Fix The Show

[Nashville]

A thread for discussing your best/worse grievances, issues, logic bombs, etc. in the show’s plot/subplots and writing.

(Created this thread so some interesting discussions wouldn’t get lost in the episode threads)

Edited February 10 by Nashville
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[Nashville]

Copied from an episode thread:

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Frankly the whole “Lookit what I found on Reddit” part of the storyline has never worked for me, simply because it exceeds my capacity to suspend disbelief:

• As anybody who’s had any degree of experience with Reddit can attest, the signal-to-noise ratio of most subreddits (Reddit’s “forums”) is generally fractional at best and infinitesimal at worst. Finding new valid data sources which haven’t already been exploited and burned to a crisp is like hunting for hen’s teeth.
• But let’s say you buck the odds and actually manage to find something worthwhile; guess what?  Your find is hardly an exclusive; you found out right alongside whatever chunk of the 90M+ Reddit daily user traffic happened to read some of the same subreddits as you.  Reddit is not exactly a place known for secrets (not keeping them, anyway).
• So your data looks good - but what do you know about its source?  Is it valid?  Does it have any integrity issues or associations which might bias results reporting?  Is it sane?

…and that’s just three straight off the top of my head.

tl;dr: Anybody basing major life decisions on Reddit posts should probably have their mental capacities evaluated - and for me, the unbelievability of this basic premise mars the show significantly.

[seacliffsal]

I have watched a lot of shows that have an unique or quirky gimmick as the premise.  One of my favorites is Psych.  But, there has to be at least a bit of plausibility factor to make it work.  IMO there are far too many holes in the basic premise of this show to really make it work.  In every episode thread there are many posters who point out the weak spots (including me).  And, for them to base the whole revenge story on a random reddit post is too much of a stretch.  However, there are aspects to the show that I enjoy, I just wish they had really thought through the premise beyond 'what if we call it Matlock' and 'people will watch Kathy Bates...'

Maybe at the end of the season, Mattie will wake up in her small apartment, which she shares with her sullen grandson, and talk about the dream she just had in which they lived in a huge mansion, were wealthy, and she was practicing law as an act of revenge. Heck, it helped self-correct Dallas, it could do so here.

[DearEvette]

Yeah, I just wonder what the end game is? If you set up a show with any type of secret conceit, it either needs to be self sustaining or it needs to have a satisfying reveal that opens up more story possibilities.

Let's say Mattie finds out that someone from the firm did hide documents. Now what? Does she confront them? If she was going to do anything legally shouldn't she have done that in the first place? But now that she has infiltrated their firm using a false identity couldn't anything she finds be suspect?  And even then what is her end goal? Did she want to expose  the firm? Ok but newsflash, opioids are still on the market and your daughter is still dead.

And let's say a single someone does take the fall?  Shae or Elijah or Senior (I doubt if the show will sacrifice Skye Marshall or Jason Ritter) are they supposed to turn to her with glad heroic thank you hugs?  How does she even stay with the firm? She will have shown herself to have utterly betrayed whatever "friendship" she had with Olympia.  Not to mention Billy and Sarah. 

I figure the writers have some end game in place for the big reveal whenever it happens, but much like the whole premise itself, I think it will  riddled with a lot of illogical things we are supposed to handwave away.

[Dowel Jones]

Maybe she gets thrown out of the firm and has to leave town.  She looks for another firm and sees that a couple of hotshots in LA might be hiring...

[Attatude]

They should resolve the documents story soon and move onto a realistic plot.  Every week Mattie has to remind us that her daughter died because someone at the firm hid documents.  They can stop repeating it.  Her interactions with her husband are predictable and boring.  

[SnarkShark]

I think the show still needs an overaching Season 2 serial plotline.  But a better and more sustainable one than Season 1.   Season 1s worked for about half the season.  Season 2 has to start with that resolved, with her being honest with Olympia at least, and possibly the two of them (and possibly You Two) out of that firm.  Maddy back to using her real name.  And something new as a season long serial plot.  If it's a twist plot it has to be either Olympia hiding something (not Maddy... so it would be a reversal) or the gang addressing an ongoing case with a twist that they'll have to work on all season.    No more amateur Detective work for Maddy.  Heck, even Andy Griffith Matlock used investigators.