Thinking about it all again now that itās morningā¦
At the end of the day the blame lies with Laura Shaw and the other people in charge.
Looking at the rest of the stories this past year and the end of last year, itās clear they donāt have a firm grip on their narratives and will just change things around and hope we donāt notice. And to a certain degree, one has to be flexible when running a continuing drama because things will happen that have to be accommodated for but so much of this goes beyond that. Theyāre creating such inconsistent, incoherent stories that just leave people confused.
I donāt know what the original story would have been for Robert. Would it have been the dark prison ptsd story we wanted for him? Probably not. Iām sure there was always supposed to be an element of Kev also just being an obstacle for robron getting together too. But it feels clear from what Chris has said that the character was supposed to be more of a villain/antagonist than he ended up being. The idea of manipulation was baked into the story and I agree that the special episodes, including Robertās prison flashback, were meant to be thematically linked in that way.
Iām sure they didnāt have it already all scripted out when they cast Chris so weāll never quite know what the original plan was or if all of the ptsd stuff from the John story time period was supposed to connect with this and tie together properly.
But what we were left with was an absolute incoherent mess and itās just no wonder it caused such a fracture. And thatās on them.
One the one hand we had:
- Robert being scared of Kev
- Robert seemingly attributing some of his sleepless nights and hitting Vic to Kev
- Robert feeling like he owed Kev because of the stabbing
- Robert and others in the village constantly calling Kev violent and unhinged, a bomb waiting to go off
- Robert being genuinely concerned that Kev was going to go off on one and potentially hurt him if he broke things off.
- Robert having to lie about the appeal so he didnāt upset Kev when he left
- the watch incident
- all of Kevās threats to Aaron and Robert and others
- the self stabbing still being shown and that being the catalyst for Robert agreeing to marry him and staying in prison longer and feeling the need to lie.
- add in the lying about dying to manipulate Robert into being with him when he got out
And then on the other hand we had:
- apron wearing and cake baking
- karaoke singing
- comedy hijinks with Liam
- bonding with Lewis
- Claudette taking him in being nicer to him than Charles
- snappy one liners
They left so many elements of what I assume was the original trajectory of the story in there but then wrote to and allowed him to improvise enough things to try to make Kev more endearing and then added in the Lewis being his son part to give them a reason to bring him back because everyone loved him and the general audience was favorable.
Chris and people on Twitter like to call him this complex character because he can swing wildly between the genuinely scary and the comedy but because they never made any real effort to reconcile these two opposing sides of the end product story, it doesnāt come across as character complexity to me so much as itās just the messy, incoherent writing of swinging back and forth between two disparate versions of the character and story that were meant to be and became. And so in effect, just poor management and poor writing.
I was one of the people who tried to be zen during the story initially and I did get frustrated with people writing it off because I didnāt want to see the comedy elements for what they ended up being, a change in the character and story to keep him viable. And thatās because I saw all of the other elements that got left in there and I could see the shape of that story and I naively had faith that they would still get there in the end. But the show allowed for those two opposing narratives to exist. And that caused so much fracture in this fandom and Iām still so sad about it.
And itās just extra frustrating, as Iāve said, because they so easily could have reconciled the two halves and made him into a properly complex character that really was all of these things if theyād just connected them. Instead of doing a 180 on his character and trying to get us to forget about the stuff they didnāt want to use anymore, just use all of it and let him have a proper redemption arc. Let Robert know about the manipulation. Still tell that part of the story and then let him be forgiven properly.
But theyāre clearly not interested in things like that because just look at the nonsense happening with Charity lately.
They donāt want to write their way out of a story properly. They just want to change the story and rob every character of the feelings they should be allowed to have.
Itās a disservice to the characters and to the actors and itās a problem.
Again, weāll never know exactly what the story would have been for Robert, if it would have been what we wanted for him, but it does feel like it would have been more central to him and it does feel like Kev was meant to be the villain and it was meant to have an element of manipulation and control that was more prevalent and not cut off at the knees.
And itās a shame that Ryan never got to play that (even though he kind of did for half of it since they left a bunch of those elements in there) but itās a shame he never got to tell that complete story.
And weāll never know what else might have been able to happen this year if they hadnāt been so intent on bringing Kev back.
The interview is kind of nothing he hasnāt said before but it was much more blatantly put and I think the original description of what Kev was meant to be is really the thing that people are hanging on to because it means we werenāt crazy for seeing what we saw.
Thatās vindicating but also so frustrating.
