Not utilising the documentary as this season's primary framing device is such a wasted opportunity, I cannot fathom why they thought going with these recordings was a good idea and I really hope the pay-off will actually be good. It's just insane to me, because I think making Lestat more reluctant to tell his story could have worked *if* Daniel was there to badger him into giving up more details and to challenge his narrative similarly to how he did with Louis in previous seasons. Instead, nothing he says is ever put into question and he's allowed to go off the rails as much as he wants.
And sure, I understand what they were going for, making everything appear so chaotic and frustrating to portray the mental state Lestat himself is currently in, but I just do not think it makes for good television. I was prepared to deal with it for the first one or two episodes because I was fully expecting the documentaryt to be relevant and for Daniel to help Lestat sort out his own thoughts.
Instead, what we got was ONE scene of them recreating the original s3 teaser where Daniel tries to conduct an interview and Lestat for some reason (despite ostensibly being the one who hired Daniel to make this documentary) behaves like he is a hostage forced to be there. The scene very much feels like another instance of the show going "here you go, now stop asking about it" because the writers knew people were expecting at least something related to the documentary due to the teaser.
It seems like something changed during production and they realised that what they actually wanted to use as a framing device were those recordings but got stuck with the documentary (even though I fully believe actually committing to the interview bit with Daniel would have really helped some of the pacing issues this season has!).
I thought the idea of including shaky black-and-white footage during the first episodes to signify that those were shots for the documentary was great but then it never really goes anywhere? What is the point of it all? And then after one botched interview it seems the documentary is now done away with and we're left with just the recordings.
I've heard that Lestat recorded them not even after this season but even further in the future (s4 or maybe even s5?) which makes me apprehensive because I do not think they are a strong enough narrative device that they should be used in future seasons, not even if there is an amazing reveal at the end that puts them into context. It's not worth losing out on having someone there to actually challenge Lestat imo.
