You know something I don't see anyone talking about regarding the Pjo Show?
The generation switch. Percy and his friends are firmly Gen Alpha in the show, but those of us who grew up reading the books know damn well Percy and his friends are a Millennials through and through.
When the show was first announced officially, I put together a playlist that I named PJO Show Better Deliver. It was composed of songs like The Middle by Jimmy Eat World, I'm Just A Kid by Simple Plan, I Just Wanna Run by The Downtown Fiction, All The Small Things by blink-182, and a lot of other alternative rock songs and some pop songs from the early 2000's that make for a perfect soundtrack when reading the books if your imagination is as vivid as mine. We all know Percy was born in 1993, he would've grown up listening to all of those songs and they would've undoubtedly enhanced several scenes on a screen.
My disappointment when not only did they not have anything like that in the first two episodes(which is all I was able to force myself to watch when the show first dropped and I immediately realized that it was ass), but that they basically made the show digestable for the average Gen Alpha kid in this day and age in the most demeaning and miserable way, I deleted that playlist because it just made me mad. The PJO Show did NOT deliver and I felt like an idiot for putting my trust in Rick and especially Disney even more so. Even if Rick was less involved in the series and Disney had more creative control over it, they would've still turned it into something unrecognizable–I learned that the hard way when they made an Artemis Fowl Adaptation that was so astronomically bad that I've blocked the actual movie from my mind since watching it years ago. Disney ruins everything they touch. I don't trust them with anything anymore.
It upsets me that something that was supposedly being made for the fans who actually read the books and were there when the movies released and Rick shat on them as terrible adaptations was turned into an even shittier adaptation by that same man who lied to us all. Somehow, the movies are now more similar to the books than the show is.
If you watch the PJO movies, you can tell what they're adapting, even if they're doing a sub-par job at it. I'm exposing myself here, but I saw the movies first and then read the books afterward because I loved the movies. I noticed the differences, but also the similarities as I read. If you watched the show and then really liked it and read the books, you'd be severely disappointed or very confused about pretty much everything. That's a huge problem.
And I'll say it because I'm not afraid to be honest, I still kept loving the movies. Even if they were bad adaptations, they had good soundtracks, good acting, good humor, and are at least entertaining to watch. I can watch the movies as entertainment and enjoy them. I can't watch that show and do the same thing, because it held my hopes and trust and then stomped on both and is nothing like the books I hold so closely to my heart. Those books and those movies were there for me when I was going through the worst time in my life. I still reread and rewatch both. But this show? This show could not have done that for me even back then when I was still a kid. It has little substance in the way of cool mythical and magical encounters with reality mixed in. It's bland, it's dry, and it is borderline soulless.
This is not me saying Rick isn't allowed to change anything in his own series. I don't like race swapping whatsoever, but I'm not gonna shit on Annabeth's actress for it. I honestly figured that they would just give Leah grey eyes and the cuntiest blonde wigs they could find and send her out to be the self-righteous and capable Annabeth Chase I knew. I thought they would give Walker a black haired wig and green eyes(I could even let go of the green eyes since his are blue because the thing about Percy's eyes is that they're just like his father's and always are compared to the ocean. He'd simply have New Jersey Seaside Ocean Eyes instead of San Diego Ocean Eyes, either one works). I thought they'd find a guy who looked as similar to Walker as they could but they rlly didn't even bother trying with that. Rick changed things that were such important parts of his own story without beating an eye, but the biggest offence was how he just completely rewrite the entire story.
I always loved that the first book was not afraid to be gritty in its own way–referencing Percy's abuse at the hands of Gabe. But in the show, they neutered Gabe and then still turned him to stone like it was justified. Bro?? He was kind of a butthead, but nothing he did or said in the show warranted being murdered by Medusa's head even if it was an accident in the show. Were we supposed to laugh at that?? What's wrong with Rick and the producers?? The PJO books are so good at being silly and funny and yet serious and heartbreaking too. Some of the more gritty details flew right over my head as a kid, but as an abused kid who grew up poor and had ADHD myself and who often reacted to my situation the same ways as Percy does in the books, it felt good to be able to relate to a character in such a meaningful way. In the show, they toned everything down randomly bc it was apparently too gritty?? THAT'S A PART OF LIFE. I wouldn't expect a rich white man with a happy family to understand that though.
This turned into a bit of a rant about the show in general, but let me feel it back a bit now–Percy is a millennial and we should've gotten the most peak early 2000's media-type show. We should be gotten something accurate and so much better than this literal shitshow.
