I am your father. Immortal words that have set the tone for TV and film ever since.
Recently, after the airing of the fourth series of Sherlock, Natalie and I had a debate about how small the narrative worlds of TV shows are. Basically characters all seem to know each other, are related to each other and often have special traits or experience that tend to 'fit' and prove useful to either the plot or the situation that the characters find themselves in. A prime example of this is Star Wars, which is essentially a space saga about a family dynasty that possess magical powers and a cosmic connection to the universe. The major players in the story arc all happen to be related to each other, most notably when the main villain of the story turns out to be the father of the main hero. What are the chances?! To a certain extent, script writers must do this so the audience can experience all aspects of a fictional world through the heroine or the hero. If the audience can see what the hero sees and feels what the hero feels then the story can be emotionally charged and easier to connect to and perhaps more entertaining. But does it mean self-indulgent storytelling? Can the end result be a ridiculous plot twist? A certain level of implausibility? Natalie expressed her feelings below:
Hell yes. I’m getting a bit bored of it to be honest. This penchant for twisty, turny stories (where actually it was the father all along) and navel-gazing has taken away my enjoyment from some of my favourite shows. I don’t even think it’s a recent phenomenon. I think that when a show runs for too long, it’s easy for the writers to lose sight of what they set out to do in the first place and chuck in lazy twists. For me, all stories need to have is a plausible entry point. I’m not saying they need to be true to life at all. I just mean that there needs to be some reason to invest in taking the time to watch it.
So, starting with what I was raised with – The X Files. Mulder, a defiant believer, and Scully, a sceptical doctor, are in their own way maverick agents, investigating weekly paranormal cases outside the usual FBI channels. Each week they fight some paranormal threat, within the realm of possibility, in one way or another. Their chemistry is great to watch. Mulder is brilliant and eccentric. He is estranged from his divorced parents. His sister was possibly abducted by aliens – or not. Scully was a navy kid who travelled about the country wherever her father’s work took the family and never put down roots. Her relationship with her father is strained because she went a different way to the aspirations he had for her to be a doctor. Otherwise, she seems to have a pretty normal relationship with her family. I really love all the character development stuff.
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| Mulder and the Cigarette Smoking Man AKA Mulder's big bad biological daddy |
On top of the weekly paranormal stories, a story arc eventually developed. To a certain extent, I liked the idea that there was a conspiracy in the background. Later we find out that Mulder’s dad (not his real dad and actually a shadowy conspirator within the government) made a deal with Mulder’s biological dad that Mulder’s sister would get abducted instead of Mulder because he was the favourite child. So the sister’s abduction was actually a conspiracy of men. Scully gets abducted too, and is returned with alien DNA and an implant inside her. Or was it aliens? Eventually we find out it may have been men. Men working with aliens that make her infertile. She has the implant removed and gets cancer. Then she puts another implant in and gets better. Is the impossible baby she gives birth to later in the series, an alien baby? We never actually see her have sex with Mulder (it is only suggested), so maybe it was. Mulder never actually finds his sister, instead discovering that she was probably taken mid-way her abduction by some spirits to protect her from the suffering she was about to experience and actually now she is dead. Mulder gets abducted too eventually. Then he dies. Then he wakes up again from the dead and has special alien skills. Are you following? Or have all the plot twists made your head spin?
Alias is another good example of a good idea turning ridiculous. The point, as far as I could tell, was for us (girls particularly) to imagine ourselves to be as good as guys at being clever and kick ass. Sydney Bristow is recruited out of college by a secret organisation to run exciting spy missions all over the world (while wearing cool outfits). Alias was good, inane fun for a while until SD6 (the spy organisation Sydney works for) turned out to be black ops within black ops that wasn’t really the CIA in the first place and Sydney’s dad turns out to be an experienced senior spy, her mother was a member of the KGB and was bad but good but bad and so was Sydney's lover Vaughan and so on until all plausibility within the Alias fictional universe when out the window. What the hell?
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| Spies in grey suits |
Recently I’ve been watching Scandal for the first time. It started out as a fun romp with another kick ass woman, Olivia Pope (a lawyer, campaign manager and general all round fixer), calling the shots and fixing the scandals of high profile Beltway people on a weekly basis, with an implausible but always slightly possible romance between her and the President of the United States in the background. Five seasons later and pretty much each one of the ensemble cast has murdered at least one other person (minimum). Oh yeah – and did I mention there’s a secret black ops organisation involved? And Olivia’s dad runs it? Again, what the hell? That entry point for the audience, that fine line where you can just about believe what’s going on even though you know it’s impossible is smashed to smithereens.
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| Olivia Pope is unimpressed with the latest plot twist |
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| Global warming led to 221B Baker Street flooding.... |
Sherlock is a bit different. I feel it was still in its infancy when Moffat and Gatiss (who I admire and respect) jumped the gun and decided to delve into Sherlock and Watson’s psyche’s a little too early. There were still so many more straight-up mysteries they could have told before starting in on the central characters. By all means explore the main character's personal lives, but just do a bit more groundwork first, I say. I was cringing during that wedding episode when John married his girlfriend Mary (who is..yes! You guess it! A super spy!). Don’t get me wrong – I adore Holmes and Watson and their banter and tensions and wonderful complexities of character but when you pile it on thick (one for the fans!) and make it the focus instead of sprinkling it over a good story you risk killing it completely. You can have too much of a good thing. I love it when Holmes and Watson are tested but in the last episode of this latest season it was just way too much, so much in fact, that the leaps of logic were absolutely ludicrous. How the hell did Holmes and Watson steal that boat out in the middle of the sea? What are the chances that Sherlock had a secret murderous sister he had forgotten about? A good enough story will, by default, tease out the characters. But I guess Sherlock was never a show about subtlety – even the music is melodramatic. I wouldn’t be surprised if Holmes Senior turns out to be a high ranking spy… Oh no, wait – that’s his brother, Mycroft.
The upshot? Quit while you’re ahead people.
