**CONTAINS GAME OF THRONES SPOILERS**
Since The Last Jedi came out (a movie which, in my opinion, is terribly flawed and has awful writing throughout) it's become extremely popular for creators and fandoms to defend writing in shows and films with "It's great at subverting audience expectations! You just hate it because you weren't expecting those things to happen!"
With the release of Season 8 of Game of Thrones and the awful massacre of that show's story and characters, it seems like people are jumping on this same bandwagon. "But it was so subversive!"
The idea, it would seem, is that writing is great merely by virtue of having unexpected things happen. If the audience is surprised with something you did as a writer, you are inherently a genius and your scripts are fantastic.
I'm going to be blunt.
This is a complete fallacy and the people using this reasoning are completely intellectually bankrupt when it comes to telling a good story.
Honestly, this whole line of reasoning is pure unadulterated nonsense.
Imagine you're watching Pulp Fiction. Marsellus Wallace is talking to Butch about throwing the boxing match. Suddenly, his head violently and gorily explodes everywhere and Willis reels in shock.
Cut to next scene. Vincent has just saved Mia from OD'ing. He takes her back to the house, smiles, and then he pulls out his pistol and shoots her dead.
Final scene. Travolta and Jackson are in the restaurant. Roth and Plummer talk about robbing the place, reach for their guns...and then decide that actually, no they won't. They just walk out, roll credits.
All three of these scenes are examples of completely subverting an audience's expectations. We don't expect Wallace's head to explode with no foreshadowing or apparent reasoning. We don't expect Vincent to randomly murder Mia, and we don't expect a robbery set-up from the start of the movie to suddenly lead to absolutely nothing.
Did these changes feel satisfying? Does it make absolutely any sense that Wallace suddenly just dies? Why would the film set up the cafe robbery for the whole run-time and then just ignore it in such a frustrating way?
No, these three examples are examples of terrible writing and would render Pulp Fiction an awful film. The expectations of the audience are "subverted" in these examples purely out of laziness or the desire to be "shocking" and unexpected. This destroys the story.
By contrast, there is actually a scene in Pulp Fiction in which a character's head suddenly explodes, subverting our expectations. However, this scene is both funny and horrifying, and is subtly foreshadowed in the form of Vincent's incompetence throughout the whole story. It also leads to a major plot dilemma which the characters successfully resolve using logic.
To cut a long explanation short; this character's sudden and "subversive" death is clever. It's not a stupid subversion for the sake of it.
Subverting an audience's expectations is not inherently bad.
But doing it out of laziness, out of stupidity or out of simply forgetting key plot points is not good writing.
Game of Thrones Season 8 is a perfect example of the worst, laziest, most idiotic "subversion". Jon Snow is set up for the entire show as a Targaryen - it's a huge reveal that means he is the rightful King of Westeros.
This is massive. This is a show all about the throne of this Kingdom and people scheming to sit on it. Jon is a protagonist we have followed right from the very beginning and is the favourite character for many people (myself included). He is revealed as the man who should be King, by right of his blood.
Yet in Season 8, Jon is suddenly meek, timid, weak, repetitive and stupid. And worse, his entire backstory and his heritage is completely ignored. The writers end the show by just giving him...nothing. He's pointless.
Arguably the biggest main character in the show becomes utterly redundant, his claim to the Kingdom is completely glossed over and he's basically deleted from the script. Instead, total randomer Bran becomes King for...no real reason whatsoever.
This is inexcusably terrible writing. To utterly ignore a central character's entire arc that you have been building for 8 seasons of television to this one incredibly important moment purely to "subvert expectations" is moronic beyond belief, not the sign of scriptwriting genius.
To round up:
Anyone can write a totally "random" story which ignores Chekhov's Gun and in which expected pay-offs are completely ignored in favour of "unexpected" twists. Children often write extremely simplistic stories like this, because they don't understand writing conventions. Does that mean children are excellent screenwriters now?
Subverting expectations in and of itself is not a mark of an excellent writer.
Tuesday 4 June 2019
Wednesday 3 April 2019
There Will Be Blood: The Duality of Eli and Daniel
After meaning to watch it for years, I finally got around to There Will Be Blood. It's a solid film with a lot of subtle meaning and I believe there is a lot more to the ending than first meets the eye.
Perhaps the most interesting thematic aspects of There Will Be Blood lie within the ironic parallels between Eli Sunday and Daniel Plainview.
Daniel is a consummate hyper-capitalist. It is his failing to have a real family (despite acting as a father to HW, that is essentially what he is doing; acting) that causes his misery, and his prioritisation of his own personal capitalistic wealth above all else that leads to both his huge wealth and completely hollow personal life.
Perhaps the greatest irony of Daniel's existence is that he murders the man who is posing as his half-brother. He himself has posed as H.W.'s father for many years, and yet he feels he is owed the boy's loyalty even after showing him callous disregard on numerous occasions. Yet he judges someone pulling the same thing on him so harshly as to merit a death sentence, demonstrating shallow emotional insight and hypocrisy.
One of the most interesting insights into Daniel's character is when he is watching a burning oil well, shortly after H.W. is deafened by a gas blast that caused the fire. Aware that his son is seriously injured, Daniel turns to a worker and says "What are you looking so miserable for? There's a whole ocean of oil beneath us, and no one can get at it but ME!"
In that very line, Daniel crystallises his approach to business in a single word. Not us. ME. Daniel has developed such an egocentric world-view that he even believes his workers should inexplicably be as happy as he is when he is making massive profits, because to him the whole world revolves around himself and his quest for oil. He claims several times to want to share wealth with his workers and the community, but in reality he has at this point become a selfish soul who wants only to accumulate vast profits for himself. Even as he says this, he is neglecting his son's well-being in order to focus on his money.
On the other hand, Eli is a consummate hyper-evangelist. He, in many ways, represents everything wrong with organised religion in the same way that Daniel represents many of the problems with extreme capitalism. In one of Daniel's more reasonable and more human moments, he agrees to allow Eli to bless his oil well, despite clearly feeling dubious about it himself and having no religious faith of his own. He does this out of good will (and perhaps also a desire to appear attractive to the community).
Eli responds that his name must be spoken during the blessing. Instead, Daniel blesses the well with the name of Eli's sister Mary in front of Eli and the community (apparently doing this without thinking anything of it, as he still says the other words Eli wanted). This clearly antagonises Eli at the time, as he smiles through pursed lips, even though the prayer was said to God as he asked.
When an accident later occurs at the well, Eli claims it was because the blessing was carried out improperly (the implication being that because his name was not said, the blessing was not "holy"). This shows a real blasphemous arrogance on Eli's part - he considers himself the sole voice and messenger of God's will. Religion is a commodity he thinks he owns. Eli claims that his religious community is his family, but as with Daniel's relationship with money over his son, Eli prioritises his own religious "wealth" above all else, and feels himself superior to his "flock".
Later, when Eli is revealed to have become a shallow radio evangelist interested only in self-promotion, he meets Daniel and breaks down. His focus on the cult-of-himself has resulted in both a lack of money (something Daniel does not experience, with his rational focus on material wealth) but also a similar lack of "soul" to Daniel.
Daniel, gripped by madness, kills Eli at the end of the film after humiliating him. But it's that last line that really throws us back to the duality of the two: "I'm finished."
Thinking of the two characters as two mirror images, Daniel as the materialistic capitalist incapable of human connection due to his own arrogance; Eli as the false prophet, incapable of human connection due to his own arrogance...this last line takes on an interesting significance to me.
What if Daniel has realised his duality with Eli? A man for whom he holds utter contempt? What if his murder of Eli is his own disgusted suicide-by-proxy? He kills the man he has contempt for, because he realises this man is a mirrored shadow of himself. Afterwards, he is just as broken and pathetic as Eli himself was, despite having everything he could seem to want.
"I'm finished" is not merely a statement of legal repercussions or a fourth-wall breaking comment on the film. No, Daniel is commenting on both how he has engineered his own emotional destruction through his mistreatment of H.W. and his annihilation of his own "other self", Eli.
Note how Eli himself is obsessed with money throughout the film. He wants $10,000 for the church; not because he cares for his "flock" or his family, but because he wants money. He asks Daniel for $5,000, essentially trying to trade a "proper" blessing of the well for money. Eli regards the death of an oil worker as a convenience for bargaining with Daniel, in the same twisted way Daniel adopts a dead worker's son in order to conveniently bargain with investors.
Eli's career as a radio evangelist is again designed to trade religious faith for money. In the end, what does Eli renounce his religion for and trade in his dignity to get? Money. The film is not about materialism versus spirituality, it's about the convergence of materialism and materialism posing as spirituality. The greedy oil barons and the greedy false prophets are the same.
In many ways, Eli is therefore a more repulsive character than even Daniel. Because Daniel Plainview says what he means and does what he says. He trades a physical commodity for money, even though he is ruthless and often cruel. Eli, however, trades on falsities and his own ego for cash; he is Daniel, but with a bible instead of a barrel of crude.
Daniel pretends he is a family man to make money. Eli pretends he is the voice of God to make money. Which is more unethical?
It is therefore my opinion that There Will Be Blood is a musing on the duality of capitalism and organised religion; how the two mingle and become indistinguishable when abused, and how neglect of the family and a lack of self-awareness brings an inevitable collapse regardless of material prosperity or religious "faith".
Perhaps the most interesting thematic aspects of There Will Be Blood lie within the ironic parallels between Eli Sunday and Daniel Plainview.
Daniel is a consummate hyper-capitalist. It is his failing to have a real family (despite acting as a father to HW, that is essentially what he is doing; acting) that causes his misery, and his prioritisation of his own personal capitalistic wealth above all else that leads to both his huge wealth and completely hollow personal life.
Perhaps the greatest irony of Daniel's existence is that he murders the man who is posing as his half-brother. He himself has posed as H.W.'s father for many years, and yet he feels he is owed the boy's loyalty even after showing him callous disregard on numerous occasions. Yet he judges someone pulling the same thing on him so harshly as to merit a death sentence, demonstrating shallow emotional insight and hypocrisy.
One of the most interesting insights into Daniel's character is when he is watching a burning oil well, shortly after H.W. is deafened by a gas blast that caused the fire. Aware that his son is seriously injured, Daniel turns to a worker and says "What are you looking so miserable for? There's a whole ocean of oil beneath us, and no one can get at it but ME!"
In that very line, Daniel crystallises his approach to business in a single word. Not us. ME. Daniel has developed such an egocentric world-view that he even believes his workers should inexplicably be as happy as he is when he is making massive profits, because to him the whole world revolves around himself and his quest for oil. He claims several times to want to share wealth with his workers and the community, but in reality he has at this point become a selfish soul who wants only to accumulate vast profits for himself. Even as he says this, he is neglecting his son's well-being in order to focus on his money.
On the other hand, Eli is a consummate hyper-evangelist. He, in many ways, represents everything wrong with organised religion in the same way that Daniel represents many of the problems with extreme capitalism. In one of Daniel's more reasonable and more human moments, he agrees to allow Eli to bless his oil well, despite clearly feeling dubious about it himself and having no religious faith of his own. He does this out of good will (and perhaps also a desire to appear attractive to the community).
Eli responds that his name must be spoken during the blessing. Instead, Daniel blesses the well with the name of Eli's sister Mary in front of Eli and the community (apparently doing this without thinking anything of it, as he still says the other words Eli wanted). This clearly antagonises Eli at the time, as he smiles through pursed lips, even though the prayer was said to God as he asked.
When an accident later occurs at the well, Eli claims it was because the blessing was carried out improperly (the implication being that because his name was not said, the blessing was not "holy"). This shows a real blasphemous arrogance on Eli's part - he considers himself the sole voice and messenger of God's will. Religion is a commodity he thinks he owns. Eli claims that his religious community is his family, but as with Daniel's relationship with money over his son, Eli prioritises his own religious "wealth" above all else, and feels himself superior to his "flock".
Later, when Eli is revealed to have become a shallow radio evangelist interested only in self-promotion, he meets Daniel and breaks down. His focus on the cult-of-himself has resulted in both a lack of money (something Daniel does not experience, with his rational focus on material wealth) but also a similar lack of "soul" to Daniel.
Daniel, gripped by madness, kills Eli at the end of the film after humiliating him. But it's that last line that really throws us back to the duality of the two: "I'm finished."
Thinking of the two characters as two mirror images, Daniel as the materialistic capitalist incapable of human connection due to his own arrogance; Eli as the false prophet, incapable of human connection due to his own arrogance...this last line takes on an interesting significance to me.
What if Daniel has realised his duality with Eli? A man for whom he holds utter contempt? What if his murder of Eli is his own disgusted suicide-by-proxy? He kills the man he has contempt for, because he realises this man is a mirrored shadow of himself. Afterwards, he is just as broken and pathetic as Eli himself was, despite having everything he could seem to want.
"I'm finished" is not merely a statement of legal repercussions or a fourth-wall breaking comment on the film. No, Daniel is commenting on both how he has engineered his own emotional destruction through his mistreatment of H.W. and his annihilation of his own "other self", Eli.
Note how Eli himself is obsessed with money throughout the film. He wants $10,000 for the church; not because he cares for his "flock" or his family, but because he wants money. He asks Daniel for $5,000, essentially trying to trade a "proper" blessing of the well for money. Eli regards the death of an oil worker as a convenience for bargaining with Daniel, in the same twisted way Daniel adopts a dead worker's son in order to conveniently bargain with investors.
Eli's career as a radio evangelist is again designed to trade religious faith for money. In the end, what does Eli renounce his religion for and trade in his dignity to get? Money. The film is not about materialism versus spirituality, it's about the convergence of materialism and materialism posing as spirituality. The greedy oil barons and the greedy false prophets are the same.
In many ways, Eli is therefore a more repulsive character than even Daniel. Because Daniel Plainview says what he means and does what he says. He trades a physical commodity for money, even though he is ruthless and often cruel. Eli, however, trades on falsities and his own ego for cash; he is Daniel, but with a bible instead of a barrel of crude.
Daniel pretends he is a family man to make money. Eli pretends he is the voice of God to make money. Which is more unethical?
It is therefore my opinion that There Will Be Blood is a musing on the duality of capitalism and organised religion; how the two mingle and become indistinguishable when abused, and how neglect of the family and a lack of self-awareness brings an inevitable collapse regardless of material prosperity or religious "faith".
Sunday 17 March 2019
BBC's "Warren" - How To Make A Completely Unlikable Protagonist
I wanted to like "Warren". The BBC's new prime-time sitcom stars Martin Clunes, the ever reliable funny-faced favourite and the advertising leads the viewer to believe that the show is going to be Clunes playing a grumpy, self-righteous driving instructor.
He snarks, he rolls his eyes, he makes sarky comments, and it all seems rather funny. I was looking forward to tuning in.
And there is some grain of truth intact from that trailer - Clunes does indeed portray the titular character Warren as a grumpy, self-righteous driving instructor. Unfortunately, the characterisation doesn't stop there, though. After 1 episode of the full show, it becomes immediately apparent that Warren isn't so much grumpy as he is a misanthropic sociopath and he isn't so much self-righteous as he is a completely unbearable bastion of ignorance.
That the writing team made the title character around which the whole sitcom is based so utterly unlikable to the point that he actually comes across as an abusive narcissist with controlling tendencies is perplexing.
The characterisation of the protagonist is so egregiously grating that I felt the show was deserving of a blog post - merely as an example of how NOT to write a character.
Why is my reaction so extreme? Well, to begin with, Warren is perpetually pissed off - with everything. Everything from his two stepsons (whom he almost invariably refers to as "tosser" or "wanker" in every breath), to his wife (who he eyerolls his way through his conversations with) to his work rivals (who he relentlessly and baselessly slanders).
I've heard many people comparing this to Victor Meldrew from One Foot in the Grave and Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers. The problem is, Warren has none of the righteous anger or vulnerable charm of these characters.
Victor Meldrew is not merely a grumpy bastard, as many vacuously characterised him as when the show first aired. No, Victor Meldrew is a sane man in an insane world. He lives an existence plagued by petty criminals, shysters, cruel employers, cruel rich people, muggers, inconsiderate and ignorant neighbours and (topping it all off) he experiences extraordinary runs of terrible luck.
Thus when he explodes "I don't BELIEVE it!" the audience laughs not just at him, but with him. When Victor is screaming at someone for failing to fix his car for the third month in a row, or raging at a car turning up dumped in a refuse skip he hired, we laugh because we understand his frustration.
Similarly, when Victor is wrong about something or crosses a line, he is frequently ashamed or apologises - a humanising and endearing trait that drives the more serious dramatic scenes of the sitcom too.
Once again this pattern is repeated with Basil Fawlty. He is rude, obnoxious and at times even aggressive towards people - but he is charmingly pathetic and vulnerable too. He is dominated by his equally obnoxious wife Sybil, his hotel is a rather crappy establishment despite his best efforts to improve it and he has hilarious delusions of grandeur, erroneously viewing himself as a member of the upper class rather than the jumped up working class man he really is. Again, his weaknesses are painfully human.
Warren, by contrast, has no such virtues or human flaws. He is merely unpleasant to everyone else in the show all the time, for no reason. Most of those he hurls abuse at are nicer or more likable characters than he is! And we are, somehow, supposed to laugh.
"Dad, can we get broadband?" His stepson asks patiently in one episode.
"Don't be such a NERD." Warren retorts. Ha. Ha. Ha?
Warren is also just a complete dick with his actual actions in the world too. In Episode 1 he decides to fly-tip a ton of rubbish out of the back of his car.
In most shows a protagonist doing something immoral like this would result in his embarrassment or humbling and a change in his or her character. Not in Warren. He is arrested at the end of the show but is as defiant, smug and unperturbed as ever...and it's never mentioned in the next episode.
When we see Warren giving driving lessons, he outright abuses his students. He tells one guy to "Piss off" and dumps him out of the car just because the guy raises a fair complaint, and then spends his time forcing another kid to drive him to a garden centre and pay for the privilege. This is the same garden centre where he abuses his stepson's boss and screams at him unpleasantly over a discount until he is dragged from the store.
I wish I was making this up. A reminder: this is supposed to be a comedy. This is the protagonist of said comedy. A man who just acts like, for lack of a better word, a complete c*** for the entire show for no reason.
On top of this God-awful soulless characterisation, the show actually has a total lack of internal consistency and bad writing across the board too. This tired joke of Warren somehow being the only man still on dial-up internet is followed by his son accessing several websites very quickly in order to further the (excuse for) plot. Because apparently 56k is indeed just as fast as broadband in this universe, and the writers don't even care that it shouldn't be.
A good show would show Warren getting ironically frustrated at the slow internet in this scene, and have his son mock him for not upgrading. Therefore, of course, the show doesn't do this at all.
Perhaps the most cringeworthy example of the terrible writing is Warren's wife, Anne. First of all, it's implausible that Warren is even married to her. He has literally no redeeming features, so it's beyond bizarre that she married him in the first place.
Secondly, Anne is just written as thick to the point of caricature. She is so dense (and portrayed in such a constrastingly dozy, gentle tone) that it becomes unbelievable that she has enough neurons to remember to breathe.
For me, the moment the show became unbearable was when Warren "ran over a cat" in Episode 2.
He's driving down the road with Anne in the passenger seat (fully awake and aware I might add) when he slowly drives up to a dead cat lying in the road. At this point Warren gets out and picks it up, suddenly and uncharacteristically turning into a big soppy animal lover full of sadness. This jarring transition of his character is so out of keeping with the rest of the show I was sat waiting for the sarcastic punchline that never came. The writers cannot even write Warren as a kind character convincingly!
However, then comes the most idiotic moment of the show. A family comes out and assumes Warren has killed their cat by running it over. Warren protests. Anne then pipes up, and admonishes Warren for running the cat over.
This isn't just Anne making a single mistake of perception. She repeatedly and stupidly utters to the family that they will pay for the cat, since Warren ran it over. SHE LITERALLY SAW HIM DRIVE THE CAR SLOWLY OVER TO AN ALREADY DEAD CAT. She was in the car two seconds ago seeing all of this! How the fuck does it make any sense that she now thinks her husband ran it over?
Truly the laziest writing I've ever seen in a sitcom. They sat around a table, decided the joke was that Warren gets wrongly accused of running over a cat, someone explained "But that doesn't make any sense, because Anne knows he didn't do it." and then someone else waved their hand and said "Fuck it, just say that she saw him run it over for some reason."
In conclusion, Warren is a textbook example of how not to write a protagonist and how not to write a show. If you want to see Martin Clunes starring in what could sadly be a career-truncating car crash I recommend it, but if you want a show that keeps the wheels on the road I recommend you park this one in the garage.
He snarks, he rolls his eyes, he makes sarky comments, and it all seems rather funny. I was looking forward to tuning in.
And there is some grain of truth intact from that trailer - Clunes does indeed portray the titular character Warren as a grumpy, self-righteous driving instructor. Unfortunately, the characterisation doesn't stop there, though. After 1 episode of the full show, it becomes immediately apparent that Warren isn't so much grumpy as he is a misanthropic sociopath and he isn't so much self-righteous as he is a completely unbearable bastion of ignorance.
That the writing team made the title character around which the whole sitcom is based so utterly unlikable to the point that he actually comes across as an abusive narcissist with controlling tendencies is perplexing.
The characterisation of the protagonist is so egregiously grating that I felt the show was deserving of a blog post - merely as an example of how NOT to write a character.
Why is my reaction so extreme? Well, to begin with, Warren is perpetually pissed off - with everything. Everything from his two stepsons (whom he almost invariably refers to as "tosser" or "wanker" in every breath), to his wife (who he eyerolls his way through his conversations with) to his work rivals (who he relentlessly and baselessly slanders).
I've heard many people comparing this to Victor Meldrew from One Foot in the Grave and Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers. The problem is, Warren has none of the righteous anger or vulnerable charm of these characters.
Victor Meldrew is not merely a grumpy bastard, as many vacuously characterised him as when the show first aired. No, Victor Meldrew is a sane man in an insane world. He lives an existence plagued by petty criminals, shysters, cruel employers, cruel rich people, muggers, inconsiderate and ignorant neighbours and (topping it all off) he experiences extraordinary runs of terrible luck.
Thus when he explodes "I don't BELIEVE it!" the audience laughs not just at him, but with him. When Victor is screaming at someone for failing to fix his car for the third month in a row, or raging at a car turning up dumped in a refuse skip he hired, we laugh because we understand his frustration.
Similarly, when Victor is wrong about something or crosses a line, he is frequently ashamed or apologises - a humanising and endearing trait that drives the more serious dramatic scenes of the sitcom too.
Once again this pattern is repeated with Basil Fawlty. He is rude, obnoxious and at times even aggressive towards people - but he is charmingly pathetic and vulnerable too. He is dominated by his equally obnoxious wife Sybil, his hotel is a rather crappy establishment despite his best efforts to improve it and he has hilarious delusions of grandeur, erroneously viewing himself as a member of the upper class rather than the jumped up working class man he really is. Again, his weaknesses are painfully human.
Warren, by contrast, has no such virtues or human flaws. He is merely unpleasant to everyone else in the show all the time, for no reason. Most of those he hurls abuse at are nicer or more likable characters than he is! And we are, somehow, supposed to laugh.
"Dad, can we get broadband?" His stepson asks patiently in one episode.
"Don't be such a NERD." Warren retorts. Ha. Ha. Ha?
Warren is also just a complete dick with his actual actions in the world too. In Episode 1 he decides to fly-tip a ton of rubbish out of the back of his car.
In most shows a protagonist doing something immoral like this would result in his embarrassment or humbling and a change in his or her character. Not in Warren. He is arrested at the end of the show but is as defiant, smug and unperturbed as ever...and it's never mentioned in the next episode.
When we see Warren giving driving lessons, he outright abuses his students. He tells one guy to "Piss off" and dumps him out of the car just because the guy raises a fair complaint, and then spends his time forcing another kid to drive him to a garden centre and pay for the privilege. This is the same garden centre where he abuses his stepson's boss and screams at him unpleasantly over a discount until he is dragged from the store.
I wish I was making this up. A reminder: this is supposed to be a comedy. This is the protagonist of said comedy. A man who just acts like, for lack of a better word, a complete c*** for the entire show for no reason.
On top of this God-awful soulless characterisation, the show actually has a total lack of internal consistency and bad writing across the board too. This tired joke of Warren somehow being the only man still on dial-up internet is followed by his son accessing several websites very quickly in order to further the (excuse for) plot. Because apparently 56k is indeed just as fast as broadband in this universe, and the writers don't even care that it shouldn't be.
A good show would show Warren getting ironically frustrated at the slow internet in this scene, and have his son mock him for not upgrading. Therefore, of course, the show doesn't do this at all.
Perhaps the most cringeworthy example of the terrible writing is Warren's wife, Anne. First of all, it's implausible that Warren is even married to her. He has literally no redeeming features, so it's beyond bizarre that she married him in the first place.
Secondly, Anne is just written as thick to the point of caricature. She is so dense (and portrayed in such a constrastingly dozy, gentle tone) that it becomes unbelievable that she has enough neurons to remember to breathe.
For me, the moment the show became unbearable was when Warren "ran over a cat" in Episode 2.
He's driving down the road with Anne in the passenger seat (fully awake and aware I might add) when he slowly drives up to a dead cat lying in the road. At this point Warren gets out and picks it up, suddenly and uncharacteristically turning into a big soppy animal lover full of sadness. This jarring transition of his character is so out of keeping with the rest of the show I was sat waiting for the sarcastic punchline that never came. The writers cannot even write Warren as a kind character convincingly!
However, then comes the most idiotic moment of the show. A family comes out and assumes Warren has killed their cat by running it over. Warren protests. Anne then pipes up, and admonishes Warren for running the cat over.
This isn't just Anne making a single mistake of perception. She repeatedly and stupidly utters to the family that they will pay for the cat, since Warren ran it over. SHE LITERALLY SAW HIM DRIVE THE CAR SLOWLY OVER TO AN ALREADY DEAD CAT. She was in the car two seconds ago seeing all of this! How the fuck does it make any sense that she now thinks her husband ran it over?
Truly the laziest writing I've ever seen in a sitcom. They sat around a table, decided the joke was that Warren gets wrongly accused of running over a cat, someone explained "But that doesn't make any sense, because Anne knows he didn't do it." and then someone else waved their hand and said "Fuck it, just say that she saw him run it over for some reason."
In conclusion, Warren is a textbook example of how not to write a protagonist and how not to write a show. If you want to see Martin Clunes starring in what could sadly be a career-truncating car crash I recommend it, but if you want a show that keeps the wheels on the road I recommend you park this one in the garage.
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