Yeah, I agree with all of this, basically, especially the stuff about Julia, who I really thought they were not going to let down as hard as the books did, and then on that whole infuriating pregnancy plot they let her down harder—the "nick" practically made me throw my laptop across the room.

I just also think—they started explicitly setting up Eliot's mega-fail with Quentin in 3x1 (when he tells the Great Cock that the mosaic scenario sounds like something he'd really fuck up), and they did a lot of work in S3 to make that 4x5 "reveal" (I don't think it was actually that much of a reveal, but I'd also been over here writing about Eliot rejecting Quentin because fear and also internalized biphobia basically since I landed in the fandom, so you know *g*) have a lot of complexity and weight, because it's so anchored in the text, in multiple places, like that scene in 3x6 where Eliot and Quentin are talking about the boat quest. So that "this is my worst memory" thing is heavily contextualized, because they've, you know, let Eliot fail, and shown Eliot failing, at his relating-to-other-humans check many, many times, before they actually let us know "no, yes, he is failing, and he understands (at least in part) how he's failing." It's not a show that shies away from letting characters be dicks, and then holding them accountable for that in complicated ways that last, you know, across multiple episodes and even seasons.

I'm—perfectly okay with Margo being a dick to Josh, above and beyond, like—"I don't want to date you." Like, she can be a dick to him about not wanting to date him and also be totally valid in not wanting to date him—those aren't mutually exclusive in any context, and especially not when her best friend just died. And Margo is a dick to Josh! Like, I think she's a dick to Josh in a way that's totally believable for her being wracked with grief and trying to hold herself together, but she's still a dick. She hurts him intentionally. Even Josh can see that, and to at least some extent can see why she does it. But I actually don't think it's impossible for the writers to set this up in a way that doesn't let Margo off the hook for having been a dick to Josh, even while the show is still giving her some room to not want a like, media-typical romantic connection. I'm not saying they're necessarily going to pull that off, but—they do tend to make character arcs that go one for a long time and evolve in kind of complicated ways, so I'm willing to cut them some slack. Especially because I feel like they're using Margo (to Josh) and Quentin (to Alice) as mirrors, and setting up those particular sets of people to act as foils for each other is a really interesting narrative choice.