The Pace Has Sped Up
I have no problem with slow burns, but Salem is not a show that needs to function that way. Like many of you, I gave up on season 1 after watching a few (3) episodes because I was bored. Shows that benefit from a slow burn have interesting characters, and Salem didn’t have that in the beginning. Mary Sibley was a character with vague motivations and fairly unsympathetic (though Janet Montgomery is great in the role). John Alden was (and still kind of is) a boring character. The sole bright spots were Elise Eberle’s Mercy Lewis (because she was batshit insane and fascinating to watch) and Stephen Lang’s Increase Mather, since he emerged as the main villain(?) of the season. That is not the case with Salem now. We now have reasons to sympathize with Mary and the brewing witch war is infinitely more interesting than the slow march to the Grand Rite via a wooden apple from last season.
