It's impressive how well they're able to manage their recurring casts, though it does draw more attention to the way regulars tend to be gone for good once they leave (I was kind of hoping for a Rebecca James mention or cameo since the new constable is from the town she moved to, though I suppose she's probably less fresh in the minds of long-time viewers who haven't seen her in eight years, rather than a few months). It's a little disappointing they had to write Crabtree out permanently, and it felt a bit abrupt the way they did it narratively with his marriage disintegrating in essentially one conversation, though it was pretty obvious it was coming IRL based on the fact that he's spent most of the past few years traveling the country to save his estranged father from bounty hunters or in inexplicably comprehensive seclusion to write his next novel.
Likewise, I'm a little nervous about how they plan to handle Julia over the longer-term, though I was ironically relieved by them having her collaborate with Murdoch on a case via telegram last week, and then have him make an off-screen trip to England prior to the most recent episode; I feel like it makes it more likely that they're not going to kill her off or break them up or something if they're comfortable including her in the narrative even without the actress being available. Personally, I think it'd be fine for Julia to be back in Toronto and just have a reduced amount of screentime; she's had like seven jobs, I think it might be a nice change of pace to just feature her in fewer episodes every season rather than her having obligatory separate ongoing subplots at the mental asylum, or suffragette group, or women's hospital that pull focus from the, well, Mysteries. It's the case for practically everyone else, it's been common for even the main characters like Watts, Henry, Brackenried, Choi, and Roberts to just not be in every episode, sometimes for a stretch, never mind characters like Margaret, Ruth, and Effie (prior to the last two seasons) who pop in very irregularly. Ruth just vanished for like two years and then it turned out she was famous now! I think they can have Julia in the setting even if we don't see her as much, and I feel like the Murdoch-is-becoming-isolated-and-weird element doesn't really have legs. This isn't Farscape.
I like Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (though I think one reference to him also being in Star Wars is enough) and it's nice to have a (kind of) American character who isn't a Cylon, but I was disappointed Murdoch didn't get the chance to spend some more time as inspector. Given how often Brackenreid tagged along on cases (and still does even now that he's the chief), it seemed to me like it wouldn't necessarily disrupt the balance of the show to have Crabtree and Watts as the detectives. It was also a little anticlimactic that Murdoch finally got promoted, and then decided off-screen between seasons that paperwork was boring and to take a demotion back to detective, especially after almost two decades of angst about him facing a glass ceiling because of his religion.
Violet's scheming and blackmail subplots have never really worked for me (I like a character with a separate agenda, but she never really seemed to have an agenda, just a loose desire to have the power to cause chaos on a whim), though this new one with her accidentally becoming the leader of a protection racket seems like it could be more interesting.
It has been a little tricky to talk up the show to my friends because of its sheer length. "The will-they-or-won't-they see-saw thing with Murdoch and Ogden having fights and obstacles thrown between them gets a bit frustrating, but don't worry, they finally get it right after the hundredth episode in season 8." I can hardly even talk about Watts; he's my favorite, but he doesn't show up until season 10.
I do wonder how much longer they plan to keep going; they've been incorporating more and more World War I foreshadowing, including the spooky bit about Brackenreid's screwup son being foretold to fight in it, which seems like the kind of thing you'd put in with the intention of paying it off.
