Well I'm always late to the party cause I don't have, and refuse to pay extra for the hub. But as you all know, S2 is on netflix now, and I had a chance to watch all of it over the holidays. I'm just really curious about all the hate I see about it across the boards....cause I generally hate on a LOT of things  lol) but I didn't really see anything worthy of it here.

I was actually pretty content with the season. I was disappointed with how they worked unicron into S1, so how this season unfolded was a bit more of a return to how dark and dismal things actually are. I enjoy stories like that, it's why empire is my favorite SW movie. Both bots and cons are pretty much screwed over at the end and will have to put aside differences to make a common goal be reached at the end of S3.

I'm just praying it won't be another organic cybertron like in beast machines. It's an extreme longshot, but the title of S3 having "beast" anything in the name gives me the bad taste in my mouth that it's not too far off from happening again.

 

I thought S2 was better then S1

 

People suffering from prolonged butthurt over Breakdown.

 

Oh this is gonna be good.

 

I thought S2 was great. Seems like some people around here aren't happy unless they are miserable.

 

Well...

Remember Unicron and the 13 from S1's closer? The writers don't, apparently.
Orion Pax having an opportunity to give life to such a stiff and boring character? Fuck that.
Breakdown's rivalry with Bulkhead, debt to Starscream, possible interest in Airachnid, and being maybe a decent guy on the wrong side? HA!
MECH's grand Project Chimera? Over in 1 episode.
But it leads to Cylas becoming a Transformer! ... ah, just 1 episode again.
2 CLIP EPISODES!
Bulk's possible life-changing injury. Let's have that as the hook ending TWICE then quickly rush thru it and ignore the "life-changing" bit.
Raf's ridiculous hacking skills.

Really, though, I enjoyed watching it for the most part. The worst thing are the people *here* getting all defensive and crying "butthurt" anytime somebody raises any kind of criticism.

 

^

Airachnid with an armada of Insecticons...could have been a great threat to both sides...over in what? half an episode?....along with the character's disposal.

 

I don't hate it by any means. I think overall season 1 was better, but I liked the last few episodes of season 2 the best. I really didn't mind the Starscream clip show either. I normally hate clip shows, and never even saw the first one, but the way they did it made it more interesting and something I wanted to watch. I'm not a fan of how quickly potentially good story arcs end and the seemingly senseless killing off of good characters, but if the show was geared towards adults I expect we would have better thought out and longer lasting story arcs.

 

Aborted plot threads, character arcs and character development (sometimes even character regression like with Starscream), inept villains, heroes that barely interact, stale story telling, some really boring characters, tedious drawn out arcs with little focus and only the last one being good, nothing interesting happening, a general lack of direction...Those are my big issues with season 2.

Also, I guess it does help to watch everything in one sitting, instead of sitting there hoping each week that it will improve or actually DO something with the interesting things it sets up, instead of then being disappointed as it completely fails to do so.

 

To be fair Starscream's army of Seekers in Animated had the same poteintal to be a threat to both sides too but as we saw once Screamer lost his head the Seekers pretty much disbanded after helping Megatron out for a while and never mentioned again. Also we don't know that Airachnid's out of the picture yet so why not wait until the show's over to see if she's dead at this point or not?

Back on topic I felt that while it has some more flaws then in Season 1 it still manage to do things that are neat. For one thing it has a better build up to the season finale and that it has a much better episode air times. Despite the flaws that season has I'm not going to point the finger at the writers because for all we know Hasbro might of made them drop some story ideas. We usually get more information behind the scenes after a show ends like with Animated with it's books.

 

Yeah. I got popcorn and soda.  

 

Because it's awful. It's monotonous, tired, flashy yet unsubstancial, heavy on spectacle and grandios imagery with very little logic or good pacing applied to it. It is everything people accuse and hate the movies for being. It's visuals and ''epic'' lines and events try desperately to hide the fact that it's a hollow, repetative story where characters have no room to act like real people because they're too busy talking about the plot of the episode. It's all serious grand scale moments with little payoff, random, dissapointing resolutions and mishandled or uninspired concepts. It's just bad. It had so much potential and wasted every bit of it. Nothing about it was satisfying. It was a pandering, pretentious trainwreck and I don't like it that much either.

Except for, y'know, how the Seekers were all running around in season three and absolutely mentioned again by, say, Lugnut who recruited Ramjet. Also the Seekers's disbanding was in-character. They were all clones of Starscream. Do you really think they'd be loyal to him? Or anyone if it didn't work out for them? That was the entire freaking point.

Airachnid just stumbled upon Insecticons, had some unexplained magical ability to control them that made no sense (arachnids aren't insects) and then stumbled into a pod and has not been heard from since. WHAT THRILLING AND AMAZING RESOLUTION! Starscream, however, reamined treacherous and scheming as a head, taking control of Omega and nearly making it to Cybertron, (only the Autobots' quick thinking stopped him) and with his "help" Megatron did make it to Cybertron and by extension back to Earth.

The difference between what happened in Animated and Prime is that Animated was well-written and rewarding and the show makers had a clear idea of what they were doing and where they were going. Prime absolutely does not. I mean, what at all in season 2 would lead us to expect what we know of Beast Hunters, huh? Everything in Prime happens randomly without any major buildup, and still manages to dissapoint. Nearly every significant event happened by accident or came out of nowhere, or in the rare cases it had build up, was a complete flop.

Even if she isn't, she's still a terrible character and the Insecticons work for Megatron now.

And honestly, this show is worse towards Decepticons than the movies. She's probably dead and I wouldn't put it past the show to either never mention her again or even havign a scene showing her dead body under rubble or something.

 

Personally I loved season 2 more than season 1. I didn't mind the relic hunt as much as others seemed to loathe it. I just wish they would have used and kept the relics for a little longer after going through all that trouble of finding them all. Permanent damage to Bulkhead and him having to cope with it would have been nice, too, but eh... I'm not mad about it .

Also
;~; DREADWING WHY?!

 

I guess some of the drawn out stuff like the relic hunts didn't bother me cause I watched 26 episodes in a 48 hour period, lol. I wasn't waiting episode after episode after break to see where the story went because I just hit play and boom there it was. So I can't really say I was bored with it or loathed it because it all seemed to move at a relatively quick pace.

My only major nitpick of course was the disposal of dreadwing, but even that I think was coming (I didn't read spoilers) because of the newfound understanding megatron gained with starscream. To me it was like he finally realized that SS's ambition could be manipulated and controlled/contained. Dreadwing let matters get far too personal and would not be able to be controlled if any circumstances invoked or involved emotions for skyquake. He becomes unstable and a loose cannon at that point. A dictator makes megatrons move 1000 times over with no regrets.

That being said, I'm not trying to start a flamewar or trolling here, I just wanted to hear why, cause I wasn't getting the hate from what I watched. So feel free to drop a bombshell of why you hated S2. Split lip's and noidea's posts were good. I got an idea of why you guys disliked it, yet you didn't shit on me or anyone else's opinion for liking S2. That's what I like to see  

 

two words:

wasted potential

 

I don't hate season 2. I just got bored and stopped watching midway through. But I don't hate it.

If there is any problem with it, it's that I thought season 1 had so much potential, kept seeming to improve with almost every episode, and ended on a real high note. So my expectations for season 2 were maybe too high. I thought, like a bunch of previous series, like Beast Wars and Animated, that the second season would actually improve on the first. So when that didn't happen (imo), it made season 2 seem a little disappointing.

 

I have to agree with this. So many wasted plot points that could have been great, except for Airrachnid, I am glad they got rid of her, she really irritated me.

 

Pretty much what some people have already said.

-The wasted potential.
-Status quo remaining the same.
-Any story threads that could have made season 2 interesting being either dropped, aborted, or "resolved" within the span of one to three episodes.
-Arcee STILL not getting over her partners' deaths.
-Optimus Prime being dull and boring.
-Starscream not getting his T-Cog installed until two episodes before the season finale.

 

It's been discussed to death all over these boards, but to sum it up: it's shit.

 

I don't necessarily "hate" it, but...

...those^ definitely inhibit my ability to enjoy it as much as I should.

Though personally, for me, replace "Raf's ridiculous hacking skills" with "the way they handled Dreadwing".