This is interesting to me because while I certainly agree that overall the crew walk away feeling let down and have come to dislike much of Eva or at least dislike the ending. One of the things I think this podcast series has done very well for me is clearly show admiration for certain things it attempts to cover while also clearly stating the ways in which those attempts are botched. One of the things people in here seem to be hitting on is the idea that they routinely give the least charitable interpretation of various events in the show. I feel like that lack of charity is built to over the watch and is earned by their worldviews and experiences with the show. They certainly were not unwilling to be charitable in early podcasts and you can trace different people's paths to losing their desire to perform more charitable readings as they individually experience AND EXPLAIN THOROUGHLY various parts of the show that let them down.
In addition to that one of the things I thought was great was Austin would routinely break a discussion for a bit when they had been piling on their disappointment to basically address the questions many people might feel they were begging. He would basically explicitly say if you are wondering why we are not giving this a more charitable read this is why or another read many people have given this scene is _____ but here is why I don't buy that. The number of times I found myself listening to them present their opinion on a scene and wondering in the back of my head "I wonder what they think of ____ interpretation" only for Austin to basically say shortly after me thinking that "The reason ____ interpretation doesn't work for me is ____" was often for me.
I do agree that the format of this pod really did center Austin's framing in a lot of cases because he was doing the recaps, but I also feel like he was largely the one other than Cado putting in any work to redeem elements of the show once opinion had soured. If you were going to ask me to map the member's preference for the show in a linear graph I would walk away with Cado->Austin->Danielle->Rob->Patrick. So Austin having the most forefront voice would presumably in my view give you one of the most favorable interpretations Waypoint could give.
Really though I just think you should be critical of the things you love and affect you. That hearing criticism of the show is good, this show is ripe for criticism because it tries so much and even if you are more charitable to it, I think it's good to be exposed to why others would not be.
