it was practically my favorite show ever when i first watched it, but upon each subsequent rewatch i like it less and less. i think i’m settling to a 3.5/5, i don’t think it’ll get lower than that, but halfway through this rewatch i realized… i’m just not loving it as much as i used to and that’s so sad to me. now i see the criticisms people were giving it when it first aired, and especially after watching Sam Levinson’s other work, it’s just glaring. the dialogue isn’t great, it borders if not crosses the line on exploitation and glorification, and the subplots just aren’t handled with the care you’d want them to be handled with (Kat). it’s great when it wants to be and lazy when it misses the mark. the main storyline of Rue mostly works, greatly helped by Zendaya giving a veryyy strong performance the Emmy was, in fact, deserved. nobody else really is given a chance to shine, but i do defend the acting. i believe this spawned several stars for a reason. but the writing is so…. bad sometimes, it just isn’t even fair to them the aesthetic does a lot of the heavy lifting to make this show stand out, but when you take that away… you get maybe 2 strong episodes. the script doesn’t hold up on its own. but i am truly looking forward to season 2. less so the weekly discourse, without fail some truly horrible takes end up on my timeline week after week the 2 bridge episodes outsold season 1 idc idc Sam needs to let the cast in the writers room more