Fictional Death, Real Pain!
- Melengers
- Jun 16, 2020
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 17, 2020
Death in TV shows is obviously not new, but it remains one of the most common tricks used by producers and writers to shock their viewers. As this technique was used a lot during the 90s – I’m still in denial when I think about Lorenzo’s tragic death in Silk Stalkings, or the ones of Sydney Andrews and Craig Field in Melrose Place – it is relevant to wonder if the process is still shrewd nowadays.
Silk Stalkings
People will say that it is just a fiction and that the pain cannot be real, but let's make it clear: when you watch a show and you are really a fan, you are feeling the pain in the same time as the characters, you can tell when they suffer and when they are happy, and all this can definitely influence your own mood as a viewer and as a person.
Therefore, if someone can call it foolishness or stupidity, real fans, the ones who are the heart of a fandom, the ones who care about the characters as family members, call it empathy and love. It is normal, indeed, to be passionate and invested when you love something: it is what makes you human, what proves you are caring about your fellows.
When questioned about the loss and the grieving in a TV show, Alan Wolfelt, the founder of the Center for Life and Transition, an American organization dedicated to helping people who are grieving, is assertive: «it’s a real, perhaps even common, occurrence». People get attached to characters, they grow up with them, they learn from them and can share similarities with them.
Sometimes a character can be a mirror of the viewer himself; sometimes it is the mirror of a person you know well or someone you lost and have the impression to see again in your screen.
A psychology professor from the State University of Oklahoma, Jennifer Barnes, studied this phenomenon for the American magazine Time in 2017. In a long article, she explains how it is normal for a viewer to mourn the death of a fictional character or a fictional relationship. She insists on the fact that «the brain is not built to separate the love of a fictional character from the love for a real person». Each week, you see this character evolving under your eyes through a screen; you witness a relationship blossom; you get attached; you can recognize yourself and, as a matter of fact, this character, this relationship, becomes important for you.
A producer or a writer can decide to push a character off a show, to use death as a shocking value. It was already the case in many shows in the past: Joss Whedon, for example, killed Joyce Summers, Buffy’s mom in one of the most traumatic scenes of the show (Buffy finds out her mom with her eyes wide-open lying on the sofa) and he did it again killing Tara because of a stray bullet. Josh Schwarz, instead, killed Marissa Cooper at the end of Season 3 in an inevitable, terrible car accident.
Joyce Summer's death
Marissa Cooper's death
Despite traumatizing millions of people around the world, the results are always the same: viewers often flee the show because they do not want to witness in a fiction what they see every day around them. Grey’s Anatomy lost a lot of viewers after Shonda Rhimes killed Derek Shepard in an awful car accident. Dallas was almost cancelled when the producers had the “brilliant” idea to kill JR Ewing (one of the best villains in TV shows!). They even had to hire Larry Hagman again to save the series, and JR came back to life after Pamela finally woke up from a terrible nightmare.
Nowadays, even if this same process is still used in TV series, producers are more careful with it because social medias bring majors changes: viewers can interfere with their shows and influence millions of people all over the world. In the last four years, we have seen Sense 8 fans get their final episode when Netflix had cancelled the show, Lucifans saved Lucifer from the Fox cancellation as did the Niners when Fox cancelled Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
So, what about bringing a character back to life? Everything is possible. The Good Doctor fans, for instance, are strenuously fighting to bring their beloved Dr. Neil Melendez back to life, since March, 30th, when he apparently died from a septic shock in the Season 3 Finale. During an interview with TV Line, The Good Doctor producer, David Shore, explained that it was a “creative decision”, but viewers remember very well how he can be good at faking death: in the last episode of House M.D., he actually faked Gregory House’s death. The main protagonist of the show, indeed, is left for dead in a fire and for every other character of the show he is really dead. In fact, Gregory is well and truly alive and wanders all around the United States on his bike alone, as he has always preferred to be.
In this regard, it is possible to add many examples to underline how a shocking death can cause a negative response from the audience: in July 2019, Rob Thomas and Hulu promoted the new season of Veronica Mars. Fans of the show were so glad to find their favorite detective back, but the bliss was short. After choosing to kill Logan, Veronica’s love interest for the whole show and one of the most moving characters of the series, in the very last few minutes of the new season, Rob Thomas condemned himself the show and the numbers of negative comments on social medias forced Hulu to bury the series forever.
Veronica Mars and Logan Echolls
This last example proves the importance of all the characters in a show. Indeed, even if there is a main character, it does not mean that viewers are interested only in him/her: quite often, supporting characters become as important (and even more sometimes!) as the lead character of a show!
A TV series is not only about a main character. A show is about a group of people, about the way they interact together, how they learn from each other, how the viewer identifies in this group. Depriving a show from one of its character for shocking value is like taking away a card in a card castle.
Sometimes, as Lamartine wrote, «un seul être vous manque et tout est dépeuplé» («you only miss one person and everything seems useless»). Therefore, in this case, writers and producers should probably take this advice as a warning for their future decisions to prevent their shows from failing.
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