Love was in the air yesterday.
I felt it in the form of a strong Northerly wind unleashing its freezing fury upon me, while I waited at a bus stop. And boy was it a strong bit of air, it almost pushed me off the curb into a multitude of traffic. Just between you and me, I think it liked me, but the subtlety of its want disappeared at the whole attempt to wind-kill me.
Television is kind of the same way. Writers angst-up lead couples, woo the audience with their semi-soothing winds, then kill them off by drenching them in melodrama or letting them get hit by a slight case of musty.
Recently, Amy Sherman-Palladino, co-executive producer of Gilmore Girls, stated that the meaning of I Love You on television has worked its way to overused, and ubergooey status. She didn’t exactly use those terms (though she would have been smart too), but her point was a very valid one. These days the TV I Love You lacks impact because it’s thrown into the dialogue of every other scene. Power couples utter the big ILY so much you wonder if their pretty selves actually mean it, or if it’s a ploy to satisfy couple-shippers in the audience that they’re favourite duo will end up together. In her excerpt, Palladino mentioned an uproar from GG fans at the lack of I Love Yous uttered by Luke and Lorelai. According to her, ILY groupies wanted to know how they were supposed to believe the couple was in love if the characters didn’t say it.
It is literally simple– love is in the subtlety of writing television, not in the grand verbose moments. It’s in the odd starry-eyed look, or a slight touch of hand (Mulder and Scully, anyone?), not in the Jojo Loses Her Virginity episode of the week. A big part of TV’s love problems is the need to break down a relationship to pinnacle
Moments–first kiss, first I Love You, first time a couple sleeps together. I however, would much rather wonder what’s going on behind closed doors, rather than be 18A’d by it, or reminded of it in every single commercial. I would appreciate the same courtesy, then, when it comes to the number of, and the frequency with which, I Love Yous are uttered on the tube.
Palladino took the high road; she let her lead couple build up that monster-butterfly-in-stomach angst for a good number of years but immediately put them together when her instincts told her the separation was getting stale. Though Luke and Lorelai don’t bury each other in I Love Yous every week, their chemistry and underlying respect for one another screams more sentiment than a three lettered phrase could ever deliver. That’s not to say I Love Yous should never be said, but when they finally are, they will be earned and truly momentous.
A few years ago Joss Whedon, did an episode of Buffy called The Body, about the sudden death of Buffy’s mom. The episode depicted the first few hours of bereavement with pain-staking realism, making it so every moment that passed in the story was one that was brutally earned and felt deeply by both the characters and the audience. I think someone should hire this Whedon guy to do a similar episode of TV, but about love. It has a bit of a glossy surface, but the overwhelming simplicity of the premise would ultimately convince viewers that Love, is in fact, worth it.
Even if it is a day late.
Happy (belated) Valentines Day.
