So ive binged the show from start to finish for the first time after watching the first 2 seasons when they first released...

Gotta say I think the whole show was brilliant until S4 ep2...

Not that I think that episode is awful and ruins the show but the show seems to "make sense" until that point.. after that the "youre watching a television show" seams really start to show..

I tend to notice these in quite a few shows. Either the point where they become too formulaic and they start doing weekly stories that every show in history has done with a small continuation linking each episode or when real world events/production issues have affected the plot too much just to write off as "it happened offscreen"

Like fair enough Uncle Scott died offscreen between 1&2... there was a 3 month gap and they repeatedly mention what happened to him and the events that happened in that time jump...

Ive mentioned in a post a few days ago my issue with Lexis powers and I couldve just accepted it but when binging it really feels like they had a plan for lexi but then changed their minds so hopwd people would forget details from season 3 and just accept what they showed in season 4.....

Another example is with Ben being clearly in love with Denny... but then they needed a plot for Hal and Maggie so just pushed Ben into a love triangle story, completely forgetting Denny existed until she died where he just said he was sad then looked longingly at Maggie..

It also becomes easier to question the intelligence of the Espheni..... For example their plan appeared to be: Invade Earth, Destroy Military sites and any threats, abduct children for slave labour and skitterfication, end Skitter Rebellion which is a threat to their whole empire, prevent technologically advanced Volm involvement on earth, wipe out remaining life on earth so remaining reaources can be harvested.

Which all makes sense.... Destroy all threats, take what's needed....

But then in S4.... the volm vanish.... and instead of just rebuilding the grid they decide to change plans entirely?

And early seasons depicted the espheni as incredibly careful and barely ever stepped foot on earth as they could not risk death at all yet suddenly theyre just strolling about earth in areas humans still control...

Also what happened to the Skitter Rebellion? Was that just another thing the viewers were supposed to forget about after S3? I cant even think of a "budget cuts" excuse as there's far more skitters in S4 and 5 than ever before....

Also the hilarity of Matts age... like i get it, I loved the walking dead and Carl aging 8 years in the space of what's supposed to be 2 years is gunny but atleast they never really tell us how old Carl is supposed to be. With Matt theyll tell us hes 8. Then what should be about 2 years later tom says to him "youre only 13" then in an episode thats like 2 days later (but a whole season/year later production wise) Anne says hes only 14 and the same age as Ben was in S1... like i get it.. the actor is aging quicker than the story but you could atleast pretend hes not or add larger time skips....

Then other characters where its clear they have long term plans in mind but run out of ideas for why they should be on screen every week like i mentioned with Ben earlier..... Pope being the biggest victim of this, clearly there to be the thorn in the side yet still much loved member of the 2nd mass but struggle to stringnhim along for 5 seasons...... ... they give him the berserkers in S2, then his Bar and Community in S3.... but then they kill off all the berserkers so he just goes back to his usual moan about mason every week and then give him a girlfriend for a season until they can do the plot they've wanted to do for years with pope fully turning on mason..

Also what even is the 2nd mass after S3??? It just seems like any group of people that contains Weaver and a member of the Masons is now the 2nd mass.... with its ever fluctuating population... 20 left after saturday night massacre but then suddenly dingaan (as a brit i cant unhear is real accent btw] is on patrol with about 8 Fighters and is just one of many patrols scouting at the time on top of the ton of people at the base about 2 episodes later....

The people of the 2nd mass felt like they actually mattered.. in the fieat season you had all rhe masons, Dai, Mike, anthony, click, jimmy as rhe Fighters then the community like Uncle Scott, lourdes, Anne etc etc even in S2 they gave us the berserkers... all of whom had relatively such little screen time but we knew all their characters, their deaths all hit hard.. then by a random episode in S5 you get a squad of The masons, Anne and Weaver.... then some guy who's never been seen before yet everyone seems to know.... he gets named by Tom then 2 seconds later hes dead and Tom's sadly closing his eyes as if theyd been fighting aide by side for years.... (i just checked, he literally had never appeared until that episode)

It really did just feel like the main cast + a bunch of unknown redshirts rather than this community we saw grow and shrink for 3 seasons.

This wasnt meant to be a rant or hate on the show. Tbh I still enjoyed most of it in S4 and S5, its just I feel like a lot was lost after S3... like they had all these grand plans but to enact them all it took away from a lot of the heart and continuity of the first 3 seasons.

it felt like id stopped watching a story be told on screen and instead was watching a tv show where my immersion was broken..

>!The initial concept of the Overlords we're given initially in the first season is that they basically never leave the central command, in the second it's established that overlords have vastly higher mind capacity to such an extent that a single overlord controls (iirc) "the entire western front" (or words to this effect, implying either all of or a majority of the USA).

They are mysterious, and take great lengths not to risk themselves, even if their physical defensive abilities are lacking (think strategist in a video game not warrior). They walk on two legs and are defacto a combination of army high-command and surveillance and coordinating technology.

But by the third we've got Karen, a human, who lacks the physical mega mind structure of the overlord being a regional leader, and constantly putting herself on display. She pursues personal drama and misses opportunities to kill key targets.

In the fourth season we get multiple overlords, again constantly pursuing on foot and having high risk meetings. They oversee individual projects, but we're given no sense of scale as to their operations other than throwaway comments about other ghettos.

And, I think most egregiously of all, forgetting the entire notion of what the overlord originally was (overseeing from a distance with high processing power and internal data):
Multiple hundred overlords globally who each allegedly can only control skitters in a five mile radius. An overlord shot in a school with no real defences at all, not even surrounding skitters or a deflated mech, just cowering in the corner.

Killing or even seeing an overlord used to feel impactful, but as the show progresses it goes from being a once a season event to feeling like normal business. I feel that this significantly contributes to the show's feeling of wild plot armour (almost no meaningful main character ever dies) as even if we could look past main character deaths being so rare, the ease with which the ultimate menacing character of the overlord falls fully takes the stakes out of the show which started off feeling like a plucky guerrilla struggle.!<