You're conflating two different things: understanding and storytelling.

Is the theory in this thread that because some other people required another viewing, the storytelling was now considered bad?

I can't speak for others, but for me, I thought the plot was so idiotically simple that it made the needless convolution of the story stick out like a sore thumb. That's bad storytelling; when you make it convoluted for the sake of making it convoluted. We got through season 1 and were expecting things to carry over from that and they simply didn't. Not only that, but everything was so needlessly drawn out that it was clearly the producers stretching the plot of 6 episodes to fill an entire season.

The rest of the episodes were pretty confusing, but the finale made everything pretty clear, and wrapped everything up almost too neatly, somehow becoming the most straightforward episode of the season.

The rest of the episodes weren't confusing, they just didn't give any details and wanted you to be mystified and remain in the dark. It was a very cheap, edgelord way of doing things. What was even worse is that after an entire season of building up the mystery by using lame plot devices, they wrapped it up in a neat bow like a cliché CBS procedural.

These things together are what made it bad. And I think you want to conflate understanding with storytelling; but that's simply not true. There are plenty of things I haven't understood, but were still good stories. They are two separate entities.

The reason people had to watch it twice was because they set out plot points and internal logic which they would go through in a cycle of breaking and then strictly adhering to again. That's very bad storytelling. I'm sorry, but the idea that staying consistent with plot points made in previous episodes is now "spoonfeeding" is fucking idiotic.