My wife's latest pet peeve is actors drinking from empty containers (coffee cups, mostly). Heard dozens of times, during any show: "There's nothing in that cup." She also won't allow me in the room any more when she watches her "silly shows" like Riverdale, or this british show where a ghost, a vampire, and a werewolf live together and try to pass as normal people. I would play games on my phone, or read a book while she watched (because I wasn't interested in the show), and would still be able to speak a character's dialog before they did, or knew where the story was going before the episode's "big reveal". The plots and writing were so predictable, and I am so story-minded and write for a living, that it didn't take any effort for me to predict story twists, or even the words characters would say. Now, after discussing with her how scenes are shot, how editing works to tell a story, how framing telegraphs what is going to happen, and how story arcs are crafted, she is mostly watching everything on screen that ISN'T the story. The empty cup the actor is pretending to drink from. The continuity errors. The framing of a scene to include some conspicuous item. Etc. In related news: I may be a jerk, wizzing all over the shows she likes. :(
The trick is learning to let go. The problem is that if a show is poorly constructed or written, we lose the willful suspension of disbelief and then everything goes to shit. It helps to know that episodics are fundamentally ritualistic. They're designed to walk you through a familiar set of emotions; Asaad Kelada's ouvre is basically one long riff of paint-by-numbers. But, I mean, Bierstadts look like Bierstadts. Parrish look like Parrish. Here's the most popular work of art of the 20th century, with 1 in 4 people in the US owning a copy at some point: Guernica it ain't. But then, Guernica it ain't. Nobody bought Kinkaid because they wanted to be challenged - they bought Kinkaid because it looked good over the couch. The couch you sit on and watch Riverdale.
This sounds amazing. What's it called?this british show where a ghost, a vampire, and a werewolf live together and try to pass as normal people.