To Filler or Not to Filler ( A first half of S1 Recap)

So we’ve gone through the first half of season one and while I’ve touched upon a lot, I think it might be beneficial to summarize just a bit and point out the recurring problems more succinctly. 

For starters here’s what we’ve covered so far if you need to catch up. 

1. Tangled
2. Before Ever After
3. What the Hair
4. Rapunzel's Enemy
5. Fitzherbert P.I.
6. Challenge of the Brave
7. Cassandra v. Eugene
8. The Return of Strongbow
9. In Like Flynn
10. Great Expotations
11. Under Raps
12. One Angry Princess
13. Pascal's Story
14. Big Brothers of Corona
15. The Wrath of Ruthless Ruth
16. Max's Enemy
17. The Way of the Willow 

Poor Pacing 

Listed above is 15 episodes out of a 24 episode commissioned series; not counting the extra pilot movie and including special hour long episodes as two parters. 

That means it takes over half of the season to get back to the actual plot. We spend fourteen episodes on standalone ‘adventures’ with maybe a beginning or ending sequence that ties back into the main story that’s mostly divorced from the rest of the episode.  And even then that’s only like three episodes that do that. 

Airing episodes out of order is part of that problem, but even if you placed those episodes back into their original intended production order, you’re still left with huge chunks of filler that add nothing to the story. 

 Too Much Filler

Out of the original 24 episodes only 11 episodes are plot relevant to the season, and only an additional 3 or 4 have anything to do with later plots in future seasons. That leaves us with about 10 episodes of just filler. Now, the first season actually benefits from having character development episodes that other seasons don't have, but even including those you still got roughly five episodes of dead space. Time that could have been spent to better use filling out plot holes and building dynamics. 

Most of the filler in TTS is focused on either redundant lessons for the mains that don't add anything to the ongoing conflict and ergo doesn’t actually development them, or wastes time developing or establishing characters and concepts that wind up not mattering in the end.   

Confused Focus

Tangled the Series doesn’t know what it wants to be nor what story it wants to tell. It tries to juggle multiple plots, characters, and styles of storytelling that winds up clashing with one another and fighting for screen time and prominence. Hence, the over use of filler, lack of step up and resolve, tonal whiplash, and an over reliance on exposition.   

Conclusion 

Structural problems, like pacing and direction, is to be expected in a series just finding its feet. What marks Tangled as a bad show is that it never learns from these problems nor makes the effort of smoothing out its rougher edges. Instead it doubles down on its flaws. In future seasons the filler only becomes even worse and lack of focus even more pronounced.