I don't think expectations are the problem. The primary complaint, wanting plot lines running through to have relevance in more than a few episodes, isn't setting unrealistic expectations. Other kids shows of a similar genre can have long running plot lines. Other Transformers shows can have long running plot lines. So I don't see why Prime can't do it.

 

I don't think I'm as disillusioned with the show as Gog, but I do agree with a large portion of what he says.

I enjoy the show a great deal while I'm watching it, but as soon as an episode ends, more and more problems become apparent, to the point where I just go "meh."

I think the biggest problem I have with it is that it seems to alternate between having great build up with no payoff, or badass payoff with insufficient or sometime even nonexistent build up. For the former, MECH is obviously the premier example. MECH was built up for the better part of two seasons, and resolved rather sloppily in a single episode. For the latter, I actually think Dreadwing was a pretty good example. I think his actions and subsequent death in "Darkest Hour" could have had a lot more weight if not only had the episode itself not been so rushed, but the episodes prior had lent more lip service to both his honor and devotion to his brother. One idea that comes to mind is to have him cringe and look away when Megatron is cutting off the arm from the corpse of that one Prime. Subtly set up how he feel about the treatment of the dead, thus making his flipping out over what Starscream did make more sense.

I could go about how the show could have taken so many little steps to make things more emotionally satisfying, but it likely wouldn't make much of a difference. Especially since, like I said, I still enjoy the show to a decently large degree.

As for how I feel about season 3... I'll watch it. Trying not to get too excited. Go in with neutral expectations. Hopefully, at the very least, the action scenes will stay at the same level, as like Chris, that's the aspect of the show I'm most consistently impressed by.

 

No, I'm not. I'm breaking down what you're saying and explaining how you're wrong, then you restate what you are saying to mean something else. Allow me to demonstrate:

100 percent, totally, incomprehensibly incorrect, nearly to the point of absurdity.

I stated in this episode that I myself feel disillusioned with the show, and I no longer feel that I should contribute to the Primetime for the sake of those who still enjoy it and for the desire to not be a hypocrite. I stated on this and other recent episodes that it does at times feel like my, and our, complaints with the show have often seemed to be in the minority lately, and if people disagree with us, its cool, but I feel the way I feel. I stated on Twitter that I was looking FORWARD to hearing people's reactions about what we said.

To be frank, I simply could not care less.

Those are points you are going to have to discuss without me, because I find your method of "discussion" off-putting, to put it mildly. "Greatest advocate that the entire Prime series sucks..." Even though I said I enjoyed the first season, and the opening of the second in this very episode. You have proven that you cannot debate a point without either warping my words or thoughts or creating them for me out of thin air. I have nothing more to say to you on this topic.

 

Man this thread....

 

Well this has been an interesting thread.

I've enjoyed this show, though I don't argue with any of the criticisms from this pod (now or previously) at all because they're all logical and things I've agreed with. I admit, after watching the finale, my reaction was "That's cool...I wonder if this will all be resolved by Ep 2-3 of Season 3, or if they'll "drag" it out to Ep 4."

I do hope people get to ask some questions addressing these criticisms of the show to Prime writers/showrunners when we get a chance at the next Botcon or SDCC or something. I'm always interested in hearing the responses from those actually involved in the running of the show and why these choices are being made (whether it's Hasbro nudging them, as alluded to earlier in this thread, or their own choices or what).

Anyways...

1. If you say you "care" about someone (who I'm assuming you've never met), than it might be nice to be more considerate and know when to leave well enough alone. You show a weird way of caring for someone.
2. I find it hilarious you're accusing him of passive-aggressiveness when I've found your entire series of posts to be passive-aggressive towards him.
3. As for the bolded piece...doesn't that go for you too?

 

Come to think of it I do think Prime is being viewed as the next Beast Machines in terms of how it's handled right now. Generally bashed and hated but once it's over later on people start to be more forgiving or at least not as harsh on it. However we really don't know how season 3 will turn out in the end. Perhaps it can win a lot of people back into the show and be the best thing to ever happen to it perhaps the opposite can happen. Either way we'll know in the future.

Well it's not just about expectation it's more like how certain plot and characters are handled is what's getting people riled up. However you're still right about having a realistic expectation level going on. I mean I expected ROTF to be epic and grand but once I saw it it was the opposite of what I was hoping for in a lot of ways. That helped me not to let my expectations fly with me. Which is why despite the flaws the show has for me I try to keep my expectations in a normal level which helped cope some of my bigger dissapointments more easier.

Here's the thing though. Perhaps the writers actually intended to have certain plot points to run a lot more longer but Hasbro intervined and made the change their plans. Or perhaps it's their own choice to end it that way. Again there's good evidance of Hasbro being the one responsible for how Season 2 turned out so why not listen to the writers side of the story through some upcoming interviews in the Season 2 DVD or at Botcon and find out if Hasbro was butting in or not? There were probably some things that the writers weren't able to bring into the show due to Hasbro telling them no do this instead because they had no choice.

 

In the end, it doesn't matter. The show we get is the show we get. I'm not going to suddenly enjoy Alien Ressurection because I learn Fox massacred Whedon's script. It's still a horrible movie. I say to myself, "Well that sucks," and the movie continues to be awful.

 

Ok. But it still sucks. Honestly I don't really care if Hasbro butted it in or not because the end product was still disappointing.

Exactly.

 

You know, Legend of Galactic Heroes and UC Gundam are pretty good... but it is completely bizarre that you are just name dropping random anime shows with no context whatsoever, and they have absolutely nothing to do with the conversation. That's... really weird. Do you uh... watch anything that isn't a cartoon or is that literally your only frame of reference?

 

What I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't hold the writers responsible for every flaw in the show when most of them weren't even their doing to begin with. If we're going to we should at least find out their side of the story. Yes it won't change how the show turned out for a lot of people but it would be fair that we should let the writers give us a chance to explain first. There may be just somethings that they weren't able to control nor able to hold on too.

 

Ok, I won't.

Season 2 still sucks. (IMHO)

 

Gog, you will be missed. I say that as someone who's not always agreed with your perspective.

Burn, you're doing the "I still enjoy Prime" crowd a great disservice by your continued presence in this thread.

 

Vangelus - I just picked up Dreadwing at the Wal-Mart at Bathurst & Centre. I only saw the one, but probably he will be turning up at other TO Wal-Marts. Still can't find PRID Vehicon, tho. :-(

 

Okay, I will admit I was having fun with the conversation (when it was being pleasant between a few of us I thank them for putting up with me) until I woke up and found this barrage of comments aimed at me. I said I was sorry if I offended or did anything wrong. Not that I am whining or anything, but I find it funny in some sense.

I will repeat again: I am sorry Gogdog. Is there anything I can do to make it up? Stop talking is probably the greatest thing I can do.

Since I am a disservice, I will heed the advice of people and no longer post. Thank you all again for the conversation.

Note that I did not mean anything offensive by saying that Gogdog was the leading advocate given that he was in the podcast I give his opinion a higher bar of leadership than others. It was to give him respect. I thought after this you were dropping Prime (am I misunderstanding you on the Podcast because I thought you said you were dropping it). That is TOTALLY FINE. I will repeat that if a show is not fun for you drop it!!! Even if it is a super popular show. Even if you are in the minority!!! Do it! If you still want to watch it, go a head with that as well. Do something fun!! That is why I made some suggestions lol if you wanted a nice refreshing story that has all the elements you are looking for that are missing in Prime (build up to character death and so on). I still like you after all of this because I know that the internet is not a place to get to know people and that you and me are having a grave misunderstanding. I am also working under this assumption that in this high quality podcast that you all are making is designed to allow listeners to hear your point of view the reason being is to persuade the audience toward your opinion. If it was less than that and just you all talking with no intention on winning over people toward your train of thought, I am again very sorry because I had a great misunderstanding from the get go.

Also, Gogdog called my tastes basically **** for giving Prime a 7 or an 8. I did not whine. I took it like a man. I like that he can do that to me, but somehow giving him a leadership roll is being a smart***. I am baffled, but still I am sorry. I should never assert things like that. I never meant at all to aggravate or upset you. I am not one to bat at a wasp's nest.

I have a weird thing that I want to help out people. It is Christmas time, and people should not be angry or depressed. I wanted to spread some goodwill. Again if I was a horse's *** sorry. Things can come off differently on the internet than what I intended too. Maybe it is my lack of familiarity that is causing me grief. Idk.

I do watch live action things from time to time Gammatron. I mean most movies, Kamen Rider, and a some sitcoms. But hey, I have bad taste, so don't listen to me lol.

 

No, I didn't. I said if you consider Prime a 7 or an 8 out of 10, I'm hesitant to take your advice. We obviously have much different tastes.

So once again, you have put words in my mouth.

You have passion and enthusiasm, that's good. Now learn to debate by actually using truth without placing completely false, unspoken phrases in the other person's mouth and that will be a good start.

 

Anyways, I started listening to the episode, and Gog, you really hit the nail on the head here. We talked about it a bit at TFCon, but you sum up pretty well why I feel that Transformers Prime sucks.

Transformers Prime isn't like the Unicron trilogy or ROTF or DOTM where it is just painful to watch, but it's utterly boring and without any emotion whatsoever. The show doesn't make me angry or anything, but it IS very disappointing, and after having watched two seasons of it, I kind of feel like I've wasted 26 hours of my life. I'm not sure if I'm coming back for Beast Hunters... because it just isn't good.

I've kind of said this before and I feel like I might be repeating myself, but Transformers Prime feels like a TF show that is literally written by robots. It looks like Transformers, acts like Transformers, and has most of the necessary ingredients, but it has no soul. It's kind of like the writers took a look at the wiki and went 'okay, let's include all these things from the mythos!' but then forgot to include interesting characters or an engaging plotline.

If I were to sum up Prime with one word, it would be "empty". The main cast is made up of boring, 1-diementional cardboard cutouts. Any interesting character is either killed off or forgotten about. Ratchet, Arcee, Jack and June were pretty darn great in Season 1, but by season 2, they are forgotten. June appears in one episode and Ratchet spends the entire season inside the base. The Decepticons are the only interesting characters in the show, and half of them are dead. At this point, Starscream and Knockout are almost literally all the show has going for it.

Jasper, Nevada is empty. The choice to go for CGI definitely hurts the show, as the limited budget severely hampers what they can do in it. Raf's mom is merely an arm sticking out of a door. A small cast is fine if your characters are interesting like Beast Wars, but this isn't the case. Episodes are stuck in the same dull locations. I'm guessing they must put a whole LOT more money into stuff like TMNT and Clone Wars, because they manage to do way more than Prime does.

There is no cohesive plotline other than "find the MacGuffins", and there are absolutely no stakes. How can there be if we as an audience literally don't care about the protagonists at all? If Prime, Bumblebee or Bulkhead suddenly got their heads blown off, I wouldn't give one shit. And why would I? They are barely even characters. Why should I care if they live or die, succeed or fail? Fuck man, while G1's characters were EXTREMELY one-dimensional (this is the whiny robot who complains, this is the vain robot obsessed with himself, this guy is a crazy redneck who shouts sound effects), at least they were personalities of some sort. G1 was an 80s cartoon with terrible animation, enormous continuity problems, simplistic characters, stupid plotlines and the writers seemed to be on drugs most of the time, but it's about 100 times more entertaining than Prime.

And, whenever Prime does do something interesting, as we all have repeated over and over again, they get rid of it immediately.

Smokescreen is probably one of the best things to happen to the show. Do I think he is a fantastic character? Not really. But at least he is a CHARACTER. He has a PERSONALITY. Something sorely lacking on the Autobot side. But you know what? He showed up about 40 episodes too late.

Which brings me to another thing: filler. TF Prime is 52 episodes long. 52 episodes long, and less shit happens in it that most anime. And now anime is a genre renowned for filler and dragging shit out way too long and making things wicked tedious to watch. Had each season been 13 episodes long, and had a more cohesive storyline, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did.

Transformers Prime isn't worth getting worked up over. Hell - the show is barely even worth talking about. (Even though I just posted an enormous rant about it...) It's just an empty shell of a TV show.

In short, Transformers Prime sucks.

EDIT: Now that Season 2 is over, instead of Prime time, TFW should do book club. Talk about some TF fiction that is actually fun, interesting and entertaining. That'll cheer Gog up. Or just do an hour long podcast about Toby. Let's put Prime behind us and talk about things that are awesome and not shitty.

 

CGI is perhaps the most overrated form of animation out there. It's extremely expensive and time consuming to make, meaning that you can't introduce as many new characters and it's nearly impossible to change things up once it's rendered.

Like Gammatron 64 said Jasper's empty. CGI means you can't animate the background characters you'd likely see in a downtown area because the time and money simply isn't there.
You know those Cybertronian crowd shots in Animated that were full of neat homages? Wouldn't be possible to do that with Prime thanks for the decision to go with CGI.

 

I like how much contempt that I, the listener, have been getting on here from the people who host the broadcast. I listen to the podcasts as I head in for work which is a 30 minute drive. To do this to a fan is stupid. I hope you all realize that.

I like that you can accuse me of using tired cliches, putting words in your mouth (when subsequent post already made the allusion that you did turn them off to Prime when they met you, my whole point about why you broadcast opinions on podcasts is to persuade people to your side, and so on), and just being generally super nasty because that is the person I am apparently.

Lets use another version that a friend and I worked out. You cannot have your toilet paper and use it too (he maintains eat it is better). Megatron cannot be both merciless yet have mercy on your one favorite character. This is probably the most ruthless animated Megatron to date. This is fine for me. Others, not so much.

Against my better judgement (after a discussion turned south in the Regeneration 85 discussion), I decided to throw my hat into this discussion thinking that it would be cool to get feedback after listening to the podcast. I was again proven to be horribly wrong. I regret even trying to make contact with the Transformer community. I am 25 years old. I act like an adult. As an adult, you need to know when to cut off things.

If I am treated with contempt by even the podcasters, I know I need to go which was implied, then you called me a liar. "Now learn to debate by actually using truth without placing completely false, unspoken phrases in the other person's mouth and that will be a good start." Maybe saying you called me a liar is 'putting words in your mouth'. Whatever, this is the only interpretation that I could find. I hate when people call me a liar. I would of dropped it with the last post, but that attack is something I cannot stand.

I am deeply disappointed. I also do not want to be put into the same boat as the Regeneration One discussion where they were insulting Simon Furman. I defended him. Funny, every time I defend fiction, I get bashed on or am 'controversial'. I should just come to these threads and just hate on the series being discussed, but that proves my (joking) adage of 'in order to be a Transformer's fan you must hate everything that is Transformers'. People seem to unite around what they hate vs what they like unfortunately. If I would of bashed on Simon Furman on the Regeneration 85 forum, I would not of been in trouble. If I did not make an effort to stick up for Prime, I would not be in trouble.

In the end, never defend what you think is good to Transformers fans. Just harp on what you hate. I should of known this was the logical result, however, I was having fun with some of the other posters who were talking with me. I would like to thank them for tolerating my apparently boarish behavior.

I also always give people the benefit of the doubt when they make posts. That it is not as rude as initially I took it. If I ever have problems, I ask for clarification (which I did in Gogdog's instance). If I get no clarification, I can only assume from the context of the argument what they mean.

Whether the podcasters realize it or not, they command a bully pulpit for their ideas since people wish to listen to it. They are, in a sense, champions of these opinions they put forward because they brought them into the public and thus can be put under public scrutiny. When I called Gogdog the 'advocate of dropping Prime', it was because that was essentially his position in the podcast. I am the captive audience. I can respond. People can agree with Gogdog. They can be turned off (as again someone was said to of been persuaded by Gogdog's arguments). This is fine!!! I am not putting words in his mouth. Just like when he called me a liar. He called me the definition but not the actual word.

I, for one, will not be listening again because of this incident.

They are in plenty at Aldi's. That is where I found mine. I need to run there to see if they have Kups and Rumbles.

 

I'm sorry you feel that way. But I'm not going let someone put words in my mouth, then argue those words against me as if I said those things. Never were you bullied. Anytime I said anything that could be construed as disrespectful, I made it a point to say that was not my intention.

If me pointing that out to you makes you not want to listen ever again, that's on you. But that's an extreme way to respond, and seems to be intended shift focus off of what just actually happened. Either way, take care.