I confess to being a sometime watcher and follower of Shorty. Very enjoyable. Lately however and perhaps because I now feel a sense of proprietary interest I find myself getting quite annoyed with the scripts. Yes I can see that to create drama the characters must get themselves into binds and I’m sure it is quite a feat to generate continuous story lines but… I’ve started wondering if more gratifying drama couldn’t be generated from characters who make strong, clear, honest and assertive decisions. Not life like might be the argument to that idea but then life-like it sure aint now. In fact characters have of late been acting rather, well, out of character for the sake of a story. It is this corruption of characters who have been defined as honest and assertive for the sake of getting them into binds that I find annoying. I’m sitting there saying – everything we know about this character says this response is uncharacteristic.
Let me try and think of a few:
TK dealing with the new Emergency HOD. TK is smart enough to have recorded the guy with his harrassment well before now – and we could have seen him get his come uppance. But all of a sudden TK has lost his assertiveness. His dealings with Sarah seem unrealistic too.
Last week we watched Jonathon and Gabrielle get knocked by the slimy Shane. That either of them took his opinion seriously enough to try to pull out of the relationship was just ridiculous. I would have loved to see them laugh him off and then watch him stew in his own bile afterwards.
Now Bella has just lost her room this week. She turns up and asks for her room back and Murray and Wendy say sorry kiddo we’ve just let it. Really? Whatever, they ring the new tenant and say sorry we’ve gotta house our daughter.
Going back a bit – Tracy dealing with Scotty’s psychosis episode – here we watched the normally very clear thinking Tracey become a blithering idiot who kept rolling back into doubt about the relationship when what we know of her suggests she would have stuck in there and dealt with the issue much more assertively.
Now I know that the writers need to drag out story lines but I would love to see a bunch of assertive honest people dealing with the manipulators and bad apples in a surprisingly punchy no nonsense approach instead of crumbling into doubt, fear, shame and guilt.
I’m gonna try and identify a few more of these inconsistencies over the next little while. I really think it would be wonderful for Shorty to model relationships and conflict resolution based on strong assertive reactions rather than these emotional collapses we get treated to everyday. We’d be cheering at every show rather than going – oh God you’re kidding me, s/he’s really doing THAT?!