Tonight my wife and I watched another episode in a network show we’ve been casually following. It hasn’t been our favorite. The writing and acting are not always even, but there have been enough situations to keep it interesting.
The first episode we streamed tonight concerned the husband of the Secretary of State learning of his father’s death and going to be with his siblings and nieces and nephews as they work through their loss. At first, the show is about this topic, about a son losing a father. But the conflict quickly deepens when the son learns that his father has actually committed suicide.
I became interested in this deeper problem. I wanted to see how the different family members dealt with this new knowledge. Yet very quickly, the episode fell into the usual pattern. After the usual questions–was it a sin to take his life, and why did he do it? Why didn’t he let us know?–the focus on conflict centered on the dominant sibling not wanting to tell the neighbors or anyone else what really happened. The son wants to face the truth. This personality conflict becomes the central focus.
And this is how this 44 minute episode takes care of things–like all TV, it moves toward a resolution of the topic of surviving a suicide by avoiding it, avoiding the deeper question in favor of how the son and his more dominant sister are going to live with their sibling conflict. This focus gets resolved when the son says a few healing things during the service, and then the siblings are shown at the end laughing and crying together about their father.
I asked my wife if we could watch the next episode to see if the husband/son-of-a-suicide continued to deal with the loss of his father, and, predictably, he didn’t. The episode to follow has plenty of other action about a terrorist plot. No need to focus on the new role of suicide survivor. This diversion was predictable.
I don’t know how to say this, but I was sorely disappointed when I shouldn’t have been. I have already noticed that this series replaces deeper issues with melodrama. This is what is acceptable on network TV.
In my own life, I know too many people who believe that life’s problems should be resolved quickly, and if they aren’t, then forget them. I feel a sort of sadness about this, about the shallowness of a culture that subsists on a regular diet of avoiding deep problems and settling for the resolution of melodrama. I know too many people who believe that I should have gotten over my own sadness at loss in my life. And I know that this is the sort of thing we expect: that even a suicide can be worked out through the proper three act management of scenes, with the right words said, and a resolution after a half an hour, or in the case of this show, 44 minutes.
This show hurt me more than helped. I have felt myself during this holiday season entering a little bit deeper into sadness than I was before. I have felt during this holiday season more isolated than before. Time is not a healer in this. I don’t need someone else’s magical statements. I am just increasingly sad over things today in ways that I wasn’t two days ago. I’m sure this sadness will pass. But today I felt myself standing at the edge of an abyss that suicide survivors sometimes talk about, and watching a shallow network show about a suicide only made the abyss seem deeper, and myself more alone in facing it.
Again, tomorrow will be different. There are good days and bad. But there is not just one epiphany–at the funeral or said by a wise person–that will take this pain away forever.
I am not blaming TV for the ways that people around me respond to difficult problems. But I do know that the stories we tell matter. The better we tell them, the more we have the chance to be, well, better. I’ve resolved to try to do this. But I know it isn’t easy. Most of the time, I will settle for less.
Here is hoping that we can all find the deeply satisfying stories this coming year that will help us to make sense of our deepest, most abiding concerns and issues. Here’s to slowly, in our own time, making sense.
Have a good new year telling your stories.
I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the subject. I have lost people in my life in different ways. You are right that many times burdened by our own dramas and issues we speed by those of others. It is inconceivable to me that you or anyone else in a similar situation as you would recover or lose the sadness. I still dream about the people I have lost. I still think about them if not on a daily then certainly every couple of days. When I sit down to watch a TV show such as the one you described, and I do that on a regular basis, I know very well that what I’m doing is engaging in a type of fantasy. Huge problems can never be solved in 44 minutes. But as you know and I’m sure you thought about writing this, Ratings drive TV. Television writers such as the ones behind this show try to do something different and better but ultimately must cater to the market. I am guilty of Feeling happy about how a near world apocalypse can be avoided in the course of my breakfast. I literally have had this thought many times when watching this particular show. I am not sure which show you were talking about, but I have a very good guess. So, is it then ultimately our fault for watching the shows which continue to deal with life’s problems in a cursory manner?
Talking about our sadness at length is definitely not something that we can do in the workplace. It is definitely not something that most of us want to do it anytime. Laugh. Sigh.However, it is something we can do when we tell stories, As you say. Very popular media probably got that way because it offered the temptation of escape while being realistic enough to allow for viewer identification. Or should we say viewer fantasy?
I feel as if I have just reiterated your ideas. However there is a new application for me and I thank you for it. I recently watched a very uplifting movie which satisfies current needs for the representation of people with disabilities. Or so I thought. But as I thought about it more rewatched etc. I realized that the premise and the outcome were very fantastical. Then I felt guilty for criticizing what would be seen as a huge leap ahead for allowing actors with disabilities to betray people with disabilities.
None of this has anything to do with a deep and abiding sadness that you feel during the holiday season. I just want you to know that your determination to continue your life online and in writing is inspiring In the sense that were I to experience any further and deeper loss maybe I too could do so In hopes of writing truth.
Andrea, thank you so much for your thoughtful response. I, like you, do spend every day or every other day thinking about the people I’ve lost–I think this is understandable. And you are right that these TV shows are built to invite viewer response and interest–and especially ratings. The one show you mention about disability is interesting: On the one hand, it seems to represent a step forward–at least people are acknowledging it. But on the other, the show can be criticized.
I suppose I should just accept what the producers were able to do in the 44 minutes they had to resolve this conflict. I, like you, am happy to see the coming apocalypse averted before breakfast.