You know if RID wouldn't have utilized the "Decepticon of the week" formula, and portrayed them more like they were shown in the Decepticon Island episodes, I think RID is a show that I would've really enjoyed a lot more than I have.

 

How can I NOT forget Soundwave when he did so little?

But I agree. All around Prime just failed hardcore at being consistent in thematic and tone. The character writing and plotting are badly handled by themselves, but it's the up-it's-ass bombastic epic tone that makes it go from simply mediocre to flat out bad.

 

Yes but no?

I think there's alot more to unpack in that sentence. Making things Dark, doesn't not make good story writing.

Having no conflict, or seance of urgence, or loss, is what really hurts the series. Which are all things I felt Prime lacked, but not nearly as much as R.I.D. did.

 

Riddle me this. If TFP really is a terrible show, then why does there exist numerous fans of it? Wouldn't a terrible show have like zero fans? Wouldn't a terrible show have bad ratings and not overall good ones like TFP had?

 

I don't give a damn what ratings or how many fans a show has. If the story is good, then I like it. Prime has an awful story, and a terrible cast and voice work for the most part. The tone was so conflicted. One second, the story demanded to try to paint a gritty portrait, and other times it demanded for a comical scene to be shoved in. Not only that, but it's ridiculous when people claim the series is dark.
The Autobots are lifeless hunks of metal, with no personalities, besides Wheeljack, UM, and Smokescreen. Arcee is such of a bs "I've gotta get revenge character". She victimizes herself far more than how bad things were for her. Until she ends up in a situation similar to Guts' from Berserk, she shouldn't be obsessed with revenge. Her life is pretty great for the most part.
The Decepticons are just as, if not more, emotionless. The only thing Megatron ever does is bitch, moan, and blame his soldiers for his strategic failures. Starscream and Dreadwing are the only Decepticons who are even barely interesting, and Dreadwing was killed off too quickly. The Vehicons are like the ultimate red-shirts as well.
Let's move on to the humans...
Raf survives being contaminated by Dark Energon, because "Science". His cliche bullshit-I'm-near-death-wait-I'm-not served NO purpose to the story at all. Miko was everything wrong with Sari knocked up to 11. The only good thing was that she wasn't voiced by Tara Strong.

 

As far as I can tell, RID isn't trying anything. Very unambitious show.

 

That's some biased reasons you got there.
"Terrible cast" So bringing back Peter Cullen and Frank Welker = horrible cast?
Raf survives being contaminated by Dark Energon = Executives demanded that he didn't die.
Hell, most of the problems with the show can be blamed by the executives as well as budget problems.

 

"Biased Reasons"? Is that because I have such a dislike for Prime?
I feel Cullen and Welker are greatly overrated by the fandom. They're great people, it's just I prefer Garry Chalk and David Kaye for Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively. I didn't enjoy Sumalee Montano, Kevin Michael Richardson, and most of the cast as mentioned before. Perhaps the problem lied with the voicing director, although I still think the former was miscasted.
"Executives demanded that he didn't die". Then that's another reason why the writing staff should have just NOT included the "oh-shit-he's-dead-oh-wait" moments.

 

The only point stated is to teach two-years-olds how to believe in themselves, since when they do, even SoundWave turns into nonentity.
What really bothers me is: every episode the group of Autobots unite to beat one guy into scrap. The story literally teaches no-opinion-in-the-head that beating one person by a group, endangering the prey to receive terrific damages or even die from it is a good thing. I would recommend this show for children only as "how you shouldn't act".

And the only good point for teaching from the entire show is when StrongArm punished herself for the things she has always been trying to punish for the rest of people.

 

Well that might change up since now we have the whole corrupted council in play. I just hope they handle the plot points correctly because the author part of me was going crazy at how many story possibilities that never got explored with Soundwave.

I know it's a show for children but when you see a story opportunity, your mind tends to like to explore what if scenarios. At least that's the case for me.

 

The quality of a show is down to opinion. If you feel it's bad, then that's fine, but if other people like it, that's also fine.

Because Ratchet isn't a grumpy old medic masking a nature who overcomes his Cybertronian pride to realize the value of humans, Optimus Prime isn't a leader trying to maintain a straight face in the wake of all the hard decisions he has to make as leader, Bumblebee isn't a friendly Autobot who often feels the need to push himself because of his damaged voice box, Bulkhead isn't a gentle giant who has a very idealized sense of right and wrong and is also kinda clumsy, and Arcee... Yeah, having your best friends slaughtered and fighting in an endless war is a perfect life. She has absolutely no reason to feel vengeful or put upon by the world.  
'Cause Megatron never joins battles or retrieves relics ever. He never once fought an Autobot, let alone all of them at once, or took on Unicron's avatars.   Just yelling at his troops. Yep. The rest of the Decepticons, that's your opinion, but I will give you the Vehicons. You have a point, there.

It did. Seeing Megatron attack an innocent, albeit on accident, and then gloat about it once he discovered it, convinced Optimus Prime of the need to put Megatron down once and for all. I can't say about your problems with Miko because you haven't made them clear.

 

Because stupid people exist everywhere. Or are you going to argue Revenge of the Fallen is a good movie because it made insane amounts of bank? Please.

Hell look at you, using "fan opinion" as something that matters. Fans know only what they think they like. All the pandering they suck on the teats of is what they know. Brainless to the point where objectively bad writing is brushed aside because it has BADAZZ VIOLENCE or a line from the old show. Shallow, easily emotionally manipulated, free to like what they want to like but ultimately worthless in any objective discussion, or again, do you forget all the people that defend a bad 80s movie because it is their childhood sweetheart nostalgia bowl?

At the end of the day it means nothing, the analysis is there, the hard lines of media-making, tone-setting, thematic driven choices have been endlessly studied, no amount of fanboyism changes that or changes that Prime simple was badly handled according to most of those guidelines. Badly handled show, even in the most basic of production standards where they wasted money on sacrifical lamb characters just to act like they were edgy on episode freaking 1! How to defend something that genuinely can't be even financially competent?

 

I'll give you Ratchet. He had some good characterization. Wasn't the best, but it wasn't bad.

Yeah, by being an emotionless leader who victimizes himself on a near constant basis.

And how did Bumblebee play a crucial part in the plot before Predacon's Rising? We never know what he's thinking, since he can't speak.

It's war. You have to expect that your comrades will die. Not only that, but Arcee goes ballistic over it. She didn't lose everything. She has no reason to go on an adventure of revenge, like she did. The writers loved to shoehorn that losing her friend was the end of her being "nice", while her loss isn't even that much. Yes, it's tragic that Cliffjumper died. However, was she betrayed? Were all of her friends sacrificed or murdered? Until that happens, I have a hard time supporting that characterization.

Megatron remained in ICU for half of the First Season, and for the rest of the series, really only stood around ordering people to get his MacGuffins, battled Optimus Prime here and there in Season Finales and a few other episodes, and then got in a battle or two with other Autobots. He has really no motivation or goals as to why he wants the MacGuffins, besides being the MacGuffin Fuhrer. Yep, definitely a tragic antagonist who has a very developed past
Not only that, but the only time an Autobot dies is in Episode 1, and we see how the Autobots brutally slay Vehicons for the rest of the series. Kind of ruins any sympathy for Cliffjumper.

 

I'd like some less overused reasons as to why you think Prime is So Bad, It's Horrible. If you use something like the dropped plot points as a reason as to why you hate it, a good fraction of shows have it. Also, TFP isn't the first time Transformers has had dropped plot points.

 

Hell, Animated had far more plot points dropped than Prime and somehow gets a pass. It's way more shallow, childish, and underwhelming with its horrible characters, human villains, no sense of danger, and pop culture references that felt like getting hit by a semi. Animated's best episode (if such a thing even exists) is still leagues below Prime's worst episode.

 

I really think 2015 RiD is a big improvement over Prime. Then again, I really prefer more light-hearted stuff. And I have to agree with Slingshot, Beast Machines managed to be dark, but it didn't overdo it like Prime, 'cause BM still had it's fun moments.

 

I'm not forcing you to dislike it, and I'm not interested in discussing with you if "well other shows did a bad thing too so its okay for Prime to be bad" and general flagpost moving is the best you can do, specially since in my posts above I never mentioned the dropped plot points. Don't be upset people on the internet dislike a show you like, it shouldn't matter to you.

Ratchet is the only character in that list that actualy displayed that regularly and effectively though. Optimus's internal turmoil means nothing in 95% of episodes and it was failed character drama since the only time it gets noted by others is Ratchet calling him out, who both times, decides to agree with Optimus anyway without any succesful use of dynamic and clashing of the two because Optimus was right and the show didn't bother having their argument happen.

Bumblebee's "pushes himself hard"? That's the plot of one episode, the rest of the time he just beeps and is generally good. They could've had him as a great youthful presence, instead we get Raf mentioning Bee likes videogames a couple of times

And I'm sorry for Arcee but if the only thing you can say about your character is that she saw a guy die that's a lifeless character. Even in a movie she would be boring, in a 65 episode series she is even more. I struggle to even describe her beyond "is good and fights". What was her dynamic with the rest of the cast? All she ever does is stand with her arms crossed quipping. Is she driven by revenge? I have no idea either one episode she'll act like she learned then she's back to it and the show just stopped putting her in the spotlight after Airachnid got written out. Again, 65 episode series, characters so focused on being melodramatic they never became full-fledged people or a joy to follow.
The only time I had fun with her was when she head-butted with Smokescreen and that was like 2 episodes in season 2 before the show half-assed that resolution too by having her go "well you got lucky and saved the day magically again so i guess now we'll simply never touch on the subject of your ego".

Bulkhead's sense of right and wrong too were only the subject matter of one episode, the rest of the time he was just the big guy of the team, which is to his credit more fun than most of the cast.

That's the problem with the show, the characters are just dead. I can quote Rattrap lines and little moments all the time he was a joy, with Prime I can only quote the lines so overly dramatic I can't forget how bad they sounded. And when your plot is so boring and frustrating due to all the examples of interesting stuff being thrown under the bus for more repetition the characters are all you have left, and frankly all you should need most fun shows have great characters in mostly predictable settings! Sadly for Prime it was never enough. Starscream and Ratchet can't save a whole show.

 

Transformers RID was decent. But the best cartoon series I've seen by far. Has to be. Transformers Animated. yes. No show is perfect. But, At least it had taste. Had actual plot etc. I'm very disgusted with Transformers RID 2015. Especially, once they brought back Soundwave. Right when he returned. They sent him back to the shadowzone. I was happy to see Soundwave. But, This show has so much potential. And yet, Wasted it.

 

If someone has a "overused" reason, then it tells you that there is a lot of people who share that opinion.

While I'm not a huge fan of Prime, there are some who legitimately enjoy the show. The "fan" opinion doesn't really exist because the fandom can universally agree on anything. People aren't stupid because they like something, they found entertainment in something you didn't.

As for Revenge of the Fallen, a movie doesn't break a billion dollars without repeat viewings. I don't know many people who go see a movie they hated more than once. A "good" movie all depends on what you're looking for in a movie. I'm sure there are a lot of people who think ROTF is a better movie than The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown or any other highly rated film. I went and saw ROTF in the theater twice. I was entertained by it, I don't think it's a "good" movie in the intellectual sense, but that's not what I'm looking for when I go and see a movie like that. Certainly action films can transcend the "popcorn flik" label, but that's just icing on the cake for me. I watch the critically acclaimed films as well, but I'm not always in the mood for them.

How can a show that breaks away from so much of the typical Transformers show be unambitious.

Bumblebee is the leader and Prime is only in the show maybe half the time.

The main villain isn't Megatron, almost none of the main Decepticons show up.

We get a completely new set of "Decepticons", who's leader rejects the Decepticons, given he scratched out his symbol.

The council seems to be corrupt, the main heroes from Prime are now considered outsiders and are essentially disowned by those on Cybertron.

Bumblebee was wanted by Cybertronian police for transporting himself back to Earth.