Pop Culture for Fun

Well, the fall/winter/spring/summer line-up has some interesting shows. And you get invested in one or two of them. You watch the show at the edge of your seat. The story’s good, the characters well written, the dialog is smart. The season ends. And the news comes that it’s not being picked up again. And you’ll never see the characters you loved or get to know how it would’ve played out in the end. Instead of this you get some reality show crap, or worse a new series that’s just a reimagining of an old one (seriously, who needs another CSI?). But don’t get too rattled up, it will all happen again, you can be sure of that.
Examples:Firefly, Jericho (possible future cancellation:Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles)

Repetition

This is hard to argue against, as tv shows rely heavily upon it:

- House: person gets ill, House gets the case, House makes fun of team/hospital staff/patient/patient’s loved ones/Wilson/Cuddy, House uses riddles to make everyone figure out what he already knows, team comes up with diagnostic, House approves it, diagnostic seems to fit, patient gets better, patient almost dies, House figures out the diagnostic all by himself/with the help of Wilson/at the trigger of a
word/song/situation.

- Friends(even if it’s over): Ross and Rachel split up, Chandler makes inappropriate joke, Joey says something stupid but funny, Monica gets fussy, Phoebe says something unexpected, Ross and Rachel get back together

- Scrubs: JD and Elliot split up then get back together, then make joke about it being like Ross and Rachel, JD gets attached to a dying patient, Dr. Cox uses a lot of sarcasm, JD has a day dream involving musical numbers, The Todd makes inappropriate sex joke, JD learns a valuable life lesson at the end, but continues to be more and more childish and stupid by each episode.

- Stargate Atlantis:on a usual trip through the gate something unexpected happens, firefight or disaster occurs, McKay has to figure out something, McKay complains and complains, Sheppard and Ronon kick some ass, McKay figures it out, they return through the gate, Weir/Woolsey/Carter show up to tell them they did a good job/to be careful next time (this pretty much goes for Stargate SG-1 as well).

- Lost: Something weird happens, the survivors argue about what to do, Kate and Jack through each other meaningful looks, flashback/flash-forward, Sayid acts like a tough guy, Hurley says something funny, some more weird stuff happens, Kate and Sawyer do it, flashback/flash-forward, Ben manipulates someone, something weird happens, episode ends in a cliffhanger/peacefully with a song while showing what all the characters do.

- Every crime drama out there: brutal murder, evidence, suspects, evidence points to a suspect, turns out it was another one.

Greed

This one factors in a lot in destroying good TV shows. When something is popular, the network decides it must churn out more and more episodes even when the show has lost its charm/meaning/main characters. Stargate SG-1 went about 3-4 season longer than it should have, reaching its peak around season 3 or 4. Prison Break should’ve ended at season 2, but instead we got reinvention after reinvention (“let’s do season one again but in a different country” or “let’s have them break into something Mission Impossible style this time”). The Simpsons continue to be above average overall but they’ve churned out a lot of awful episodes lately. Season 10-12 would’ve been a perfect time to do the movie and go out in style. Does anyone remember Sliders? Jerry O’Connell was in that (so was Kari Wuhrer, yum), then he wasn’t. The show went on until only one original cas member was left, and the story didn’t make the least bit of sense. Should’ve pretty much died after John Rhys-Davies decided he’s too god for the show.

Cliffhangers

You know, the ones leaving you hanging by a thread, just waiting to see the next episode. And sometimes it pays off. But most of the times it’s just a gimmick used to keep you watching, to keep you lusting for that next episode when the cliffhanger situation resolves itself pretty much out of thin air, before the episode goes on and ends with another one.
Examples: Lost, Heroes, 24, pretty much every show with a story arc.

Character inconsistency

Now this one mainly happens when the writers have no idea what to do next. Let’s do a case study on Heroes. Sylar was bad, then bad but trying to be good, then good, then bad but caring for someone, then just bad again. Angela Petrelli was almost evil willing to sacrifice one of her sons, then kind of bad but caring, then became a hero all of the sudden. Mohinder was a good guy, one of the few I had no doubts about. Come the second season the brilliant doctor is making dumb choices and aligning himself with the bad guys. And they’re not even consistent with a theory someone on IMDB had: intelligence decreases with power. Peter was once the most powerful of them all, now he’s lost his powers and started using his brain. Sylar was all the more cunning without his powers, tricking Maya and whatshisname, then regained power and started being just a pawn for the big players. But that didn’t happen last episode, during the eclipse when everyone lost their powers, he just seemed clueless then.

Loose ends

Ever found yourself scratching your head wondering why the writers have not addressed something they eagerly pushed into the show a couple of episodes back? I understand that with a long running series some things get left behind, either due to lack of time or when an actor decides he doesn’t want to do the show anymore, but it’s never nice to leave people wondering. Lost has done it all too many times, first that comes to mind being Libby and her showing up in a flashback in Hurley’s mental care institution.

Shocking U-turns

When everything seems to be going one way and they pull a Kansas City Shuffle as Bruce Willis called it in Lucky Number Slevin. Everyone’s thinking ahead according to current events then out of the blue something totally unexpected, and, at times, illogical happens. Take for instance Prison Breeak, with its sudden twist. The end-game came, the players all did their parts, everything was smooth, and I honestly hoped they would end it, as I did many many times before. Then, 5 minutes before the end, FBI agent Don Self asks a question of his partner. And all I could think after that was : “Don’t kill her!!”, but he did. And all the characters are back at square one, despite absolutely no clue before-hand of what was about to happen. Now, if that’s not toying with the audience, I don’t know what is.