On Carolina, Wash, and Where Seasons 9 and 10 Went Off The Mark Part 1, Part 2.

PART 3 of 3

It’s not about the relationship between York and Carolina -- I was fine with the moments they had in Season 9, honestly, and thought they were a nice touch to add something to both of their characters. But without the basis and backstory that we haven’t seen yet to give this scene more than it is, I cannot even begin to care about it. I have been given no reason to get invested in Carolina’s storyline past the surface levels, and at this rate, I don’t expect to.

The thing is, a lot of this could be avoided with some very basic structural changes to the series. I mentioned before that Wash’s storyline works because it’s a natural progression, but it’s not just that....

On Carolina, Wash, and Where Seasons 9 and 10 Went Off The Mark Part 1, Part 2.

PART 3 of 3

It’s not about the relationship between York and Carolina -- I was fine with the moments they had in Season 9, honestly, and thought they were a nice touch to add something to both of their characters. But without the basis and backstory that we haven’t seen yet to give this scene more than it is, I cannot even begin to care about it. I have been given no reason to get invested in Carolina’s storyline past the surface levels, and at this rate, I don’t expect to.

The thing is, a lot of this could be avoided with some very basic structural changes to the series. I mentioned before that Wash’s storyline works because it’s a natural progression, but it’s not just that. The reason that Season 6 is remembered so fondly is because it’s a great story, first and foremost, and it’s structured like one. It starts out with exposition, setting the stage on who the characters are and what the story’s about, and works it way up from there with rising action and a few tense skirmishes with the Meta. It eventually reaches an amazing climax in S6E16, and then the resolution -- and the jaw-dropping cliffhanger of a last line -- makes it all worth it.

Season 9, on the other hand, only has half of a plot. At no point are we given any explanation for what’s going on in the Freelancer side of things, and no context for half of the scenes we see on screen. (What mission did Wash and CT go on? What is the Sarcophagus and why do the Insurrectionists have it? Who even are the Insurrectionists?) The Epsilon storyline, on the other hand, has a clear arc of what’s going on, what’s wrong, and what Epsilon can do to fix it. While Season 10 has been better on the Freelancer side in terms of what’s going on and why we should have some reason to care about it, it still suffers from the immense problems of trying to tell both of Carolina’s storylines at once.

So what could be done to improve it? Simple -- just reorganizing the seasons. Season 9 could have kept the same Freelancer side, but the present-day storyline could have been about Wash and the BGC crew, and how he settled into his new role as Blue Team leader. We are, after all, missing a chunk of development between the end of Season 8 and the beginning of Season 10, as far as Wash goes -- Wash had spent all of S8 as a villain, and in S10 he’s fully integrated into the group. The story could have been about how Wash received some kind of message urging him to go find Epsilon, and how he wrangled the Reds and Blues together to do it, and the season could have ended by entering the memory unit.

Season 10, then, could have had the same Freelancer side, and the same content as Season 9’s BGC side -- providing, of course, that the Freelancer side shows how Carolina gets her AI and reaches the point where she either can’t take it or starts turning against the Director. It could then have ended with the reveal that Carolina had been the one to lead Wash and the Reds and Blues to rescue Epsilon, and that she needed Epsilon to go after the Director.

And then, of course, the current present-day timeline of Season 10 could have formed a present-day timeline for Season 11, with flashbacks about the dissolution of Project Freelancer and how it all went so wrong to form the rest of the season.

It wouldn’t have been difficult, and everything that’s currently in Seasons 9 and 10 could have been kept, though more exposition and less meaningless action scenes couldn’t have hurt. More importantly, though, by the time this Season 11 rolled along, the viewer would care about Carolina’s struggle, and watching her deteriorate in that Freelancer half would have simply spurred on her fight against the Director.

As it is, it doesn’t. And the series is suffering for it.