What is it with TV writers lately?

[shadow4486]

There are 1,001 different reasons this could be the case...

1: Writers are often told what to write and, as a result, aren't as invested in the material as if it were their own original work. There's an outline for a show, which is usually created by the showrunners, and dictates that certain things happen at certain times. However, it is extremely difficult to write every episode of the show you're working on, especially if you oversee multiple series, as do the people who currently head up Supergirl, Arrow, Flash, and LoT. They have to hire a writing staff to complete episodes for them. Sometimes, these writers will be full time and assigned a handful of episodes. Sometimes, it could be a one-off. They are told what needs to be in the episode, and asked to craft the rest on their own in a certain period of time. These writers aren't necessarily invested in the material and might just be writers for hire needing the money. This will often lead to a degradation in quality.

2: There are only so many writers to go around, and not all of them are as qualified as they probably think they are. Think of how many different scripted shows, films, books, and plays there are out there right this very moment. Not all of those writers are going to be good. The good writers also cost more, and for CW shows, where budget constraints are tighter than on the more major networks, they aren't going to spend a lot on the best writers available. They'll get what they can.

3: Network mandates often force shows to do specific things that don't work. Big wigs will often force shows to change they way that they tell stories. The CW, for example, very much has a specifically targeted demographic. They want their shows to have young, beautiful, people in the lead. They want their shows to have angsty drama. They want their shows to have a wee bit of T&A. If someone has an awesome Flash story to tell, but it doesn't include these things, it might not get to the script stage. They absolutely will compromise to give the network what they want. In the case of the crossover episodes, one of the things the network wants is big huge marketable team-ups that benefit both shows. Well, that might become tough to do when you're talking about casts from THREE different series set to run concurrently, all with their own unique storylines and themes. It's not easy to put those together. But if the network wants you to push LoT, you do it. If the network wants you to push toys, you do it.

4: TV shows are built on repeatable formulas. It's difficult to write the same story 22 times a year and keep it interesting every time.

5: Not everything every writer writes is going to be their best work. It's impossible.

6: In the case of these superhero shows, they tend to have one big arc for the entire season. That arc might not fill 22 episodes worth of stories, and you end up with filler episodes. Or, it might be overbloated and you end up with episodes that are rushed.

7: Sometimes the actors and directors can't "pull off" what the writer puts to page. You might end up with a story that's simply better on the page than it is on the screen.

8: Some writers have their jobs because they were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and know the right people, not because they're legitimate talent.

9: Some novels are written over the course of years and years, because deadlines aren't necessarily a huge issue, unless you're contracted by a publishing company. This gives people the opportunity to have their work critiqued, to edit, and to try again. When you're running a television series, you don't have the luxury of not having a script ready. Studio time, actors, crews are all booked well in advance. If the script isn't quite ready, you can't just grind everything to a halt for revisions. You have to shoot it.

There are MANY more reasons, but these examples represent a few of the big ones...

Cool. That all makes sense.

[Antiyonder]

well, the comments by the actors and the director said otherwise when they were interviewed about it. They honestly wanted it to be a serious movie while retaining the superhero campy background at the same time....

Hence, why it bombed. they wanted to be campy and serious at the same time, which they couldn't be.

Or you could argue that the left and right hands didn't pay the best attention to each other. Hard to say.

I mean Batman The Brave and The Bold also would blend seriousness and camp, with said show mostly receiving praise despite some dismissing it entirely. B&R in contrast they likely didn't know what they wanted, thus it feels disjointed.

One other argument to consider is that camp tends to work for the character when he doesn't realize how odd his lifestyle is. Basically whether it's West or Diedrich Bader, their Batmans took themselves seriously while it's suggested that Clooney was in on the joke.

Yes, but some people also enjoy melodrama. Soap Operas, for example, are quite popular to daytime audiences. Even the fans of those shows often know that they are watching something terrible, but they are drawn to it anyway.

I sometimes feel the melodrama is a side effect of misconception. I mean when you get down to it, there's the misguided belief that if a character isn't a pure jerkass that they are boring/perfect.

If anything, being perfect means to lack flaw, but some writers think it means to have any positive attributes/strength, you know like a character can't just be a good person sometimes, while making a moral blunder other times.

That's especially true with romance in the media If anything, I feel it's good to remember that a healthy function couple doesn't automatically mean that the two involved never have problems or disputes, but rather they manage to overcome them.

But media conception is that healthy and function means perfect and happy 24/7. Even then, tension as necessary as it is should come naturally (i.e. making use of character aspects and environment).


Let me put it this way, are there any couples in fiction that are written with balance/moderation that still come off as unappealing?

[protege]

I mean, they try so hard to make us like the relationships they set forth in the TV shows... but we end up hating it even if we originally started out as an shipper of that.
I admit it, I was a Oclity and Clana fan until the writers made me hate the ships.

And now they're making me hate crossovers too? I used to think that crossovers were the bomb, etc... but now I just despise the idea because they're always making us watch a TV show that we may not watch regularly...

for instance, I don't watch Arrow as much as I used to because there was certain aspects about the TV show that didn't just appeal to me. Likewise I'm sure there's Arrow fans who doesn't watch the flash that much. But I was forced to watch Arrow for the second part of the crossover just so that I could know what happened to Kendra. I don't like being made to do things like that.

I can't help but wonder if they even thought ahead towards things like DVD sets. For the crossovers, there comes a time when people are gonna collect the DVDs. So I wonder if they're gonna stick the flash-arrow eps together on the dvds,or if we'll be forced to collect arrow dvds too or vice versa just so that the crossover makes sense to the new fans.

*shakes head* I have to say the way they set up the crossover events is such a mess sometimes.

About the dvd sets; they certainly didn’t bundle all the episodes together for last season, and i have a feeling they won’t do it for this season, eithet. Last year was kind of annoying, since i liked parts one and yhree of yhe crossover, but this year might not be a problrm, since i may skip over the event entirely. Not a fan of nazi storylines in general.