So the season finale has unsurprisingly prompted a lot of Discourse among fans, and even casual viewers. Jasika was right; people will be talking about it until the show returns.
The word 'disrespect' has been used a lot: fans have been accused of 'disrespecting' the writers by calling the finale (and many arcs we've seen in Season 3) 'bad writing'. While I do think that term gets thrown around a lot whenever something happens a fan doesn't like, in this case I can see where they're coming from.
I only watched one episode since the winter finale, but that last episode has been everywhere. From what I've seen and read (including that infuriating David Shore interview) it very much seems that they wrote themselves into a corner. They wanted a big, life-threatening catastrophe for the season finale that would culminate in Shaun and Lea in each others' arms. The stakes had to be so high that Shaun would forget about Lea's prejudice and Lea would forget that Shaun screamed at her that she deserves to die alone. Someone had to go and, for whatever reason, they decided Melendez.
I wasn't a big fan of his since he demoted Claire and generally got off easy when he did something wrong but I appreciate why a lot of people liked him. To kill a major character so suddenly, and with fairly little fanfare does feel cheap. If that were the first time this show had killed someone off for no other reason than to develop another character or relationship then perhaps it wouldn't be so egregious. But this season alone, they killed Patricia just to drive a wedge between Neil and Audrey, they killed Claire's mom to bring her closer to Neil and they killed Shaun's dad to bring him closer to Lea. Finally they've killed Neil. To what end? My best guess is that it's the same reason they do most things: to make Claire suffer.
When this show started out it was so different and refreshing. A cast of mostly people of colour, an autistic lead character, an apparent willingness to take on social issues and represent the marginalised, ...Jared. It's not that show anymore and hasn't been since season one. The cruel death of Claire's mother and subsequent treatment of Carly made me start to hate the show, to be honest.
Respect goes both ways. When you make characters people care about and then mistreat them the audience gets tired of it. If deaths start to feel random, then why get attached to a character if they could be picked off just to serve someone else's story?
Possibly worse than death is to be forgotten. Used as a plot device or to develop another character then simply discarded without so much as a word. (Let's play a game: How many women has this show yeeted into the void so far?)
Shore talked about how the show needed to stay realistic and credible. The way I laughed when I read that.
But maybe he's right. There's nothing more realistic than killing people of colour and treating black women like shit.
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