In fairness to Brandon, while I agree with your analysis of the handling of Androl (who is an awful lot like Kelsier if you think about it) and his pet Red, I also think that his side characters are generally WAY more interesting than RJ's rather bland and sometimes cookie-cutter Darkfriends, who seem to be the only characters that get true side plots when RJ is driving ("true" in that they're fairly disconnected from the heroes throughout). Androl is interesting in a way that Narishma really wasn't. You had to infer an awful lot with Narishma to make him cool. If you were dripping with fan theories and fiction, you probably liked him a lot more than someone like me who ingests only what's in the books.

I'd have liked for RJ to have done more of this Sanderson-style sidetracking, because his own sidetracking always seemed annoying and distracting to me. It never seemed to go anywhere, was not really interesting because of how repetitive it was, and more and more I just started internally moaning at the text and looking expectantly along the page for a main character to crop back up.

But I do agree that Androl and Perava got WAY too much screen-time and had an annoying and unnecessary toolbox full of gimmicks.