“No crabs were harmed during the making of this blog post.”

So once we must apologise for the crab catchy title (see Why I Stopped Reading Books for an explanation of that phrase) and make the same general observations as from the previous post. We won’t mention any specific television shows, just the concepts that are likely to cause us to stop watching a series. These observations are of course highly subjective. As before, we hoped these thought processes might help us in our ongoing novel writing avoidance. I mean project, novel writing project.

As a minor aside, we really don’t possess a television as we prefer reading improving books or dining in fine restaurants as an evening’s entertainment. But we do have access to a well known video streaming service named after a South American river.

Half A Person

“He’s a wise-cracking smart-alec manufacturer of craft beer, she’s a by-the-rules cop with a taste for danger. Together they are Trouble Brewing.”

Maybe the character development stopped at the “elevator pitch” or maybe the size of the writing team means that no one person scripts all the characters’ lines, but quite often we notice a certain “two-dimensional” quality to characters. It seems like they all have wonderful, clever lines, well suited to the character’s archetype, but they never speak to each other as normal people do. This makes them seem less real, less plausible and then we don’t care as much about them anymore. And we all remember what happens when that happens…

Suffer Little Children

We like some dark in our fiction. Regular readers of this august organ will no doubt be aware of that fact as we weave in some fiendish and mesmeric scenes into our stories. But for us, dark does not mean constant decapitations or slow motion torture or psychological torment. It means… a certain atmosphere or feeling. A sense of unease or a disconcerting moment. So when we encounter television shows with body parts flying around and human beings in pain, it tends to “turn us off” as the young people say. And so we in our part turn it off.

I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish

We have persevered for weeks, we have followed every twist and turn, on the edge of our seats. Our hearts are melted by the protagonist, enraged by the villain and enraptured by the mystery. The series finale beckons with a final reckoning. Evil will be punished, good will be rewarded and we will finally find out what is in Cory’s bedroom closet. And yet, our faith and energy are not rewarded. There is some ending of a story arc to be sure, but the villain has escaped, the heroine has lost her job, and inside Cory’s closest is chest of drawers.

Of course, all of this sets us up nicely for the next season in how many months time, and of course we are hooked. Or at least we are for now. We are aware of the truth of the famous quote that a mystery endures longer than the explanation, but nevertheless there has to be some satisfaction in the end. I would implore any creators to finish the story arc they started. Trust the audience, if we liked the show we will be back next time even if you haven’t left us dangling over a cliff. Because a story without climax, is, well…

That’s all we shall discuss this week. We hope that you have enjoyed our critique. Next Saturday we shall discuss Why I Stopped Watching Movies. Have a marvellous week.