#that doesn't work

Traveler: This is Thoma! He is a good friend! He threw a spear in the Shogun's face to save us after she knocked me out!

Traveler: This is Kazuha, a wanderer originally from Inazuma! He blocked the Shogun's Musou no Hitotachi and saved us!

Traveler: This is Ei, a good friend of ours, don't mind the attempted murders!

Traveler: This is Childe, he is good, I promise!

Traveler: This is Shenhe, we fought a sea monster together!

One of the things that I was looking forward to this season was them being able to tell a present day story considering so much of season one hinged on the “ten years ago” past with Rosa’s death and what happened at the end of high school. I was just always frustrated in season one because it felt like they were spending so much time revealing what happened back then, that they were almost using it as an excuse not to develop the relationships in the present day. I was hoping that season two would allow for a change in that kind of storytelling, which would hopefully make the plot less confusing and make the character relationships more clear. 

And instead, not only did we get all of the 1947 flashbacks affecting our current characters, we also, in the last couple of episodes have had to deal with another past plot coming forward with what’s going on with Helena and Jesse and Mimi about Jim Valenti and Rosa etc. 

The 1947 stuff hasn’t bothered me as much because it’s more about the aliens trying to understand their identities, which is a plot that I feel should be far more at the forefront of this show and it’s just...not, inexplicably. And we also had Alex trying to reconcile the past and how that plays into maybe his future relationship with Michael or at least their current friendship. And you had Maria discovering her true history as well, which has allowed her to integrate more with the group. All of those are positive aspects. 

But then we have this whole mess with Helena and Jesse and that to me has been worse than even the frustrations I had with the Rosa mystery last season. With Rosa, that was the mystery from day one. I still feel like it hindered the present day storytelling, but at least you knew sort of what you were getting into with that. With this, you’ve just had Jesse hobbling around doing vaguely shady nonsense in the background in a couple of episodes but they never spent any real time on him. Did we know he was developing this atomizer? Did he already have it? I still have no idea. And what exactly was his game with Flint and Alex etc? 

And then you have Helena who didn’t come in until half way through the season for one episode and was slightly off but then they reveal that she’s been doing all of this stuff behind the scenes with very little hint that any of that was happening? I know she was apparently in the blond wig in another scene but we hadn’t even met her yet so how would we ever have know to look? 

And then there’s Mimi, who was “abducted” right away this season but there were no stakes in getting her back and the investigation into it was so lackluster. The boot maker nonsense is still completely baffling to me. Sheriff Valenti’s investigation into it was basically nothing. And once she was back, she was immediately shoved off screen again. We’ve never really gotten a handle on who Mimi is and no one besides Maria seems to really care. 

And then you have the Valentis. We got a lot of information about Jim Valenti last season with the Rosa mystery but very little this season. And Michelle has been in and out of the story looking into Noah’s death but we haven’t seen her since Max smoothed things over. 

I just feel like if you’re going to try and tell this story about the parents of our characters and have this conflict between them suddenly take center stage at the end of the season, then we should have seen this story more all along, not just in fragments that no one understood or was even really looking to understand.

And once again, you have this story that is hinging on the past and it feels like they wanted it to be this twist at the end so they just didn’t bother telling the story really until now and I just don’t think that’s the best way to write the show. And it’s hinging on a past that is so hazy for all involved because we really don’t have much information about it other than what we found out in season one. 

I just don’t understand the decision to do this kind of story once again because I don’t think it worked all that well last season and it definitely hasn’t worked well this season as is evident by the fact that they entire tag is just like “wtf is going on?!” 

It does make me think about the fact that Carina does come from the TVD and the Originals world where pretty much all of their stories hinged on the past because the characters were vampires and they did have long histories. With TVD especially though, they kept reaching further and further back in the past to get their story content and it just kept getting more and more convoluted as the seasons continued and it makes me highly concerned for the future of Roswell, at least on those terms.