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Aug. 10th, 2011 05:17 pmAs I'm currently marathoning Fringe Season 3, I once more marvel on how the show is one of the very, very, very few in TV history that manages to make redemption believable for me.
Despite redemption being a big theme in fictional stories, most of the usually screw it up badly. Bad deeds are either retconned away, woobie-ed away, blamed on someone else or buried under Sue-torture, sometimes all of those combined. *gives certain shows the stink-eye here* Occassionally, depending on my goodwill for a character, I will still be able to like them, most times it makes me hate them but no matter what, I never, ever buy the so-called redemption.
In Fringe, though, I see a rather heartwarming wonderful yet honest portrayal of a character who has done something so horrific that others would be justified in totally condemning it but because I don't feel they do any of the above things in adressing the misdeed, not only do I feel sympathy, I also am not angry for in-show characters extending that sympathy as well.
The only anger I feel is towards writers of all those other shows who take all kinds of "tell, not show" shortcuts in creating sympathetic characters and interaction.
Despite redemption being a big theme in fictional stories, most of the usually screw it up badly. Bad deeds are either retconned away, woobie-ed away, blamed on someone else or buried under Sue-torture, sometimes all of those combined. *gives certain shows the stink-eye here* Occassionally, depending on my goodwill for a character, I will still be able to like them, most times it makes me hate them but no matter what, I never, ever buy the so-called redemption.
In Fringe, though, I see a rather heartwarming wonderful yet honest portrayal of a character who has done something so horrific that others would be justified in totally condemning it but because I don't feel they do any of the above things in adressing the misdeed, not only do I feel sympathy, I also am not angry for in-show characters extending that sympathy as well.
The only anger I feel is towards writers of all those other shows who take all kinds of "tell, not show" shortcuts in creating sympathetic characters and interaction.
