User blog comment:Juan Jose Rodriguez/Gwen and Duncan - Why Do You All Hate It?/@comment-5928665-20190509130023

Well, since this old blog has been kicked up yet again, I'll state my opinion.

1) I never thought there was any basis for them to become a couple. For me to accept two characters as lovers, they need to have stronger connections than they both like horror movies and dye their hair unnatural colors. What else do they have in common besides that? Gwen is a sarcastic goth with a tendency to look at the worst aspects of people and situtations and Duncan is a punk bully who takes genuine pleasure in tormenting people, albeit he has rare moments of being "nice". Despite being an incarcerated criminal, his attitude towards life is actually pretty cheerful and upbeat, which is totally different from Gwen. There's nothing they really have in common, despite what people constatly say.

2) How they got together was sloppy. In TDI, they weren't even friends and Gwen didn't even like Duncan all that much. She respected him somewhat, but that was the full extent of her affection for him. You don't refer to someone you like as "psychotic". In TDA, they then became friends and even that felt pretty forced to me. There really was zero transition from Gwen disliking Duncan in The Very Last Episode, Really!, to being all chummy with him only three episodes later, so much so that it created tension between her and Trent, the guy she just spent an entire friggin' season pining over. Then, in TDWT, she's suddenly head-over-heels in love with Duncan with no explanation at all. Again, absolutely zero transition. Gwen was gone by Episode 7 of TDA, so they didn't even interact in the prior season anywhere near enough to justify this change in character. And Duncan wasn't handled any better. We know what he originally saw in Courtney, but it's NEVER been remotely hinted at even once what he saw in Gwen.

3) I cut Fresh TV slack for this whole thing overall, since this was apparently something that was forced on them by network executives. Tom McGillis even reportedly prefers Duncan/Courtney.