Hm. I liked the Annie bits in the last episode more than I liked anything else in it, I think. The convention plot was weak, IMO.
One of the things that I enjoyed about the better Harmon episodes (having not seen the worse ones) was that strange feeling that, to a great degree, they were about the characters themselves playing a game with undue seriousness, but still remaining true both to their own character, and to some degree, the in-game character except for one-off moments that remind us that the game-within-the-show isn't real, but it still felt like it might be. And somehow, through that, there was character development -- we got to see different facets of characters, even if and when they were tinged by the weirdness around them. Law and Order episode comes to mind. And, I think, it took a lot of understanding of both the characters and the genre itself, to make that happen.
In the new episodes, it felt like the characters remained static themselves in a wacky setting. Maybe that's how it was in the weaker Harmon episodes, and I am giving the show the benefit of the doubt. But that's the difference, and that's what I miss.
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Date: 2013-03-07 01:21 am (UTC)One of the things that I enjoyed about the better Harmon episodes (having not seen the worse ones) was that strange feeling that, to a great degree, they were about the characters themselves playing a game with undue seriousness, but still remaining true both to their own character, and to some degree, the in-game character except for one-off moments that remind us that the game-within-the-show isn't real, but it still felt like it might be. And somehow, through that, there was character development -- we got to see different facets of characters, even if and when they were tinged by the weirdness around them. Law and Order episode comes to mind. And, I think, it took a lot of understanding of both the characters and the genre itself, to make that happen.
In the new episodes, it felt like the characters remained static themselves in a wacky setting. Maybe that's how it was in the weaker Harmon episodes, and I am giving the show the benefit of the doubt. But that's the difference, and that's what I miss.