TriPolar - I think you may be confused. Having an unreliable narrator isn’t a bad thing, it doesn’t mean the work of fiction is badly written. It’s usually a clever thing, to make the story more interesting or subtle.
Yeah. For example, all the narrators in Wuthering Heights are unreliable - not intentionally, but because they each have their own prejudices and priorities - and that’s one of the most interesting things about the book.
So an unreliable narrator isn’t like the all-knowing voice (like describing the aptly named Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Film) in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it’s more like the Grandpa reading the book in The Princess Bride. Right? Or am I still not getting it?
Not really, since it’s pretty clear what Grandpa is doing.
If a narrator says something like “It was the best thing we could do at the time, we had no other options” when it’s clear to someone reading that there were plenty of options and the narrator chose a poor action because they didn’t want to get involved, or were afraid, or something else, then you have an unreliable narrator. They are justifying their actions to the reader, but the reader can’t take that at face value. The reader can use common sense and see that the narrator is lying, or is self-deluded, because of a character flaw. The reader understands that the narrator is a character with motivations and personality. An unreliable narrator may play up their involvement in a scene when they were a minor player, or may downplay their actions when they were in fact the protagonist.
Also, both Grandpa and Sir Not Appearing are both narrating in the third person, whereas an unreliable narrator would have to be speaking in the first person by definition. Or am I wrong about that?
Well, the definition used by the OP does state first-person narration, but I’m not sure why.
In what way is Grandpa unreliable, anyway?
I just thought of another single episode that’s a very good example of an unreliable narrator: Buffy season 7, the Storyteller episode, where Andrew narrates ‘Buffy, Slayer of the Vampyres’ and then tells various versions of his own story.
You’re still confused, since grandpa is just not an omnipotent narrator. The unreliable narrator is one for one of the following reasons:
- s/he is deliberately lying about what happened
- s/he is confused about what happened, and though attempting to tell the truth, getting things wrong.
- s/he is, or was at the time that the action occurred, a very young child who doesn’t fully understand what is/was going on. (it’s sometimes argued that all child narrators are unreliable)
In the case of #1 it could be to avoid negative consequences or to make themselves look better; as in of some of the suggestions here, multiple narrators are automatically suspect because their stories do not match up, which indicates that one or the other is lying though you often don’t know which of the narrators is that is. In the case of #2 it’s often someone who is ill, drugged, or mentally ill/traumatized (or occasionally mentally deficient) which makes them not the most accurate observers.
In literature examples of stories with narrators who fall under #1 include:
Atonement by McEwan
The Little Friend by Waters (a kinder reading will suggest this falls under #2 as well)
The Black Cat by Poe
In literature examples of stories with narrators who fall under #2 include:
I Am The Cheese by Cormier
Flowers for Algernon by Keyes
House of Leaves by Danielewski
Surfacing by Atwood
Some narrators are unreliable in multiple ways, like the narrator does want to look better to you, but also shows clear signs that they might be mentally ill. Like:
The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
After the Hole by Trask
It’s also possible for the narrator to be unreliable simply because you don’t know if they’re telling the truth, or they’re crazy. Like this story I wrote for this month’s flash fiction contest, or the short story “Bunny Makes Good Bread” by Peter Straub.
Also under #1, the narrator of Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. There are still a number of mystery fans who consider her to have cheated, considering just HOW unreliable her narrator was.
A good starting point for unreliable narration is the Bertie Wooster stories of P G Wodehouse. One source of humor is the stories is that Bertie, who is the first-person narrator of the story, portrays something that he does not understand (but is immediately obvious to the reader).
I can’t think offhand of a story written in third-person that has an unreliable narrator, but surely there are some.
This last season, there was an episode where House was at a school doing a career day thing, and got sent to the principal’s office. While sitting and waiting, he exchanges stories with two kids who are in trouble for being where they weren’t supposed to (for making out). The version of events he describes several things very unreliably.
[spoiler] He calls himself “Doctor Hourani” throughout, until he flubs and mentions talking to Doctor Hourani at some point in his story, and the kids figure out he’s lying about his identity, which is also what happened in the career day, because he was lying about his identity there. On the way to school, he had a fender bender and lied about his identity to get out of the accident, only to find that parent at the career day.
He lies about his job and his case and keeps getting called on it, both by the kids and parents in the career day event, and the kids to which he is telling the story. It’s an unfaithful narrator during the career day discussing his case, and an unfaithful narrator conveying the story of what he did to the kids. Double layer of lieatude. [/spoiler]
It can work without seeing it from multiple perspectives if you are either privy to outside information (such as knowing the character’s name is not Doctor Hourani), or lampshaded by another character listening to the narration and pointing out some inconsistency or logical gap.
Not TV, but both 300 and Gates of Fire work better (for me) by remembering that the story isn’t a straightforward historical telling of Thermopylae, but narrators relating the tale to other Spartans in the former and to the King of Persia in the latter, both of whom are likely embellishing greatly as to the military prowess, nobility, and all around awesomeness and badassitude of Leonidas and the Spartan 300.
A couple weeks ago, he was explaining to two students why he, too, was in the principal’s office. His narrative was highly unreliable.
A couple more literary examples: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
I’m not sure whether it’s intended, or if it continues as such into the third season and beyond (I’ve only watched the first two seasons), but I find Dexter is a much more interesting character if you treat his self-analysis as unreliable, if you treat it as chock full of denials and rationalizations of his feelings that don’t accurately reflect what’s going on in his head, but rather reflect what he’s telling himself is going on in his head.
I only care a teeny tiny bit, but the thread title does specify television. Literature’s chock-full of it.
ETA: It just now occurred to me that the entirety of Newhart – well, everything but the very last scene of the very last episode – reveals the entire series to be the ur-example!
Yeah, I know, everybody’s scene it. But it’s too awesome not to link to.
Likewise St. Elsewhere.
I never considered “It was all just a dream” movies/shows/episodes to be from an unreliable narrator. The events happened as they happened. Yes, they were in a dream, but they were still an “real” experience. The narrator really only tells one lie, that it’s a reality as opposed to a dream, but in some situations the narrator doesn’t know that until the dream is over.
You mean like Bobby Ewing turning up in the shower, or the last episode of Enterprise?
I’ve never seen Newhart or St Elsewhere (though the latter was shown here), so I’m not certain if that’s what you mean.
Generally speaking, yes, but not necessarily. One can also have MORE information than the narrator: for example, a narrator who says she’s the smartest person in the family but we can see how stupid she is. It’s not necessary to have a separate version of the event, just a disparity between the verbal narration and the visual scene.
I’ll supply a spoiler.
In the last episode of Newhart, Bob, the psychiatrist character from the Bob Newhart Show, wakes up in bed with his wife from that show and speaks of the long strange dream he just had about Dick Loudon (the protagonist of the later show) thus revealing merely that everything shown on Newhart had been a fantasy. The very existence of a pseudo-narrator is thus concealed until the very end (or, more likely retconned at the last story conference).
In the last St. Elsewhere … no, I won’t go into it. Let’s just say that an argument has been made that that episode reveals every single television show ever made to a tale told by an idiot, full of sound of fury, signifying nothing. Though that truth is exposed by any single Saturday night at home with the flu.
I hated Enterprise too much to watch any episode not centered on Hoshi Sato, so I can’t comment on its last episode. I am not prepared at this time to admit to having ever seen any episode of Dallas or to have lusted after Pam in my walnut-sized heart. I don’t even know that the actress who played Pam was named Victoria Principal, that’s how little I know about Dallas.
I can beat you there: I haven’t actually seen any of Enterprise, but I’ve seen loads of people talking (mainly complaining) about the ending. And the reason I wrote Bobby Ewing is that I couldn’t remember whether he was in Dallas or Dynasty. I must be a little younger than you. 
I wouldn’t consider them narrators, myself; we see things from their point of view, sure, but that’s not the same as them being the narrator. But, of course, you started the thread, so you get to define the parameters.
Ok, but the reason I don’t know the definition is that I really don’t notice it. I’ve probably seen movies and TV and read books employing this technique, and only ever noticed it once in high school. I can’t recall any other case where I recognized, or had it play a part in whether I liked or didn’t like a work. I think I’m one of those people Koxinga mentioned when it comes to fiction. It’s just not registering with me.