Judgment of Solomon/ Cold Case
Oct. 7th, 2004 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lederhosenMother dies in bombing; her five-year-old daughter is badly injured. The mother's Italian partner and the girl's Australian biological father both fly to Indonesia to be with her. Both of them see themselves as the girl's father.
So they settle it like men.
ION, 'Cold Case' irritates me. Concept, good. Storylines, good. Heavy-handedness, bad. Somebody needs to be sat down with a copy of Kind Hearts and Coronets*, and not let out until they've learnt about this thing called 'understatement'. Even the mostly-excellent CSI occasionally falls prey to this disease.
Somewhere there is a Jerry Bruckheimer School for Screenwriters where they learn things like this:
1. Make sure your characters say lots of profound things.
2. Here, 'profound' means 'bleeding obvious'.
3. For additional profundity, take something that's already been said - doesn't matter who by - and put a twist on it. If you need help with this, watch the Sphinx in Mystery Men.
4. The audience may need help realising when you've said something profound - especially if irony is involved. Make sure you stop and point it out to them. There are four ways you can do this:
4a. Repeat it. "I'm sorry, Jim. I'm sorry."
4b. Pauses. (Besides alerting your audience to the fact that you're really pleased with this line and want them to like it too, this also gives slower viewers some catch-up time.) A long pause before, during, or after your Profound Utterance is the dramatic equivalent of a neon sign flashing "Profound Utterance Here".
If combining with #4a, an excellent way to do this is by inserting the pause between statement and repeat: "I'm sorry, Jim... I'm sorry." This has the added benefit of making it very slightly less obvious that you are repeating yourself.
4c. Swell dramatic music.
4d. Cut to ad break. Or better yet, roll credits, which says that this is the Best Line In The Whole Show.
Example, culled from this week's CSI: Our heroes have a suspect for a woman's murder. They ask him if he's been feeling well - he's not - then tell him that what he's experiencing are the initial symptoms of HIV infection. They tell him that genetic analysis shows his strain of HIV is identical to the victim's - meaning he caught it directly from her - and that he got it when her blood splashed in his eye. After all the above:
SARAH: "You killed her." *pause* "I guess she killed you." Roll credits.
Don't even get me started on the mandatory "show everybody in flashback and the murder victims looking happy and thanking the investigators" ending on Cold Case. Once was cute. After the three episodes I've watched, it now officially counts as 'beaten to death'.
*Which y'all should watch, if you haven't already. I can't say enough good things about it. Just make sure you get the original version; the initial US release had an extra scene tacked on at the end to satisfy the Hays Code.
So they settle it like men.
ION, 'Cold Case' irritates me. Concept, good. Storylines, good. Heavy-handedness, bad. Somebody needs to be sat down with a copy of Kind Hearts and Coronets*, and not let out until they've learnt about this thing called 'understatement'. Even the mostly-excellent CSI occasionally falls prey to this disease.
Somewhere there is a Jerry Bruckheimer School for Screenwriters where they learn things like this:
1. Make sure your characters say lots of profound things.
2. Here, 'profound' means 'bleeding obvious'.
3. For additional profundity, take something that's already been said - doesn't matter who by - and put a twist on it. If you need help with this, watch the Sphinx in Mystery Men.
4. The audience may need help realising when you've said something profound - especially if irony is involved. Make sure you stop and point it out to them. There are four ways you can do this:
4a. Repeat it. "I'm sorry, Jim. I'm sorry."
4b. Pauses. (Besides alerting your audience to the fact that you're really pleased with this line and want them to like it too, this also gives slower viewers some catch-up time.) A long pause before, during, or after your Profound Utterance is the dramatic equivalent of a neon sign flashing "Profound Utterance Here".
If combining with #4a, an excellent way to do this is by inserting the pause between statement and repeat: "I'm sorry, Jim... I'm sorry." This has the added benefit of making it very slightly less obvious that you are repeating yourself.
4c. Swell dramatic music.
4d. Cut to ad break. Or better yet, roll credits, which says that this is the Best Line In The Whole Show.
Example, culled from this week's CSI: Our heroes have a suspect for a woman's murder. They ask him if he's been feeling well - he's not - then tell him that what he's experiencing are the initial symptoms of HIV infection. They tell him that genetic analysis shows his strain of HIV is identical to the victim's - meaning he caught it directly from her - and that he got it when her blood splashed in his eye. After all the above:
SARAH: "You killed her." *pause* "I guess she killed you." Roll credits.
Don't even get me started on the mandatory "show everybody in flashback and the murder victims looking happy and thanking the investigators" ending on Cold Case. Once was cute. After the three episodes I've watched, it now officially counts as 'beaten to death'.
*Which y'all should watch, if you haven't already. I can't say enough good things about it. Just make sure you get the original version; the initial US release had an extra scene tacked on at the end to satisfy the Hays Code.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-06 05:29 pm (UTC)My theory is that Cold Case is for people who want their cop show without the blood and guts. You see: even when they show bodies, they're invariably in black and white, perhaps even softfocus. Aarrggh! I also hate that Rush doesn't seem to make any real decisions without checking with one of her (male) mentors.
This show is so unrealistic: in real life if you were investigating a forty year old murder, a heap of people will have died or moved away. You won't find them just waiting to answer the questions that were never asked all those years ago. And I hate the way they keep flashbacking to how the characters used to look! It just reminds me about how youthful good looks fade and that's it baby - get used to it.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-06 07:53 pm (UTC)In fairness, this week's episode was better than previous ones I've seen. They didn't show blood and guts, but they did show a very savage beating; I wouldn't accuse them of going soft there. And they did have to put in a lot of legwork tracking down one witness, who they knew only as a black drag queen called 'Tinkerbell'.
(Although, considering they were investigating the murder of a gay man outside a gay club, and two of their key witnesses were also gay men from that club, it was odd that AIDS didn't seem to warrant a mention.)
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 04:53 pm (UTC)Methinks my involvement in politics may have made me a wee bit too cynical.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-08 11:52 pm (UTC)