🤔🤔🤔🤔

my general sentiment on this season is a big meh lol. like all the criticism and worries i had about where the season was headed and about kamdar being nothing more than a lightning rod all stumbled into fruition. my biggest criticism is that the writing seems intent on delivering shocking moments and stressful situations at the sacrifice of interesting stories and actual character development. the biggest example of this is the show choosing to drop chris’ story, the far superior and more emotionally-compelling storyline, halfway into the season and choosing to fully focus on kamdar instead. i really think it was a gigantic misstep to veer into this direction and a misread of what drew people to this show in the first place. to me, the real strength of tcl was always, always, the chemistry between arman and thony, and between thony and fiona. people watched because of the actors’ chemistry; even in s1 the mob drama was always less interesting and draggingly melodramatic at times. but people put up with it because it was the vehicle to showcase the chemistry and relationships that intrigued everyone. s2 literally went full throttle into mob territory and sacrificed the emotional side and the relationships that made us care in the first place. and that is the true fumble here.

i do get frustrated reading some of the postmortem interviews with the EPs because i really want to know what progress they think this season made at all. almost all the new characters that they brought on have died (shoutout to JD for living to see another day!), the triangle of death is still in tact, thony is still single-mindedly focused on her family, luca is still sick, the de la rosas are still undocumented, arman still has no power, etc. and everyone is so miserable 🥴 something something about a clinic and helping out the community was completely overshadowed by this kamdar storyline which ended exactly how we all knew it would end, with him dead. oh i guess g*rrett miller died too. overdue imo but i’m sorry to his fans for your loss lol

one thing i will say is while i think it was very deliberate to have thony do unlikable things and behave antagonistically, i still think a lot of the fandom is being unfair with how much hate she’s getting and letting recency bias cloud their judgment. this is the same character that agreed in a second to sell street drugs because arman looked sad and then immediately incriminated herself when they got caught, literally only to protect arman. it’s a complete disservice to the character and franking oversimplifying just to write her off as selfish. she is anything but selfish imo. i do believe, and the EPs have said as much, that she has a tendency to be arrogant and to think she knows better, and this stems from her career as a surgeon. but to say she hasn’t paid for her mistakes is crazy lol, the entire two finale hours was basically nothing working out the way she wanted, and everyone telling her off and giving her shit for what she’s done. which for the record i liked; thony has often acted purely on instinct, but i like that this time that she had to lose and that the same instinct led her to make bad decisions. makes for a more compelling character vs. one who is always doing the right thing. i will say that i think reverting to anchoring all of thony’s actions to be about saving luca’s life was a narrative mistake. not only because it only underscores what we already learned about her in s1, but because atp (and i hate to say it) luca is nothing but a plot device imo. like people get frustrated when luca is thrust into the forefront again because aside from being a cute kid who is unfairly ill, there’s nothing else to the character. is he not literally only there to be sick and to cause thony to act irrationally? instead of investing time into actually making luca a well-rounded character with a personality, we wasted scenes on the likes of kamdar and maya, none of whom ended up having any staying power on the show anyway, and the stakes ended up feeling repetitive. i cannot understand why there was a need to bring on so many new (and temporary!?) characters in a short season when you already have existing shallowly-written core characters that the audience actually wants and needs to know more about.

i’ve already made my opinions on love triangles very clear lol and it still stands. like if you’re a fan of any of the characters of arman, thony, or nadia, i cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone would want this triangle to continue. it’s horrible for all of them; it’s unattractive to see arman continue to divide his heart between two women; it’s depressing to see thony reduce herself to an emotionless robot because she has to shut arman out; and it’s ridiculously unrealistic to think that nadia would still put up with arman after all the arguments they’ve had about thony already. if you’ve read any of the postseason interviews with melissa carter and miranda kwok they seem pretty intent on continuing to ride this out. i’m flummoxed because like what more is there to explore???

in one of the interviews, they said that they had to slow down armony because they went too fast in s1 which is wild to me when that’s one of the few reasons why people tuned in in the first place lol. the philosophy behind thinking that when a couple gets together it becomes boring is flawed and imo more of an indictment on the writing if interesting stories can’t be told with your leads in a relationship. miranda kwok said that the bond between arman and thony will be strengthened after surviving what they went through in s2, but literally none of that was communicated to the audience lol. melissa carter said there was an opportunity for more romance in s3 because there was none in s2 but like y’all literally wrote it that way 🥴🥴 i really do think the writing massively overestimated everyone’s patience and tolerance for nothingness and crumbs. it might have been more tolerable if the rest of the show was just as compelling, but imo it just isn’t so s2 was really just watching this show shoot itself in the foot repeatedly lol. fwiw i think a push and pull between these two could have worked but s2 was literally all pull lmao; like if you have guaranteed five seasons to arc out a molasses-paced relationship then sure but we’re barely scraping by here lol 🤧

I honestly think her ‘betraying’ Arman has been a bit overblown, at least only judging by what went down this week. Was it harsh to question Arman? Sure maybe? But I dunno she wasn’t exactly wrong, the drugs were already on the way via Kamdar, vs. all the variables and unknowns that would come up if he died and they had to find their own way to get to the drugs. Like imo it was less about not trusting Arman vs. going with the sure thing for the sake of Luca. I hated seeing them fight but both had points tbh.

And as for Thony keeping Kamdar alive, well I mean I see it less of a betrayal as much as a clear crossroads of motivations. Thony was extremely clear with everyone that she couldn’t have Kamdar die, and also mind you she spent basically all day trying to reach out to Arman who ignored her. And per her scene with Nadia, she was really just asking them to *wait* — wait until the drugs were secured for Luca. When they kept blowing her off, she was pretty much left in a desperate situation. And also let’s not forget that before Kamdar collapsed, Thony was at Fastlane to beg for Arman’s life. She never betrayed them by giving up their plot to kill him, she was just trying to find another way. Which by the way has always been what she’s tried to do, it’s just in this episode it didn’t work out as nicely as it has in the past.

The only real bad thing she did to Arman was siccing an emotional Miller on him and she didn’t even know the extent of what she was doing. She had no idea they found Arman’s print on the gun, she had no idea the danger she was putting him in. She’s certainly guilty of being myopic but not intentionally putting him in harm’s way.

I do want to bring up that the more I sit on it, the more annoyed I get at Nadia gaslighting Thony about equating keeping Kamdar alive to killing Arman. Obviously I understand it’s out of concern for Arman but like what is she supposed to do with that lol. It literally puts Thony in an impossible situation. And notice how it’s not Arman who says this to her because he knows who Thony would choose. This is why I don’t think their relationship will be that strained coming out of ep 10. Ultimately Thony choosing Luca over Arman, over anyone, should be the least surprising thing. As much as we all would love to see Armony, people ought to remember the reason Thony got into the mob business in the first place. She would sacrifice anyone and anything for Luca, even herself.

To be clear, like I said in a previous post, I didn’t agree with Thony’s choices this episode, but at least I can see what drove her to make those decisions. I also think it was very deliberate writing how almost every character pushed back on Thony this episode; I think the writing made it clear that she’s trying to control everything and failing. It’s really her hubris; thinking that she can outsmart everyone and can control how everything goes down (which btw definitely plays into her past as a surgeon). But reality isn’t like an OR and people are wildcards and she cannot possibly see all the angles and things won’t always work out exactly how she wants. I think that’s the main takeaway from ep 10 and going into the final two hours of the season. As far as the episode synopsis for the finale, with everything leading up to it (JD’s voice of reason, a certain character in an orange jumpsuit in the promo, the looming danger of Sin Cara), my initial thought is Thony’s plan is less about throwing other people utb as it is about herself. But yeah who knows lol.

so like every other week, i have some criticism and some positives too. i mean obviously i didn’t find the episode that ~enjoyable~ lol but there were some good moments. i liked seeing fiona and the kids so happy and smiley and i didn’t totally disagree with JD re: his pov on thony. it almost doesn’t matter if he’s being hypocritical, his concern is the safety and well-being of jaz and if he sees thony as a threat to that, i think he’s justified in wanting to protect her by any means. and it was actually kind of refreshing to hear a different perspective on thony from a character who isn’t like knee-deep involved in her life.

the shipping of it all aside, i think what i’ve come to struggle with the most this season is just how goddamn miserable everyone is lol 😭 this show keeps writing itself into darker and darker corners so that moments of levity almost seem unearned and out of place (i.e. the interview scenes in episode 5), even though more than anything i just want to see my favs get wins. like i think coming out of season 1, i was really hoping that thony would have more agency into her descent into the crime world, but really it’s been more of the same, which is she keeps being forced into situations that she seemingly can’t get out of and is absolutely miserable all the time. to me the writers seem to be stuck on making sure thony is still a relatable ‘good’ character who is just forced into criminal activity by circumstance… which did work well for season 1 since the focus was saving luca by any means. but with this second season there was an opportunity to tell different stories, i.e. stories about thony that don’t involve her carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders; instead it seems the show has just leaned heavier into that. i was hoping we would be able to see a grayer thony this season, more of her purposefully leaning into the criminal activity because it’s convenient or simply because she can (i think this is why i liked ep 4 so much lol). instead, it’s the world around her that keeps getting darker and darker and she’s just being further suffocated. and not to mention, on top of that, arman who was more or less her lifeline in season 1 is now also just as miserable as she is 💀 like it’s infinitely more satisfying to see characters we love do bad things but do them willingly vs them being forced to do bad things and are constantly suffering. it becomes too much after a while!

pacing-wise i do think ep 7 and 8 have been probably the best paced episodes this season? these episodes have at least felt like they’re building towards something and riding some sort of momentum. i guess the payoff this season is taking down kamdar, which is very meh to me. again i don’t think i’m a big fan of introducing a cartoonish villain for the express purpose of making characters suffer so that he becomes a lightning rod/excuse for everything terrible in these peoples’ lives. like even if he does get taken down by the end of the season, it doesn’t strike me as super satisfying because it seems like that’s the only reason he’s here? the issue with making a new character the sole focus of the season is that once he’s out of the way, where does that leave our main characters? if it’s in the exact same place they were pre-kamdar, then i think it’s kind of pointless storytelling haha. but idk lol, we’re still in the thick of it so it’s hard to say right now whether the conclusion will be a good one or not. one last thing on pacing — something i have noticed is that a lot of episodes this season have ended on cliffhangers which i’m personally a little allergic to; imo cliffhangers are effective when deployed sparingly or else they just feel overused and narratively repetitive which is how i’ve often felt about the episodes this season unfortunately.

ok to the armony: i mean obviously the shipper in me was watching ep 8 like 🫣 haha. though i mean honestly i don’t think it was out of character for anyone with how everything spun out — thony has really rarely shown any outward desire for arman (aside from 1x06 which one could argue was a moment of weakness) or any desire to want to see his marriage end on her behalf. and arman not being able to definitively decide between the two sides of his heart only to have thony literally decide for him. it sucked but like it didn’t not make sense i guess? nevertheless, it was still so so frustrating to watch and it’s annoying because it feels like what happened was just narratively manufactured to get people riled up lol. but getting people riled up and talking about it is likely exactly what the writers wanted? we got major baited by arman offering to stay with thony (the potential of seeing them comfort each other and emotionally leaning on one another!) only to have that immediately ripped away by thony basically pushing him back towards nadia. literally no one is happy watching this unfold lmao i’m tired! end this triangle from hell 😩 like it’s not bad storytelling imo, i’m just annoyed! personally i believe that the way to get fans to stop clamoring about a ship and focus on the core story is to stop throwing endless angst at them 🥲 they shouldn’t need to be canonized immediately but continued progression and bits of payoff go a long way. but that’s just me!