Quote Originally Posted by MikkoAkure View Post
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Stargate SG-1 is an interesting comparison. I've seen pretty much the entire franchise, sometimes a couple of times. SG-1 has the heroes fail... a lot. But, being a serialized show, there's a basic need to reset back to something stable in between episodes. Not every show does it that way, but that was SG-1 a lot of the time.

I would also argue that a lot of bad things happened to the main cast with the possible exception of Sam, which was a complaint of the show for a long time. The show starts with O'Neal losing his son and Daniel's losing his wife to the Goa'uld. That's where the show starts. Teal'c sacrifices his position and station in the first episode. Teal'c loses his symbiote and lot of his resistance at one point. They have a lot of near-death experiences. The fact that the situations tend to last an episode instead the entire franchise is a writing choice, but one appropriate to episodic television.

Contrast that to here where our allies barely get hurt or slowed down. We don't even see them fail very often. McCay frequently fails and is one of the reasons he's sufferable. We don't see the struggle for the Scions. And that lack of struggle is why they frequently come off as insufferable. Sam from SG-1 had the same issue. She rarely, if ever, suffered and as a result was a poor character.

Struggling (and sometimes suffering) is what allows the Scions to be bastions. Without that they're the rich man whose never suffered a day in his life telling the poor man who has lost everything that he just needs a better attitude to succeed. Alphinaud was personally obnoxious to me for most of ARR and only after the Banquet that I actually start to like him as a character -- because he had learned perspective and humility. The hero's journey includes struggle as a necessary component. But their success rate has moved the needle from struggling to just doing. And if they are struggling, the game is having trouble showing it.