Won't go into details (spoilers), just focus on overall direction. There is a lot of interesting premise and characters laid out in early episodes, but the character development after that is minimal & the plot becomes increasingly 1) implausible (soap opera effect) and 2) gratuitously sexual. BDSM, really? Fine maybe to have given the brief taste in previous episode for character development reasons, but the extended screen time added in this episode is just ... extraneous titillation. Plus lots of other "dramatic diversions" which don't appear to further the main story at all, just ... draw out the telling of it. How many episodes in a row now could just be described as "The Duttons try to hang on in Montana waiting for Spencer, while Spencer & wife encounter and overcome yet another impediment to their journey. Plus some T&A."
A good writer would figure out the "big picture" of the story they tell, then conceive a large number scenes to drive it, plus background and character development to make it feel "real." A good writer, doing this well, would than have so many scenes that they would have to pare away some because of pacing, lack of screen time, and/or redundancy to achieving the overall objectives of the storytelling. A bad writer would have so little supporting story development that they would be compelled to throw stuff in to fill the minutes, and maybe exploit prurient aspects of their viewers to keep at least SOME of them from getting bored or impatient. Taylor Sheriden, I am increasingly concluding, is a bad writer.
A good writer would figure out the "big picture" of the story they tell, then conceive a large number scenes to drive it, plus background and character development to make it feel "real." A good writer, doing this well, would than have so many scenes that they would have to pare away some because of pacing, lack of screen time, and/or redundancy to achieving the overall objectives of the storytelling. A bad writer would have so little supporting story development that they would be compelled to throw stuff in to fill the minutes, and maybe exploit prurient aspects of their viewers to keep at least SOME of them from getting bored or impatient. Taylor Sheriden, I am increasingly concluding, is a bad writer.