With Season 13 being over. (Praise God!!). Figured it was time to post a real review that full on calls out this wretched Season for what it really was. Don't read if you're a wuss and hate criticism.
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Frankly, this Season was doomed from the very first episode. Why? The inexcusable, never explained, and downright makes zero sense move to demote it's living heart and soul to 'Special Guest Star'. When you make a bonehead move like that and never correct it, you're doomed to have a terrible Season! It also doesn't help that the first episode put my favorite mother/son like relationship in this stupid tiff over stuff that was completely rewritten from earlier Seasons!
What else did this Season from Hell dish out in terrible mistakes? Let's see......
New opening music sucks. There's was no reason to change the music!! Now it sounds all chopped up.
Hetty continues to be treated like she doesn't matter. Seriously, when, oh when are these braindead writers ever going to learn to stop this insane madness!!! We don't want no long running arcs that never get updated, never get finished, and make no sense. (along with teasers that turn out to be utter lies.) All we want is actual answers to what is really up with Hetty!
Callen’s inability to move forward (until the literal last 3 episodes). We get it pal, your childhood was really messed up. (and most of it has been rewritten because the writers seemingly have no real memory as to what happened a few years ago). But you already know what happened, why continue to dig around for answers that don’t exist all to see if you can magically change 1 fact about it? Not to mention, ‘answers’ that completely change vital facts that we already knew! Just give up, accept that Hetty loves you no matter what, and look towards your future with Anna!
Too much changing history. It’s 1 thing to want to explore someone’s childhood, it’s another thing entirely to make those so called ‘memories’ not line up at all with what we already know about that person! And if that reason is so 2 people who have had a special bond for so many years can be in a completely ridiculous tiff for the entire Season, then you have no business writing for any show out there! 😡😡
The amount of long running arcs. Just how lazy do you really have to be to have so many arcs from a previous Season going for an entire Season? Ever thought of wrapping 1 up before the Season actually ends instead of in the last few episodes?
All 3 ‘newbies’ are freaking terrible!! Remember this old Season 1 quote? ‘This is an elite unit’? Well, these 3 are anything BUT elite!! The rookies get traumatized too easily and constantly need to be coddled, (and are 100% political token pieces) and the grumpy old fool is a complete bitch who clearly looks at those 2 failures as his ‘favorites’. Hetty would never play favorites like that, and she certainly never would coddle new people in such a way that turns them into pussies that think they can just suck up to the higher ups whenever they want!!
The idea that an grumpy old man could ever lead the team. Here’s what you get when you think this way: No drinking with the team, no ‘good jobs’ at the end of the day, preferring 2 failures of rookies over trained agents who don’t break easily, constantly insulting them, always complaining about how bad the city is, even sending them home even when the job is not fully complete yet...
Hetty would never act like this!! She loves this crazy ragtag team of agents, and she’d certainly never refer to them as an ‘Isle of misfit toys’!!
I don’t find the fool’s humor ‘witty’, or ‘a gift’ (🤮🤮), I find it stupid, and at times disrespectful. And his so called ‘good side’? That has bad guy origin story written all over it!! Have you all just suddenly forgotten what he was like back in Season 12 that easily?! Or is it just soooooo easy to prefer a total asshole over someone who thinks of the team as her family?
This bitch needs to go, and it needs to be by severe butt whupping by Hetty herself! (also, drinking her whiskey without her permission is a crime!!).
Cases were too easy or not fully complete. Remember when the cases were actually complex? Now, they either feel too easy, too cheap, or get left incomplete. AS I’ve said above, Hetty would never allow that bullcrap to happen! And if this was in any other earlier Season.... (and then there was the absurd increase in liberal politics cases.....)
The hundreds of writing errors. Seriously, does anyone BTS even remember anything that went on in the earlier Seasons anymore? All these changes to canon, stuff that happened years ago, even things that are significant to Densi, does anyone even bother keeping track anymore, or does everyone just forget easily?
Writing stunk to high heaven. Honestly, can you imagine the freaking outrage if any one of these episodes from this Season was approved in like, say Season 10? 9? Or 8? Or even 7?? This whole show would be made a laughing stock!!
The mockery that Densi’s adopting struggles made of the real process. Most aren't aware of this, but fostering or adoption isn’t an easy process that takes place over just a few months. It’s a long, intense, and very detailed process that can even last a couple of years! The fact that 2 individuals with dangerous jobs, who are probably living in a safe house somewhere because of a supposidly dangerous stalker (who still hasn't been found and is only referenced briefly now) still being on the loose, are just ALLOWED to adopt an illegal alien instead of literally any other child in the foster care system, and their very dangerous jobs don’t even come up as a liability issue in the whole process, is a giant mockery of the process itself. And it’s very wrong. But hey, I guess when you’re THAT desperate for a freaking family despite literal YEARS of joking about having babies, life just hands you freebies like that!! 😂😂😂 Must be soooo nice to live in a fantasy like that.
No Christmas episode. How was it supposidly such a huge problem to film one this Season and not last Season? We were robbed of seeing Hetty and Callen reuniting at the end of the episode while Christmas music was playing! 😡
Promos were absolute scum. Like, how can 1 person possibly get excited about an episode after seeing such badly edited and very short promos like the ones released on each episode this Season?? Might as well just have slapped a massive label on them that says ‘Hey! Nothing real exciting or shocking happens in this episode! We just have to make things look exciting because we need our precious ratings!’. Remember how awesome they used to look like, 3 to 4 Seasons ago?!
Press releases were lousy.
New opening theme music SUCKS!!! There was no reason to change it to this chopped up crap!!! 🤬🤬 (As stated above, it really does stink)
Tips for improving next Season (that are 99% likely to NOT be used at all, but an optimistic clown has got to dream):
Get a new showrunner! Get an entirely new writing team! Hire much better people who want to respect this entire team instead of make them look like fools! Quit playing deception games with the Hetty fans! (just because they are the majority of overrall fans worldwide does NOT mean they are all going to keep putting up with these pathetic games!), Quit changing history! Fire the newbies! Restore the old opening theme music! Put Linda’s name back with the other Series Regulars! Enough with the lousy cases and low stakes! Make much better episode promos! Do better with the press releases! A Christmas episode! No more Hetty smearing! No more agonizing long arcs that take 2 years to resolve! GIVE HETTY THE RESPECT SHE SO RIGHTFULLY DESERVES!!!!!!
And so many more that I’m sure you can think of.
All in all: 'Season from Hell' is putting it mildly to describe this dumpster fire.
Let's see if Season 14 continues this ever increasing downward spiral or actually tries to make a real effort to improve.