I watched season 4 of JWCT
Remember when I said I didn’t even watch it?
I just watched the entire season (I watched it in french to motivate me, to have some kind of tangible reason to watch it, and what better reason to watch it than to see it in my dub?)
Because I wanted to know. I wanted to know if my feelings about Brooklynn were obscuring my judgment and if, apart from that, what was around it was good.
Because I loved this show and more than anything I loved those characters. I loved all of their bonds despite the fan pandering. So I thought MAYBE the season as a stand alone, and not as the ending to Brooklynn’s (and the Nublar 6) arc, has some good in it.
But now I’m finally at peace with season 4.
It’s not even that I hate it because of what they did with Brooklynn. I also just don’t like it, in the basic sense of the word, I got absolutely no enjoyment whatsoever out of watching it. None 😭
I won’t rewatch it, not because it « hurts », but because I just. I don’t like it. It made me stop caring about the show. I find it bad. It’s irritating. Makes me roll my eyes. Makes me mad sometimes. Nothing but irritation, and it’s one emotion I don’t like in my shows.
There’s one thing I hate in fiction, and it’s when you can just see the writers pull the strings to get the characters where they want them to be, and that season is them doing that for 9 episodes.
And it’s even worse when the place where they want them to be isn’t where they wanted them to be, but where the fandom wanted them to be (Heidi’s post about the Ben and Kenji scene’s storyboarding where they say that « unlike in jwcc, here I knew what I was doing 😏 » at least made it clear that they (the crew) were fully and shamelessly indulging in fan service. Because they made it clear, and they already said it in past posts, that the Ben and Kenji ship was never on the crew’s mind when they made jwcc, that they were even surprised when the show came out. But unlike during jwcc, in jwct they knew what they were doing 😏, because they decided to please the fans. And I mean.)
Now enough with the fan service.
A non exhaustive list of everything I disliked, in no particular order (that I didn’t already talk about in my post that was mostly about Brooklynn):
Kenji and Sammy doing what Dodgson tells them to do.
Dodgson puts them inside of a whatever-that-things-called-in-english leading them to Bumpy, DOESN’T go with them, and they… they trust him. They don’t threaten him to make him go with them. He has a business meeting to attend, that makes total sense, yup, let’s just ride this thing and we’ll absolutely stop where Bumpy is.
It makes no sense. It. Literally. Is. The. Most. Ridiculous. Plotline. Of. The. Entire. Series.
As if KENJI and SAMMY would believe a word a man like Dodgson says. It’s as if Tiff and Mitch had told them “wait, come on our boat, you can trust us not to throw you overboard” and they believed them. I can see the writing here because it makes no sense, the only reason they do it is because the writers needed Kenji and Sammy to end up in the jungle.
It just makes the first episode look so dumb because Kenji is all smug and sh*t but then loses any braincell he had and lets Dodgson manipulate him (by barely trying). If I was Dogdson I would have been laughing my ass off at Kenji because all this smugness only to believe an obvious lie??
The way Dodgson name drops the Gutierrez deal out of nowhere to allow Kenji and Sammy to close what we now know to be the irrelevant plotline of Sammy’s family issues (yet another plotline they didn’t care about).
“You want organic food in the cafeteria ? We make a deal with the Gutierrez ranch 🤪 »
What in the bad dialogue writing was that.
This dialogue actually made me cringe. Literally he could have looked at the camera, at Sammy and Kenji like that and it would have fit.
The timing of Brooklynn’s “character development”.
That’s why it was supposed to take 3 seasons for her to get her character development. Because Brooklynn literally changes worldview in between two floors of the same building in the span of like 30 minutes.
She’s being dismissive of her friends and their emotions (be it Darius, Yaz or Ben), she’s being especially awful to Darius when he rightfully tells her he doesn’t like her (the way she pushed him??? Get out of my way??? Because he’s not bending the knee to her???) which culminates in this awful moment where she complains that’s they are too dramatic and complicated (for having feelings?).
She genuinely DOESN’T CARE about anyone’s feelings and sees them as a nuisance, she SAYS IT, she only feels bad when people don’t like her and don’t validate her awful actions. But that’s the thing, she never sees anything wrong with her behavior.
I’m really starting to think that the only way I can find this season tolerable is if I watch it with the headcanon that between CC and CT Brooklynn developped an antisocial personality disorder. Then they would have absolutely nailed it. Then the Kenlynn scene would actually almost make sense because Kenji was so not entertaining her self-importance that she lost any interest in him because he didn’t love her. And she doesn’t have time for people who don’t even consider her.
But back to Brooklynn. She doesn’t care and for some reason, her “give a f” function randomly activates when they enter the elevator, out of nowhere. When 1 minute ago she was incapable of giving a care, it was like a foreign concept to her.
And then we have the scene with Wu where she’s like “people can change”. Yeah they can, but not in under 30 minutes, not between two floors of the same building. She genuinely didn’t care about anyone’s feelings 10 minutes ago, it wasn’t a misconception. So why would she suddenly do, what actually happened in her brain ??
Also this scene where she hugs Darius out of nowhere.
They treat her personnality, her feelings for anyone and her morals like moodswings that change based on the weather (the weather being what will get her friends to like her and give her the attention she’s craving).
And even after this realization she still acts like a jerk, especially when she talks about her friends forgiving her as if they’re just names on a checklist. Even Kenji looks disgusted, at least they kept his reaction somewhat realistic.
The car horn attracting the dinosaurs instead of pushing them away because the plot needs it.
Remember the jwcc days, when they would use the car horn to push the dinos away? Because dinosaurs are animals, because dinosaurs don’t like loud noises and naturally get the furthest away from it as they can, because dinosaurs have survival instincts. Because no animal would knowingly come towards a loud car horn, NONE in the history of the universe.
This scene is so… I have no words. Even the dinosaurs are acting out of character to please the plot 😭 It’s something jwcc established, and they just don’t care.
The plot is a (bad) paid background actor.
Even the lame side quests in Zelda games in which a random peasant asks you to bring him 10 dragonflies to do the most random sh*t you can imagine have more plot relevence that the campers’ mission this season.
Wu basically told them “yeah, go delete that random thing for me, a thing that no-one even cares about, that we will never know the consequences of, but I won’t tell you exactly where it is so that while you waste the viewers time searching for something meaningless you can all make up before it turns into a Ben melodrama where Ben…literally becomes the plot”.
And even the scene where they delete the data pisses me off, because the writers try to play it off by having the characters mention how underwhelming it is.
They’re basically using the characters to laugh at their own storyline because they know it’s lackluster. But I’m sorry, I’m not laughing with you. I’m so tired of the Marvel writing, using humor to highlight the absurdity of the story and go “yeah, we know it’s bad, see, we’re making fun of it!” instead of writing something that’s actually good.
I was primarily here for the story of the campers, but I still expected actual real stakes and motivations for the characters. And as I said. I hate the Marvel writing.
The Brooklynn sacrifice scene.
Going to drop the cynical tone because this one is actually serious and not funny at all. All of this is only my feelings on the matter.
I hate that this scene exists, I could barely sit through it. I think it’s really the moment I was done.
I don’t know who in the writers room came up with the idea that Brooklynn’s « arc » would end with this scene, but I’m heavily side-eyeing that (plural?) person.
This scene hits a little too close to home and not in a positively relatable way.
More in a “my abuser ALSO poses themselves as a martyr everytime I bring up what they did/do to me, or even only do so much as to act coldly toward them because I tend to do that with people who abuse me and that doesn’t make me an abuser” way.
I’m open to having my mind changed but it was truly a hard watch and I didn’t realize it the first time around because as I said I roughly skipped through the scenes.
And then I was like “maybe it’s not as bad as it seems, maybe she just instinctively wanted to save her friends and there wasn’t anything darker, maybe it’s not what it looks like,” but then they had her say “I just wanted to make everything better”, and the hand thingy.
I don’t know if it’s the scene or the line, or both, but If it was the writer’s intention for Brooklynn to attempt *, then I despise the scene. You don’t have to agree with me, it’s not a light topic, I’m only talking about my feelings on it.
Because how would that make anything better. Her friends never said they wanted that. Her friends were only reacting to her behaviour, and rightfully so. They had valid reasons not to like her.
It didn’t mean they wanted her gone, it just meant they didn’t want someone like her in their lives, because she was TOXIC.
But not wanting someone in your life doesn’t mean you wanted them literally d. Yet the writing, or Brooklynn, or both idk, take that shortcut.
There’s no doubt Brooklynn would feel like they might want her gone, there’s no doubt anyone in her place would suffer tremendously. I’m not arguing on a character level. I’m talking about the message the writers sent with that scene.
They make Brooklynn a martyr instead of having her come to terms with the campers feelings. Instead of having her accept that all of this is the consequences of her actions, behaviour, and of all the trauma she inflicted on them, she gets pushed into the victim postition (which was her friend’s). And they strip the others of their right to hold Brooklynn accountable because the narrative changes from them rightfully wanting nothing to do with her to them somehow being too harsh on her, because surely their reaction is disproportionate if it indirectly causes her to disregard her own life and value???
But the thing is that their reaction wasn’t disproportionate. It was warranted. They weren’t being unfair to her.
Again, I’m not being satirical in this section because I really wish this scene didn’t exist. This topic is very sensitive. * isn’t a way out of accountability. It isn’t a way to get back into someone’s good graces. It’s a very serious thing, and I’m not saying my view is the right one, I’m only explaining that I didn’t like how they portrayed it. I’m only saying that there were a thousands other ways to end Brooklynn’s story and that they just had to go and choose this one.
The second half of the season is a spectacle
That’s why I actually have nothing to say about it. It feels very fanfictionny so I can’t even criticize anything. It’s like a mini show inside a show. Dinosaurs. Emotions. Explosion. Benji.
But had been waiting since the first episode for Brooklynn to receive the ending she deserved, so let’s just say that after what they did to her in these five rushed episodes, I wasn’t very inclined to give a crap about it 🥲.
As I already said, Chaos Theory wasn’t written for me, it was meant for the fandom (and I always had very different opinions). And that’s okay. Watching the last season at least allowed me to move on. I think I will still be able to appreciate jwcc because the two are different, so my love for the initial show still remains, but at the same time I feel like I lost interest in even that 😭
I’m sorry I don’t even want to be so negative but it’s really what my experience was like watching and I feel like I needed to at least mention it with how important this show had become to me. It’s like me making peace with it. Understanding why I didn’t like it.
This is also part of being a fan, you get disappointed.
With that being said: I did really like Earnest, I did really like Ben and Yaz’s relationship, same with Sammy and Kenji, and season 4 managed to make Darius my favorite character for a good portion of it (the first half at least), so there was some positive ?
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