My rating just keeps dropping the longer I watch. I wanted to like this because this because I find mermaids & sirens fascinating mythological creatures. I have stuck with it until what I desperately hope is the end. Season three episode 10. The thing immediately struck me as off once they made 'diversity' choices for not only the town, I've lived in the Pacific Northwest in a small fishing town, it's largely white with natives. One or two black folks if any. Only a few Asians. That's just the reality. So imagine my surprise to see so many of the characters are black, or part black. But! I said okay it's Hollywood. They are ignorant of real life to make political points. But then you have multi-racial mermaids! Which makes no sense from a species perspective. The Mermaids have such a small gene pool that they should all look almost identical. Again overworking the diversity angle to make points. And then the Haida related girl is half British half Nigerian. And I'm thinking what the hell? Are there no native American actresses? But after a while I just persevered and stopped thinking about it. Plots come and go with alarming speed. We spend half a season worried about the military, or Ben's mother, or oil drilling operations, or the cult, or the mermaids wars. And then these things recede. And the same is true of characters. We worry a little then things randomly change. Then there's an apologia for polyamory as Ben and Maddie indulge in 'love' with Ryn the mermaid. I'm sure that made a lot of folks wince. Okay fine, mermaids are hypnotic. But then the whole thing is weirdly dropped as Maddie moves on to her own merman. And underneath all of this I'm starting to get a trans allegory vibe. And sure enough mermaids changing sex becomes an issue as their transitioning hole needs to be fixed. And so bad PC writing with shallow characters envelopes everything by the end. And I'm thinking that the only way this could possibly redeem itself is if Ryn is responsible for the destruction of every character, much the way that sirens were traditionally pictured as seductive but deadly. But we keep getting cuddly vibes. And I'm not even going to discuss the acting. How can I when the merfolk are all given baby language, signing and hissing. What actor could surmount that? And how could anyone hiss underwater? There are just so many irrational creative choices that just seem to be there to make weird political points. Why did I watch so long? Because there was a bit of a hook I was holding onto. I kept hoping, as I was feeling the riptide pull me under. Don't waste your time. Unless you are really interested in how contemporary culture has perverted the image of the siren in our age.
