partly | 10 Meta: Motion

tvrealm has a prompt where you are supposed to claim 10 words and do something off of them. "Meta" was one of the choices, so I'm going with that. This post's prompt: Motion.

For me to like a show, it has to have more than good characters and interesting plots, it has to have forward motion. There has to be progress and answers and conclusions. It’s why I love so many of the USA network shows, they are experts on the “episodic television with overreaching story arcs”. They give me an interesting story within the episode and bits and pieces of an larger story that continues over several episodes or over the whole season.

When a show loses that forward momentum, when everything that happens just leads back to the same question or puzzle, when every time you learn something new it turns out to just reverse everything you already thought you knew, it loses me.

Shows like Lost or Fringe, shows that depend on never giving an answer to a question frustrate me on a level that’s almost primal. I watched Lost when it first come on and I loved the show because the characters were so awesome, but the more I watched the more it felt like a bait-and-switch. It didn’t matter what we were told, it wasn’t going to lead to any real answers, just more questions.

Without forward motion, it feels too much like a lie, like the kids that would pretend to hand you something, and then pull back at the last second, just to laugh that you were gullible enough to believe they were actually going to give you something. Now I get that I may be unique in feeling that, but that doesn’t change the feeling.