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Show is good so far, but at some point it feels like the show is going to keep withholding information unnecessarily as a crutch to artificially generate drama, e.g. this last part about looking in the eraser. The way the scenes were setup and ordered felt lazy, and did not explain or justify her actions in the story's world.
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Jul 21, 2016 17:22
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Darth Walrus posted:The eraser thing was a twofold lesson after she'd started getting cocky. First off, that life is unpredictable, and that the world won't accommodate you all the time even if you have future knowledge. Second, cute, elaborate little schemes introduce more and more failure points, so you need to nut up and actually talk to people. Those are fine lessons and all, but my problem is with how they were delivered, if at all. Basically, I'm blaming the storyboard for being subpar. Lemon-Lime posted:There's nothing artificial about a plot device where a distracted character forgets something they read that morning. I don't get your complaint about the scenes' setup/ordering "not explaining her actions." See that's the thing: that's not what actually happened. You just filled in the blanks with whatever you wanted to try and make sense of the scene, which is admittedly almost what happened to me at first. But if you think about it, simply saying "she forgot what she read that morning" doesn't even make sense in the story's world. More on that below. Here's what actually happens: She clearly remembers to give him the pencil and eraser, and executes this task. No problem. The show then shows the audience shots of the notebook saying to do this. At this point, we have no frame of reference for how important this is, which is fine so far. She begins an internal dialogue about whether it's unfair for her to feel this way (about him not dating the other girl) and wonders what to do. Then we see him hand back the eraser, and then the next line of the notebook, stating very particular and not-intuitive instructions. Nothing up to this point would indicate that she could have possibly missed this or not treated this with at least a skeptical eye. And then what happens? She doesn't forget to look at the eraser; the scene jumps to her immediately about to open the eraser cover,... and then she gets distracted by the request to do cleaning duty. So us the audience are like, oh, ok, maybe it wasn't that important, or it could be like the very first day where the letter was brief and didn't describe the consequences properly-... and then the letter is shown to go into detail, more detail than ever before, about what would happen if she screwed this up. So the audience is framed here to be like "wait, how is there any chance in hell she could have messed this up or forgotten if the letter went into this much detail about what would happen and the consequences, unlike anything prior? And the letter has been spot on correct in every case (which her character confirms internally at the start of this very episode) except arguably one, so why is she ignoring this yet again? Just check the eraser, isn't that the clear 1st priority?" And the answer is this shouldn't have happened this way, because this segment was not put together in a solid way. Moving forward, there's not even a shot of her being all "oh crap, I just forgot this super important thing I was supposed to do", it just suddenly cuts to her already going back for it, with no sense of time elapse or anything. She whips open the eraser case immediately; no pause for concern that once again the letter was right and there was in fact a super important note in there. Zero build up (aside from the music track) to the moment they finally decide to show her reaction, where she reads the note. The resolution at least makes sense in the story's world: in her panic and/or shyness she neglects to actually "tell him how you really feel" as per the letter's instructions, and makes an assumption that a shoe locker note would be sufficient to change the future. So to summarize, we the audience are led to believe that despite pondering this letter day and night (literally shown in bed and at various times through the school day thinking about the letter), that somehow she incorrectly prioritized the most important and urgent and detailed part of the letter... underneath completing her classroom cleaning duty. This doesn't make sense given what the story has provided, and the only reason this sequence could even occur was because the audience was unnecessarily withheld from information; the sentences of the letter being shown intertwined between scenes that were not put together well. This is the generation of artificial drama. While this all seems very picky, the show hinges on her interaction with the words of the letter, which up to this point had been handled pretty good, but this was noticeably subpar, and I'm not sure if the show can afford any more of these without going into "eh, screw it, just toss a bunch of feels at the audience and gloss over it" mode, which is not something I'm interested in watching. AnacondaHL fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Jul 22, 2016 |
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Jul 22, 2016 06:40
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Lemon-Lime posted:You're right, I forgot the specifics and assumed that she forgets about part of the note. She doesn't, because the show is consistent about how she's portrayed and what decisions she makes, and is better for it. We're on the same page, and I agree with the implied outcomes you describe, and no I haven't forgotten that the main character is a 16 y/o girl. I'm stating that these implications were executed poorly. I'm not calling out the concept or the source material, I'm calling out the Director and/or editor and/or storyboarder for executing the ideas poorly.
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Jul 22, 2016 16:32
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That was a great episode. A series saving episode.
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Aug 8, 2016 00:32
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