What if I scripted Stephanie Meyer's "The Host" into a TV show, and I kept all the rad as fuck sci-fi concepts and the messaging about human love and resilience, but I removed all the nasty bioessentialism and openly advocating for teen girls to date adult men. What then?
Probably would keep the focus on Wanda and Melanie's relationship, rather than the love square/jealousy plot. I never liked how after Melanie started "fading" in the book she basically became a nothing character. Also the way she completely lost all sense of self and/or rationality whenever her dude was around was uh. Dumb.
Also the cast of the human survivors are so potentially interesting, but we never spend any time with them. They could have sub-plots! We could get to know them! The funeral scene of that one guy would be way more emotionally effective if he like. Actually had a character before dying.
We're keeping all the alien species as they were described, like the telepathic underwater plants, or the polar bears with hand blades, or the bats who communicate entirely by singing. Also benevolent parasitic communism. That's good as is.
But yeah every scene with Jared or Ian needs to be at least slightly reworked, so we can get them to the level of "flawed yet compelling" instead of "irredeemable assholes". And we're aging Melanie up a few years, that's going to solve a lot of our problems from the get go.
Uncle Jeb and Jamie are mostly good, they can stay. And the basic plotline of the human characters being rightfully terrified of Wanderer because of what her species has done to the human race, but as a result mistreating her, since there's no way for her to adequately communicate she's not a threat to them, and then slowly learning to accept and to trust. Honestly that slaps. I love when characters get the shit beat out of them because of Circumstances. I love when people who think that they have to be enemies, because they have every reason to be, because not only are they on opposing sides but they have actively harmed one another already, decide to become family instead. Favorite storyline, has the same vibes as that one ATLA fanfic where Zuko's taken captive on a water tribe ship, y'all know what I'm talking about [you likely do not know what I am talking about].
Basically The Host would be one of my favorite books ever if it didn't suck so bad. Also no one ever cared about the movie adaptation. A TV show could be so kickass. Thank you for attending my ted talk.
