TV Tuesday: The Point of No Return
Hey Readers,
We are back fresh from my Birthday Week (recognized as a week long holiday in these parts) and I want to talk about a phenomenon that I've noticed with TV and then dive in to a specific example.
Have you ever had a show you were on the fence about and then an episode came along and pushed you straight into hating it? Or sometimes (and this hurts pretty bad) you're not on the fence. Sometimes you're genuinely enjoying a show and in less than an hour, the show finds a way to squander all that good will and drive you away forever.
I like to call these killjoy episodes Points of No Return. They used to be called Jumping the Shark (after the Happy Days episode where Fonzie ski-jumps over a shark) but now that's come to mean any episode where a show steps away from their usual story line and experiments with something totally new. Musical episodes are usually Jumping the Shark, but they are not always Points of No Return.
Are you following my logic here?
You can always tell a PoNR because you walk away mad, not at the characters, but at the show itself. For the show Lost, I would argue it was when the polar bears showed up. For the original Dallas it was Return To Camelot when Bobby died in a car crash. Not everyone has the same Point of No Return but for some shows those episodes become a part of their culture.
So with all this in mind, let's talk about the time The 100 pissed off a huge chunk of it's fanbase including yours truly. Let's talk about season 3 episode 7 "Thirteen." Spoiler alert is in effect.
This is the episode everyone always points to as THE episode that changed the show. With good reason. I can understand the logistics and reasoning behind the death of the character Lexa. The actress who played her (Alycia Debnam-Carey) got a gig on the Walking Dead spin-off and when you consider the fact that there have long been rumors about how difficult the 100 set is to work on, it's understandable that she chose to leave for a prestige AMC drama when she got the chance. My issue with this episode is that instead of treating the death of a fan favorite character with care and reverence, as you probably should, knowing that regular viewers were going to be hurt by losing her, the writers made Lexa's death feel like an afterthought. She's killed accidentally. By a stray bullet.
It was abrupt. It felt petty. Honestly it felt like a writer taking out their frustrations on the fans. So understandably it turned a lot of people off. Ans I can go on for hours about the exhausting frustration I feel at the trope of killing LGBT characters (ask anyone, I'm inches away from that rant at all times) but what hurt the most in this episode was the dismissive way it was handled.
So I hope that noticing and hating this sort of episode helps build me as a writer. And that I never leave and audience feeling abandoned or disregarded and at a Point of No Return.
Happy Watching,
Little C
We are back fresh from my Birthday Week (recognized as a week long holiday in these parts) and I want to talk about a phenomenon that I've noticed with TV and then dive in to a specific example.
Have you ever had a show you were on the fence about and then an episode came along and pushed you straight into hating it? Or sometimes (and this hurts pretty bad) you're not on the fence. Sometimes you're genuinely enjoying a show and in less than an hour, the show finds a way to squander all that good will and drive you away forever.
I like to call these killjoy episodes Points of No Return. They used to be called Jumping the Shark (after the Happy Days episode where Fonzie ski-jumps over a shark) but now that's come to mean any episode where a show steps away from their usual story line and experiments with something totally new. Musical episodes are usually Jumping the Shark, but they are not always Points of No Return.
Are you following my logic here?
You can always tell a PoNR because you walk away mad, not at the characters, but at the show itself. For the show Lost, I would argue it was when the polar bears showed up. For the original Dallas it was Return To Camelot when Bobby died in a car crash. Not everyone has the same Point of No Return but for some shows those episodes become a part of their culture.
So with all this in mind, let's talk about the time The 100 pissed off a huge chunk of it's fanbase including yours truly. Let's talk about season 3 episode 7 "Thirteen." Spoiler alert is in effect.
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This is the episode everyone always points to as THE episode that changed the show. With good reason. I can understand the logistics and reasoning behind the death of the character Lexa. The actress who played her (Alycia Debnam-Carey) got a gig on the Walking Dead spin-off and when you consider the fact that there have long been rumors about how difficult the 100 set is to work on, it's understandable that she chose to leave for a prestige AMC drama when she got the chance. My issue with this episode is that instead of treating the death of a fan favorite character with care and reverence, as you probably should, knowing that regular viewers were going to be hurt by losing her, the writers made Lexa's death feel like an afterthought. She's killed accidentally. By a stray bullet.
It was abrupt. It felt petty. Honestly it felt like a writer taking out their frustrations on the fans. So understandably it turned a lot of people off. Ans I can go on for hours about the exhausting frustration I feel at the trope of killing LGBT characters (ask anyone, I'm inches away from that rant at all times) but what hurt the most in this episode was the dismissive way it was handled.
So I hope that noticing and hating this sort of episode helps build me as a writer. And that I never leave and audience feeling abandoned or disregarded and at a Point of No Return.
Happy Watching,
Little C
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