i don't think the people who say "you shouldn't hate tadc because it didn't give you lore because it's a character driven show!" even know what a character driven show is. Heck, i don't think gooseworx knows what a character driven show is because looking back on the show, its writing sucks!! it sucks so bad!!
but before i start my rant: the clear definition of a character driven show is: a piece of media, like a movie or tv show, in which the plot progresses due to character actions/wants/needs as well as character relationships with one another that involves focusing on all characters to drive the plot forward. are you noticing something here? yeah. lets go through tadc's writing flaws for second.
first of all, the audience was misled. a majority of the fandom, myself included, were led to believe that this was a lore driven show and it would expand on the lore behind the circus as well as have the characters escape or not. so, everybody, some advice before you start writing a story: KNOW WHAT YOU'RE WRITING BEFORE YOU WRITE IT. while yes, some shows can be written wonderfully while also being aired at the same time (see the Pakistani drama Parwarish by Kiran Siddique) most of the time you should start writing something once you've made it clear what your goal is with the story and what type of story you're trying to tell. i genuinely believe goose didn't know what she was doing with the story or where it was going to go and was just making stuff up on the fly. and while, again, sometimes it can work, this was not one of those times. the audience was also misled to believe that every character would get a focus episode, so when that didn't happen, fans were rightfully upset and it led to rushed or non existent character development.
now for the writing flaws in the show itself. the most obvious one: if you're going to write a character driven show, and you give yourself a full cast of characters, you have to focus on all your characters. and since there's no other place for them to go, you can't just say "oh they're not here right now, so we won't focus on them for a while." and focusing on characters means you gotta give them character arcs. just because they are stuck in a stationary setting doesn't mean they will remain stationary people. characters, like real people, grow and change throughout the story. and in a character driven story, them changing is a fundamental aspect to drive the plot. it turns into a cycle: the plot changes the characters, the characters then act in a way that changes the plot, and the plot again changes the characters. which is why it's so important to give your characters fully, fleshed out arcs and growth and depth. i mean, what else could you be doing if not focusing on characters in a character driven story?
which brings me to the main point: if you were going to write a character driven show, why did you focus so much on one singular character the entire time?? it defeats the entire purpose of a character driven story if you're only going to focus on one character the entire time. even if one character is supposed to have more superiority than others due to their role as protagonist, that doesn't mean you forget about the side characters. the reason why the plot changes in a character driven show is due to the relationship and interactions with other characters in the story. if you don't focus on all characters, they become redundant, and you might as well cut them from the story entirely. and another thing -- once again, we were misled with jax becoming a protagonist, as not once in marketing was it ever mentioned that jax would become a protagonist. so, of course, we were rightfully surprised and angry that jax took up all the screen time because we assumed that only pomni was the protagonist, not jax. so now we as the audience have been misled by gooseworx not once, not twice, but three times. so please. know what story you're trying to tell before you tell it. please.
and speaking of character arcs -- did they have good character arcs? or arcs at all? the answer is no, of course not.
pomni: no tangible arc. her only changes from the beginning to end of the story is that she adjusts to the circus and becomes friends with jax. other than that, she doesn't really change. she gets one scene where she yells at caine in eight, but that felt strange and out of place. she starts off the story anxiety ridden and ends it confident, but there's not a real reason as to why other than "she adjusted." which was going to happen anyway. so that isn't really growth for her. she doesn't grow or develop throughout the story except that she becomes an enabler for jax. and even that feels strange and out of place.
ragatha: i think her arc was going to be how to take care of yourself and how it's not your responsibility to care for others, but we don't really see that play out. she remains a people pleaser from beginning to end and while we do see events that should change her, like her talk with kinger, it doesn't seem to have an effect on her. but honestly, i'm not totally sure, since she didn't get enough screen time for me to make sure.
gangle: her arc was most likely going to be to love the parts of you that make you different through her friendship with zooble, but again, it got lost and was never finished or fleshed out. we see the beginnings of this in four and one conversation in six, but then it's abandoned and never touched on again.
zooble: i think their arc was going to be to be okay with change, but i'm not really sure. in three she explains that she doesn't like her body but it isn't given much importance and is seemingly magically resolved in seven, where they say something along the lines of "and i've learned that change can be good." while yes she did have that conversation with gangle in six, but it would seem if she's giving advice, then their issues have been mostly resolved to some degree, right? either way, we don't see any progress and kinda just have to infer what's going on with her throughout the story.
kinger: kinger's kinda just there to fill the gaps. sometimes he's a wise old mentor, sometimes he comes up with genius plans, sometimes he's insane, sometimes he's dropping lore left and right. he feels like he was just put there as the glue to hold the story together and doesn't really have a defined character arc or purpose.
and finally, jax: i don't think he had a defined arc, or at the very least, it changed midway and i don't know what the original one was going to be. he thinks none of it is real as a way of running from his guilt, his main theme throughout the story. but the thing is, jax doesn't change. he doesn't grow. he doesn't develop. he doesn't become a better or worse person. he just... stays the same abuser bully piece of crap he started the series as, except the narrative tried to get us to sympathize with him by saying, "oh, wait, look, he's got a traumatic backstory and is trans so we added some diversity! don't you feel sad for her now??" and again, while having static arcs for characters isn't a bad thing (see Zendaya's character from The Drama) the way the narrative kept dropping hints and lore about jax and never pushed him towards redemption yet kept trying to make us feel bad for someone who has been horrible to the rest of the cast since the beginning. now, if we were shown he had redeeming qualities, then maybe it could've landed. but jax never developed as a character. so he stayed the same person he was at the beginning of the story, with the only difference being that we got the explanation. not the excuse. the explanation. keep in mind those are different things. and his relationship with pomni is extremely forced and out of character for both of them AND it doesn't really drive the plot. in fact, the only character who really drives the plot at all is:
caine. while his arc's ending could've been much better than it was, it was a start and ultimately the best arc in the whole show (and that's saying something). except... it was still bad. yes, it was fleshed out, we got a lot of screen time with caine and all that, but it was a badly written arc and basically pointless as it was the blue ai controlling him the whole time. which makes the entire arc redundant and pointless because it wasn't caine's doing, it was the blue ai. also caine apologizes and the cast just. forgives him. like right away. somehow. but up until the finale, i thought it was a decent arc. had he not been controlled the whole time, had this been his own doing and his own natural descent into villany with a redemption, caine would be the only one on this list with a fully fleshed out completed character arc. but alas, that's not the case.
moral of the story: know what story you're trying to tell before you tell it, and if it's character driven show, give the characters actual screen time, development, arcs, and keep your favoritism of characters from polluting your writing for your cast of characters, otherwise your story might end up just like tadc.
just a thought.
