the wages of sin don't adjust for inflation

I've been following Taran's patreon rewatch of The Genius in which he's finally reached season 4. It's been a lot of fun and in some places really validating, for example I had cool feelings about season 3's games (despite really enjoying Dongmin and Hyunmin's everything), and sure enough even with Taran's ability to understand and break down games, he felt that some of the s3 games were too complicated to follow as an audience member, as opposed to being a player, and that the show was more entertaining through seasons 1 and 2, when they were still interested in putting on a show. I'm surprised he came to that conclusion, especially with how much he loves The Devil's Plan, of which I liked season 1, but eh about season 2.

Three episodes into season 4, and for some reason I'd convinced myself that Sangmin made it to the final four, but as it turns out he's gotten eliminated! Very surprising to me in the rewatch, and made worse by my sympathy pains for Taran who loves Sangmin more than I do, though I don't recall being that mad about this elimination when I watched season 4 the first time. Maybe because I was focused on Jinho then, though overall Jinho (and sadly, Hyunmin) don't make an impact on the season as much as I'd wanted. But Sangmin is so great to watch and it's true, the show will not be the same once he's gone. :(

I'm 152 episodes done of 189 and so much stuff has happened and is still happening! The status quo has shifted in a major way now that everyone knows Victor is Aryana's father, which has led to Stella and Megan having mom-daughter evil bonding time trying to figure out how to get rid of Aryana, while doing the "keep your enemies closer" by actively spending time with Aryana. (Which has a funny/tragic consequence of forcing Marlon on the outs, as he sees her even less since Aryana's been spending time with her other family.) After Megan forced Aryana to reveal her water powers, there was a batch of episodes where Megan pretended incompetence in trying to keep Aryana's secret, like "oops I'm so bad at keeping your secret haha sorry I didn't mean to almost out you" which is A+ perfect and awful and funny.

Unfortunately I think that's over now that in episode 152 Megan revealed her hand by forcing Aryana's transformation into a mermaid and recording her on her phone. The merfolk storyline has come back in a relevant way, too, with Neptuna almost being captured by merfolk --> Neptuna is recorded being violent towards humans --> there's now an anti-mermaid hysteria --> Aryana WILL be caught by frightened and angry people if she's revealed as a mermaid. Consequences! Omg! We're heading into a climax, I would expect!

There's also been a turn to make Stella's ex Jason relevant, and I think the show had Stella accidentally confirm that Megan is Jason's daughter instead of Victor's? Unless that was Stella manipulating Jason, but I don't think so. But Stella finally discovered a use for Jason by triggering his protectiveness of Megan in order to target Aryana, which is sneaky fun.

All this excitement is great and Aryana gets to be at the center of the action in a good way, but I have to say it's come at a cost of flattening the other characters and relationships back to what they were near the start of the show. Stella and Megan are full-on manipulative villains again without the depth of the anxieties, vulnerabilities and surprising thoughtfulness we saw from them through the middle episodes. Victor is once again being drawn by the problem right in front of him with no consideration for his other responsibilities. Ofelia's only job is to worry about her daughter and panic whenever something goes wrong. At that sense, the show is fulfiling the promise it made at the start, but it is a bit of a shame after getting other points of view and relationship complications.

As a side note, I finally do not find Adrian annoying! Because we barely see him in these episodes, yes, but his blunt rudeness is pretty funny when he's using it to bitchily stand up for Aryana against Megan, unlike Hubert's too-gentlemanly waffling about. It'll stop being funny once the show tries to ship them again, but I'm enjoying it while I can.