1) Overall: Did you like TLR or ELR better? I'm leaning towards TLR... sure, because of the space and time confines of the plot it was much easier to have all the characters interact, but that's just what i was missing in ELR. When they went "We know it's you because everyone else is dead" I honestly had to pause and figure out if i remembered everyone dying, not even because they died so early on but because it hardly felt like anybody got to do much of anything. I mean, did Geoff do anything?
2) Where the hell was Ryan for most of it?? The greatest things about ELR were most people being bi and, of course, Elyse, but the plot felt convoluted and the ending was lazy... maybe i'm experiencing some form of nostalgia but to me TLR just seemed much better contained and planned out. How bout you?
i liked elr a lot, and it feels difficult to compare them since they’re of vastly different genres and scopes, but.
as a writer and a fic author -- because really, we have to look at elr/tlr as fic; they’re just au fic that josh wrote about his friends -- i can say that the problem with elr was that josh didn’t want to kill any of his darlings. not onscreen, i mean obviously, but he had too many concepts going on that could have been trimmed significantly. i mean, this was a roster of 24 (including non-combatants), and 18 roosters themselves. had they had 12 roosters, each with a noncombatant or two that exited the show after their rooster was killed, i feel like it could have worked better. i can tell josh wanted more teams, which worked against the 12 agents so the 12 agencies were born, but, for instance, moose and knuckle should have been one character, a noncombatant working outside the core. the griffon should have been wah’s rep, with geoff as her noncombatant teammate (since, really, that’s what he was). ryan should have either been given a more significant onscreen role or been cut entirely (i know, who the fuck am i). madam mariel with her noncombatant teammates. on and on and on.
the biggest problem with elr was that josh had too many ideas, with too many characters and locations to juggle, and he set it up in such a way that the only time those characters really interacted were when one was about to kill the other. had he reduced the cast and scope, i think it would have worked out much better.
that’s not even accounting for the ending, which was not only lazy and ableist but was just not very good writing. the twist didn’t have the setup it needed and so it felt like it came out of left field so josh could make a fight club reference and a shipping joke. and tbh i didn’t see it coming -- couldn’t figure out who -- because the mole’s character development and supporting cast seemed to indicate he would be the one to survive to the end, so i suppose props to josh for turning that assumption on its head, but not in the best way he could have.
like i said! i liked it a lot, but just looking at it from a writer’s perspective, there was a lot that josh needed to have done differently.