Why So Serious?

Comedy gets kind of a bad rap. On the one hand, a comedy might be considered a perfectly acceptable vehicle for a goofy little idea, an energetic lead, and a lot of humorous dialogue. But everybody knows that if you want fiction that plumbs the depth of human emotion, that has heart and soul and is willing to challenge you intellectually and empathetically, you need to look under serious drama.

The general phrasing of things gives away how we feel about this. If a writer has a story or character they want the audience to really invest in, or an actor wants to be appreciated for a deeply nuanced role, they want the audience (and critics) to take them seriously. The amount of respect an entertainer receives seems irrevocably tied to how serious they take themselves and their craft. And it applies to every media: either you're Leonardo DiCaprio, or you're Jack Black; either you're Stanley Kubrick, or you're Shawn Levy; either you're Radiohead, or you're LMFAO.

And this distinction is more extreme now that it ever was before. Silent actor Charlie Chaplin was incredibly well respected for his physical comedy and was able to perfectly balance silliness with anti-Nazi social commentary. With the exception of classic Star Trek, most of television's great strides in racial equality took the form of sitcoms. Jackie Chan made a career out of films where any moment could bring either unbelievable stunts or simple slapstick. Even as late as 1997, we got The Fifth Element, one of the best action movies ever made, and it was more than willing to engage in its fair share of schtick.

Great action movie, or the greatest action movie?

The point being that drama, emotion, social commentary, or just sheer undeniable skill as a performer used to cooperate with comedy, but nowadays it feels like the only action movies with comic relief are Michael Bay pictures.

And you really have to stretch to call those “humorous” or “relieving”.

This era of distinctly separate comedy and drama had its own beginning in each of the media individually, but the thing that seemed to spur it all on in the mainstream pop culture was the Bourne Identity. Despite the fact that it shares a nearly identical plot with Jackie Chan's arguably superior Who Am I?, this humorless and baleful look at the life of a rogue, brainwashed assassin started gritty and depressing, and would only get moreso in the following two sequels. Meanwhile, Hollywood (and the rest of the medias) have been playing catchup ever since, constantly one upping each other in terms of how dismal they can make life for their protagonists.

I think partly it's just that everybody wants their creations to be taken as seriously by audiences as they the creators take it, and the only way they know how to be sure it will be is to flat out demand the audience do so. Obviously, there's some commercialist creators who took a look at the Bourne Identities, the Dark Knights, and the Hunger Games and said, “Whoa, personal tragedy is way in right now, I need to get me some of that.”

“Put the plucky sidekick back in the box, we've got some expositional families to kill.”

But a lot of these I honestly think are the result of writers who don't want their hard work to go unrecognized. Take a look at Young Justice, for instance. It's actually been pretty decent so far, a little angsty at first, but it has recently mostly overcome that. What I consider its biggest flaw, however, is that it seems to feel embarrassed about being a cartoon. It has a tightly knit continuity, in depth character development, shifting status quos and beautifully realistic animation, but these partly feel like the result of the writers constantly working too hard to get noticed; that they're constantly vigilant to always be serious, as if a little bit of levity will undermine all the hard work they've done. Half the time it feels like they're looking right at the camera and saying, “This is very serious, you guys, we demand that you recognize it as such.”

Thankfully, there are others out there who do understand the benefit of balancing comedy. More than that, there is a growing underbelly that for perhaps one of the first widespread times in mainstream fiction has taken to attempting to tell drama and emotional depth through the comedy. Previously, if an important lesson or dramatic moment happened in a comedy, it occurred in a break from the humor; very special episodes, or moments where the laughter died down and an announcement was made that wiped the smile right off your face. But recently there have been more and more stories that have been giving in depth character or plot development while they never stop being funny. Kieth Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis' Justice League International, originally started in 1987, chose to portray its superheroes comically, even goofily, because it was a way to look past the veneer of superheroes' public face and show their personalities when they could be themselves. There's been a resurgence of this team as of late, with two miniseries written by the original creative staff within the last couple years, and multiple episodes devoted to them on the recent Batman: The Brave and The Bold. Brave and the Bold, meanwhile, just finished its three season run of being able to make me laugh out loud with scenes like this:

and then make me cry with scenes like this:

often within the same episode. If the death of a character brought tears to your eyes, it was because they worked their way into your heart by being hilarious. Kieth Giffen and John Rogers made headlines a few years ago by creating Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes, one of the most prominent Mexican superheroes, but what made his comic among the best I've ever read was the level of characterization given to the entire supporting cast, all done through humor, and the fact that there were only two moments in two years where it stopped (briefly) feeling like a comedy. Scott Pilgrim, the movie and the comic, wowed critics and audiences alike with its honest portrayal of modern love and romance, which it presented through a hyperbolically comedic series of challenges to the main character. Community has quickly developed a reputation as the most heartfelt and emotionally deep sitcom currently on TV by embracing the humor as a means to further our care for these characters. These are all stories that understand that the best way to get an audience to take them seriously is to get the audience to want to take them seriously. Not everyone will when you spend more (or even equal) time joking than chin stroking, but not everyone will get into a constant stream of grim and gritty drama. Not everyone agrees with me, but I took Batman: The Brave and The Bold more seriously than I ever could take Young Justice, because instead of constantly demanding my attention, it was willing to just entertain me most of the time, and only occasionally would it ask me (politely, even) to pause, reflect, and feel something. This balance, this style is out there, and hopefully we'll get to see more of it, because frankly, it's way less tiring than than the modern grit we've become so used to. Until we see more of this, I'll be forgoing most of the big summer blockbusters, the new drama shows, and the upcoming comic book crossover events, and I'll be watching endless reruns of the show that perhaps best blends humor and drama, silliness and seriousness. I think you know who it is.

The Internet Just Wants a Hug

I've long believed that you can tell a lot about a civilization by its entertainment. When Romans loved to watch people fight to death in gladiator fights, it said something about what large percentages of that people found entertaining, and the same can be said today. When reality shows and Saw sequels make so much money that studios will not stop making them, it says something about the civilization that we live in. It says that a large enough percentage of our population loves watching dumb people and fictional torture that the people who bring us our entertainment will make sure we are never without a steady supply of new idiots to gawk at and fresh and innovative ways of killing people painfully. But if people in general really do love these things, how come Hollywood says it's struggling? If our entertainment is being made based on what people really want, why does everyone complain that there's nothing good on TV? The entertainment industry has begun to base nearly all of its production line on what's lucrative, but given the growing despondency of audiences, I'm starting to think that money making can be deceptive as to letting us know what people really want. After all, a movie can flop for stupid, stupid reasons, and the same can be said for success. Reality shows, while they certainly have their audience, are really so popular with TV execs because they're cheap to make when script writers aren't being paid. Meanwhile, John Carter, a great movie with a pretty high audience satisfaction rate, pulled in low audiences because of a terribly executed ad campaign and is considered a flop chiefly because its budget was way higher than what it made back. So what can give an accurate depiction of what people are looking for in entertainment? Hows about just straight up asking them?

This is what brings me to the internet.

You see, the internet right now can truly be said to be a cross section of humanity. Not long ago, that statement wouldn't have been accurate. The early internet was comprised mostly of brainy types, because only people who were good with computers could maintain or navigate early websites. Most of the sites that popped up at the beginning, therefore, catered towards the likes and dislikes of that demographic. This opened up a cycle that caused more nerdy people to flock to the internet, and more sites to pop up that were tailor made for nerds. Even as the internet grew and offered a little something for everyone, it first took the form of sites and forums for fans of certain things. Even when there were forums for sports teams and musicians, it still meant that most websites were essentially made for one demographic at a time.

This is basically as unreadable as Egyptian hieroglyphics.

But all this changed. Google, Myspace, Facebook, Reddit, Tumbler, DeviantArt. Sites began to show up that were made without one particular demographic in mind, and now they're the dominant type of non-commercial website on the internet. You're not required to be a nerd or a fan in order to find something worth your while on the internet; all that is required is a computer and internet access, and it will find something that is right up your alley, even if that thing is just talking to the friends you already have. And what this means is that the internet now truly can represent all of mankind (or at least the ones with wifi). And what does this mean for things that the internet latches onto? It means that if a show is big on the internet, it's big with representatives of all demographics. Seeing as how the folks that make our entertainment for us are more concerned with what's successful than what's popular, taking a look at what's the most talked about on the internet is a much better way for people like me to judge the rest of humanity based on what they fill their heads with when they're bored.

As I've begun to look into what the internet finds entertaining, the results have actually vastly improved my outlook on mankind. Want to know why? Let me begin with a specific example.

I'm a really big fan of the show Community, which as you may know (or statistically, not) is on the verge of cancellation. To be more accurate, is basically canceled already with a shortened season coming up before the end. Now, the show hasn't really had the best of times with the ratings, partially because it's been up against Big Bang Theory. Community itself is a show about a group of people in a community college, and and while it certainly has its share of nerdy references, it's moreso a show with a little bit for everybody, the kind of show that anyone with a sense of humor should find accessible. Big Bang Theory, on the other hand, is a show about outdated nerd stereotypes from 80's films, and the dialogue of every episode consists 50% of references to whatever geek fare is closest to mainstream at that particular moment.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm not really a fan.

The interesting part? Big Bang Theory is doing splendidly in the ratings (which is completely inexplicable from my point of view), while Community is doing poorly ratings wise, with the exception of its huge internet presence.

Now, my point isn't that the internet is great simply because it has vastly superior taste to the Nielson families. It's something more; it's why the internet loves Community so much, but can only give an unenthusiastic “meh” to Big Bang Theory, despite the fact that it seems like it would be (ostensibly) aimed directly at them.

Why wouldn't nerds enjoy this accurate, loving depiction of their culture?

Gawker recently asked this question, and their answer is, I think, a good reason to give the internet a second chance. Essentially, it boiled down to the way each show portrayed the relationships between the characters; Big Bang Theory just shows us some people who hang out together and plays their personal conversations for laughs; Community portrays a group of people coming together, becoming friends, and overcoming obstacles to remain friends. The point of one show is “ha, those nerdy types sure are a hoot, aren't they?”, while the point of the other is, “let's all be buddies here”.

And the internet is eating it up.

Gawker's conclusion was that the internet finds appealing entertainment that emphasizes friendship, closeness, communication, and, if you will, a sense of community. I find this suggestion very encouraging, and it got me to take a closer look at what else is popular. Stuff like My Little Pony. Have you heard of Bronies? That's the name given to the vast hordes of adult, male fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It sounds horrible, mostly because any portmanteau that features the word “bro” is horrible. But when you stop to think about it, it's actually kind of sweet. I was morbidly curious when I heard how oddly popular My Little Pony was, so I watched the pilot. I'm not going to lie, I kind of loved it. The aesthetic was obviously not made with me in mind, but there was a core essence of kindness that I enjoyed thoroughly. There was an extended sequence where one by one, each of the protagonists (I can't say “each of the ponies” and still have you take this sentence seriously) individually overcomes an obstacle through some unique, positive trait and gets the group one step closer to their goal. This even included taming a furious manticore (I know, right) by removing a thorn from its paw, and I'm not afraid to say I teared up a little there.

I'm not going to continue watching My Little Pony, mostly because I simply cannot allow myself to belong to a group with “bro” in its name, and also because as much as it was my perfect idea of a fairy tale, I just can't watch a show about ponies.

Also, the dragon sidekick is pretty annoying, and gives me a serious Max from Dragon Tales vibe, which is entirely the wrong kind of nostalgia.

But just look at how much this show which is designed for young girls is bringing together fans from all sorts of demographics, just because they want to be entertained by something sweet and kind. And it's all over the place. Plenty of shows get canceled every year, but which ones get noteworthy fan campaigns to save them? How about Firefly, which features a tight knit, familial crew of a spaceship. Or Kim Possible, about a tight knit, familial trio of teenagers who fight crime (and also spend time loving their own, literal families). Or Jericho, which is about a tight knit, familial group of people trying to survive in a post apocalyptic wasteland (seriously, Wikipedia even says, “Several themes regularly addressed in the show included... community identity, the value of family, and the hardships of fatherhood”.)

What about comic books? Yeah, it's true that Batman is the most popular character right now, but if you want to know what's big on the internet, look for what the publishers refer to as “fan favorites”. Fan Favorites include Birds of Prey, an all girl superhero team that has dealt with strengthening the bonds of friendship on so many levels; the All New Atom, about the adventures of Ryan Choi and his ever loyal supporting cast; Blue Beetle, which featured the teenaged Jaime Reyes coming completely clean to his whole family and best friends about having a secret superhero identity by the third issue; even Secret Six, which got about as dark as a comic about a mercenary team of supervillains could get, but still managed to make you love the characters because of how close knit and familial they were.

The lesson here? For every Yahoo Answers trolling, there's someone talking about how the happy ending to the latest Doctor Who episode made them cry. For every YouTube comments Flame War, there's a forum hoping for a full series of Super Best Friends Forever. And for every Craigslist killer, there's about 50,000 internet users who just want a hug.

Gee, maybe humanity isn't so bad after all.

Gimme Some Candor

So it’s closing in on summer and another Transformers movie is heading our way. Now, I've never cared too much for the franchise, and I snickered aloud first time I saw the latest preview, but truth be told, I probably will be seeing it. Being honest, this is mostly because I am, at heart, 12-years-old, and there will always be an itch that only giant robots bashing each other into explosions can satisfy. But a small part, I will say, is the candidness of Michael Bay. You see, the last installment was widely derided for being a montage of mindless explosions. So when it came time for a third movie, no amount of aping the Inception noise for the new trailer would placate the audiences who were starting to doubt that there would actually be a little plot to go along with the robot fight scenes.

To allay our fears, the director was primed to take the stage to tell us that this sequel would indeed be better, but to do that would require admitting the previous one needed improvement. Would he be willing to make that admission? Bravely, Bay did just that when he point blank and without sidestepping, said “that was crap.”

I appreciate that. He’s right, the movie was crap. You know what else was crap? 80% or more of what the rest of the media has been feeding us, completely unapologetically. I appreciate that for once, a director took the time to essentially apologize for what he’d done and promise to do better next time (and have that apology actually be about the movies themselves and not some sort of drunken fiasco). My biggest question at this point is why aren’t there more people doing that?

Seriously, it’s a legitimate question. I sat through Wolverine: Origins, I played Metroid: Other M, I read Brightest Day, and I still have yet to receive an apology for any of those. The time and money I spent on those went off into a black hole of wasted resources, and I have nothing to show for it but disappointment. At this point, I’m not even angry that these things sucked, but that their makers show no sense of reprehensibility for the sucking. I understand sometimes things go wrong. Deadlines need to be met, creative differences arise, certain risks are made that don’t always pay off. I am more than willing to forgive a cook a few broken eggs it means he’ll learn to make the omelet. But I walked away from these instances, and have no indication that an omelet is coming; all I can reasonably expect is more broken eggs and blank looks as to why I’m not enjoying this.

And I’m not the only one who’s hurt by this lack of candor: these makers are hurting themselves. As with addiction rehabilitation, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Without this admission, they will never learn from their mistakes. That’s why honest disclosure is so important. Think about Superman Returns (or don’t, if you prefer). Bryan Singer, who’d been so successful in adapting the mopey, edgy X-Men, dropped that franchise in order to jump to Mr. Bright-and-Shiny superheroes himself, Superman, in what should have been recognized as the most inappropriate pairing of director and material since they tried to get Tim Burton on Superman. As a result, he ruined both franchises.

What we should have gotten:

What we got instead:

If ever an apology was overdue, this would be it, yet when Singer finally addressed the issue, the most he faults the film for is being “a bit nostalgic and romantic”. Seriously, the movie refused to delve any deeper into Superman’s vast mythology than “Holy crap, this guy has super strength”; they cast Lois Lane as a pouty banshee; and they gave the big blue boy scout an illegitimate son that he abandoned, but the most the director said was wrong with it was that it was too respectful to its successful predecessors, and that the big thing he would fix would be to ‘tighten up the first act’? If the fates were to frown upon us and Bryan Singer got another shot at Superman, apparently he would make the same mistakes, just without the exposition.

And here we get to the crux of the matter, the fact that this lack of candor not only can, but has and is still leading to the same mistakes being repeated. Take DC Comics. Once upon a time, they were more than willing to not just admit mistakes, but to take action with the audience’s express desires in mind. When they paired Batman with the much maligned new Robin Jason Todd, they heard the cries of anguish at how terrible a character Jason was. Time kept going, and so did the complaints, so eventually they did respond, and how: the audience was polled on whether this new character lived or died. This was not only an admission of guilt in creating a truly unlikable character, it was offering the audience to be a part of correcting the matter, while simultaneously adding a touching new layer to the Batman mythos. In terms of creative penance, this is the gold standard. Fast forward 22 years, and what do we have? The latest Robin is as unlikable as the original Jason, is the illegitimate spawn of Batman and someone-who-is-not-Catwoman, and also Jason’s been brought back too. (Though to be fair, in a bizarre twist, the story that brought Jason back is actually so good it makes it hard to complain). They’re not just not apologizing for current mistakes, they’re actively taking back previous apologies and seeing how many times they can make the same ones again. Last September, they drastically altered Wonder Woman’s costume and back story to something terrible enough to offend just about everybody. A year later, they still haven’t said they’re sorry, and instead they’re going to do the same thing with every other character (including Wonder Woman, again, for good measure). The costumes are even being designed by the same guy who made the much hated last one; they actually picked the guy who thought Wonder Woman needed a leather jacket with football player shoulder pads, showed him the entire collection of DC superheroes and said, “Do your worst.”And he did.

"And don't come back until you've ruined everybody."

Seriously, Hollywood, and TV Land, and Comics World, enough is enough. I really want to like what you have to give me. Without you I’ll have to spend my free time talking to my family or doing something productive, and neither of us want that. But if you don’t admit your mistakes, then I can’t help you. You’ll keep doing the same things wrong over and over, and I’ll give you the cold shoulder for a while and try to pretend nothing’s wrong. We’ll just keep growing more and more distant until we don’t even know each other anymore. Then one day you’ll wake and look for me, but it will be too late, and I’ll be long gone.

I'm not enjoying this any more than you.

Your Princess(es) are in Another Castle

We live in a constantly changing world. New societal orders and continual communal upheavals are the order of the day, so it’s never a surprise to see certain age old traditions fall by the wayside. But one of these recent casualties has struck a nerve with me, so I’m here to lament the loss of princesses.

Certainly you’ve noticed the drop in princesses in the last few decades. Royal stations in the real world are quickly becoming a thing of the past, and even the ones that are left are totally unlike the ideal version of the station. And as the world of fiction steadily marches on into the more realistic and modern reaches, even imaginary princesses are feeling the sting, and their numbers are sadly dwindling. The problem we face is two prong: not only is there a very low supply of princesses, but there’s also a sad and distinct lack of demand.

Perhaps no better indicator of this is Disney’s recent announcement to outright abandon princesses from here on out. Their official release seemed to imply a certain sorrow on the subject, and pointed an accusatory finger in the direction of all boys everywhere, because they stink and have cooties and just suck in general. But let’s face it, Disney is a huge conglomerate company that runs with property based on what’s in demand. If princesses were on enough of the paying public’s mind, then no matter how much these boorish boys bullied them, like the fetid troglodytes they are, Disney wouldn’t have given in to their constant demands for robots and aliens and basic “boy stuff”.

Because this is totally something all boys would want to see.

Case in point with Disney, you can check out their Rapunzel, which despite heralding from the studio’s very princess-centric roots, was adapted closer to release to be more boyish and Shrekified, even being renamed to Tangled, removing that unsightly “princess” name from the title. Similarly retitled is their forthcoming project A Princess of Mars, now called John Carter of Mars just so none of these princess enthusiast upstarts got any ideas. Now I’m not necessarily complaining about the new name, or even the prospect of a new name. After all, the book upon which it was based was only published under the Princess title after being changed from the original Under the Moons of Mars. But Princess was the title that truly said all you needed to know, relating to the audience who was the character that served as the entire purpose of the tale, the catalyst and reason for all the events, even if she wasn’t the main character or had the most screen time. But, sadly, the public’s desire for that character’s importance has waned, and Disney’s chance to successfully marry epic sci-fi action with the princess theme has been passed over for a chance to get with the times.

Again, Disney isn’t just doing this because boys told them to (no matter how much they want you to think this is the case), they’re doing this because princesses are just not that popular today. Girls don’t even want to be princesses when they grow up anymore, they want to grow up and be president or something stupid like that (note: I’m not being sexist; I don’t trust any child that wants to grow up to be president. In a perfect world, every girl wants to grow up to be Princess Leia and every boy wants to grow up to be Batman.) Used to be, there was princess stuff for girls and action stuff for boys, and that was perfectly fine with everyone. Boys got their Ninja Turtles and Transformers who would gladly beat the crap out of each other all day, and girls got Disney princesses who were wholesome and nurturing and had armies of fiercely loyal animal friends who were ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. But then one day, animal friends just weren’t enough.

And sometimes, they’re too much.

I don’t know if it was too many boys going “eww” at all the pink frills and singing, or too many girls growing up, or feminism or communism or whatever, but everyone started focusing on all the bad parts of princesses while overlooking the great parts. They started looking at how weakly docile and pretty much useless Princess Aurora is, and forgetting just how awesome Princess Leia is, or how morally courageous Cinderella is, or how much of a firecracker Princess Jasmine is, or how powerful She-Ra is.

She is after all, a Princess of Power.

People started decided that everyone being equal meant everyone being exactly the same, so our female cartoon characters that girls could look up to had to stop being so royal and be more like all the male action heroes. Now they absolutely must have all sorts of villains and action and gadgets, just like all the boys. Dejah Thoris, the earlier mentioned princess of Mars, in the original books possesses power and strengths stemming and gained from her royal standing; she is a powerful diplomat, a brilliant scientist, and clever strategist. These attributes make her a perfect compliment to her counterpart, the sword fighting wunderkind John Carter. Wonder Woman, perhaps the greatest princess of them all, owes everything she has in terms of strength, power, weapons, and allies to being the Princess of Themyscira, and heir to all of its vast wealth of resources (physical, mental, emotional, and philosophical). But modern audiences and writers just can’t see the greatness of princesses through their modern tinted glasses, and feel forced to strip away this aspect in favor of making them more like the guys. If script rumors are to be believed, Dejah Thoris now grabs a sword and “blitzes” enemy soldiers, foregoing the peace seeking diplomat and the planet saving atmosphere scientist she was in the original to make her good at exactly what the main character does for the whole book. Wonder Woman in the comics is now forced to be less mythological princess and more Street Fighter rip-off, and now on TV she’s forced to be less mythological princess and more CEO turned urban vigilante.

Pictured from left to right: “Hadouken!”; “I am Batman.”

Well, I for one stand by my principles that women should not be made to be more like guys. I say it’s high time we celebrated princesses and action heroes alike for the unique merits they both bring to the table, to create a more balanced world for our children.

For our children.

Please Answer the Questions in an Orderly Fashion

The word on the street that I’ve been hearing is there's a remake of The Black Hole coming up. Now, I’d perk up in attention if any movie titled something like The Black Hole was being made, but in this case I’m actually familiar with the original. It was a Disney movie from the 70’s that was basically a vehicle for Maximilian Schell to play the greatest, crazy, space Captain Nemo ever seen, and as much as that speaks to everything in movies that I enjoy, I’ll be the first to admit the movie had some distinct flaws. Sure the special effects are dated now, but they were pretty good for the time; granted they had terrible robot sidekicks, one of which inexplicably had a bad southern accent, but you have to keep in mind it was marginally a kids’ movie. No, the gravest mistake that they made with this film was in the ending. (I’ll go ahead and warn you now: there will be spoilers aplenty ahead.) The movie’s big question throughout is what lies on the other side of the black hole. A daunting question for any film, let alone Disney’s live action department in the 70’s, but the movie builds up that question for 90 mostly awesome minutes. Closing in on the end, the gravity macguffens are failing and the giant mystery space station and its crazy German space captain and his killer robots and hypnotized space crew are being dragged into the black hole, and everything seems so cool that we can’t possibly be disappointed, we find out the answer to the film’s ongoing question, and it ruins everything.

This movie is just one in a long line of films, television shows, books, and other things that belong to a burgeoning new subgenre that I really, really want to like, and thus far have found incredibly few satisfying examples of. As the first person to have noted this (at least without researching the matter further), I take the right to name this discover, and I have called it The Impossible Question. The basic point of any example in the genre is to set up a question, similar to a murder mystery, except that the question pertains more so to the reality in which the characters live (Lost’s “What is the island?”; The Black Hole’s “What lies on the other side of the Black Hole?”; Muppets from Space’s “Where did Gonzo come from?”; etc). It seems like a new form of mystery, mostly a subgenre of sci-fi, though it definitely carries elements throughout of fantasy, horror, maybe even religious, but really anything that adds to the mood and intrigue. While there have been examples of this popping up throughout the history of fiction, as far back as I can tell to Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, it’s suddenly had a resurgence which has made it more popular and common than ever, with several new attempts at the genre coming out within the last few years. And, by and large, all these recent attempts are terrible.

The problem with the Impossible Question is partly due to its own biggest selling point; the questions are really interesting. To make a really cool, cosmic feeling, truly epic and impossible question, you need a fantastic build up. The build up, it turns out, is not that hard; you just keep asking increasingly bizarre questions and having increasingly illogical events happen.

“Oh my God, polar bear attack!”

But that turns out to be something of a problem where the writers in question seem to stand back and look at the situation and say, “Well, that build up was fantastic, it sure got the audience hooked and loving this. Wait, why are you still looking at me? What? Crap, you want more?!” They seem to forget that the more questions you ask, the more complex the answer(s) is going to have to be.

There seem to be three major cop-out answers that writers are willing to give, and have begun to rely on.

First off, and starting with the worst, some people will just not answer the question at all. Like, flat out refuse. It’s almost as if you asked someone on the street what time it was, and then they did an elongated song and dance routine before finally (breathlessly) telling you they didn’t have a watch the whole time. It might have been entertaining at the time, but the entire purpose of the interaction was voided within the last few moments. Take Cloverfield. Anyone who knows me as a person knows that I hate and loathe Cloverfield, and consider it the absolute bottom on my list of movies I’ve seen. And while I have many, many reasons, pretty high among them is the movie’s absolute refusal to answer even the most basic of questions pertaining toward its apparently nonexistent plot. “What is the monster?”; “Where did the monster come from?”; “Why is it attacking?”; “What does the monster look like?”; “Why should I care about any of these vapid, banal teenagers when I went to see a giant monster movie?”; and “Can I see the damn monster now?” are all questions that J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves just opted out of answering, despite the fact that the potential for answers was the absolute only thing getting me through the shaky camera. Another example is the upcoming Vanishing on 7^th Street (it’s not even out yet, but I Wikipedia’d it after an early release). Basic plot is people are vanishing and the literal darkness is what’s taking them. This leads to some very important questions like “What is the darkness, and why is it taking people?” but if you’re going into the movie wondering things like that, you’d best forget expecting an answer because that’s something for another day. The movie ends with everyone in the world disappearing, and there’s no real reason why. If we’re comparing this new Impossible Question genre to the Mystery genre, this is like a murder mystery that you watch for two hours, and then the detectives take one last look at the corpse before calling it quits and deciding they’ll never know who the murderer is, and then the credits roll.

The second option, somewhat less bad, but possibly more groan inducing, is that it’s been a trick question all along. Take for instance the 2009 movie Exam. The basic plot is 8 people on a job interview for a mysterious company, they’re told they have 80 minutes to answer the question, except they're not given a question. As movies who have those little wheat stalks on their posters are wont to do, human emotions swell to the breaking point, and a seemingly simple event becomes a bottle movie of epic proportions which likely shines a light on the darkest aspects of modern man.

Is this what most job interviews are like? I’ve only been on 3.

Well, how can this go wrong, we’ve already delineated exactly what the question for the film is (there’s two, really: “What’s the question again?” and “Psst, guys. Does anyone know the answer to question number 1?”) There’s a mysterious corporation involved, and hey it’s got those little wheat stalks on the poster again, how can this go wrong? Turns out that right before the clock started ticking and the emotions started swelling, the guard that brought them into the interview room asked them “Any questions?”. The one who figures it out responds with, “No.” End of movie. The entire mystery of the film is a trick question. It’s almost like there was no mystery at all, given how trivial and unimportant the answer turned out to be. I’m actually surprised there wasn’t a classic comedy drumbeat and symbol clash. It’s only a couple steps above a pun.

Which is odd, seeing as how puns have turned out so much better in this situation before.

In murder mystery terms, this is like earnestly watching a 2 and a half hour movie before they climactically reveal that the cause of death wasn’t murder at all, but only a tragically placed banana peel.

Lastly, we have what is probably the most common answer: let’s get Meta-Physical. The thing with this one is that it’s secretly what you want the answer to be, it just turns out that you didn’t really think it through that much. When these kinds of stories get really, intensely complex, and they involve these ever growing questions that are so cosmic and profound, you want to the answer to be equally cosmic and profound. But there’s a lot of trouble in trying to make it so. For starters, meta-physical, somewhat spiritual answers deal more in the mystical than in the science fiction realm. This means the answer is going to be kind of a hackneyed catchall, like “this character is special because he is The One”, or “the deal with all the craziness is that this is a cosmic battleground between the absolute forces of good and evil”. Even if they attempt to go for a science fiction backed answer, it will inevitably turn into some kind of catchall answer that is just advanced and misunderstood enough at the time the story is written, like nanites, neutrinos, the super-collider, or electromagnetism. But in either case, they will still be trying to marry the science fiction with the quasi-mystical, and the effect is way too simplistic of an answer to cover the multitude complexities of the questions asked.

Secondly, cosmic is different to every person. Taking into consideration the set of religious beliefs that each audience member subscribes to is difficult, and this difficulty is multiplied by the extremely personal attributes every person ascribes to their set of beliefs on their own accord. To make things mystical and cosmic that work for every audience member, without alienating anybody, means that you have to take what was already a disappointingly one word answer like, “God”, and rework it until it's acceptably faceless, like “an anthropomorphized image of all things good in the universe”.

Someday, we’ll all end up in that big, diverse, politically correct safe haven in the sky.

This is probably the most widespread of all answers to the impossible question today. The Black Hole is one of the earliest that I can think of. Have you figured out what was on the other side of the black hole? Yeah, it’s heaven and hell. 2012 decided that the end of the world was caused by Neutrinos doing something science-magic, and yet it still turned into the Biblical flood, complete with arcs. Though "John from Cincinnati" was cancelled before it managed to tell us what it was about, it was stated by its creators that it was somehow about finding God through surfing. Easily the best example of this was Lost, which basically had everything I talked about up there as their ending. Everyone who ever wondered what kind of an island had so many weird things on it waited 6 years to find out that it was the battleground between anthropomorphized Good vs. Evil, and that electro-magnetism was magic, and that in the end it was all okay because everyone died and went to heaven (eventually).

I’d like to say that the murder mystery equivalent is watching a 3 hour movie to find out that the killer was the Devil, but it doesn’t really matter because the victim went to heaven, except that comparison would be incorrect. It’s really more like watching something for 85 hours, and then finding out that the killer was the Devil, but it doesn’t really matter because the victim went to heaven.

For anyone, like me, who sincerely wants to like this genre, do not give up hope. There are good examples in the past, there are a few good ones out there right now, and that means that there will be some, however few, in the future. By delineating what makes the bad ones bad, and pointing out some good ones, I hope to make a small difference in this genre myself. So here’s some good examples: "The Twilight Zone", and to a lesser extent, "The Outer Limits". The anthology format really allowed you to ask multiple questions, and get a great answer every time, every single episode, and even better, if you don’t like one, the next episode is a fresh start! Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, possibly the progenitor of the entire sub-genre, is one of the first and one of the best. And then there’s "Doctor Who". Old and new, most episodes of "Doctor Who" follow this format, except where they ask a bizarre series of questions, they answer them better than you ever thought possible. I’ll go ahead and give you a small spoiler, the answer is almost always aliens, but that’s the beauty of it: in basing a show in a world where technology and alien species make just about anything possible, the answers can literally be anything, and thus they don’t have to rely on cheap tricks like nanites (and even if they do, there will be much more to it than that.) Not to mention that the British are largely a Godless nation, so you don’t have to worry about the answer turning out to be a literal Deus Ex Machina. So, go out to your nearest (British) video store today and rent all the seasons of "Doctor Who" you can. There are questions to be asked, and they will answer them with aliens.

They also do this a lot, too.

Property Claims

I want to ask a question here, and I hope I don’t end up sounding like a bigot; how come gay men can claim heterosexual women as their representatives? I’ve recently become a big fan of Wonder Woman comics, and while my reasons for enjoying them stem from their propensity towards superpowers, sword fighting, beautiful and ageless warrior women, and mythological creatures, I’ve found out that Wonder Woman is also considered a gay man’s superhero.

Nothing says male homosexuality like a hot chick punching demons at the Lincoln Memorial.

I don’t understand this, for the same reason I don’t understand why that demographic is so attached to Judy Garland and Julie Newmar. I suppose Garland I can kind of get, what with “Over the Rainbow”. It’s a bit of a stretch, almost a pun, like when Stephenie Meyer used Arcade Fire’s “My Body is a Cage” for her book about Bodysnatcher aliens. It’s a tenuous connection, but I suppose it’s there. But really, how do you make the leap from the hottest Catwoman ever (no offence to Eartha Kitt, Lee Meriwether, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry, and Anne Hathaway), to movies about men in drag? Same goes for Wonder Woman. I’m honestly at a loss at to where the logic lies in making the leap from a superhero clad in the American flag who represents a pinnacle of the perfect womanly behaviors of peacemaking and nurturing to male homosexuality. If Wonder Woman has to be used as a representative for one specific demographic, I’d just as soon assume the obvious one: women.

But really, this is a wider phenomenon. How can any one demographic really lay claim to one particular character or celebrity? Sometimes it seems simple and makes sense. John Wayne, Jackie Chan, and Bruce Willis are seen as men’s kind of actors, and that makes sense: they specialize in cool and manly things like shooting people, kicking people, and blowing people up (in some cases, all of the above). But when you really stop to think about it, couldn’t they just as easily be women’s kind of actors? Aren’t they physically attractive to women? (I’m honestly asking here, because I’ve come to realize I really don’t know. I just found out that the three closest women to me at work all think Nicolas Cage is, quote, “Hot!”, so my world view has been turned entirely upside down and I don’t know who to trust anymore.)

Sexy!

Gone With the Wind gets a rap as a women’s movie, but why? At it’s core it’s about war and the Confederacy; you don’t get much more manly than that. I’m pretty certain you’d be hard pressed to find a man who didn’t find Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, and Minnie Driver attractive, and yet ohmygodtheyreallinthesamemovie and it’s considered only for women.

Sometimes the ones who get claimed by one group or another don’t make any sense between the two of them; Samus Aran, interstellar bounty hunter in a robo suit and one of the first female video game heroes is played mainly by boys it seems, yet Lara Croft, reigning queen of polygon assets, is a feminist icon.

From left to right: chick with a gun, chick with guns

Now, sometimes a celebrity is particularly outspoken for a certain demographic, so I can understand when Buddhists claim Shirley McClain, or blue collar workers with fancy cars claim Bruce Springsteen. But I don’t think that any person or piece of fiction should belong to any one race or religion or gender or creed. I don’t have to work at an automobile factory in Michigan to jam to “Thunder Road”, nor should I have to.

I have a dream. I dream of a world where men can enjoy Wonder Woman and women can enjoy Power Girl; where chicks can play video games and dudes can enjoy baking; where white people can love watermelon and fried chicken and black people can eat mayonnaise and free range brown eggs; where Americans can appreciate soccer while baseball and apple pie are products of the world instead of one country; where you don’t have to be a poindexter to like edutainment and you’re never to old to watch a Saturday morning cartoon. If we as a people can learn to see ourselves beyond social labels with preset lists of allowable likes and dislikes, then we can finally learn to like all things indiscriminately. This, this is my dream.

Time to Take a Break

A wise old fortune cookie once told me, “If you love something let it go. If it returns, it’s yours forever, if it doesn’t it was never yours to begin with.” Wise words indeed, but I’ve been thinking recently that this should start applying to things we don’t love so very much; things we have perhaps gotten a little bit sick of. I propose that we, as a world, just stop doing certain things for a while, let them sit, and when the time comes (believe me, we’ll all just know) let them start up on their own again. If these things are truly something to have around, they’ll crop back up eventually, and our love and appreciation for them will have grown exponentially during the time they were away, something about absence and hearts and fodder (again, fortune cookie). If everyone forgets about them during the break, and no one ever brings them up again, then we’ll be able to congratulate ourselves on dodging a societal bullet and never have to deal with it again (much like what I hoped would happen every summer break from school, although this idea never seemed to have caught on.)

This may sound like pretty out there notion, but let me assure you there is a precedent to this sort of thing. Take a look back at Romantic Comedies. They hit a heyday in the times of early cinema, but after the Audrey Hepburn years ended in the early 60’s, they just kind of drifted off the map and everyone forgot all about them. The genre had run out of steam, all the stories had been done and all the clichés had become too commonplace; everyone was bored of Romantic Comedies. So humanity did itself a favor, and just stopped making them. It was a nice long break from the French film Irma La Douce in 1963 until someone decided to make another major Rom-Com, when Woody Allen made Annie Hall in 1977. His new and innovative take on the genre revitalized the public’s interest in Romantic Comedies, paving the way for Matthew McConaughey.

Woody Allen’s fault.

My point is, this has happened before, albeit by accident. What’s to stop us from joining together as a global community, and doing this kind of thing on purpose for the benefit of all mankind? So let’s just take a break from things like:

Romantic Comedies: Boy howdy, what ever were we thinking bringing these things back? I mean, I suppose the genre has its merits when it’s starring the likes of Audrey Hepburn, or even later generations actresses like Goldie Hawn, but it has once again reached a saturation point well beyond the time when we should have stopped making these things. Look at this list of the top examples of Romantic Comedies on Wikipedia. You can see that clear break between 1963 and 1977, but even more importantly, compare the size of the lists before and after the break. Yes, Woody Allen decided the world needed to bring back the Romantic Comedy, but I’m not sure even he knew the floodgates he was opening. Not only are the plots tired and rehashed, but the genre is also a prime breeding grounds of heinous criminal careers like the aforementioned McConaughey and Dane Cook (although, he also has benefited from the “dysfunctional family on vacation in a Vermont cabin” genre , one which is also desperately need in a semi-permanent break). So, it’s time to give ourselves a break and stop this madness for now, or possibly forever.

The “F” Word: Seriously guys, this is one that has gone far enough. Aside from pronouns, articles, and conjunctions, can you think of a single word that pops up with the frequency of the “F” word. One of the first rules of writing is to refrain, as much as possible, from using words like “thing” and “it”, because they are purposefully vague and end up sounding like filler words for when we can’t think of anything else. The “F” word is exactly that as an adjective, except it has become accepted and even encouraged. For instance, if a movie is rated PG-13, it’s merely a commercial project pandering to the lowest common denominator. If you toss in the “F” word enough, bumping it up to an “R” rating, it’s to be taken seriously as an Oscar contender. It’s a vague, often meaningless word, made inane by its overuse and overdependence. It’s barely even a foul word any more, because it’s barely even a word anymore. With such a Brobdignagian vocabulary at our disposal, we can come up with better adjectives for our everyday use, and that is why we should all just take a break from this word, for now, and possibly forever.

Autobiographies: I don’t have that much of a problem with autobiographies themselves, but their biggest problem also stems from their biggest strength: they’re a biography written by the person they’re about. The problem therein is that the person pretty much has to be alive to write it, and right now there’s really no one alive that has led a life that worthy of a biography.

The progress of autobiography readability over time.

The lack of biographable people combined with the public’s continued acceptance of autobiographies still being published has led the massive, dirty autobiography industry to horrible, horrible crimes. Don’t believe me? Three words: “Miles to Go”. And since those three words were so popular, I’m going to revise that to add another two words: “Extended Edition”. Also, since the only thing a person needs in order to be worthy of an autobiography is a pun based title describing the most frequent hardship overcome in their life, this is one of the few genres of literature, where you can actually judge the books by their cover. For this reason, we really have to take a break from this genre of books for now, or possibly forever.

Comic Book Deaths: Okay, this is a big one. This is a problem that has been going on so long that it has its own Wikipedia page. Once people said, “No one stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and Uncle Ben”, but it has become so all encompassing that it has been revised to leave out two thirds of its own original exceptions. The problem is not necessarily it’s own impermanence, but the fact that when it is impermanent it means it shouldn’t have been done in the first place. I have multiple t-shirts with Aquaman on them, and yet someone thought it was a good idea to kill him. When someone decides to bring him back to life, undoing a mistake that should never have been made, the act of solution adds to the ridiculousness of a situation. That is the problem. The idea of a comic book character dying is often employed as a cheap tactic for dramatic effect, emotional heart string tugging, or possibly just shock value. But all of these things rely on the rarity and permanence of the trope, and without them it is useless, thus it continues to exist without any real purpose. My suggestion serves two purposes; it lets us take a break from having to endure these mistakes in writing, and also it allows the trope to rest and regain its meaning for potential later use. I hereby challenge DC, Marvel, and everyone else to set aside a lengthy period of time to just not kill anyone. No casualties, no cannon fodder, no red shirts, no women in refrigerators. Just have everybody live for a while year or so, and see what we think at that point. You might find that we only want to pause this trope for now, or possibly forever.

Vampires: Long time coming. On the one hand, they’re already pretty overdone. But look deeper at what we, as a civilization, are doing with vampires right now. They pretty much fall into three categories: either they’re gory slasher villains, or they’re sexy, sexy bad boys, or they sparkle. It’s those three choices, or nothing.

As a fourth choice, they can sell breakfast cereal.

With all the things you could do with vampires, from a cutting commentary on the members of society who figuratively drink the blood of the innocent all the way to Blacula, the only thing we have to offer right now is the most basic array of sex, violence, or sparkles. No range, no variety, nothing deeper, just those three things. The problem isn’t that we’ve told all the tales there are to tell about vampires, it’s that we’re limiting ourselves to the best portrayals a Middle School mind could come up with. This is why we need to take a break from vampires, for now, or possibly forever.

Reality TV: No explanation needed, just take a break from this. Forever. Period.

Why do I Keep Watching?

I’m going to go ahead and preface this by saying that when it comes to movies and TV, I’m a special kind of snob. I watch what I like, and I like what I feel is “good”, high quality entertainment based on a personal rhetoric of critique. This rhetoric can be very different from most critics and most audiences, but it encompasses the things I enjoy and appreciate; I rarely will admit to liking a “bad” movie, as I almost only enjoy movies I feel are “good”, even when that is vastly disagreed upon by almost everyone else. With that out of the way, let’s continue.

One trend in cinema and television that I am growing restlessly tired of is shortcuts. In what once was a market where capitalism demanded making good movies to achieve audience support, filmmakers have been looking for, and finding, easier ways to get to all that cash. Like professional athletes turning to drugs to enhance their performance, audiences are falling victim to the effects of cinematic steroids. Here I am going to list some of the most insidious examples.

"What Have We Got To Lose?": Probably the oldest and easiest trick in the book is to simply put so little effort into something that the slightest gain results in inexplicable profit. The Scary, Epic, Date, Dance, and Disaster Movies are proof of that. Why hire writers when all you need is other scripts, scissors and hot glue? Why hire actors when all you need is people dragged off the street who maybe look like famous people when you squint. Epic Movie was, economically speaking, a huge success because of its $80 million gain over a comparatively low budget. The very fact that there are more on the way, means this trickery is working.

"Look At Me! Look At Me! Look At Me!": A snappily edited trailer can go a long way into making something not funny look funny:

Some folks just don’t rely on being low spenders. Despite the fact that they actually spent money and effort, they still ended up with nothing but crap, and now they have to sell it. How do you do that? With the trailer, and any other alluring aspects that come out before the film does. Case in point, Year One. With that trailer and that cast, there was no way it couldn’t be hilarious. Yet there I was in the audience, wondering how so many funny people got together and couldn’t think of anything funnier than ample use of the word foreskin. It didn’t take long for people to realize just how bad it was, as it dropped off the charts by the end of its first weekend. But the opening made enough money to be considered a financial success. What put it in that category was the fact that they spent far more time and effort making enough funny bits to look good in a preview, than trying to make a good film. Between casting and trailers, and any other non on screen choices that will trick people into thinking something will be good long enough to make them pay for it, one can still make a success out of the snakiest of oil.

Also, remember this still works on a week by week basis. The revival of “V” has contained a dream sequence almost every episode, the entirety of which manages to be incorporated into every next week preview.

You left your gun in my promo material.

"Indie Darling":

Tricking people with a stunning trailer for a bad film is still strictly small fries, though. The end result will be a good opening weekend with little else; to get a good long run requires tricking people on a larger scale to think something is good even after they’ve seen enough to know otherwise. How to do this? Enter the hipsters. As someone who’s taken three High School art classes, I’ve had firsthand experience with people who think Juno is a legitimate film. Few social groups are easier to trick into liking something ridiculous than hipsters. Anything with the words Indie in it originates from somebody who knows this, and is determined to make money off of them. But what really takes the cake is the career of Wes Anderson. I’ll be the first to admit that the trailer for Life Aquatic looked hilarious. And now that I’m older, wiser, and not trying to impress my art class friends, I’ll also be the first to say the actual movie was very much not hilarious. Wes Anderson, the kind of jokes you’re not supposed to laugh at, who I’m certain has blank parts in his scripts that he convinces his producers are jokes only smart people can see, managed to make a preview that appeared like it was a mainstream, laugh out loud comedy. After the opening weekend crowds realized it wasn’t, there was always the ever reliable hipsters there to back it up for the rest of its theatrical run. Clever, Mr. Anderson, very clever indeed. But when it comes to long running, career spanning trickery, there is truly only one master.

"Looks Can Kill": J. J. Abrams is a genius. An evil genius. For starters, he is the man who made Cloverfield. Cloverfield can be called many things; “good” and “a movie” are not among them. Having taken a camcorder and ran around New York on any given Friday night for an hour and a half, he released it into theatres and told people that if they look hard enough, there might be a monster in there. People didn’t go to see it because it was a good movie, because it wasn’t a real movie. They saw it because of the huge network of viral marketing, and the countless unanswered questions that would all be explained in the film itself. There was more effort put into the advertising; there was more plot put into the advertising. But people ate it up, and still are; just check out the buzz surrounding his newest trailer, Super 8. Basically it’s Cloverfield 2 except with a different blur for a monster, and a different group of presumably attractive teenagers. And also because the Cloverfield 2 is its own thing.

But on the subject of unanswered questions, how can we overlook Lost. He made another claim, slightly less incredulous than saying Cloverfield was a real movie, that Lost was real sci-fi. But it got people watching. And kept them watching for 6 years. Pretty much the best thing to get and keep people watching (that is allowable on network television) is curiosity. Lost had curiosity in spades, and refusing to answer any question asked along the way really just lead to even more curiosity. It filmed in Hawaii, thus winning over all the crowds who would otherwise be watching the Travel Channel on any given Wednesday night. Several main characters (like Kate and Sawyer) were played by former models, and it doesn’t take 12 seasons of America’s Next Top Model to tell you why folks tune in to watch those people. And when all else fails, there was always the good old fashioned soap opera storylines. This is in fact a show where the decision to change the course of history via nuclear proliferation fused with time travel on who was in love with who at the time (a status which changed about 15 times in that episode). When using this conglomerate method of storytelling, it didn’t really matter what actual plot events happened, as nothing actually happened on Lost. This wasn’t plot, this was formula and trickery and every aesthetic choice possible made with the goal of getting people to watch week after week, and never question until it was all over. For 6 years. In perspective, the popularity of Lost outlasted the reign of presidents and the existence of certain countries, despite every episode consisting of attractive people moping in Hawaii, and occasionally some goes out to murder a teenage girl or pregnant woman. Because J.J. Abrams really, really hates pregnant women.

Honestly, audiences, if we keep letting ourselves get bamboozled like this, we deserve it by this point.

Plain as Day

While I haven't been watching too much current TV recently, I have been keeping pretty close tabs on what's actually on TV now. And I've come to the startlingly sudden realization that the most popular setting for shows anymore is a crime scene investigation. Even more than just that, it's specifically a lower name celebrity playing a character with a gimmick that plays a coincidentally large factor in the resolution of every case. Whether it's Tony Shaloub with OCD, Tim Roth as a human lie detector, or Jeff Goldblum forgetting he's not in the 6th Sense, there's always a crime, there's always a celebrity, and there's always a gimmick. So to jump the gun on what is sure to eventually happen, I'm going to present to you a preview of my own crime scene investigation drama, Plain as Day. The hero is Detective Jack Day, who has an uncanny knowledge of typical TV mystery twists and turns. Here's a sample of the script:

(Open on a police lineup, Jack Day being led in, presumably following a cantankerous but ultimately likeable police chief begrudgingly saying, "Get me Jack Day.")

Day: So what's the deal?

Attractive Female Officer: It's a murder, sir. A moderately rich man was found dead in his mini-mansion. Shot dead.

Day: Any leads?

Officer Attractive: His wife. She was having an affair, she holds his life insurance policy, and she was found with the murder weapon.

Day: Let her go, she's innocent. We introduced her before the first commercial break, and it's never that obvious. Anyone else?

Officer Attractive (leading Day through the suspect lineup): His mistress, his brother, his stockbroker, and his veterinarian.

Day: It wasn't his mistress, she's the snarky hooker with a heart of gold; it wasn't his stockbroker because he's gay and secretly in love with the victim (and it's never the token minority); it wasn't the vet because no one of that noble profession can ever kill, so he's a red herring. No, it was his impoverished brother who is secretly in love with his wife and is the one having an affair with her.

Brother: It's true!

Gay Stockbroker (Dressed like Elton John, but he doesn't have a lisp. That would be tacky.): How did you know?

Day: Because it's as plain as Day.

(Suddenly the wife comes in, still holding the murder weapon.)

Wife (to the Brother): You killed my husband?!

Brother: I did it for us!

Wife: I could never be with you! Sure I was having an affair with you, and my husband was chronically unfaithful, but I still loved him! (Points gun at brother.)

Chief Curmudgeon: Quick, someone talk her out of it!

Day: It's fine. She can't actually do it.

Wife (drops gun and hangs her head.): You're right, I can't.

(Cue a bittersweet montage of people looking wistful along to a barely off mainstream moody alternative song rife with repetitive acoustic guitar chords.)

How's that, huh? What? You say it's too preposterous? Well, I got you covered. Let's take a look at Day's pseudo-realistic (read: depressing) home life. His first wife was murdered, but never solved; his second wife divorced him and has his daughter who periodically guests as the sharp tongued teen during the home scenes; and his current, third wife is secretly planning to kill him. Let's read a scene at home:

(Day is at home and is relaxing, as symbolized by his unbuttoned white dress shirt over a wife beater with his untied tie draped over his shoulders and neck. He is playing Clue with his cute, blonde, too-young-for-him wife.)

Day: Colonel Mustard with the Revolver in the Library.

Wife: How did you know that?

Day: There are only two of us playing. Clue is a game for 3 to 6 players.

Wife: You didn't even look at your cards.

Day: It was as plain as Day.

Wife (to herself): Sometimes, I swear, I could just kill him... (Cue "Dun Dun Dun")

So how's that? Too formulaic you might say. This may be true. But it could be worse, it could be something that showed a spark of originality or didn’t attempt to rely entirely on the star or hot co-star or gimmicky premise. Thank goodness it wasn’t something else dreadfully creative. So count your lucky stars that it’s plain. Plain as Day.