It’s that time again. Where I cover the core overarching problems of the series in a season recap. Just take note that what I covered in the past recaps still applies the second half of season two, and what I talk about here can go towards past seasons as well; I’m just trying not to repeat myself.
And here is the past recaps if you’d like to catch up...
Episodes covered in this recap are
- Rapunzel: Day One
- The Brothers Hook
- Mirror, Mirror
- You're Kidding Me
- Rapunzeltopia
- Lost and Found
- Destinies Collide Part 1
- Destinies Collide Part 2
Confused Ordering of Episodes
In the time since I have written their reviews, Rapunzel: Day One and The Brothers Hook have switched places once more on the Disney Plus app. Your guess is as good as mine as to what the true order of events is. If The Brothers Hook is indeed suppose to come before Rapunzel: Day One then someone somewhere didn’t communicate things clearly to the marketing team.
Meanwhile season one is still out of order on the Disney+ and I don't expect that to be fixed any time soon. It’s a minor complaint but it’s just another indicator of the poor management that this show suffers from.
Poor Foreshadowing
The second half of season two, and it’s season finale in particular, is meant to be the resolvement of a lot of plot points that have been in the works since the beginning; giving answers to many questions that the fans had been asking.
Supposedly anyways. It winds up not achieving that because the foreshadowing leading up to most of the twists was practically nonexistent. What we did get was too little, too late and far too bleeding obvious in order to make up for the poor planning thus far.
Too Much Exposition
A consequence of the this lack of foreshadowing and poor pacing mean that we’re given important information in a bunch of info dumps. There’s no less than five exposition speeches from three different characters in the last three episodes.
The audience has less means of absorbing needed information when it’s just told to us once by a character rather than shown. Moreover, what we’re told is sloppily presented, confusing, and contradictory. The explanations provided actively undermine the story rather than progressing things. Which is the opposite of what exposition is suppose to do.
Things Don't Add Up
The flip side of not having enough foreshadowing for certain plot points is that we get hints for things that’ll never be resolved or wind up being contradicted later on. What we get is a mess of an overarching plot where the villains’ plans don’t make sense and the heroes look like unthinking asshats.
Conclusion
This is why you plan things out before you start animating and why you don’t waste years of pre-production by changing the story in significant ways at the last minute. The story arc that Tangled started out with is not the one that we finish with come series end and it’s pretty plain to see that writing out certain characters and plot points wound up sabotaging the show.
Anyways that it for season two. Starting next week we’ll embark on the final leg of the journey with the first half of Rapunzel’s Return. In addition to this I’m going to be streaming season three episodes on the Tangled Discord as I go through them if you would like to join. No set times or dates, but I will acounce when the streams will be in the debate channel beforehand.
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