I see dead people.
They’re everywhere on Netflix. I don’t mean dead people as integral to the story — a la Ghost, or The Sixth Sense. And I don’t mean the victims of the many gruesome slasher flicks in the vast category of horror movies and shows.
I mean the talking dead people. The ones who show up to haunt the living and have full-blown conversations with them. Some people like it. I get that it’s a facile way to develop a character. It’s also unimaginative. Exhaustingly so. It’s so old it should be dead.
To be, or not to be an overused trope. That is the question.
When did Hollywood and the streaming content world get so fixated with this writer’s room crutch? Hold on, you say, Shakespeare did it way back when with Hamlet. Right. But this ain’t the 17th century.
I’m thinking of series such as Painkillers, where the Matthew Broderick character has these melodramatic conversations over and over with his dead father. (Insert eye roll here. Again, it ain’t Hamlet.) The Crown. 13 Reasons Why. The examples go on and on.
Even the excellent Money Heist series left me scratching my head at the end because (SPOILER ALERT) the narrator is dead.
Maybe it’s not fair to single out Netflix. The dead person talking trope is everywhere. And, full disclosure, I have a currently dead person in my manuscript, Last Bridge to Memphis. But in my defense, this is an alternate timeline story where Elvis Presley lives, still walking in Memphis in the late 1980s.
Tone it down, please
By the way, I can’t be the only poor sap who’s unwittingly woken up the whole house late at night trying to sneak in another episode of Squid Game, only to have the screen come up just as the Netflix intro blasts out of the soundbar.
Some say the tone derives from the sound of Frank Underwood rapping on the desk in the oval office in House of Cards. I say it’s an outtake from The Gong Show. Word to the wise: turn down your volume before clicking on Netflix.
What else ain’t so chill? Let me count the ways. Maybe they could stop maniacally pushing content at the end of a program — squeezing the movie you just watched into a small box. Did Netflix ever hear of people who might like to see the credits?
Apparently not, as the streamer forces you to dance your fingers around the remote in a rapid fire jiu jitsu within a few seconds. Snooze, and it’s goodbye credits! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit the wrong button and closed out the movie or episode, inadvertently racking it back to the beginning.
“More Info” = PLAY?
When is Netflix going to change the maddening algorithm (if that’s the right word) that prevents you from even reading the description of a show or movie before they start playing it? Why have a “More Info” option if you aren’t allowed the requisite seconds to read the actual info? I do believe people are smart enough to hit the PLAY button when they’re good and ready.
It’s almost as if Netflix doesn’t want you to know what the film or show is about. It’s hell-bent on getting its equivalent of eyeballs on a given piece of content whether you intended to watch it or not. It’s like when you accidentally click on a web ad. I always silently curse myself because the annoying advertiser got an unearned free click out of me.
So yeah, love/hate with Netflix and its copycat streamers who all have their own versions of the nine circles of TV viewing hell. Don’t get me started on Paramount+.
That said, feel free to click over to some of my other posts. And if you know any friendly literary agents out there, have them check out my book pitch. I’ll engage with any interested agent who’ll talk with me, living or dead.