On Representing Committed Relationships on Television

[manonlechat]

If you've been in fandom a while, you've heard these arguments but this un-ranty rank sums it with good examples:

A Rant About Television's Difficulty in Representing Committed Relationships

An excerpt:

... the problem with House is not that House and Cuddy are in a relationship. The problem is that the writers do not have a clue how to depict a

Comments

[aiffe]

Even just from the excerpt, I twitched.

That was exactly the point of how it was written. House is a cynical show. I read an interview with one of the writers, who talked about how people are incapable of change, or rather, can expend huge amounts of effort for completely inadequate amounts of change. The theme of personalities being essentially static is one that's run through House for a very long time--see the episode after Foreman's near-death experience, when he was all ~high on life~ and a "changed man," and House's annoyance for what he saw as a natural reaction--and a completely temporary one.

In fiction, people are dynamic. In life....sometimes they are, but honestly, a lot of times we just aren'tTo paraphrase a really wonderful moment on Farscape

[manonlechat]

The aspect of the article that resonated most with me was the critical examination of the idea that declining viewer interest, show quality, and loss of sexual tension is inevitable when characters enter a committed relationship (Moonlighting being the classic example, you could also argue Cheers and to some degree X-Files). There is a palpable lack of interesting married/committed characters in genre television (one of the reasons I loved Zoe and Wash on Serenity) and even fewer whose dynamics are written well and in a way that makes their intereactions as varied and fraught as the relationships between other un-coupled characters. Case in point: It irritated me that on Dexter, after Dexter and Rita finally married, the writers couldn't seem to figure out what to do with them as a couple and eventually wrote themselves out of the hole by killing Rita off and introducing a new female lead. I think there's a Western Romance Myth that goes like this: boy meets girl (or boy), they marry, THE END. The consummation becomes the end of

[aiffe]

Yeah, I agree that that's silly--sexual tension isn't the only thing making stories interesting! Which is why I'm so pleased about what's going on in new episodes of Doctor Who, because for literally decades, they've told stories where companions leave the show to get married, and now we have a companion who just does the obvious thing and BRINGS HER HUSBAND. And it is most definitely not going to kill the show

[celarania]

I think part of it is the trouble of having an ongoing show like House as opposed to one that is scheduled for only x number of seasons like Avatar

[jade_sabre_301]

Someone in the comments brought up Bones and, like, Booth and Bones had their moment and they missed it because the writers chose to make them miss it, and the problem is--the problem is when writers choose things, rather than letting the story evolve naturally, that's when you get soapy occurrences and forced drama and a loss of interest. But it is because television writers have trouble writing committed relationships.

And maybe House/Cuddy wasn't a great example to use of "this gone wrong," but I can't say Castle wholly fits the model of "this gone right" because they haven't gone there yet. It might sour into another Bones fiasco--we just don't know yet. (Bones did let Angela and Hodgkins finally get married though, but again, they're secondary; also half the show's appeal isn't built upon the tension between them.) I haven't watched it, but my understanding is that quietly on the sides, The Office has really had the most success in this department--look at Jim and Pam! It takes about three seconds of watching them interact