Do you agree with Alan Ball's belief on TV relationships?

[stj]

I think it was Jack Williamson who explained that the key to his writing success was to put his hero up a tree, then throw rocks at him. Ball just applies the same principle to couples.

The thing is, Williamson was talking about how to be successful in writing for the pulps. Plainly, television is today's pulps!

 

[DarthPipes]

...but Al and Peggy Bundy stayed together for the entirety of the 11-seasons of Married...With Children. And granted, while they weren't the ideal set of parents, they were also cartoon characters on a live action show satirizing married life.

I fail to see how they apply to this discussion?

Exactly. Al and Peggy were supposed to be that way. They were the anti-Cosbys. That was the working title of Married with Children. Not the Cosbys.

American Beauty is an overrated piece of crap.

 

[bigdaddy]

American Beauty is an overrated piece of crap.

I love that movie!

However it's not really the writing that is great, if you listen to the DVD commentary they really had no clue what they were doing and just lucked out that the movie was as great as it was.

 

[stj]

American Beauty is not quite a piece of crap, but it is a melodramatic piece of wish fulfilment with a bizarro world drug dealer character and an insane plot twist for arbitrary tragedy at the end. It has a point of view, it concerns itself with an aspect of real life (the agony of the mundane, I suppose you could call it,) it has some strong imagery and dialogue. The number of so-called dramas that don't have a point of view and nothing to do with real life at all is remarkable, so American Beauty was ahead on points from the get go.

I still amazed that it won nominations/Oscars.

PS I can't resist asking how American Beauty fits into the Sam Mendes oeuvre? The director is supposed to be the auteur of the movie, after all. I myself find American Beauty fits in with the rest of Alan Ball's work.

 

[Anwar]

I thought the Family Guy spoof was hilarious, especially the plastic bag spoof where God actually bitched Peter out over paying so much attention to it.

 

[Navaros]

The best relationships on TV shows are the ones filled with drama, difficulty, and conflict with temporary moments of happiness and that the only time everyone should get happy is the end of the series.

That quotation is partially, but not fully correct.

Absolutely all drama needs conflict, otherwise it is useless.

However, there still can still can be happy, lasting relationships without conflicts that are very good. The only way that would be a problem is if every or most of the relationship(s) in the show are that way.

 

[DarthPipes]

I thought American Beauty had very good acting and great cinenamatography (Conrad Hall did some amazing work with this and Road to Perdition) but was not impressed with the story and the cliched "suburbia is hell" storyline.

I did read how the film was originally supposed to end though and that's pretty interesting.

 

[bigdaddy]

an insane plot twist for arbitrary tragedy at the end.

Really? I think the twist was shocking at the same time very very fitting to form.

 

[stj]

^^^To each his own, they say. Personally, I don't think of coming out of the closet as meaning "with guns blasting."

 

[Anwar]

That quotation is partially, but not fully correct.

Absolutely all drama needs conflict, otherwise it is useless.

No it doesn't, and no its not.

 

[Kestra]

I think happy, perfect, non-dramatic couples are boring if their relationship remains the focus. Usually the focus is on some sort of tension between characters and when that's resolved, it's stupid to keep the focus there.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Relationships do not need conflict to be interesting. Think of Holmes and Watson, Nick and Nora, ET and Elliot, Roarke and Tattoo, Friday and Boss, Daneel and Giskard, Master Po and Caine, and so on, ad infinitum. Conflict and drama are fine, where appropriate, but forced conflict, and the inability to write an interesting relationship without conflict, is the crutch of the lazy or incompetent writer.

 

[stj]

I'm increasingly inclined to suspect there is a positive pleasure in the reaffirmation of a negative (or even predatory) view of humanity as a whole.

 

[bigdaddy]

^^^To each his own, they say. Personally, I don't think of coming out of the closet as meaning "with guns blasting."

You clearly have no clue what "coming out of the closet" means.

 

[Kestra]

I'm increasingly inclined to suspect there is a positive pleasure in the reaffirmation of a negative (or even predatory) view of humanity as a whole.

Why is that?

 

[Goliath]

Relationships do not need conflict to be interesting. Think of Holmes and Watson, Nick and Nora, ET and Elliot, Roarke and Tattoo, Friday and Boss, Daneel and Giskard, Master Po and Caine, and so on, ad infinitum. Conflict and drama are fine, where appropriate, but forced conflict, and the inability to write an interesting relationship without conflict, is the crutch of the lazy or incompetent writer.

Relationships do not need conflict to be interesting--but stories about relationships do.

Consider, for example, the relationships you list above--or at least, the ones I'm familiar with.

Yes, Holmes and Watson had an interesting relationship. But the stories in which they featured were not about that relationship. They were about solving crimes. The same is true for Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man.

This was doubly true when it comes to Mr. Roarke and Tattoo. The stories on Fantasy Island weren't about them. They were about the fantasies of people who visited the island.

Or, consider a relationship with which we should all be familiar: Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy. The stories in TOS were never really about their relationship as friends and colleagues--even though that relationship gave the series much of its lasting appeal. The stories in TOS were about how these three men resolved a variety of space-operatic crises.

Or, consider a movie I just watched this evening: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This movie actually sketched out a rather nice relationship between the main characters, Dr. Miles Bennell and Becky Driscoll: two divorced people who rekindle an old romance.

But this relationship is never more than a sketch, because the story is not about them rekindling their old romance. The story is about how their town is invaded by the body snatchers. Their relationship is mentioned solely to make them more rounded and sympathetic characters, and to make us care about them and their plight. And ultimately, to deepen the horror of the film's most horrifying scene.

If you're actually going to write a story about relationships between people, then absolutely you need some kind of conflict. It doesn't have to be forced or melodramatic: in fact, ideally, it shouldn't be either of those things. The conflict, and the resulting drama, should develop naturally from character and circumstance.

But without some kind of obstacles to overcome, without successes and failures, without drama, then what's the point of reading or watching?

 

[bigdaddy]

Relationships without conflicts are not realistic! That's my problem, there are never perfect relationships, there are never relationships without conflict. That's life and that's how you tell a good story.

 

[Checkmate]

There's a difference between normal relationships and the ridiculous ones that writers always force down your throat. No, love triangles are not the norm. No, the world doesn't conspire to keep two people apart. No, the CIA won't kill you if you become involved with your associate. No, once you score a really hot chick you won't suddenly be swarmed with dozens of even hotter chicks all trying to get in your pants, especially if you're a normal looking person yourself.

Just no. Unless the story is based around such ideas from the very beginning -- as in its a core concept in which the main story cannot exist without it -- it's just weak bullshit whenever it comes up.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Relationships do not need conflict to be interesting. Think of Holmes and Watson, Nick and Nora, ET and Elliot, Roarke and Tattoo, Friday and Boss, Daneel and Giskard, Master Po and Caine, and so on, ad infinitum. Conflict and drama are fine, where appropriate, but forced conflict, and the inability to write an interesting relationship without conflict, is the crutch of the lazy or incompetent writer.

Relationships do not need conflict to be interesting--but stories about relationships do.

Consider, for example, the relationships you list above--or at least, the ones I'm familiar with.

Yes, Holmes and Watson had an interesting relationship. But the stories in which they featured were not about that relationship. They were about solving crimes. The same is true for Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man.

This was doubly true when it comes to Mr. Roarke and Tattoo. The stories on Fantasy Island weren't about them. They were about the fantasies of people who visited the island.

Or, consider a relationship with which we should all be familiar: Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy. The stories in TOS were never really about their relationship as friends and colleagues--even though that relationship gave the series much of its lasting appeal. The stories in TOS were about how these three men resolved a variety of space-operatic crises.

Or, consider a movie I just watched this evening: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This movie actually sketched out a rather nice relationship between the main characters, Dr. Miles Bennell and Becky Driscoll: two divorced people who rekindle an old romance.

But this relationship is never more than a sketch, because the story is not about them rekindling their old romance. The story is about how their town is invaded by the body snatchers. Their relationship is mentioned solely to make them more rounded and sympathetic characters, and to make us care about them and their plight. And ultimately, to deepen the horror of the film's most horrifying scene.

If you're actually going to write a story about relationships between people, then absolutely you need some kind of conflict. It doesn't have to be forced or melodramatic: in fact, ideally, it shouldn't be either of those things. The conflict, and the resulting drama, should develop naturally from character and circumstance.

But without some kind of obstacles to overcome, without successes and failures, without drama, then what's the point of reading or watching?

Well, the statement made was that happy, functional relationships are boring. As far as conflict goes, even if the story is about the relationship, the conflict doesn't need to be between the characters. In the example I gave earlier, a story about the developing relationship between a hobo and a young runaway, one could say the conflict is between the characters and the world as they try to get along.

 

[DeafPoet]

I think characters in happy relationships are way harder to pull off but the premise isn't inherently flawed.

I'll use How I Met Your Mother as an example. Here's a show where two of the main characters (Marshall and Lily) are maybe the most committed, sickeningly happy couple on TV and they're still interesting and funny. The show has also almost completely eschewed traditional will they/won't they sitcommy crap.

It can be done, it's just not easy to do well.