I think I've just been grumpy for the past week of Fishtank but the ending sucked to me. Skipping over Frank in the curtain call (of sorts) was funny.
Maybe I have rose-tinted glasses but I don't feel like the highs of season 2 surpassed season 1's and its lows, which drug out for hours or days, were abysmal. When season 1 ended and everyone walked out the back door I thought, "Huh... now what?" and was kinda sad it was over. With season 2 I've counted the days for 2 weeks and was wanting them to hurry things along but didn't want to tune out since I was curious how they'd attempt to salvage this season and how it'd compare to season 1's save by Sam. Well they never really saved it and it was a boring day. I feel bad for Tay but honestly don't care that she lost, she was deliberately screwed over by production as far as I'm concerned. Brian showed up because Jet liked him and that's literally the only reason he's there which is a great reflection of what Jet is all about.
A terrible season that I think is more representative of what Fishtank is and will be than season 1 where they got incredibly lucky on top of having an incredible cast. I'll probably just pop in here and there for season 3 but can't see myself caring all too much anymore.
I didn't think Season 1 was very good. I thought it had potential though, I didn't watch the last 3 weeks of Season 1 as, after Jon left I didn't think there was anyone interesting left on the show. I just sort of followed along with the thread.
I had hope Season 2 would be a step up. I think 10 Fish was a better starting place than 8 for a 6 week run, and I think the cast was a lot stronger. I actually liked the ploy of not trying to avoid secret MDE fans, and instead convincing them they all were fill ins that had to keep their knowledge secret. The burn outs of the first week were a disappointment, but after that I think they got into a pretty good stable position.
However, Sam and Jet really fucked up managing this thing. They played favorites as opposed to producing good content, they took their weak pool of remaining fish and weeded out and worked against the ones that were entertaining. Sam flipping on kicking out TJ and having him kick Taylor broke the tank. As much as Jet catches the flak, Sam fucked up the Season. Because from that point on, the entire Season was seeing if they could take this retarded spaz and make a man out of him. They brought back Jimmy to act the villain and get knocked down by TJ as a massive fluff piece.(I still 1000% assert that was a set up, you are retarded if you thought Jimmy was there long term with two bodyguards around him all the time, and that Sam was really pissed off because "(Jimmy) was suppose to make the show good". If Sam was actually mad, it's because he was suppose to take a fall for TJ and he quit instead). After three weeks this had failed and their choice was to cut their losses and give the win to the popular Shinji or the actually competitive Tayleigh, or drag the TJ growth arc they had sunk the show with to the end.
Season 1 was Fake and Gay because they ended up at the halfway point with only one clear winner Josie, and got lucky that Letty and to a smaller degree Lance carried along a charade to make it seem like the Season 1 wasn't a flop. Season 2 was Fake and Gay because Sam and Jet marionetted around the eventual winner, and the actual people playing the game were suckered into suffering for half the run so that Sam and Jet could make Season 2 seem like it was an amazing story.
One is making the best out of a bad situation, and the other is making a bad situation out of the best they had. I don't like Pro Wrestling, and that is what this Season felt like, a big gay story pretending to be real. I'm out, maybe I'll follow along here to see how bad Season 3 is, but I'm not engaging with it from the start like I did Season 1 and 2. I only came back to watch the TJ/Shinji fight because it sounded like it was a complete train wreck and that's really all it was.