First of all, I absolutely love this series to death. Keeping that in mind, there were a few things that I couldn‘t quite wrap my head around.
So after I watched S3 episode by episode every week my main criticism afterwards was that Nate was allowed back so easily on the team and that he didn‘t really have a redemption arc and so on. After rewatching it now, I still think it could have been handled a bit better but I‘m not as annoyed at it anymore. Instead, I think that there are 3 much bigger issues with S3:
First, the ungodly amount of side plots that I just couldn‘t care less about. Everything related to KJPR, Zava, Nate‘s love life, the fortune teller and so on. Honestly I started skipping through some of it because I was too bored watching it.
Second, to have all this screen time for these subplots they dropped some already established ones that I actually did care about. For example, Phoebe barely had any screen time and I was excited to see what was gonna happen between Roy and Phoebes teacher after S2.
And third, the in my opinion unresolved (and unsatisfying) ending and plotlines. The Roy/Jamie/Keeley situation wasn‘t really solved. Beard getting married to an abusive PoS. The Dr Jacob situation. Richmond not winning the league??? Seriously, would it have been any worse for the plot to give people the happy ending they were waiting for?? And lastly the biggest issue: Ted‘s ending. To me it didn‘t feel like he is now in a better place than when he started at Richmond or after the promotion. He actually regressed during S3 and yes he‘s now back with Henry but I just can‘t help but feel like he‘s not in a happy place.
Feel free to discuss
I always thought they were setting up Roy/the teacher. I thought the Keely story was to help him see his own self-worth. I thought Keely and Jamie would end up together because of his completed arc.
Yep. The teacher was a plotline that went nowhere. In the end she was just a nice person who liked Roy. Cool. What was her storytelling purpose?
The reality she was basically just a S2 Shandy/Jack character for Roy- someone for him to play off of in solo stories. There was no further purpose to the character than that and they were not important to the plot (the teacher was just better received). The fact that the writers gave her the full first and last name of one of the writers proves that.