Talk:Through a Glass, Darkly/@comment-25556607-20141226214237/@comment-71.178.133.75-20141227021958

She has done some good stuff and bad stuff as a writer. I'd say she is good, not great overall. I think she focuses on relationships too much - or rather she lets them drag on and become incredibly stale. Couples that I shipped the first couple of seasons I've lost interest in - it's kind of what happens when 3/4 girls have the same pairings for over 4 seasons. - excluding minor intermittent relationships like Hanna/Travis and Jake/Aria. Definitely too much catering to the shippers.

Also I think Marlene has a way of hyping things up wayyy too much. Her tweets about "shocking" and "epic" things hype up episodes far beyond what they actually deliver. I get that she does this to get people to watch (which is fair enough I guess). But from the standpoint of a fan who is going to watch until the end this is terrible. Episodes that otherwise I would have thought were good solid episodes seemed very underwhelming after Marlene hyped them up. Like when she wanted us to tape our reactions to the Christmas episode...there wasn't anything that shocking in there to react to...reaction tapes are for Game of Thrones Red Wedding stuff, or revealing A.

Generally I do like the episodes that Marlene writes better than the ones other script writers write. But she always writes the premieres, finales, mid-season finales, and "special episodes." These are supposed to be the best episodes in general, regardless of the writer. So yeah, her episodes are overall better - but thats just because she has the best stuff to work with. I guarantee some of the other writers on the team could do better than her, given the same caliber of episodes to work with.