Windshield wiper issues

I drove my car in the rain for the first time in quite some time last week. The windshield wipers seemed to work fine for a bit, then I started having issues with them hanging up.

I had fairly recently replaced the wiper blade and the first issue encountered was the blade was getting stuck on the edge of the windshield. So I thought the blade might be too long, and went and had another one installed, it was an inch shorter than the blade it replaced. It seemed to work without hanging up, but in about 5 minutes it started hanging up in random places on the windshield. I then noticed it was only moving in an out on 1/2 of the windshield (passenger half). After 10 minutes or so it started moving freely again, but the in and out motion is gone.

I'm guessing some gear or spacer with the in and out motion was causing the issues, and it eventually completely broke. So what broke, and how do I fix it?