“The thing about the fourth season – why it’s so dull upon first viewing – is that you have no grasp of the whole story and thus no sense of how the parts fit together. It’s like seeing a tapestry one square at a time and in no particular order. But, as more squares are revealed, the tapestry takes shape, and each prior reveal retroactively acquires new meaning.”
What did you think about the remix, which sought to correct this by editing the season to be more chronological and flow more like the original 22 episode seasons? I watched both versions when they first came out, and I seem to recall preferring the remix, but it wasn’t a “first viewing” for me so it’s not really a fair comparison.
There was a lot of the “not really understanding the whole until you’ve seen it from multiple perspectives” in the first 3 seasons, but it was in more digestible chunks rather than requiring a full season binge to appreciate.
Fundamentally season 4 got hosed by the scheduling issues that prevented more than a handful of ensemble scenes.
To me, watching the remix is like reading Kant secondary literature (i.e. brutal). As I recall, the remix contained a few deleted scenes that helped explain the plot, but it ruined the brilliant "excavation-like" storytelling of the original. Like, instead of the Lindsay/Tobias/Maeby plot playing out over three episodes, they just merged them into one giant shit sandwich, completely ruining the joy of discovering that all three characters just happened to travel to India at the exact same time, stay at the same hotel, etc.
I don’t know, that sounds dangerously close to praising incomprehensibility for its own sake. “Oh it’s really good as long as you watch the whole season in one sitting, twice (you’ll hate it the first time), and make sure to take copious notes”.
I guess you could call it the “Type 2 Fun” of Netflix comedies.
It’s certainly an experience, but not what one would traditionally call an entertaining sitcom - an episodic series that only works as a binge, and then only retroactively. Now I certainly remember enjoying the payoffs at the end, but I’m not sure if that fully redeems the previous episodes for sucking on first watch. Do you *need* to suffer for 14 episodes to make the payoff of the 15th (and then your rewatch) really good? I feel like the original 3 seasons disproved the necessity of that - they always managed to do some of that “retroactively rewarding foreshadowing” without making the whole series reliant on that (e.g. Buster’s hand, Annyong).
Please don’t take this as overcritical of your piece, which I think is a really interesting insight that I enjoyed reading! I’m just not quite convinced, even with this insight, that Season 4 is quite redeemed let alone superior.
The whole Dangerous Cousins through-line aside, i never considered how incestuous the show was!
Anyway, i get what the season was going for, but it still pales in comparison to the first three (though i still enjoyed it). The structure was forced upon them because of scheduling i believe, so it really wasn’t as good as it could’ve been. And yes, I’ve watched it twice.
Phenomenal—I loved this!
“The thing about the fourth season – why it’s so dull upon first viewing – is that you have no grasp of the whole story and thus no sense of how the parts fit together. It’s like seeing a tapestry one square at a time and in no particular order. But, as more squares are revealed, the tapestry takes shape, and each prior reveal retroactively acquires new meaning.”
What did you think about the remix, which sought to correct this by editing the season to be more chronological and flow more like the original 22 episode seasons? I watched both versions when they first came out, and I seem to recall preferring the remix, but it wasn’t a “first viewing” for me so it’s not really a fair comparison.
There was a lot of the “not really understanding the whole until you’ve seen it from multiple perspectives” in the first 3 seasons, but it was in more digestible chunks rather than requiring a full season binge to appreciate.
Fundamentally season 4 got hosed by the scheduling issues that prevented more than a handful of ensemble scenes.
To me, watching the remix is like reading Kant secondary literature (i.e. brutal). As I recall, the remix contained a few deleted scenes that helped explain the plot, but it ruined the brilliant "excavation-like" storytelling of the original. Like, instead of the Lindsay/Tobias/Maeby plot playing out over three episodes, they just merged them into one giant shit sandwich, completely ruining the joy of discovering that all three characters just happened to travel to India at the exact same time, stay at the same hotel, etc.
I don’t know, that sounds dangerously close to praising incomprehensibility for its own sake. “Oh it’s really good as long as you watch the whole season in one sitting, twice (you’ll hate it the first time), and make sure to take copious notes”.
I guess you could call it the “Type 2 Fun” of Netflix comedies.
It’s certainly an experience, but not what one would traditionally call an entertaining sitcom - an episodic series that only works as a binge, and then only retroactively. Now I certainly remember enjoying the payoffs at the end, but I’m not sure if that fully redeems the previous episodes for sucking on first watch. Do you *need* to suffer for 14 episodes to make the payoff of the 15th (and then your rewatch) really good? I feel like the original 3 seasons disproved the necessity of that - they always managed to do some of that “retroactively rewarding foreshadowing” without making the whole series reliant on that (e.g. Buster’s hand, Annyong).
Please don’t take this as overcritical of your piece, which I think is a really interesting insight that I enjoyed reading! I’m just not quite convinced, even with this insight, that Season 4 is quite redeemed let alone superior.
Maybe that's the problem with modern programming. They're trying so hard to entertain you they forget the importance of making you suffer!
Oh no don’t give Disney/Marvel any ideas!
The whole Dangerous Cousins through-line aside, i never considered how incestuous the show was!
Anyway, i get what the season was going for, but it still pales in comparison to the first three (though i still enjoyed it). The structure was forced upon them because of scheduling i believe, so it really wasn’t as good as it could’ve been. And yes, I’ve watched it twice.
Twice - ha! That’s like saying you know how to ski because you’ve skied twice :)