You bring up a good point, re: the not caring about any particular character. That's obviously been a critique of the series in past seasons as well, but it was especially glaring this season (save for episode three, IMO, which was Charlores' incredible episode). I've been thinking about the show's issues as a whole lately, and it finally occurred to me why it's been so hard to truly care for these characters. Because it's not just that they're robots. It's that the filmmakers prioritize twists and surprises over empathy. And empathy, of course, requires us to fully understand a character's plight, yet people like Jonathan Nolan and J.J. Abrams instead think it's "cool" to shroud many of their characters' backstories and motivations in mystery, at the cost of creating a connection between them and the audience.
For instance, there was no reason whatsoever that Dolores Prime's mission this season needed some big, "All along she was trying to free humanity as well" reveal in the end. Instead, why not reveal that information to us in, say, episode one or two this season? So we understand her plight and could care whether she achieved it or not? And not only that, but make an episode or moment out of her actually coming to that realization, so we can actually root for her to succeed. But no, instead, Nolan prioritized a gotcha reveal in the end over establishing clarity and a connection with her.
They even did this for Caleb, the one human we were supposed to relate to. And it was especially underwhelming in his instance because we all guessed his general backstory (that he had been an outlier) well in advance of him realizing it himself. Imagine how much more effective it would have been had we - and he - known earlier in the season that he was an outlier who had been royally f/cked by the system. We got that to an extent in episode two, yes (by Dolores simply telling Caleb that the system was keeping him down), but had Dolores Prime revealed to Caleb soon after that he was *also* once an outlier who had been "edited" by Serac, we would have cared SO MUCH MORE about him wanting to rise up and take down Serac from that point on.
It's like, if Nolan or Abrams would have written, say, Gladiator, you just know they would have waited until the very end to reveal to us that Maximus had once been a general, for no other reason than the twist of it. When, instead, giving us that info from the jump establishes a much higher level of empathy for Maximus that only builds and builds throughout the story.
I'm all for twists and turns, but not at the cost of empathy.
