Episode 15 Morals

In plain English, these are the morals from Episode 15:

Paul and Cricket--haunted even now about that car accident?

This is just playing with a lot of loose ends. No one can figure out why the car accident was never gone after; I guess we're to assume that the no evidence means we've put it to rest. But gee, a private detective of Paul's supposed caliber couldn't think of any psychos he might have had run-ins with last year? Do we have to draw him a picture? Ok, I drew him a picture in this episode and it didn't help get him to expose Phyllis. But now that I've shown this `other way out,' at least we know he has a motive for not putting two and two together--he has a fond memory of Phyllis and perhaps a tiny hope for a future with her. So maybe he's being deliberately quiet about the conclusion, which surely must be obvious even to him. That's much more palatable, at least to me.

After all, none of us can understand how there was no aftermath of him having had Phyllis instead of Cricket. Surely he'd have fond memories of that. Why have we seen no hint of that. He always gives her such icy stares. If he's even half the man he claims to be, surely that would not be his lingering impression.

Dru and Neil--can an accident bring them together?

Marilyn Wood suggested on the CBS soaps newsgroup the idea of a plane accident for Dru, so that Neil would get a little humility from realizing how fragile Dru's chance for a career was. What a great suggestion! I didn't use her idea directly in this episode, but rather a slight variation. But this is where the idea came from. Mostly I wanted to show that this suggestion could be acted on even without permanently disfiguring Dru (and without miraculous recovery). So I changed it enough to set up the same scenario in a reversible way. Also, I think Neil's character is too far gone to really even profit from the realization that Dru has lost her career, and I wanted to show just how badly the writers have already trashed her character. His character is pretty far gone if you ask me--I'm sick of what they have done to him and I think it's harder to repair believably than Marilyn suggests--but that's just my personal opinion and doesn't make her suggestion either bad or unusable.

The part at the end was just to show that life is full of ironies and they could always have Neil be the one with the disabling injury. That would bring him down a few notches, I think. Brushes with death and other human limitations are usually what it takes to fix people who are as far gone as he seems to be.

So part of my point was to show still more things you could do with the characters. The other part of my point was to show that the writers have a rich source of material on the newsgroup if they just take notes. They don't have to lift things directly (although "ideas" are not copyrightable, and there is nothing keeping them from taking an idea here and there directly), but even just taking notes about people's sense of focus and concern, about their fears, etc. can teach one a lot. Now when I read the newsgroup, I do it with an editor buffer open and I take lots of notes about how things people say strike me. Sometimes it's not directly something that someone says, but just how it strikes me that gives me the idea. But I jot it down for later consideration. It sure does make things a lot easier when it comes time to put pen to paper!

Jack and Jill--just an accident waiting to happen?

I was struck the other day by the irony of Nick being involved in pretend business meetings at one minute and then ostensibly running off to class to learn something the next. He never shows a sign of behaving educated. I was thinking--wouldn't it be fun to actually see him apply something he learned in school and show that business is not "all in the genes". Maybe some kid out there in TV-land watching would be intrigued by the opportunity of school, rather than just being sad not to be a child of the Newman's. Well, maybe not by a single use of this trick, but maybe if they showed a regular pattern of school doing one better.

The Nina plot is a lot more realistic in this way than the Newman one is. People advance for stupid reasons at Jabot. Nina's plotline shows much more realism.

Hey, speaking of the Nina character, how can the writers be clever enough to insist that Cole study his character's background intensively to know how he talks, and yet not take their own advice? The teenagers on the show look and speak like rejects from West Side Story. How about researching modern day teen likes and speech patterns? Who dances during the daytime in coffee houses? What coffee house even has dancing?

That's all for Episode 15's morals. Don't miss Episode 16 and its morals!
If you missed any older episodes, see the index.