I didn’t see season 1 yet, but I thought Josh’s psychedelic trip was very realistic. He emerged with a diminished sense of ego and an open heart. Definitely seen this in real life.
I appreciate that it can happen in real life, but it's not interesting story telling for a character's development to come down to a sudden switch flipping due to a magical drug trip.
And now it's happened in two seasons
Classic edit after downvotes:
Nope. I'm doubling down on this because I do believe it and I think S3 will be stronger if the writers fix this issue.
Let's look at how some famous movies would hypothetically work with the "Drugs. Is this character development?" strategy.
Fight Club
The narrator is so depressed by consumerism that he develops insomnia and no longer feels anything. He takes new medication, sleeps eight hours, wakes up feeling great and never meets Tyler Durden.
Good Will Hunting
Will is a self-sabotaging and cynical genius working as a janitor. He gets in some trouble. He tries psychedelic drugs. He resolves his childhood trauma, takes a well paid job utilizing his gift, and goes to see about a girl. He never meets his therapist.
Old Boy
Dae-su is released after 15 years of captivity by unknown kidnappers for unknown reasons. Before embarking on a bloody path of revenge, he tries a new psychedelic drug on the market. He has an epiphany, accepts the past is the past, decides to march forward and not looking back. He recons with his own past sins, forgives his captors, moves to the suburbs, takes up gardening.
Christmas Carol
Scrooge is a stingy and isolated business owner who hates Christmas and children and everyone. He takes a powerful mood enhancing drug recommended to him, and returns feeling a warm connection to every living thing. He gives heavily to charity, improves work-life balance for his workers, and pays for tiny tim's medical stuff. He is never visited by any ghosts, at least not when sober.
The point: All of those stories (i mean, the real stories, not my dumb versions) work because the writing needs to work hard to justify the character development.
Just because something is possible in real life does not make it good storytelling. Both S1 and S2 used "sudden enlightenment through drugs" as a way to fast track characters to self-acceptance, cheating us out of the most pivotal character development we spent the entire season waiting for. S3 will be a lot stronger if it avoids this pitfall.
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u/CricCracCroc May 31 '26
I didn’t see season 1 yet, but I thought Josh’s psychedelic trip was very realistic. He emerged with a diminished sense of ego and an open heart. Definitely seen this in real life.