I know loads of people who love it when characters on TV shows (just look at all those people who watched Harper's Island.) It gives a show pathos, it reinvigorates plotlines, wakes up the audience and gives the brooding characters something new to brood about. To stay alive, a show has to maintain suspense, and what better way is there to remind everyone that characters are in jeopardy than killing one of them off?
Yep, from a storytelling point of view, killing characters can be hugely beneficial.
But I hate it.
It's the reason I stopped watching Lost. I gave up when they killed Libby. I really liked her, and felt really gipped when they killed her off without really doing her backstory. (For those of you who didn't watch or don't remember, Libby was one of the survivors from the tail section of the plane they met up with at the beginning of Season 2. She was the sweet blond one who started dating Hurley, right before she got killed.) They also killed off Ana Lucia, another tail section survivor, in the same incident. And then later I heard through the grapevine that they also killed Mr. Eko a few episodes into season 3.
That just made me mad. What was the point of introducing new characters just to kill them off a few episodes later? Why are Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are blessed with immortality, when other equally-interesting characters get killed for no good reason? Their deaths didn't really have a huge impact on the direction of the show.
I realize that Lost is a scary show that has to keep its creep cred up, and killing characters is one of the best ways to maintain suspense, but I think killing off new characters before we really get to know them is just stupid. It doesn't have the shock value of killing off someone who's been there from the beginning. And it feels like a rip-off, like if you thought this blogger you were reading was going to launch into an elaborate analogy for how much it sucks to feel cheated out of watching a favorite character and all they did was just babble lamely until they finish the sentence.
But then again, I might be impossible to please, because I also hate it when they kill off series fixtures.
As I got over Libby enough to start watching again, they killed Charlie. And I hated it. Partly because, Charlie could have easily escaped if he had just locked himself on the other side of the door. But also because, it didn't really make a difference in the grand story arc. Because even if Charlie and Des had both gotten out, it still would have been too late to warn Jack about the boat. And although Hurley seeing Charlie's ghost at the convenience store and running away was kind of priceless, there are plenty of other dead people Hurley could have talked to. (Like say, Libby!)
Maybe I'm a wimp, but an unjust, underwhelming death for a favorite character is one of the worst things a TV writer can do to his or her audience. Therefore, I'm coining this list of rules for killing off characters, which I promise I will follow 98% of the time if I ever actually become a TV writer.
1. Killing off a character has to affect the plot. And the bigger the character, the more it has to affect the plot. Eliminating a series regular should have a huge impact. I'm too lazy to think of an example right now, but y'all know it's true.
2. Killing off a character has to affect the other characters. A really good example of a well done character death is when Buffy's mom died. It was heartbreaking, and not just because we were sad that character was leaving the show. They devoted an entire episode to the aftermath of her death and all the other characters' reactions to it- the sadness, the denial, the wishing they could have done different and realizing they couldn't have. It was a great episode. Buffy was a great show.
3. The death has to be karmically sound. Don't you just hate it when they kill off nice characters who don't deserve it? Karma, justice, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it has to be respected in storytelling. I'm gonna use another example from a Joss Whedon show, even though I know I do that way too much. (SPOILER ALERT!) On Angel, when Darla, Angel's vampire sire and ex-girlfriend, comes back pregnant and discovers that because she's carrying child with a soul, she has a soul while it's inside of her. But that child can't be born in a normal way. (I know, vampire physics don't make any sense.) So in a final redemptive act, she stakes herself, so that her son can live. A dignified, redeeming end for a really, really annoying character.
4. Don't kill a character unless their story's been played out. This was the rule that was violated with Libby's death. If a character still has friends to make, people to torture, and/or tragic romances to suffer through, don't kill them. Not yet!
And last, but not least: 5. Don't kill the cute character with the funny accent. The most senseless TV character death of all time (that I can think of, anyway) was that of Dr. Carson Beckett from Stargate Atlantis. The adorable, instantly-quotable Scottish doctor was killed by of all things, (SPOILER ALERT) by an exploding tumor. WTF? It was unexpected, and apparently the producers did it just because they though that killing Carson would make a good episode. It didn't. If you want a lesson in how to kill characters off badly, that's the one. It violates all five of my randomly-made-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night rules. But if all TV writers can learn from this and agree not to kill Scottish doctors, Irish rogues, or British one-hit-wonders off their shows, Carson's sacrifice will not have been in vain.
So that's pretty much my take on character deaths. What do you guys think?
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