Angel

I’m just not feeling Fred as a hot-mamma sexy symbol. There are some women I find attractive, but none of them fall into the category of sniveling, simpering, neurotic, erratically angry, break-like-a-desiccated twig women. But then, I’m a straight woman, so who cares?

Good luck with your campaign to position Fred as a sex symbol, ME. Maybe if the ratings increase, you can renegotiate for a little more money and send all of your writers to a remedial fiction-writing workshop because:

Jesus Christ, ME, it’s called a PLOT! You might want to look into it. Or try a little trip down memory lane because you actually used to know what the word meant. Here’s a list of elements frequently found in the PLOT of a DRAMA, which is what you are supposedly producing:

1. Exposition 2. Rising Action 3. Inciting Incident 4. Obligatory Moment 5. Climax 6. Denouement / Falling Action

Here’s the structure of last Wednesday’s episode of Angel (5-4 "Hellbound"): 1. Exposition 2. Exposition, reiteration 3. Exposition, restatement 4. Exposition, redux 5. Exposition, kill me now 6. Meaningless action 7. Post-meaningless-action exposition

See any PROBLEM there? Any deficiencies? Huh, ME? Look at me when I’m talking to you! I’m wasn’t an English major in college (though I’m sure many of you were, so tell me again, what’s your excuse for writing this empty-headed drivel?) but I’ve read enough that I can recognize poor plotting when I see it. A two-second Google search this morning found me pages and pages about the necessary elements involved in PLOTS and DRAMAS. Perhaps I can send you the links so you can brush up?

And no, "Spike finds out why he’s been vanishing" is not a PLOT. It’s an idea that might lead to a plot, if you people didn’t think, "Ah well, we’ve had an idea. Phew, we’re all tuckered out coming up with that idea. That’s about enough ideas for now — let’s just pad out our single idea out with endless repetitive dialog for the full run-time and call it a day."

Stop ducking out early for yoga class, put down the pancetta sandwich, get off your lazy asses, and try writing some scripts with tightly structured, exciting one-hour plots. Plots you’d be truly engrossed by if you were the audience, maybe even featuring some of the emotional resonance you used to be so skilled at developing. A solid main plot will give you a structure on which you can then begin to hang good dialog, nice character moments and all those other details that give a show some depth and complexity.

Speaking of depth and complexity, I guess since y’all are incapable of writing a decent plot for the SHOWCASE character in an episode DEVOTED TO HIM, I should feel so let down that we’re getting NO B PLOTS at all. But I am disappointed; I really, really am. That huge cast and you can’t excise some of the endless exposition to let us see some of the other actors do a little work?

For years, ME, I’ve felt that your audience was much more inquisitive about, and excited by, your characters than you are. And that’s just sad. Why should we care about these people why you so obviously don’t?

And NO, "Lorne has a tiny scene where he talks to a prop phone" ISN’T a B-plot. It’s just not. Neither is "We find out what division Wesley heads." Those are tiny moments that hardly even qualify as character beats, let alone B-plots.

Look, multiple plot-lines will ensure the show has some depth, some complexity, and will prevent most of your actors from standing around the sidelines like a bunch of dipshits watching Tony Manero shake his booty at center stage. Most importantly of all, telling multiple stories in an hour will cut down on the endless, expositionary REPETITION.

But you don’t have to take my non-English major word for it - just check out the highest rated dramas of the past few years, ER and C.S.I.. These shows feature quite different subject matter but both make use of multiple, intercut plot-lines which converge often enough to remind us of how all the characters relate. I’m picturing "Hellbound" rewritten to feature Spike, Angel and Fred dealing with Spike circling the drain to Hades, Gunn and Wesley deciding whether to battle a hostile take-over of Wolfram & Hart by another law firm that, on the surface, appears to be less evil, and Lorne dealing with the murder of a singer who just signed with the firm and was given a large mystical talent-advance, which has now vanished.

Sure, those ideas probably suck — I’ve never claimed to be a fiction writer - but I still think it would’ve made for a much more enjoyable hour of television than the one I ended up watching on Wednesday.

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I’m done now, Me, but here’s a few more rules for creating good drama to chew on: "Artistic Unity - essential to a good plot; nothing irrelevant; good arrangement." "Plot Manipulation - a good plot should not have any unjustified turns or twists; no false leads; no deliberate and misleading information."

For "Hellbound" you get an F on plot, D- on Artistic Unity (I saw better artistic unity on Hollywood Wives: The New Generation the other night) and a C- on Plot Manipulation.