Keeping Secrets
Nov. 4th, 2010 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn the second season of the tv show Lois & Clark, there is a scene where one of the villains, Tempus, gleefully reveals Our Hero's secret to Lois Lane. If you're not familiar with it, check it out, it'll only take a minute. This scene repeatedly comes to mind when watching both The Sarah Jane Adventures and Merlin. Now, there are a lot of shows (and comic series) who have the whole secret identity/ secretly fighting crime/ some superheroic secret of sorts premise built into them. Early on, it inevitably gives the show in question a lot of mileage built around the juxtaposition of the main character really doing amazing things and some or all of the people around him/her being unaware of it. You don't need actual superpowers involved.
A stock in trade gag of the first season of Alias were scenes in which the heroine, Sydney Bristow, was on the phone with her friends Francie and Will about some every day business while dangling from the proverbial cliff on a hair raising mission. (A gag JJ Abrams is currently also using a plenty in Undercovers.)
The downside of this is: if your heroine or hero isn't an absolute loner and has strong relationships, then there should better be good explanations as to why she or he has to keep lying to the people he or she supposedly is close to. And if you're playing the "omg will X find out Y's secret identity?" plot too often without pay off, it gets tired.
Now, shows that I think handled this right include the afore mentioned Alias and also Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As a double agent, Sydney has several reasons (and sworn oaths) to keep her job secret from her friends, but phone gags or no phone gangs, this turns out to be as dangerous to them as if she had confided; the consequences of the secret to one friend are part of an s1 subplot, and by s2, he knows. The friend who still doesn't know also pays a terrible price for that. In BTVS, Joyce Summers' lack of knowledge of her daughter's Slayer activities is stretched juuuust to the point where all disbelief would break down, i.e. two seasons, and the eventual coming out, choice of phrase not accidental, makes for one of the most powerful and painful scenes in the s2 season finale. There is no attempt to rob Joyce of the knowledge afterwards; from this point onwards, she's informed. Buffy, too, had several reasons to keep her secret at first - for starters, no responsible parent is going to say "Yay, go for it!" when told about their teenage daughter fighting nightly life and death battles, and if you accept the later Normal Again retcon, she did try to tell her parents once who promptly thought she had a nervous breakdown and brought her to a psychiatrist. As for Lois & Clark, Clark had the romantic sitcom type of justification - he's in a love triangle with himself and wants Lois to love him as Clark, not as Superman. But here you have the problem that Lois Lane is supposed to be a brilliant reporter, the best of Metropolis, reporters are supposed to be observant among other things, and there is only so long Lois can be presented as missing the obvious before she comes across as, to quote Tempus, "galactically stupid" instead of smart. The show kept the game going for two seasons (the Tempus revelation doesn't stay due to one of those annoying amnesia inducing plot devices) and then as the s2 cliffhanger revealed Lois had figured it out a while ago when Clark finally does come clean. Which just about works for me.
These shows are all long gone. As mentioned, two of my current shows, SJA and Merlin, also use the "secret life" ploy. Merlin is in its third season, SJA in its fourth, and in both cases, it starts to grate, though paradoxically while I'd say SJA is far more consistently well written (both shows are targeted primarily at a young audience, so I think it's fair to compare them), Merlin has a better in-built justification for dragging the revelation out a while longer. Merlin's Doylist reason is pretty obvious - "if Merlin's powers are revealed to everyone, especially Arthur, we have to say goodbye to Tony Head as Uther and push the show to the Arthur-as-King stage which we don't want to" - but it sort of works on a Watsonian level as well, given Merlin's and Arthur's respective characterisations and the "magic is outlawed" premise. And it still grates. Whereas with The Sarah Jane Adventures, the continuing deception of Clyde's mother and Rani's parents about their children's world-saving activities doesn't only grates but has started to actively hurt the show because there is really no good in-universe reason for it. In s1, Maria's father found out halfway through the season, and while the secret was kept from her mother Chrissie till Maria's departure even when Chrissie had her own alien encounters, we did get a revelation scene indicating that Chrissie, plot device to the contrary, did remember and was aware of what her ex husband and her daughter were keeping secret from her. While Chrissie was allowed to remember if not by her family then by the show, Mrs. Langer, Clyde's mother, was not, due to both. Same goes for Haresh and Gita, Rani's parents. The show tried to come up with a justification for the later by showing Gita reacting with a wish for television fame, which a discreet world saver does not need, but rather than reason her out of it (i.e. treating her as an autonomous human being capable of listening to arguments), the show used yet another mindwipe plot device.
Haresh, Gita and Mrs. Langer could of course all object on the gounds of safety for their children, but given this universe's penchant for dangerous situations arising every other week, Sarah Jane could convincingly argue that at least under her tutelage, the teenagers have a chance to deal with said dangers instead of simply falling prey to them. The problem is that none of the parents even gets to make that argument so far. We're in the fourth season - i.e. it's the third year of adventuring for Rani and the fourth for Clyde - and the idea that their parents either "couldn't handle it" or are somehow still oblivious enough not to draw the right conclusions despite all the glaring signs, and despite being characterised as loving, concerned and brave parents, starts to be far worse than what any variation of the Superman story ever did to Lois Lane in this regard. It makes me feel like Capslock!Harry Potter from Order of the Phoenix. STOP IT ALREADY.
A stock in trade gag of the first season of Alias were scenes in which the heroine, Sydney Bristow, was on the phone with her friends Francie and Will about some every day business while dangling from the proverbial cliff on a hair raising mission. (A gag JJ Abrams is currently also using a plenty in Undercovers.)
The downside of this is: if your heroine or hero isn't an absolute loner and has strong relationships, then there should better be good explanations as to why she or he has to keep lying to the people he or she supposedly is close to. And if you're playing the "omg will X find out Y's secret identity?" plot too often without pay off, it gets tired.
Now, shows that I think handled this right include the afore mentioned Alias and also Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As a double agent, Sydney has several reasons (and sworn oaths) to keep her job secret from her friends, but phone gags or no phone gangs, this turns out to be as dangerous to them as if she had confided; the consequences of the secret to one friend are part of an s1 subplot, and by s2, he knows. The friend who still doesn't know also pays a terrible price for that. In BTVS, Joyce Summers' lack of knowledge of her daughter's Slayer activities is stretched juuuust to the point where all disbelief would break down, i.e. two seasons, and the eventual coming out, choice of phrase not accidental, makes for one of the most powerful and painful scenes in the s2 season finale. There is no attempt to rob Joyce of the knowledge afterwards; from this point onwards, she's informed. Buffy, too, had several reasons to keep her secret at first - for starters, no responsible parent is going to say "Yay, go for it!" when told about their teenage daughter fighting nightly life and death battles, and if you accept the later Normal Again retcon, she did try to tell her parents once who promptly thought she had a nervous breakdown and brought her to a psychiatrist. As for Lois & Clark, Clark had the romantic sitcom type of justification - he's in a love triangle with himself and wants Lois to love him as Clark, not as Superman. But here you have the problem that Lois Lane is supposed to be a brilliant reporter, the best of Metropolis, reporters are supposed to be observant among other things, and there is only so long Lois can be presented as missing the obvious before she comes across as, to quote Tempus, "galactically stupid" instead of smart. The show kept the game going for two seasons (the Tempus revelation doesn't stay due to one of those annoying amnesia inducing plot devices) and then as the s2 cliffhanger revealed Lois had figured it out a while ago when Clark finally does come clean. Which just about works for me.
These shows are all long gone. As mentioned, two of my current shows, SJA and Merlin, also use the "secret life" ploy. Merlin is in its third season, SJA in its fourth, and in both cases, it starts to grate, though paradoxically while I'd say SJA is far more consistently well written (both shows are targeted primarily at a young audience, so I think it's fair to compare them), Merlin has a better in-built justification for dragging the revelation out a while longer. Merlin's Doylist reason is pretty obvious - "if Merlin's powers are revealed to everyone, especially Arthur, we have to say goodbye to Tony Head as Uther and push the show to the Arthur-as-King stage which we don't want to" - but it sort of works on a Watsonian level as well, given Merlin's and Arthur's respective characterisations and the "magic is outlawed" premise. And it still grates. Whereas with The Sarah Jane Adventures, the continuing deception of Clyde's mother and Rani's parents about their children's world-saving activities doesn't only grates but has started to actively hurt the show because there is really no good in-universe reason for it. In s1, Maria's father found out halfway through the season, and while the secret was kept from her mother Chrissie till Maria's departure even when Chrissie had her own alien encounters, we did get a revelation scene indicating that Chrissie, plot device to the contrary, did remember and was aware of what her ex husband and her daughter were keeping secret from her. While Chrissie was allowed to remember if not by her family then by the show, Mrs. Langer, Clyde's mother, was not, due to both. Same goes for Haresh and Gita, Rani's parents. The show tried to come up with a justification for the later by showing Gita reacting with a wish for television fame, which a discreet world saver does not need, but rather than reason her out of it (i.e. treating her as an autonomous human being capable of listening to arguments), the show used yet another mindwipe plot device.
Haresh, Gita and Mrs. Langer could of course all object on the gounds of safety for their children, but given this universe's penchant for dangerous situations arising every other week, Sarah Jane could convincingly argue that at least under her tutelage, the teenagers have a chance to deal with said dangers instead of simply falling prey to them. The problem is that none of the parents even gets to make that argument so far. We're in the fourth season - i.e. it's the third year of adventuring for Rani and the fourth for Clyde - and the idea that their parents either "couldn't handle it" or are somehow still oblivious enough not to draw the right conclusions despite all the glaring signs, and despite being characterised as loving, concerned and brave parents, starts to be far worse than what any variation of the Superman story ever did to Lois Lane in this regard. It makes me feel like Capslock!Harry Potter from Order of the Phoenix. STOP IT ALREADY.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-04 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-04 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-05 12:29 am (UTC)It took six years for Smallville to allow Lois to find out about Clark. Six. Years. It has been incredibly frustrating. Even this year, when we fans knew that Lois knew and it is the show's last year, we were still very fearful that it would be walked back, as it had been, many times before.
All that to say that I agree wholeheartedly with the above. I don't mind secrets being kept; I just mind them when people not knowing has become completely implausible and ridiculous. Arthur on Merlin is nearing that point, I must say. (And how many times does he have to be knocked unconscious before he has permanent brain damage, anyway???)
no subject
Date: 2010-11-05 05:25 am (UTC)