Criticizing random bullshit about RVB again. This is about Shisno & its characters/cast but I don't remember Shisno enough to be credible (and I just don't like that arc much) so a grain of salt is recommended.
I think one of my biggest nitpicks of S15-17 (bar the more obvious flaws) is how much random character bloat there is. Even in a show with probably a hundred characters. Like, sure, the Blues & Reds and the Cosmic Powers exist for reasons, but they're secondary cast members who have no real emotional impact on anything.
PFL saga also has a LOT of characters running around, between the main guys and every Freelancer introduced. But they all tie into the story at least somewhat, between the twins showing the severity of conditions in Freelancer or even just, like, Florida existing to show how orchestrated the Director's control and corruption is (which might be a generous reading, admittedly).
Chorus does it too, with the mercs, the Chorusans, even re-introductions of characters who had no real significance prior. But they're all there for a reason. You get enough time with them to at least understand most of their roles in the plot, then they move away once they've fulfilled that role, they aren't pushed to the front outside of those narrative needs.
But Shisno has all these characters who overstay their welcome, do nothing interesting outside of maybe one decent scene they're in, and get pushed aside so quickly or used too hard for comedy that they just feel like filler to give the illusion of refreshing a show that was already kind of on its last legs.
They exist to make a joke but are introduced like they might be something more and it creates a weird dissonance between their introduction and the fruition of their character. It's one thing to have random side characters who are meant to exist for the comedy of their existence, but something about the Blues & Reds felt dry and needless while the Cosmic Powers were just egregious in number and extremely boring in execution.
The Blues and Reds (outside of Temple and Biff) generally serve the singular purpose of performing a bit that's completely (IMO) said and done after their introduction. They do, of course, have more potential before this, where they're used to frame the Reds & Blues for crimes they didn't commit, but I honestly think the tension and potential of all that falls apart when we find out they're just "evil clones" of the main cast down to personality. It doesn't really make sense, it gets old quickly (because we don't NEED identical copies of the characters we've already spent 14 seasons with), they get built up as a group then pushed to the side when we realize the main villain is just one out of their entire group.
You could argue, I guess, that some of them had their moments--Gene with the knife, Loco's time machine--but I honestly think those "moments" were MacGuffins that felt secondary to the joke that they're meant to be reflections of the Reds & Blues. They have their moment that serves the plot or character development but they're still very disinteresting on their own.
The Cosmic Powers have a similar flaw where too many of them are introduced at once and none of them have ANY staying power but Chrovos and Genkins. They, again, serve a purpose of showing the convoluted AI system they seem to be, but I'm going to be so honest most of the shit surrounding them makes no sense in RVB's universe. They're a little too all-powerful in presentation and needed SOMETHING to justify their existence in the surprisingly grounded (relative to Halo canon) world RVB exists in (in that so much of RVB's sci-fi drama falls in line with military/human corruption rather than otherworldly power that feels like some shit out of a Marvel movie).
And, to be clear, having a lot of pointless characters isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself--I feel like at least a third of RVB's named cast is just random tertiary characters--but it feels like Shisno characters are trying to replicate the pattern RVB presents in its arcs by introducing a new secondary cast to the main characters, but it completely misses what makes this pattern work.
With PFL and Chorus, your attachment to or enjoyment of these extra characters--the Freelancers, the AI, the Lieutenants--usually winds up culminating in some sort of climax and subsequent resolution. They reintroduce Sharkface and Price briefly enough to serve as reminders of PFL's echoes on the Reds & Blues' lives. Even the most comedic of Freelancers choose a side to stand on after the system starts coming undone. Even joke extras like the Zealots during BGC are used with some discretion; they make their jokes and leave, they're not set up to be much more than the bit they were made for.
I think THAT'S what makes the B&Rs and Cosmic Powers so boring to me--their setup was potentially interesting, but after that setup is explained the majority of those new characters fall flat in the way of motive or personality. There's nothing intriguing about Cronut or Surge or Burnstrom or the Fates when they're not on the screen, but the story kind of introduces them ALL with the same gravity that the most interesting of them (Temple, Genkins) have despite them ultimately, individually amounting to nothing.
I'm not really trying to make some statement here about Shisno's writing but I just find it to be a flaw of its design. I don't like the Blues & Reds or Cosmic Powers as a whole for these reasons, which is disappointing with how much potential the Blues & Reds especially had (they didn't need to be personality clones, they're wearing armor, it's extremely easy to impersonate people who are wearing armor...). It just adds to why I think Shisno is the weakest arc of the entire show.