I have been trying to figure out my feelings on the show and pin pointing my frustration with the series, and I think I have boiled it down to I love the actors and characters. But I find the direction the show is taking the writing frustrating because it doesn’t feel like the writers feel the same.
The show feels very “Netflixified” ( yes this is a new word lol). They adapted a romance, market it like a romance, but continue to deliver a drama. I don’t mind world building in book to screen adaptations, but you can’t world build to the detriment of the original stories. Eight episodes is a short window to adequately tell a love story from introduction/reintroduction to hea. Eight episodes to tell those stories successfully when they go from becoming the story to one of the stories being told is impossible. Yes, the show is an ensemble cast, but even with an ensemble you have to have an understanding and of who your core ensemble is or you end up writing for more and more characters, with the same amount of episode run time.
To me the through line of these stories is the Bridgertons and the core ensemble should be the Bridgerton family (spouses and siblings), but it is very obvious that is not the case for the writers.Idk. I think as a fan of these characters it is just frustrating to see them used and then tossed to the side. Its the same pattern of don’t get them together until the last 15 minutes of the last episode, we get a handful of fluff scenes between them in the next season, and then they are written off into obscurity.