-
Do people want more upbeat stories during trying times? I don’t know. I think people want more upbeat stories all the time. Sarah Connor’s a difficult woman to have in your living room on a weekly basis. But that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be there or we shouldn’t be trying to tell challenging stories. Episodic television conditions the viewer to expect resolution. You become addicted to knowing the end without paying the price for knowing it. It’s death without the pain of dying, dramatic immortality, really. And that’s very comforting to people.
I prefer to watch characters try and fail and try again and sort of succeed a little and maybe fuck up again. That’s what I want to see. Flawed people trying to figure their shit out. Because that’s me. We’re not perfect parents or lovers or friends. We’re not heroes. But we can do heroic things once in a while, sometimes even on purpose. So TSCC is a sloppy mix of hope and despair and that suits some people just fine and others don’t have a taste for it. I’ve made peace with that. I’m not particularly interested in giving the world a xanax and telling them it’s gonna be all right. It’s usually not all right. And I don’t want someone showing me what it’s like to be awesome in the face of hard times. I’m probably not gonna be awesome in the face of hard times. I’m gonna be scared and mediocre and I don’t need to feel worse that I’m not awesome. I want to know that scared and mediocre is a reasonable response to hard times and not something to be ashamed of.
