There are only a certain amount of things you can do with a plot on a TV show when the show runs for so long. As such, many shows contain the same kind of life events, but only rarely are some of the big ones handled well. Most of the time they feel like cheap tricks to drive the plot forward without offering much meaningful development. See what I mean below.
The Marriage
What’s the best way to eliminate sexual tension between two characters? Finally have them get together, and end up marrying them. This happens in shows that go on for far too long and run out of things to do with their characters. For example, Pam and Jim were TV’s hottest couple when they were flirting, and even dating, but once they got married? They became incredibly boring. There was now zero possibility they’d end up breaking up at that point, and it eliminated all mystery from their characters from that point out.
The Baby
The baby can follow marriage above, but more often than not it doesn’t. Rather it’s used as a “shock reveal” in shows that can’t think of anything better to surprise their characters with. It works for a while, until the baby comes. Simply put, it’s hard to make babies interesting on TV. Even if the show lasts for another six seasons, the kid will barely be old enough to start doing anything interesting. A good example of this would be Friday Night Lights. Tammy Taylor had a baby in season one, but after that? The kid really didn’t have any purpose for the entire rest of the series other than being carted around.
The Car Crash
Everything going fine in a character’s life? Well, time for a tragic car crash! I believe I watched this happen in Glee two times in two seasons, and it’s just never as jarring as the show wants it to be. Unless its caused by a more malicious element than random chaos (like say, a rival gang causing a car accident in Sons of Anarchy), it’s just a traumatic event for a traumatic event’s sake, and is just a cheap trick.
The What If Episode
Every show that’s been on long enough does something like this at some point when it runs out of ideas. It used to be a “It’s a Wonderful Life” type thing where a character would see what life would be like for their friends and families if they’d never existed. I’ve seen this in countless shows across the years and yes, like It’s a Wonderful Life, we always know what the end result is going to be: the character is indeed valued. More recently, shows like Heroes do a “Days of Future Past” type episode where they imagine a scary future if some bad thing was allowed to happen. They might as well be saying “this will definitely be NOT happening in the future,” and you know from the start that nothing that’s about to happen in the next forty minutes is going to matter to the show at all, as it will all be undone by the end.
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