Rather than try to engage with its characters' complexities, it busies itself with visual distractions that splinter off in every direction, save one that leads to a point.
Seemingly everyone has an opinion — often delivered as a demand — about what Disney should be doing with its characters, especially when it comes to diversity.
Most of the time, because it's a documentary, it has to trot around with its characters -- the staff -- as they run themeless errands and navigate prosaic, or at best amusing, reality.
When "Ab Fab" was first shown, in 1992, it electrified British television with its characters' boundless excess and passionate self-obsession.
In the Observer, Hannah Beckerman wrote that it "struggles to engage with its characters" and "the story lacks the psychological insight and rounded character portrayals that might have transformed it from an intellectually interesting novel to an outstanding one".
But as the bodies pile up, it's hard to sympathise with its characters.
It's a tight show, taut with its characters' knowledge that happiness is an illusion straining to pass as truth.
But "Parenthood," since it's a one-hour drama, can go deeper with its characters, mixing humor and pathos with a free hand.
"Sorry" ups the ante, offering intimate relationships not only with its characters but also with the whole show, as if it were a nebulous digital angel typing directly to you from on high. .
It is where the book asks us to engage seriously with its characters, to believe in them as individuals, that its weaknesses appear.
