#every time a new tmagp guy shows up i get SO EXCITED

[sillywizardvoice]

LADY MOWBRAY YOU HAVE RETURNED TO US!!! So excited to see all the eccentric old lady art coming from you guys

[fakecrfan]

TMAGP 30 Thoughts - Overall

This episode was pretty good-- but it was also just "pretty good" to me, which in itself is disappointing. I attribute this to the pacing.

Every single individual element of the episode is entertaining. The fed up custodian, his statement, Alice freaking out, the bored cabby, Gwen's triumph and smugness, Celia's betrayal--all of it was excellent individually. But the way it came together left me feeling a bit miffed.

Again, this is because the pacing sucked.

Instead of the frenetic, climatic pace of the season finales in TMA, this one was very slow and had a lot of unnecessary elements. For example, Alice arguing with the cabby was fun, but a mistake. It slowed the whole pace down, and added no information that we didn't already have. We already knew that she was chasing after them, did we really need to see every individual step of her journey along the way? Did we need to hear her questioning the cab guy?

It would have been much more effective for her to have the phonecall with Colin where she decides to go after Sam instead, and then to cut to her finding the custodian melted into the concrete. Seriously, are we supposed to be frightened at any point during this horror show, or aren't we? Cut to the scary bits already!

This underlines a greater tendency to waste Alice's screen time on stuff that is repetitive and unnecessary.

Another problem was--for once!--the GWEN bits! I did love to see her triumph and to see her utterly cold and smug reaction to it. But the stuff with her absolutely slowed the whole episode down. Especially since we cut from Colin's almost certain doom and Alice unknowingly making a Sophie choice between him and Sam--to Gwen.... getting what she wants, and laughing about it.

And then we cut from Alice finding a guy melted into the concrete--to Gwen having a conversation that doesn't give us any new information and only reinforces what we already learned from her convo with Lena.

All of these choices underline a more fundamental problem I have had with the way TMAGP has set itself up. Every time something exciting happens, it undercuts the building tension with 1) something boring 2) something slightly funny but unnecessary or 3) something that we already heard before. Usually Alice's plotlines have gotten the short end of the stick from this writing method, but in this one Gwen's plotline was actually the drag. We DO need to see the culmination of Gwen's season plotline, but it was in entirely the wrong place.

Here is I would have done it: Have Gwen's moment first. We don't need both Trevor and Lena to confirm that she both got the power she wanted and now is mega fucked, either. We only need one scene for this. One. Stop. Repeating. Information.

Then we can cut between Alice and Sam + Celia for the rest of the episode. Cut down the unnecessary transitional scenes. The cabby conversation was funny, but cut it. This is a finale. It's not time to add a bunch of cute banter if it doesn't naturally fit in to the action.

This episode was good, but it did not need to be 40 minutes and was not served by being 40 minutes. The TMA season finales were much more exciting with much less material because they knew to only give you the most important and most adrenaline pumping moments. That serves horror much better.

....but since this is how the entire series has been thus far, I don't have high hopes that this is going to change. I'll resign myself to what the show actually is. It's not bad, like I said. And I like enough individual elements to keep listening.

This also might sound overly critical, but this isn't because I dislike the series. It's more that I like the series, but not as much as I could have, and I am making note of why so that I can use it to improve my own writing in the future. Maybe if you're reading this, you really liked the slower pacing that is padded with tangential incidents! If so, feel free to share your own breakdown.