09-17-2017, 09:01 AM
(09-17-2017, 06:55 AM)Robyn Wrote: But she remained in love with Renard long after it obvious he wouldn’t provide for or protect her.I agree with almost everything you said except for the above. Any warmth Adalind had for Renard came to a halt after he abandoned her. What little interaction they had before Diana was mutual distaste but with a sexual relationship that was more about using one another and nothing else. Diana was an opportunity for them to mend fences since Adalind herself had an about turn after her birth, she was willing to align herself once more with Renard but I doubt it was out of love for him, romantic or otherwise.
Meisner was certainly a possibility but I realised that was a dead end the moment Kelly took over and was transporting Adalind to safety. Had the actor not made an impression on the audience, S5 would have looked very different.
One thing that struck me between S1 and S4 (in hindsight) was how the show/story was split (although not evenly) between Nick and Adalind (Renard/Royals). We followed Nick's journey but we also followed Adalind's story. He was the hero, she was the villain. I never understood why we ever saw Adalind at all after she lost her powers, why we watched her gain her powers and then have Diana and so forth for a two-bit villainess. I don't think it was so they could bring them together as a pairing. It's as you said, she was a fascinating character and people responded to her and the writers obviously took notice.
During these four seasons their arcs almost nearly mirrored one another. I don't think it was purposeful at all, just a happy coincidence. The writers were putting in too much effort on a character that should have been relegated to the background. But suddenly they decided to bring together these two characters who were always on opposite ends of one another and yet always connected since day one. It's like the writers no longer wanted to split the show in half and to achieve that they put them together romantically because they probably couldn't come up with a non sexual way to do that.
Nick and Adalind have always had sexual chemistry right from the beginning of the show, their one on one scenes were a lot more passionate, I think it was unintentional from the writer's end. Adalind refocused on motherhood, that was her redemption. The writers hijacked her character growth and reworked her to fit Nick in record time but they went too far ahead of themselves. They took it to the extreme, lobotomising her personality even though it was completely unnecessary. Nick and Adalind would have been 10x more fascinating if Adalind's S1 and S2 spunk was left in tact. And let's not forget how later (and awkwardly) they brought up trust issues when that wasn't apparent before the 100th episode.
With WotW taking precedent over character work/overall arcs the writers probably felt they were stretching themselves thin. Writing on the show has never been stellar except for how creative they were when coming up with new wesen cases. The show was strictly procedural with a hint of serialisatio. It was too much to expect the N/A to deal naturally with four years of mutual antagonism and extremely bad history. In reality, they shouldn't even want to be in the same room together. Whatever the writer's intention with these two, they had far too little time to execute it and they did it badly.
One of my favourite pairings on TV was Harm and Mac from J.A.G. for a decade these two danced around one another and even though that eventually wanted to be together, it happened naturally without compromising the integrity of the characters. If my memory serves me right, they got together practically at the close of the last episode. These days not every couple can be written with this kind of "slow burn", people want instant gratification. Someone on this show wanted N/A together and then later realised that it was too far, too soon and in slamming the brakes, they damaged whatever potential they had for those who were neutral to them getting together and weren't fans.
I love them as a pairing, I didn't intend to, like Nick, I had four years of their history to reconcile even though I had been loving Adalind since Diana's birth. I'm a fan but I know it could have been done so much better by simply planning it properly so stuff didn’t happen out of sync (Adalind's ILY and Nick's trust issues). It had to happen over a longer period of time to avoid them reaching certain milestones too soon. The disparity between their ILYs because Adalind said it too soon is unfortunate because it makes Nick come of like a jerk for waiting too long to say it back, which in truth was probably the most realistic part of their relationship, he wasn't rushing into anything. Too bad the writers didn't show the same level if insight in everything else about them.