Saturday, October 05, 2013

Writing ruins you for most TV.

So, Hunter is re-watching, and I'm watching, GAME OF THRONES together. And the rap about GoT is best summed up by this fake book cover:

I've heard a great deal about how many main characters die in GoT. And yet, 19 episodes in, I can't say that I've been shocked by anyone's death so far. Sure, some people have died, sometimes suddenly. Some important people have died, important in the sense that many fictional people would have considered them important to, say, the balance of power.

But no really great characters have died. No one has died who, in dying, would have left Westeros a less interesting place. No one with a really interesting character flaw, for example; no one you could get a lot more stories out of. 

This is a cable show. So likable and good characters are not immune from fatality, any more than a certain adorable teacher was immune in BUFFY. But really fun characters are, as far as I can tell, still immune. And "really fun characters," of course, in a cable show, often includes "really atrocious people." 

I called out my guesses for who I was sure would make it to at least episode 30, and Hunter did not contradict me.

Writing TV kind of ruins you for watching TV. We watched a SLEEPY HOLLOW episode, Lisa and I, and the moment we were told in Act 2 that the [entity] could only be killed by fire, we knew that it was going to be the convenient trunkful of [inflammable substance], shown in Act 3, that did for the [entity] in Act 5. And so it was.

That's one reason my writer friends watch so much BREAKING BAD. They're sometimes surprised. 

5:46 PM

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