WeBuiltThePyramids

I saw that! I really liked it and part of me wishes I had thought of it to incorporate in my season five fic a bit.

FoxPhile

Interesting role reversal. I hope Walter doesn't take quite so long to crack Paige's shell.

WriterFreak001

I can definitely see some angst had the writers gone that direction.

WeBuiltThePyramids

Well they already went in the angst direction so I could see it.

FoxPhile

It was pretty obvious in the last few episodes that we were heading for a big Waige angst-fest. If Walter was in the position of trying to break through Paige's defenses, he would have been much less well-equipped to do so than Paige was with him, simply because he still doesn't have a great understanding of emotions. Although I can see him getting help from a lot of sources - Toby, Cabe, Ralph and even Happy.

WeBuiltThePyramids

I keep thinking about what we might have gotten for them in a Christmas episode this year. They probably wouldn't be back together yet, but I doubt we would have gone without some kind of positive moment that would have shown they were getting there.

WriterFreak001

Speaking of Christmas, my artwork for Waige can be voted upon at: http://www.fanforum.com/f88/2018-hol...ples-63217680/

Sidenote: If you're familiar with Outlander, my other artwork can be voted here: http://www.fanforum.com/f448/2018-ho...nder-63217747/

Cyclone139

Do you think it would have taken that long? I really hope they would have been back together by now. I would like to think the writers would have realised how unpopular their decision to break them up in the first place was and had them reuniting at the end of the two-part season opener! (With the team back together by the end of Part 1!!) Yes, they had a lot to work on, but they could've worked on it together. We had three long years of 'will they/won't they', I think that was enough!

Earnie

I agree after 3 years of waiting for Waige to make us fans wait almost another year would be torture if that is where they were going maybe its better they did not get a 5th season

FoxPhile

While I wouldn't want the reconciliation to take too long, given the issues, I wouldn't have wanted them to come back together too quickly, either. I think Walter and Paige need time to really work out their issues, and a quick and too-easy reconciliation wouldn't do that. I would hope they would be at least talking by Christmas - maybe even working on those issues, perhaps with a counselor. Which would allow for a very nice Christmas episode.

Cyclone139

I wouldn't have wanted a quick and unsatisfactory 'reset' to happen, but I envisage all the 'working on their issues' to have been done while they were at least back together as a couple. It would have been far too heartbreaking and frustrating to watch otherwise.

WeBuiltThePyramids

As I ended up writing in my fic, I do think they just needed one or two deep conversations to get back together. But it being a show, I really feel they would have been kept apart for the better part of season five and the team wouldn't get back together until November sweeps at the earliest. Because you don't do something as fundamentally different like that without committing to it for a while.

Like on The Good Place, the whole premise of that show is the characters are dead. When they made them be alive again, they were alive for nine episodes. Changing it up that much for one or two wouldn't have been considered worth making such a change in the first place, most likely. Ditto for breaking up the team when the team's existence dated back in some forms to years before the pilot.

FoxPhile

I think one does have to temper one's expectations when it comes to how long it takes an issue to resolve on a television show. The writers come up with some source of drama and they want to milk it for everything it's worth - which usually means at least a few episodes for a minor problem and a half season for something major like a breakup.

Cyclone139

I know TV writers seem to think we enjoy ridiculously protracted and frustratingly overlong conflict storylines (can you tell I don't? ), but they showed it didn't have to be that way with Toby and Happy's engagement.

The Season 2 finale when she turns him downs and drops the bombshell about already being married was a shocker and packed enough of an emotional punch to be effective as a cliffhanger (the Waige cliffhanger notwithstanding, of course), but the next season Quintis hadn't gone through a heartbreaking split, they were still together because they loved each other despite the revelation, but they were working through their issues. They didn't resolve it quickly by having Happy just admit who it was, or by having Toby work it out, for quite a few episodes, but that didn't stop them being together because after all the work they went through to get together in the first place it would have been horrible to break them up.

Apparently the writers forgot all that when they thought breaking up not only Walter and Paige, but the whole team too was a good idea!

FoxPhile

You've got the crux of the problem with the finale there. It wasn't just Waige breaking up. Having the entire team splitting was adding insult to injury. Part of that, to me, is that the impetus behind BOTH of the break-ups seems implausible. They blew Paige's jealousy up ridiculously when Walter first told her of his Florence dream and they did it again with her reaction to Walter taking Florence to a lecture and Florence saying she had feelings for Walter. As much as I've tried to explain her reactions based on her history of abandonment, etc. it just feels so over the top. Similarly, while I get that the rest of the team gets tired of Walter's bossiness, I don't see where he did anything recently that was above the norm. Those complaints seemed to come out of the blue for me. It's as if instead of trying to round out the series in a good way, the writers were doing their best to destroy everything they've worked on for four years.