I have now spent two full days with my filing cabinet and Merlin and my head is swimming in a sea of paperwork and badly-written scripts.

This is a show purely for children so I will forgive the bizarrely teenage behaviour of the fully adult actors, the large number of filler episodes--especially in early seasons--and the god-awful repetition. A bit of that is necessary: if anything, the show is a valuable, valuable lesson in humility. It also does a good job with the difficulty of decision-making, with the irrational nature of fear, and with the importance of compassion.

Unforgivable, however, is the lack of character development in Arthur; the troubling focus on loyalty, which is not always grounded in reason; and the even more troubling focus on "destiny"--its existence, its veracity, and its influence.

[SPOILER ALERT?]

Most unforgivable of all is the fact that the dragon was right. About everything. The commendable lessons of kindness, mercy, and understanding--painfully established every season--are really, for me, undercut by all this.

I've taken it much too seriously, as I'm prone to do... but for parents watching this with their children: I would take care to point out its flaws.