For some reason, the new edgy seems to be boring the living crap out of the audience. I don’t know when this started, but it seems to be a pattern that emerged somewhere around 2004. Movies and TV shows have found new and interesting ways to slow plots to a crawl, mysteries never seem to resolve, and our new heroes are just good-looking whiny characters with problems. Okay, so I’m speaking in extra-broad generalities, and I know several recent TV shows and movies that don’t fit this pattern. Yet, lately I seem to sit in front of my TV only to be tapping my fingers waiting for something interesting to happen.
Don’t know where I’m coming from? Well, let’s look at a quick scene for an example. This is completely made up by me, but you can see to what I’m referring:
Donna rushes in, her clothes tattered. Blood streaks down her right arm. Phil’s eyes bulge with fright as he looks up at her.
Donna: Time to go.
Phil: Go where? Who are you?
She takes out a knife and cuts him free.
Donna: Hurry, we don’t have much time.
Phil: Why should I trust you?
She pulls out a gun and chambers a round.
Phil: What do you need that for?
Donna: You should know better than anyone.
WTF?!?!?!?!!? I wrote that scene in jest, and in context I can see how it may end up to be pretty cool. But so often the above example seems to be the ENTIRE EPISODE! (Sorry for shouting…)
Let’s look at some other ways to dangle the carrot, alienate the audience, and drive yours truly absolutely bonkers:
- Main character discovers big secret only to get amnesia.
- Character wins true love, only to have his/her love killed, transported to another dimension, or somehow separated through some other B.S formulaic garbage move.
- At the height of the story arc, the character dies. Ha ha! Sorry you invested in that one, stupid audience!
- Character is about to catch the bad guy, then receives a phone call that he has to pick Timmy up at soccer practice.
- Solve a mystery by starting another mystery… then another… and so on…
- Never show the aliens… ever.
- Never show the alien ship.
- Never show the inside of the alien ship.
- Never explain WTF the alien’s are doing.
- Political grandstanding or other proselytizing that’s out of context with the narrative.
- Ending the finale in a cliffhanger.
Maybe it’s all due to the fact that the current generation has drawn their experiences from TV instead of books, making stories feel hollow and trite. Maybe our traditions have gone from an intellectual literary scope to quick cut music video vignettes. I’m not so sure, but I am convinced that the hope and optimism that used to drive humanity and strong storytelling are all but gone and what replaces it doesn’t feel quite the same.
I propose no solutions; this is an open rant. But I just want the good stuff—the action, the passion, the narrative, and the subtext. I want to relish in a story that is free and unencumbered by guilt or disingenuous populist outreach. I want to cheer a hero that’s not shadowed in shades of gray, but who fights for us all and aspires to the best that we can be. I want a real villain—the kind we all enjoy loathing. I want a story that takes me through all the emotions, whether high or low. And I want an ending where the good guy wins and even gets to live happily ever after. Because when I sit down to be entertained, I only want to watch the good parts.
