disaster in writing

editing note: this is a textless BT au!edit where buck and tommy talk it out and stay together — all videos used were sourced from @zainclaw's BT scenes master list which you can find here.

my last post talked about how the lead writers (for the episode) had failed to offer an equally satisfying resolution/fix to the arguably problematic/toxic dialogue they wrote in previous episodes (that they were also the lead writers for), then I made an assumption that it was due to their inability, specifically I said:-

they are just that excellent at writing in genuine toxicity into the dialogue while simultaneously being so piss poor at writing an equally genuine fix to remedy the consequential ‘conflict’

but after thinking it over, there is an alternative in mind

assuming they are plenty competent (they got the job for a reason right?) to write a fix, they instead CHOSE not to do so - why?

contrary to my previous belief, if the writers hated buck, they would NOT have him be the subject of the toxicity, because as the fandom knows, a lot of people did not take kindly to "trials and tribulations" and the strays he caught during the dinner argument - the dialogue they wrote pushed a part of the fandom to defend buck

that would mean the one these writers were targeting instead turns to chimney and eddie

if they deliberately had both of them be in conflict with buck and wrote half-baked resolutions, then that begs another 'why'?

do they dislike the characters? or do they dislike the actors?

overall I liked the outcome*, from a narrative point it's a soft reboot/reminder of the firefam dynamics (whether it’s earned is a different argument), but there were lines and scenes I was not particularly a fan of — namely the buck and chim scene and that “chain of command" line again

to me, it felt like those two things in particular was written in only to address (or rather backtrack) their awful context back in 9x8 with the dinner fight, and just made it feel more performative with being all "see? chimney wouldn't actually fire buck", not to mention the way they were trying to make "chain of command" sound like a positive

and again, this is my opinion, it just ended up highlighting how bad the implications really was that they had to shoehorn some damage control for the dialogue they had written

which, by the by, even that is too generous to say — cause let me tell you, there are probably hundreds of things I’d say a “chain of command” actually was before I’d say it’s “the thing that ties us all together, so that no one person has to carry the weight alone”

like wow, I’d say that almost counts as gaslighting with how far and away the definition went to

in fact, that line left such a familiar bad taste in my mouth that I had to look up if I recognized who the writers were for the episode (in case you didn’t know, different episodes have different lead writers) and you know what I found out?

not only are they the same people who wrote the dang dinner fight in the first place, they are the same people who were responsible for “the trials and tribulations of evan buckley”

with full offence intended, it was at that point I realized why I felt their attempt of course correcting buck and chimney’s dynamic felt a bit cheap—