I think there have been missed opportunities to explore relationships (like how Martin relates with his parents, for example—he was barely in scenes with Nicole/Ted prior to the Leslie/Dana reveal, and it wouldn’t have taken much to establish more layered dynamics there).
Nicole’s had her own drama, but she’s a psychiatrist, and her son has been enduring psychological trauma. She’s been much more involved in her sister’s drama than her son’s.
Whether that’s a character choice that we’ll learn about later remains to be seen (or if it’s been an issue of lining up actors’ schedules/guarantees), but there’s a weird choppiness to the show that undermines a lot of the good ideas. Soaps require a lot of walking and chewing gum at the same time, so I don’t envy MVJ one bit, especially if budgets aren’t there.
BTG doesn’t have the luxury of counting on viewer patience like new soaps in previous eras had. (Passions was 1999, which may as well be the Neolithic era in TV terms. Much less talking about Santa Barbara and B&B’s launches back in the early Stone Age. You can’t do an apples-to-apples comparison to previous soap launches because the viewing environment has changed so drastically. Hell, 2019 seems ancient now.)
Fair or not, BTG had to hit the ground running in ways that no soap in history has had to do. Things move much faster these days, which is why launching a soap in 2025 was such a risky (and courageous) prospect. Its very existence is its own triumph, and they’ve done pretty well in holding an audience, all things considered.