Can I be *kinda* negative for a second?
I need some of these journalists who actually get a chance to speak to Tim to grow a bit of a backbone and start pushing him.
Don’t just ask him his thoughts on Buddie canon… take it further and ask why he thinks that when it’s obvious that the overwhelming majority of people watching are constantly let down and upset with plotlines because he’s refusing to go through with it.
Don’t just ask him if it’s intentional that he wrote something a certain way; ask him why he felt the need to write something in a way that he knows is intentional only for him to refuse to follow through on it.
Don’t just ask him why he made certain choices; ask him why he spends a whole season inserting direct visual and textual callbacks, themes, and plot points that all point to one singular conclusion for each character’s plotline, yet the only one he actually ever follows through on fully is Athena’s.
We need to start bullying showrunners again. We need to start actually holding them accountable for things again. Not just laughing off every bad writing decision they make, and making up excuses as to why something had to be “pushed back.” When are we going to stop believing that he “is pulling for buddie” when he constantly jerks the story away from them, and when are we going to *start* believing that maybe for some reason he actually *does* believe that there is nothing wrong with what he’s doing because he genuinely enjoys mistreating the fans that keep him employed by actually engaging with his show and keeping it going.
And while I don’t condone negativity towards the cast for writing decisions, nor do I ever blame them for things that I don’t like because 9/10 times they do not have the amount of power that people think they do, but I do think that journalists who get the chance to have these private conversations with them need to start asking *them* hard questions too. Not just the same “Oh, are you open to buddie?” or “Oh, is buddie gonna happen?” where we get the same answers over and over.
We need to start asking *them* where the hesitation is coming from in the writers room. We need to ask them why they are making certain acting choices in certain scenes: are you being directed to do so? Is this in the script? Are you being told that this is building to a bigger picture? If this is supposed to have been building to a bigger picture, why did it not go there in the end? If it’s none of those things, then why are you making those choices? If you believe they’re true to the character, then why are the leading to nothing?
We’ve gotten so many iterations of the same interviews over, and over, and over, and over, and I know that sometimes journalists questions are pre-screened which I think can be a bit ridiculous, but if they have the chance I feel like they need to take it. Especially these ones who have built a whole acquaintance with them over the years, and treat these interviews like a catch-up chat, who enjoy using their surface level buddie questions as clickbait for their articles when they themselves know they’re just saying the same exact things over and over.
Until the fire is lit under that man, he’s just going to continue doing things like this, and while I don’t mean we should send him horrible, vile messages, or try to organize massive hashtag campaigns, or even orchestrating fake charity events to try and convince him to do what we want like certain people do, I think it does help to voice displeasure. Any media created for entertainment is susceptible to criticism, and if we were able to make that man sweat over Bobby last year, then we need to carry over that same energy about everything else.
Why is Maddie a glorified extra at this point? Why are we spending so much time on extras’ storylines, dedicating entire episodes to them while our mains are all scrambling for actual depth to their arcs? Why are we leaving May stranded as a prop in her brother’s story for over half a season when she herself is a main before we finally give her a rushed storyline in the last couple episodes? Why are we constantly and directly bringing up the Buddie elephant in the room and doing nothing with it? Why are we still even dabbling with the idea of a new third party love interest for Buck or Eddie when we know the fandom will absolutely hate it, and it will inevitably lead to skme of the bad parts of the Buddie fandom treating whatever actor or actress at hand like trash when they’re just doing their job? Why are we deciding to throw massive brand new character-altering storylines in the last two episodes that derail everything else that’s going on (as much as I love Theo, this is not an end-of-season plotline that should have been sprung on everyone when Tim randomly decided to write it while they were filming two episodes before it was meant to be introduced, this should have been a long-term development over the course of at least the spring half of the season)?
I’m not going to say any more because I do genuinely not like being negative or sounding like I’m dooming, but it really does genuinely get to a point sometimes where I can’t make excuses anymore, and I think this recent trend of fandoms playing it too safe has really affected things in a negative way.
