"Structurally awkward" is probably the best way to describe all three season arcs in Picard. The writers seemed to focus on "No tell, only show" plus "surprise

"Structurally awkward" is probably the best way to describe all three season arcs in Picard. The writers seemed to focus on "No tell, only show" plus "surprise twists" rather than character motivations so all three plots wound up feeling "upside down and backwards" in my opinion with key exposition infodumped in the end that I think would have been much better up front. They wouldn't have been "surprise twists" in that case, but that would have been for the better overall I think because you'd actually understand what all the various season villains were actually trying to accomplish. "No tell, only show" is a common problem in a lot of "Prestige TV" right now, leading to so many episodes feeling oddly paced where things need entire scenes across multiple episodes that probably should have been a two minute conversation. So that is not entirely a Picard flaw given how much current TV seems to suffer from it. (It certainly comes from a good intention, coming from the adage "show don't tell" taken to a logical, but awful extreme.) But it stands out a lot more in Picard especially, I think, because you watch old TNG episodes and they did so much exposition/setup in just a carefully worded "Captain's Log" and in that context it seems (at least to me) so how obvious how much could the Picard TV show have used a few more "ex-Admiral's Log" moments to just speed up a lot of filler.