But having no tension at all because you 100% know how every encounter will end is not bad writing?
I mean, the whole reason the Saiyan saga worked was because of that overwhelming sense of dread that was just omnipresent. Same thing with Vegeta letting Cell become perfect, because it was totally in-character that he would do such a thing and nobody knew just how strong he would become there was an incredible sense of "oh shit things are going south".
The tournament, by contrast, has been so devoid of any tension that the stakes don't even feel real. This is kind of a bad sign, considering that one of the biggest goals of writing out a tournament like this is to give people that sense of catharsis when fighters you want to
root for squeeze through an incredibly difficult trial with an overwhelming opponent, but right now U7 has been on top in every single episode and it's pretty much impossible to root for them because they're not the underdogs.
As far as I'm concerned, this is just plain bad writing all around. It's impossible for me to care when they don't even try to give me the slightest impression that anyone in U7 is in any sort of real danger. And yes, I am well aware that this will likely change in the coming episodes, but that doesn't help me appreciate the episodes we've got any better.
The latter fight was two 1v1s, not a 2v2. I did forget about the one instance with Kale, but I think I was too distracted by how Kale was being portrayed to even note which universe those characters were.
Either way, not good enough for me. In a team of 10 we should be seeing more than just two fighters working together at a time. The U9 episode and the Pride Trooper episode were the closest we got to that and even then they omitted a bunch of fighters from the action. It's just really unsatisfying to watch and raises a bunch of questions (especially with regards to just how much Toppo and Jiren actually care about all of this).
I mean, I'm watching a bunch of series that consistently manage to be way more engaging than this show, so as far as I'm concerned there's no way I can praise this series' writing and, by my standards, it hasn't been anywhere near good enough, so ¯_(ツ
_/¯