User blog comment:FlynnUsername/Each Season's Best and Worst Thing/@comment-11883116-20170711095054

Interesting blog to read! I agree with everything. TDI had a perfect and realistic cast and bad writing that made it lose its top place for TDWT and RR for me. TDA had a great theme and indeed was boring. And the drama was great in TDWT, especially in the second half, being the first (and only) time since TDI that I've felt some good drama on the show.

I'll expand my opinion on why TDA is boring for me. The theme is great and I personally don't have problem with reward challenges. I don't consider them filler because they develop characters and it's the character development that TDA is the best at. However, I do agree that reward challenges late in the competition (Crouching Courtney, Hidden Owen) was a bad idea.

But what makes it more boring for me is the lack of competition. This is fixed once Courtney returns and makes things more interesting, adding some more drama. But prior to her return, we only had Gwent, Chef's alliance with DJ, Justin and Leshawna. Gwent was the only source of drama in the first seven episodes. DJ's plot was rather minor and no one seemed to mind his alliance with Chef in the end. Justin's antagonism was unnoticed by the others, so even when he did something as an antagonist, no one acknowledged him for that. And Leshawna's lie was mentioned only like once per episode. As I said, Courtney made it more interesting for me, but the first half, especially episodes 8-11, lacked some solid drama for me.