I loved Book and Wash as much as anyone, but their deaths were 100% necessary to the story in Serenity.
It was pretty much all over the trades when it happened. Stevenson thought he could play the lead in his own show, so he walked on MASH. We got a powerful episode, he got Hello, Larry.
I know he left because he wanted to be the star of his own show. Stevenson’s Wikipedia entry even says as much.
What I challenge is the notion that the producers of MASH* killed Henry out of spite because Stevenson chose to leave the show. It was an ensemble comedy, and Henry was fourth or fifth banana after the Swamp denizens and Margaret Houlihan. He wasn’t important enough to the show to engender that kind of venom by leaving.
I heard Larry Gelbart say in an interview that they killed off Henry because they wanted to remind viewers that it was set in a war, and in wars people we like don’t always come home. I’ve seen no arguments (using either evidence or logic) to persuade me he was being disingenuous.
Looks like we do need a definition here:
Gratuitous: unearned, without a return benefit, uncalled for, unwarranted.
It doesn’t mean “shocking” or “unpopular.”
To keep Stevenson from “coming back”? How would Col. Blake have “come back” after earning his points and getting sent home? It’s not like in Cheers where the audience might expect Diane to come back to Boston to visit. Once Blake was leaving on that helicopter, the actor was gonna be gone either way.
I’m with lisacurl. Blake’s death in a warzone – bringing the tragedy close to home via a much-liked character – was as far from gratuitous as it gets. Even before this, MASH* had proven it wasn’t a standard sitcom and was willing to show serious, grim moments. For three onscreen years our surgeon pals had saved lives and lived with the spectre of injury and death.
Heck, I’d cite Edith’s death in All in the Family before Henry’s, but even there it was the only believable way for Jean Stapleton to leave the show. Plus there had been a shocking death (of Beverley LaSalle, the female impersonator) before then, so AitF had also shown it was willing to mix drama with comedy.
For me a gratuitous death similar to Maude Flanders – in fact, worse – would be Susan’s on Seinfeld. There were countless other ways to get George out of the relationship, but instead they knocked the poor woman offstage via poisoned envelopes. Seemed pointless to me, and represented a turning point where the characters lost much of their charm thanks to their nonreactions to her death. They went from believably shallow and annoying to cartoonish and reprehensible. And the show turned more absurdist and less slice-of-lifey.
But it’s a matter of taste, I know. Lots of people love the later seasons of Seinfeld and look on Susan’s death as a brilliant move. I still enjoyed many episodes afterwards too.
But sometimes more pointless than others. In one episode, nothing happened to him during the entire story. So as the closing credits ran they showed a tree toppling on him just so he would be dead.
IIRC, there was a season-finale episode of South Park one year in which Kenny did not die. Then, when the following season started, he was silently written out of the show. (They brought him back later, of course.)
Or did I dream that?
Book’s maybe, but not Wash’s. Nothing in the story required his death.
George’s Fiance by envelope poisoning? If not gratuitous at least stupid. :rolleyes:
I agree. Wash’s death didn’t propel the story forward, it didn’t give anyone that one motivation they needed to keep fighting, and the person it most affected, Zoe, wasn’t the principal of the story. Now if it had been Simon, or maybe even Mal, it would’ve made more sense. Killing Wash spoke more of authorial intrusion. “Hey, I want to show you how dangerous this situation is, so I’m going to kill someone important for no other reason than because I can.” That’s what red shirts are for.
Certainly there was. :rolleyes: Josh, as brilliant as he can be, is still Hollywood to the core. And you know it is against the **Rules **in Hollywood to have a happily married couple. :rolleyes:
I am 100% convinced that is why Wash was killed- so that the crew could have more sexual tensions in potential future shows. 
:mad:
I know it’s open spoilers, so it’s no one’s fault but my own, but :smack: .
Just finished Firefly, Serenity is in the mail via Netflix.
Since someone else mentioned the soaps, I’ll mention the death of Marlena Evans by the Salem Strangler. Or her apparent death. It turned out Marlena had a twin sister who had been introduced in a previous story (played by the actor who plays Marlena, Deidre Hall’s real life twin sister Andrea), and she was the one who got killed.
More recently was the Salem Serial Killer, whose victims were really being taken to some mysterious island. Extremely lame story.
Oh, I’m so, so sorry! I think it’s important for any Browncoat to see those moments unspoiled.
You shouldn’t have clicked on this thread, but of course you know that now.
I don’t know who this “Josh” person you refer to is, but Joss Whedon had good reasons for both deaths.
The murder of Book raised the stakes of the Miranda issue, and made us care what was going on in a way that killing someone we didn’t know, like Mr. Universe, didn’t.
Killing Wash, who was such a well-loved character, right before the final confrontation with the Reavers, showed us that literally anyone could die. It ramped up the tension and shock tenfold.
When Simon got shot just minutes later, I really thought “Shit, this is Butch and Sundance! He’s going to kill them all!” And I didn’t feel safe for the rest of the crew again until the Operative told his men to stand down.
I don’t know what sort of necessity one wants in a character death, if it’s not that sort.
That’s easy. When Homer Simpson ran over Ned Flanders.
You have it wrong. In the season finale Kenny died from cancer or something. Cartman tried to get stem cell research legalised in order to save Kenny. But it turned out he was manipulating things for his own selfish reasons, again. Anyway, Kenny died.
Next season there were frequent references to him being dead. He appeared in a few flashbacks, or as a ghost. He was replaced in the gang by Butters. They kept trying to get him to do stupid and dangerous things by telling him “Kenny would have done it.”
At the very end of the last episode of the season Kenny reappears, alive again.
Do Halloween episodes count? If so, you can’t forget that one where Groundskeeper Willie gets killed with an axe to the back in all three stories.
That’s the way I remember it being explained as well. Although many of the patients died in the course of the show, they were basically faceless men. They needed someone that we loved to die, to have the full impact.
Way I heard it, Richard Hooker the author of the original novels got pretty upset when they killed his character without permission.
It was also Gelbart’s idea to send Henry home, though, instead of Tokyo or Seoul or an Evac Hospital, which would be a more realistic way to write him out, considering his orders came as a complete surprise. He was the first character they actually wrote out of the show, as opposed to Spearchucker, who apparently just wandered off into the minefield, and Ugly John, who disappeared, changed his name and became a crooked MP.