KILLING OFF BELOVED CHARACTERS IS NOW A LAZY PLOT TRICK.
KILLING OFF CHARACTERS HAS BECOME TV’S CHEAPEST, EASIEST PLOT DEVICE
If there’s anything George R. R. Martin and Shonda Rhimes have taught the contemporary t elevision audience, it’s that the death of a beloved character is A- OK, just as long as it somehow furthers your plot.
This goes against much of how we were raised by television series in the past. Death was never treated as a minor narrative development that simply propels a narrative forward. It’s traditionally been a major plot device, the sort of thing reserved for premieres and finales that could incite an entirely new narrative juncture, shifting the arc and identities of multiple characters.
In fact, it’s often the sort of plot that’s used to kickstart entire television series, like Six Feet Under and Brothers & Sisters, because the weight of that not- sosimple action is more than enough to catalyze its ethos.
But in recent years, and particularly the last year of television, killing off main characters has become a sort of Hail Mary, a strategy used to write one’s way out of, say, a love triangle or a narrative that simply isn’t working.
While this seemed novel at first, it’s become a transparent ploy. Not only does this trend minimize the gravity of death, but it reduces the character it kills off to a mere tool. It also brings the audience out of its engagement in the series to make the mechanics of producing a television program more pronounced. Perhaps worst of all, it takes advantage of the goodwill of viewers in the disguise of furthering the story.
This may have been best exemplified this past week when, midway through its third season, CW’s Jane the Virgin, an American take on the telenovela genre, killed off a major character, Brett Dier’s Michael, Jane’s husband and the man she — spoiler alert — finally loses her virginity to.
Despite hints of his death having been dropped early on in the first season ( in regards to how Michael would never stop loving Jane, the narrator ended one particular episode with the words “For as l ong as Michael lived, until he drew his very last breath, he never did”), and the character recovering from what seemed like a fatal gunshot wound early on in its third season, Michael ultimately dropped dead out of the blue in last week’s episode, succumbing to the previously undetected effects of said gunshot wound. Go figure.
The episode t hen c ut three years into the future — Jane has moved on the best she can, living a new life while surrounded by entirely new narratives as the show cleans house and restarts for no apparent reason other than suggesting that a wellwritten, eventful and healthy relationship is simply not television-worthy.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, creator and showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman said focusing on “the aftermath ( of Michael’s death) would overwhelm our storytelling because we are a light and bright show, generally, and a comedy. If we were to live in that aftermath immediately after, it would just take over everything as it would have to, because you would have to see all that mourning. … It allowed us to not live in that deep, deep sorrow for our show, which is not the tone of the show. But you get a lot of those real emotions, but you also then have somebody who’s three years later and has a job, whose life is then completely different than we left her, which I think makes for some exciting storytelling.”
Sure, and some lazy storytelling to boot.
While the series certainly hinted and therefore prepared viewers for Michael’s inevitable death early on, fair warning doesn’t make it acceptable to sweep aside an entire character and narrative arc. It’s become a common symptom of network television, where writers rooms create under the pressure of 22- episode seasons, forced to either extend major story arcs across seasons, or pack the year with multiple confounding narratives.
Jane the Virgin was a rare example of a prime- time soap opera that managed to maintain its unique balance of wit and drama while still being at play with the telenovela genre, accenting ridiculous plot lines with clever writing. This makes it all the more concerning to fans of the series that its writers would opt to use a major character death to write its way out of an otherwise endless love triangle — one that seemed to have been finished once Jane and Michael married.
Another aspect of this bothersome development is how often love triangles are concluded via the modern deus ex machina of a character death. Last year saw the sudden demise of The Good Wife’s Will Gardner for this very reason, resulting in an out- of- the- blue murder during an equally awkward courtroom shooting in a Season 5 episode ( aptly titled Dramatics, Your Honour). The character death brought an end to Alicia’s love triangle with him and her husband Peter, but in doing so left a massive hole that even salacious storylines and popular guest stars couldn’t fill.
Josh Charles, the actor who played Will, also had plans to leave the show — a death knell for any television character. In much the same way, Dan Stevens’s Matthew Crawley was unceremoniously killed off in a car crash moments after the birth of his first child in the third season Christmas special of Downton Abbey, all because the actor wanted to pursue other projects.
Similarly, Derek Shepherd was killed off Grey’s Anatomy after a decade on the series spent romancing lead Meredith Grey when Patrick Dempsey wanted out. After rescuing multiple victims of a car wreck, Derek found himself in an unrelated car accident, dying later at the hospital at the hands of incompetent surgeons. Instead of dealing with the emotional complexity of characters in love moving on, death becomes the easy out. Derek would never simply leave Meredith, just as Matthew would never leave Mary — only death could ever do them part.
Why bother with probing emotional story lines when you can bring out the car wrecks and torches and baseball bats?
That last tool was what brought an end to The Walking Dead’s Glenn, who was killed off in the series’ explosive seventh season premiere after a Season 6 fake- out. To introduce the bloodthirsty character Negan and prove his utter ruthlessness, the series had the leather- jacketed, baseball bat- wielding villain graphically beat to death the show’s beloved Glenn, played by Steven Yeun. His relationship with Maggie was the beating heart of the series and his character had survived seven long, bumpy seasons. Fans were left in an uproar, many considering it the jump of the shark for the AMC series. When asked why t hey would eliminate the character in such a brutal fashion, showrunner Scott Gimple informed fans at an Los Angeles screening that he was “looking for a way to break the audience.” Thanks, pal!
There is, admittedly, a currency to be found in shock value, and if anyone has capitalized on it best, it’s Rhimes, who, with a gamut of prime- time soaps filling out ABC’s Thursday night schedule, has made killing off major characters her favourite game ( even admitting she has killed characters because she didn’t like the actors playing them). Viewers make season- long bets with one another on which of their favourite characters will see the axe before year’s end. Her milestone series, Grey’s Anatomy, has seen the majority of its original cast become victims of hospital massacres, bombings, shootings and bus, plane and car crashes, all with equal melodrama, for pure shock value.
It’s rare that a series is able to kill off a crucial character and maintain its tone while also upping the stakes and remaining true to its story, a la Game of Thrones, which kick- started a bloodthirsty worldwide race to the Iron Throne after the death of its main character by the first season’s end.
However, in its very first season, it was 24 that set the bar high, ending its first 24 episodes by killing off Jack Bauer’s wife, just as in Dexter’s fourth season, when the title character’s wife Rita was murdered by the very killer he’d been stalking. Both were shocks to the system, but weren’t meant to reset an entire narrative. The impact of their loss is felt through just about every character and corresponding storyline.
While Michael’s death in Jane the Virgin may not have been graphic and gory, it still feels ugly in its needlessness. While this could be a sign of the show upping the emotional stakes and taking a turn for the darker, knowing its telenovela roots, that’s unlikely — and a route they’d best steer clear of anyway. Then again, the same was once said of killing off a main character.