Ok, but here’s my trope hate: The good guy doesn’t die, but his best friend/the new kid/the little brother/the comic sidekick does.
I grew up a very traumatized little girl because when I watched action adventure movies with my older brothers I never fell for the main hero (he always had a girl already) - I always fell for the sidekick. And the sidekick always died/got badly hurt. I was afraid to date any boys I was attracted to for the longest time - because I was convinced they were destined for death and dismemberment.
Agreed. This was one of the flaws of the X-Files. They are not going to kill Mulder. They are not going to kill Scully, or Doggett, nor Reyes.
Hell, as much as I liked it, this was a major flaw of Fargo. As much danger as she got in, I just couldn’t in any way believe they would harm/kill a pregnant woman. She has immunity.
ETA: melodyharmonius, added to that is the reason the sidekick usually died is because he was doing something stupid…sulking, or going off to fight the Big Bad without the hero, or whatever. Just as annoying!
Actually, 2 of them I’m thinking of involve the sidekick doing something courageous - like rescuing the little kid who decides to walk through the middle of a shoot out. You know he’s going to rescue her, and you know he’s going to die. . . .
And so does the hero - but he’s either too far away to stop it or hurt or something. And the sidekick dies saying, "i always was a f*ck up. . . " or “tell momma I would have made her proud at the end.” or something that is smarmy but makes me cry anyway.
Yeah, Jack Bauer, by all rights, should have been killed about 100 times over the course of the series. He’s been shot, stabbed, electrocuted, and knocked unconscious more times than I can count, but of course there’s never any question he’ll survive.
Worse is when they make it look like the main character has been killed, but of course they’ll reveal – after the commercial break – that he was wearing a bullet-proof vest, or grabbed a flagpole after falling off the roof, or wasn’t really in the exploding car, or whatever.
The running joke with my wife and me is to say “Well, I guess this is the last episode,” then act mock-surprised when we learn our hero is safe.
Jack Bauer was often in horrible danger and was actually clinically dead twice. He got better both times.
Of course, Kiefer Sutherland made it known to anyone who asked that he and the writers wanted to kill off Jack, but they never ended up doing it. Too bad too, because as awesome as Jack was, the “kill 'em all” philosophy of the 24 writers would have made Jack’s death a huge shocker.
In a drama, I present to you The Troublesome Little Sister. The Bionic Woman series with Zoey from Eastenders a couple years ago is the most blatant example. I’ve droned on about TTLS before, but basically the parents have inconveniently died in a car crash and the hero/heroine is saddled with a younger sibling. Who inevitably ‘acts out’, gets into trouble and has to be bailed out of same time after time, interferes with, by her sheer annoying presence, hero/heroine’s love life, and often buddies up to the villain of the show. And gets kidnapped by the villain, needs a suspenseful rescuing, many wild shots fired, some kickass action… Enough, I say. Give the Troublesome Little Sister a one-way bus ticket to visit Auntie Em in Kansas.
This isn’t a “plot” cliche, but I hate the thing about using a single punch to the jaw or blow to the back of the neck and rendering people unconscious for the duration of a scene, without doing serious injury to them.
When did this start? I have a feeling it goes all the way back to the beginning of motion pictures. Did it exist even before then, in pre-film stories and plays?
Then you don’t want to watch In Plain Sight, in which US Marshall Mary Shannon has to act as surrogate mom to little sister Brandi (although they’ve toned it down from season One).
Member of tightly-knit crime-fighting team is accused of doing something criminal, and the whole ep revolves around proving them innocent.
Member of tightly-knit crime-fighting team is actually guilty of doing something criminal (okay, it’s interesting, to some extent, with Gibbs, but Zack Addy? Please.
Was Marge ever really in “danger” aside from perhaps the last couple minutes? If there was some long scene of her being kidnapped or something, I could see the criticism but she never even encounters the “bad guys” until the movie is in its final scene.
I never did anything exactly like this, but upon the third re-reading of this (you are at the top of the page, after all) I remembered an incident from college. It wasn’t while we were having sex…I was taking a nap in my bf’s room, and he shook me away, and I said his suitemate’s name. I was pretty embarrassed, as was he. I never was reotely attracted to this guy, but we were all pretty young, and I had no idea where it came from.
In this vein, any scene where two people are in love and keep meaning to tell the other but something else always comes up.
Battlestar Galactica is one of the single best television series ever produced, in part because of Cylons. The way the subject is handled is the exact opposite of clishé. They aren’t shapeshifters, though–they can’t change form or impersonate any individual, they just look human, and a lot of them don’t even know what they are. Furthermore
there are only twelve models. So while part of the dramatic tension revolves around identifying what the twelve models look like and they could very well be anyone, it’s not like they can keep transforming into other people. Once any one model is found out, neither it or its ‘‘siblings’’ that look exactly the same can hide.
The character development that is driven by the experience of Cylons and the conflict that arises because of their uncertain identities and mixed loyalties is some of the finest I have ever seen in any television show ever. You’re doing yourself a tremendous disservice by dismissing it based on the premise.