#Tessa you're not off the hook either.

[wheezecheese]

It's all J's fault. If she had just kept an eye on Cyn instead of locking her in the basement none of this would have happened. If J never felt the need to terrorize those she viewed as below her everything would have been fine. She deserved everything that happened afterwards. J is lucky she gets to rot in the core of Copper 9! She has nobody to blame but herself. She had every chance to help her fellow drones, but she sided with Cyn (out of selfishness and fear, unlike V.) like a coward.

[scottmemelordstrashpile]

My Murder Drones series review. (WARNING: SPICY TAKES CONTAINED WITHIN AS WELL AS GENERAL SERIES SPOILERS.) (UPDATED for the August 2024 series finale!)

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I hate to say it but I think I'm just done with the series at this point. Or if nothing else I've just kinda stopped giving a shit. At most I might continue to watch out of morbid curiosity but I'm past the point of caring about it on any other level. I'm just here to watch the fire burn.

I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. I really did. But the problems I have with the show just kinda continue to persist. It's sort of a death by a million cuts thing where my issues just continue to pile higher and higher with each new episode.

Please don't take this as a personal attack if you like the show, if you enjoy it that's fine. You're entitled to. This is just my own opinion however if you don't want to read me being overtly negative and critical of the series then feel free to just continue scrolling. If however you'd like to know more then I implore you to click the "Keep reading" button and you can get a better understanding of why I feel this way and why I have a love-hate relationship with this show.

(Author's note August 2024: Originally I wrote this shortly after Episode 7 first came out however I have returned to make some small additions after the premiere of the series finale. That being said most of my thoughts haven't really changed much.)

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I have tried very hard to push my feelings aside and put on a positive face.

I kept telling myself "Maybe they'll get better as they go. Maybe the storytelling will get better as it goes on." but every episode I just feel even more confused and frankly kind of annoyed.

Everything just goes by so quickly, we're almost never given time to ruminate or rest. Sometimes it feels like entire scenes are missing with how it jumps between things. Hell, a good example is in-between episodes 4 and 5 where it feels like we missed something in-between. (Episode 5 in general is very confusing and probably my absolute least favorite, but that aside.) The last scene we see is Uzi and N falling asleep on the bus then somehow I guess we're back at the colony in Uzi's room and V is there too now? We don't even know V is there too until later either. At first we think it's just N but then it's revealed V is also unconscious. (And I guess also somehow hooked up to the same simulation or whatever N is? Also how do they know the parts neither of them were there for?) This is just a single example but they do things like this more than once. Jumping between scenes with no context.

It's still unclear who did what or why and they killed off Doll who was like the only character that had a definite motivation which also annoyed me. She was like the only character we actually had a very solid understanding of so to see her get killed off without a thought was almost kind of symbolic with how the writing in this show is. (Though I guess at the same time even Doll didn't 100% make sense like for instance why she was perfectly fine with slaughtering random members of the colony just like the DDs that killed her parents even though they hadn't wronged her or anything to warrant it. I understand she likely needed to due to the solver infection but during the prom scene for instance she kills two random worker drones for basically no reason, just because she could.)

I don't really get the point of masquerading as Tessa when it's pretty much stated outright she can basically brainwash drones by rewriting their memories and programming. And the whole "I wanted you to keep your original personality" spiel just seemed like a lame excuse if I'm going to be honest. (This section has been altered due to later revelations.)

The show just seems to never actually answer any questions and just continuously piles on more and more questions with the few it does answer.

But if I went into intricate detail on every little thing that bothers me or doesn't make any sense I'd be writing a novel and this post is already getting kind of long and ranty. Plus I feel like that'd be a bit petty of me to do. (In addition to just taking way too long.)

(Obviously the part below was written before it was confirmed Episode 8 was going to be the end for the foreseeable future.)

I know I said before I would reserve my judgement until after the show is "Over" so I guess I kind of lied. But since what I presume to be Season 1 is coming to a close and it'll probably be a long while before Season 2 is announced if Glitch's previous tendencies are any indication I'd say it's a decent enough time to form an opinion. If the show hasn't got me by the end of the first season I feel like something might be wrong. I will not deny, it could also just be the show isn't for me to begin with which I guess I can respect. So I won't go out of my way to say it's bad, but I don't like it. And considering there's only one episode left of season 1 I highly doubt it's going to save it for me. It feels like I'm watching the series out of context when I'm not.

Me from August 2024: So now that we know Season 2 is bunk and the future of the series if any at all is uncertain I think I can safely say the series did a really bad job of conveying it's lore to the viewer.

I also really dislike how the series uses so many "Blink and you'll miss it." moments to dispense lore. It gets really tiring, I shouldn't have to analyze a show frame by frame just to have an idea of what is going on. I hate to act like I'm an authority here but I feel like that's bad writing. It feels like the writer(s) completely misunderstand the idea of "Show, don't tell." almost completely.

In general the show suffers from how rushed everything is likely due to its short 8 episode format, but instead of trying to fit the narrative to their limitations it seems like they're trying to cram all of this lore and information into these tiny 8 episodes and the result is a confusing mess.

Now I'm not familiar with Vicker's history but I would assume this is likely his first big project that has gotten this much attention. It feels like he's trying to go way too big and it shows. The show is almost hurt by it's own ambition to be this big sprawling narrative with deep lore and intricate detail when it probably would've been smarter to go for a much more straightforward or simple form of storytelling.

I feel like it would have been a better idea to instead filter things a bit more, knowing that we only have 8 episodes I feel like they should've cut out any unnecessary elements and tried to get everything across that they wanted to as concisely as possible. Like if something wasn't 100% necessary to the narrative it should probably be removed and things that ARE important to the narrative should've been more concisely presented.

In general the show seems to suffer from over ambition, despite that severe restriction. It feels like the 8 episode limit hurt it more than anything not to mention with how expensive the series is to produce I can see another reason why they would want to rush things and not take too much time to let things flow naturally.

I also see a lot of people praising Uzi and N's relationship as well as V's "Character development" but honestly I didn't see much of it at all. Again everything feels so rushed, from our perspective at most Uzi has only known N for a few days at most same for V, it almost feels like kind of whiplash from how she goes from being uncaring psycho to laying down her life for the others.

And while we're on the subject another thing that bothered me a lot about the series was it's seeming indecision on whether it wanted to be series or not, pretty much all of the time. Characters practically die left and right in the series and none of it is taken seriously most of the time infact the characters reactions are usually "lol, lmao even." most of the time so it felt really jarring and not in a good way when V's apparent death was treated so seriously and dramatically when before characters were dropping left and right without a care in the world.

I'm honestly not even sure what Doll's point for existing even is beyond her debut episode either since she doesn't really play much of a role beyond it or really do anything too interesting afterwards. Barring the trap that led to V's death she kind of just exists. Until she doesn't. I feel like she was a waste of potential like a lot of things in the show so far. She COULD have served as an interesting foil/mirror antagonist to Uzi but that potential was basically thrown into the trash.

Here's hoping that Season 2 is allowed to have better pacing because... yeah I'm a bit tired of the plot going a million miles at once.

During GlitchX it was hinted that Season 2 might happen and I recall Liam saying something implying that Season 1 is "Just the setup." so one can hope I suppose.

Me from August 2024: Yup, unfortunately we know now none of that is happening. Oof.

Anyway yeah, probably not going to be discussing it as frequently anymore. So if you were only here for my insane Murder Drones related ranting and want to unfollow now, that's perfectly fine. But I can't ignore my feelings any longer.

I'll still talk about it, but probably not with the same passion I used to. Again it sucks because I really wanted to like the series but... yeah they just keep fucking it up.

Oh yeah, everything else is fantastic though the animation, the voice acting, the soundtrack... I just wish the writing was on-par... I feel like the problem is they're being overly ambitious and trying to cram all of this lore and plot into these mere 8 episodes and it just isn't enough.

I may return to this to make an addition after Episode 8 finally drops on the off chance it somehow changes my opinion, but I doubt it...

Me from August 2024: So yeah, it didn't in fact it kind of went exactly how I expected and almost emphasized everything I said was wrong with the series. We got no answers, lots of flashy action and even a seemingly cliffhanger ending but none of the burning questions were answered and many dangling plot threads were just outright ignored...

I'd also like to take this time to once again emphasize I REALLY WANTED TO LIKE THIS SERIES, I can't stress that enough. Especially because I love robots and media focusing on robots since we don't get that too often. But the series just seem to keep disappointing me more and more with each episode. And it makes me sad. I'm disappointed because I cared and wanted to see the series improved and grow but frankly at a certain point it kind of just started freefalling.

My disappointment cannot be properly conveyed in words.

Feel free to leave thoughts and such I guess. But I'm probably the only idiot that feels this way.