This really has been the perfect update, the individual sections for each girl are amazing and it feels like it finally puts us on notice for trying to juggle multiple relationships.
Thus far we had a lot of teasing that things will go bad but not a whole lot of bad actually happening, Alexis-Layla some others... but often we can "survive" these things.
But this update with things like
Erynn's likely being setup for a school internship, Nikki/Cara moving into town, Val vs Alexis... it feels like we are about to arrive at our destination
In regards to Ethan/blackmail, Nyx seems to finally be doing the right thing and not letting it go cold, just a short scene here and there to keep interest... with hints of more to come(i still would rather have it over with to "speed up" the Erynn route, but at least now it's constantly moving instead stopping for several episodes at a time).
If you go too many episodes without any progress in a storyline it becomes much harder to keep interest(just look at freaking Lucas he went away so long ago, no one cares anymore).