Both Carole & Tuesday and Kipo started promising as small stories but lost their steam in their second acts when they “went big”. The folk singer duo disrupts the presidential election on Mars. A lost girl dethrones a would-be emperor.
Conceptually, such stakes inflation might make common sense as a way to drive the story. How does our hero’s problem get worse? Make the problem really big! However, all the extra stuff that comes with saving the world bogs down the character development. The price is not worth the stakes.
The charm in the first acts of both of these shows came from exploring the world. Learning about the characters who were simultaneously learning about themselves. Once established, it makes sense to take characters out for a spin to go “do stuff”, but when things get too grandiose the natural arc of the story suffocates under the weight of the action.
Carole & Tuesday really suffered under this inflation. The two title characters get sidelined into becoming Mary Sue’s with the ancillary characters frozen in midway through the show, and a bunch of new personalities thrown into the second half.
A couple examples from the world of movies to confirm the my dislike of this tendency.
I absolutely loved Bladerunner but Bladerunner 2049 fell completely flat. The colors were pretty, but the global conspiratorial sweep of the second movie ran against the claustrophobic moodiness of the first movie. Let the bounty hunter chase his prey and don’t distract him with a worldwide economic conspiracy-catastrophe.
My favorite movies from Studio Ghibli all keep a laser focus on the scale and don’t get grandiose. The genius behind Ghibli is that their majestic animations allow themselves to be bounded within the limits of their universe. That’s why Princess Mononoke and Castle in the Sky fall flat, even though both of them are brilliantly crafted – they veer too close to saving the world.
Unfortunately Carole & Tuesday did not have a third act to rescue the show, but Kipo was able to regain the narrow focus in its third and final season, becoming a personal vendetta between the good and bad protagonists. Re-tightening the focus also let the show explore fresh moments of absurdity which made the first season so charming.
When the plot gets going, stay small!