHOSE to shit on Jack and Elizabeth’s love story.”

Again, I don’t care that much about Jack or Elizabeth, but I remember the S4 and S5 Jack fans, and they would have felt that in breaking Jack and Elizabeth up, the writers were popping a big fat squat on the love story that had been dragged out for four seasons.

So then what do you do? You kill him off. It’s easy.

But they messed this up by trying to convince the audience Jack was safe, when what they should have done is let everyone worry that he was in danger from the start. “Oh it’s fine it’s just basic training some newbies haha!!” every other word out of someone’s mouth was like salt in the wound. We all knew he was going to die. Why would the writers choose to try and “trick” the audience into believing Jack was safe?

Then there was the issue with Lori, and I think they honestly just...did the best they could with what they had. We’re lucky they didn’t pull the whole season, probably. S6 had that one episode that featured a “love story” thing with Abigail after they made her single on the show because they felt she wasn’t feminist enough or something (Hallmark proving they don’t know what feminism is 2k20 I guess). I’m so relieved I never had to watch those episodes. I didn’t need to see Abigail become an even worse character than she already was. Their attempt to edit the season left things...a bit awkward and poorly done, but they did their best.

Then S7 came along and I was super unhappy with it. Almost depressed, even. Angry? They tried WAY too hard to shove the love triangle down our throats, and they didn’t give Elizabeth any real time to process or work through her grief at any real point. Is it lazy writing? Maybe. It’s probably well-meaning writing. I’m sure the writers don’t go into these seasons intending to give us bad material. But sometimes I just wonder who they run these scripts by. Does anyone sit down with the writers and talk about their concerns with the story? Do the writers even get the freedom to write what they want or are they given an outline/story beats to follow?

And then we have to ask ourselves: are the script directives good and the actors aren’t always following them?

If I could get my grubby paws on the full script for WCtH I’d lose my entire mind reading through it, but more importantly I think it would give me some really good insight into the series—at least, the intention behind certain things.

I’ll just keep hoping the end to this season is...satisfactory.

#answered mail #anonymously asked

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