How to break up a TV couple

[Joe Washington]

A sequel to my thread How to portray a TV romance.

I've been noticing fans of shows demanding the breakups of certain couples like Jim/Pam and others, thinking it'll make things better by injecting a burst of melodramatic drama into the characters' lives. Why would that make things better? Why are breakups necessary to give a TV couple's relationship life? What's wrong with a couple being together through most of the show and never breaking up? Is it unrealistic? If a TV couple were to break up, what you would like the reasons to be and how you would handle it?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Drama comes out of conflict. Happy people do not make for great conflict.

 

[Level 2 Diagnostic]

Yes, because married people never have any kind of conflicts.

 

[selina]

^ I'm not sure if that was ironic, but in case it wasn't I' d like to point out that Allison and Joe Dubois in "Medium" are a happy, married couple and yet there is still room for conflict. And I think the way their marriage is portrait is very realistic.

I don't mind breaking up a couple once and then bringing the people back together. What bothers me is, when the couple breaks up, gets back together, breaks up again, gets back together ... and so on. They should make up their mind.

However, I think that a moral conflict is a good way to go to break up a couple. Two people really need to have totally different opinions concerning a certain subject. And it has to be something of great significance, e.g.:
"Battlestar Galactica": Do the survivors settle New Caprica or do they continue and try to find Earth?
I know, this isn't such a good example but it helps to explain what I mean. In a situation like this two people with contrary point of views might break up. At least I would prefer it over the "I think he/she is seeing someone else"-story-arch.

 

[Joe Washington]

A perfect example of the kind of breakup that makes sense to me: the Nate/Brenda breakup in Season 2 of Six Feet Under.

BEWARE SPOILERS

Nate and Brenda's personal issues come to a boiling point. Nate has been feeling out-of-wack with his illness and finding out he's a daddy. Brenda has been acting out since his brother was institutionalized and more so after finding out about Nate's illness. She's been acting out by engaging in sexually compulsive behavior with spontaneous flings and sex parties. You knew at some point something was going to give between these two in which the shit they have been keeping inside them would inevitably come out and it did in one of the most well-acted scenes of Six Feet Under ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi-rvruy70M

I wish there were more well-acted breakups like Nate/Brenda or Sopranos' Tony/Carmela.