Forcing the Romance

In answers to my recent query about TV I should be watching, friend of the blog Foxessa mentioned the perils that might come with giving the fans what they want.  Because what fanatical viewers want may not be the best thing for the series, and I thought I’d rant about that for a while.

Usually what the super fans want is some kind of ill-advised romance.  If there are two major characters in a show, fandoms can and will develop around the romantic possibilities involving those two characters.  Mulder/Scully, Frodo/Sam, Kirk/Spock, Spock/Chapel, Kirk/Green Alien Bikini Babe, Kirk/Anybody, Starsky/Hutch, Galadriel/Eowyn oh jeez it just goes on and on.

I’ve been watching The Mentalist, not because I found the show particularly believable, but because I used to do stage magic and I enjoy watching the actual mentalist trickery used in the show.  The hero Patrick was paired with a team of detectives headed by Teresa, but one of the things I liked about the show was that I there wasn’t much in the way of sexual tension between the leads, and what existed was tentative and pretty much dropped as a non-starter— for one thing, in his quest to bring down a serial killer, Patrick lied to and manipulated Teresa much more than anyone else, even the bad guys.  Any relationship would have been based on mendacity and deceit.

But now that Red John’s been caught, the series has been revamped, and apparently Patrick and Teresa now feel free to declare their love for one another.  It’s not plausible, there was never any real degree of sexual tension there in the first place, and the switch involves Teresa being in love with someone who has never trusted her and who has psychologically abused her.  Which may be realistic in its way, but it’s not something I particularly want to watch.

Desperate writers, out of ideas, caving in to the fans who wanted to see Teresa and Patrick in each other’s arms.  Let’s hope that they don’t take the same course as Castle.

Castle is a series that was pretty much built on the sexual tension between its co-stars, bestselling writer Castle and Detective/First Beckett.  (I never believed that Castle was a writer, because he never cared about any of the stuff that writers care about; but that was okay, because I  likewise never believed that Beckett was a police officer— and I never believed that either of them were New Yorkers.  Though it was a romantic comedy and none of that mattered so much.  But I digress.)

Eventually the writers ran out of reasons to keep them apart, and then the Season of Dreadful Cute began.   Castle and Beckett comically trying to hide their relationship from the others in the cast.  Castle and Beckett dancing around the issue of marriage.  Castle and Beckett planning their wedding— for what seemed like years!  (“Elope!” I kept screaming.  “Elope!  Spare us the wedding plans!”  But no, they did not listen, and we were not spared.)

(And the series ended its season on a horrible note of false tension, with the wedding day finally arrived and Castle supposedly killed in a fiery crash.  Now watchers knew the show had been renewed for another season, and there’s been nothing in the papers about the name of the series being changed to Beckett, so we knew that Castle would turn up having been kidnaped or something, and that he’d eventually be rescued and then we’d have another season of cute wedding plan moments!  Because for some reason we cannot be spared all these details.)

And let us now have a moment of sadness for all the series that can’t figure out anything to do with their female characters but get them pregnant.  Because women are for sex and babies and . . . is there another thing?  And babies are complications to the plot, which is supposedly good though nobody actually wants to see the characters in, say. an action series, actually raising an infant, juggling feeding schedules around the car chases and the shootouts with the bad guys.

Plus there are the Romances that Make You Go Squick.  Like that of Dexter Morgan and his sister.  Which was probably an attempt to capitalize on the two actors being married in real life, but OH MY GOD WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Less squicky but equally troublesome is the relationship developing between Sheriff Longmire and Deputy Victoria Moretti.  Two seasons in which their relationship was professional, and both demonstrated their competence, and then Moretti showed up in Season Three with her uniform blouse unbuttoned and I knew the series was going to swerve in an undesired direction.  (Because women are for sexing and babies?  I’m afraid we may find out.)

Let’s give some thought to the shows that do this right.  Battlestar Galactica, oddly enough.  Starbuck and Apollo were obviously intended for some kind of relationship, but while the actors had plenty of chemistry, they had no chemistry with each other, and the writers seemed to notice this and steered the characters elsewhere.  (At least as far as I got in the series, because I stopped watching after the Inevitable Stupid Finale started looming closer and closer.)

And Bones did quite a number of things right.  Again, the two principals were clearly intended for a romance, but it was very quickly obvious that the two had no chemistry, and the writers noticed and kept any romance out of the plot.  Except that as the series progressed and the characters developed, they did develop some chemistry with each other, and the romance evolved naturally.

Once the romance actually happened, the writers spared us all that Castle is determined not to spare us!  End of one season, Booth and Brennan get together.   Beginning of the next, they’re living together and Brennan is seven months pregnant.  No cutesy byplay.  No endless wedding plans.  No scenes where Parents are Informed or Exes are Jealous or Co-Workers Make Rude Jokes.  No competent woman wondering why she’s missed her period.  Oh my God, what a relief!

There is a kind of decline that can happen in a series, whether literary or on TV, when the creators no longer have the juice to keep the story in its path.  They start using bad ideas because they’ve used up all the good ones.  And fans, dedicated and loyal though they are, can have some of the worst ideas in the world, many of which seem to involve Rule 34.

And series needs to have more going for it than sexual tension, because once the tension is released, you need a reason to keep watching.

Now I’m all in favor of romance.  But romance isn’t all I watch for, and when I see a romance I don’t want to roll my eyes or get creeped out or think “Is this really the best you can do?”

Because you really can do better than that.