You know, I honestly wouldn’t be shocked if that’s exactly how it worked out. What irritated me and presumably others wasn’t even that he was acting so self-righteous and horrible but that the narrative was reinforcing it. The other siblings called it out but in the mildest of ways, they still went along with his plans. And that’s what really annoys me about oafish white men leads, where everything they think and feel is centered, even when they’re horrible, their growth and development is still central, at the expense of other characters’.
But the second season really did seem to pull back on that. It worked in two ways, by making him less intolerable and then by elevating the other siblings to a more equal level, especially Vanya. Like, I’ll usually go along with the narrative, but something really rebels in me at this kind of character getting such unearned narrative power, but this second season, when the narrative was inviting you to gently mock and sympathize with him, I was like, I guess. Heh, I mean, I’ll never love him, but I really left the first season loathing him to a point where I was unsure if I’d enjoy this season, but luckily it didn’t work out that way.
