Thursday, January 15, 2009

A romance for all seasons

Flipping through channels this evening I just realized that I am a total sucker for TV shows with unfulfilled relationships. It is a whole sub-genre of TV cheese: many seasons, two characters, and enough obviously missed opportunities for mad monkey sex that you want to jump into the screen and slap those idiots silly.

Case in point these days: Bones. Bones and Booth are dying to jump into each other, do some pretty crazy things that would require a long, long commercial break to avoid the FCC going bonkers, and basically let some good sense into the plot for once. These guys really need some relief, and seriously, someone should rent a room for them.

I don't just want to put an end to their suffering, though; it is their work mates I worry about. Can you seriously imagine working with two first class morons like that for that many years? And boy, she is you boss. Mentioning that stuff to her will get you some crazy looks, and definetely nothing like a solid, stress free working enviroment.

It is a cheap plot point, but I can't help but fall for it. I kept watching X-Files long past its due date just because of their obnoxious non-romance (and my favorite episode, "Triangle", basically spends most of its time teasing about this), Battlestar Galactica has decided to torture me with a presidential unfulfiled relationship, and at the current rate 30 Rock is going to add a Jack / Liz subplot by the end of the season, binding me to the altar of the almighty Tina Fey forever.

So note to writers: any show that has this silly plot device, I will fall for it. Hard. Add one sucker to your ratings.

1 comment:

  1. Sorry for my english, not a natural speaker...

    I actuall fell in the unfulfilled relationship trap during Smallville (using comics is cheap) but fortunately I could quit after a while. What shoueld stop is the "case of the week" format with 5 minutes of trascendental story at the beginning and the end of each chapter, with pure filler eventes in the middle of both. Dexter, Dr. House, Burn notice, the list is long. Why do the series with actual continuous plots have to suffer the writer's strike?

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