At number 7 on my top ten pet hates on Fame is The Season of Death!
The Season of Death is my little nickname for Season 2. After a very upbeat season 1, I was always a bit disappointed by Season 2 for a number of reasons I didn’t think it lived up to magic of Season 1. Naturally individual episodes were great but as an actual season I felt it was a little downbeat. One of those reasons was the number of episodes that had storylines involving death or potential death. It’s a little difficult to have a rousing song & dance number in the cafeteria when someone has just died!
We started off in episode one with a small plot of Sherwood’s ex husband, Nick, dying and Sherwood going off work sick. We knew nothing about this character or even that Sherwood had even been married and divorced, so to suddenly throw it in seemed a little bizarre to me. Although we care about Sherwood, the audience has no emotional attachment to the character that has died. I’m sure they could have come up with a storyline more relevant to the school which would cause Sherwood to question her life.
In “Childhood’s End” Coco’s grandmother dies and causes her concern that pursuing her dreams of stardom is turning her into someone she doesn’t want to be. This is a great episode as we see a different side to the usually over confident Coco. Although did someone actually have to die for Coco to question what she’s turning into? Again it’s someone we’ve never heard of although do get to see briefly in the hospital.
Then, just 2 episodes latter the School is dealing with the death of Mr Crandell in “a Tough Act To Follow”. Now naturally Michael Thoma had died in real life and the show wanted to do a tribute to him, which is all fine and good and to be honest killing Crandell probably was the best way to go with this story. At least we knew and cared about this character so his death had an impact on the audience as well as our characters trying to adjust to the situation.
Then in the very next episode Will, Doris’ cowboy boyfriend is killed off suddenly and I was starting to think that the writers were struggling to think of other ways to create drama apart from having characters die and how this affected our core cast. Did Will have to die? If we were never to hear of him again couldn’t he have just have met someone his own age and not want to go out with a school girl anymore and broke Doris’ heart that way?
A few episodes later and we have an episode about teen suicide and we discover a couple of kids at the school maybe feeling suicidal. Again there are some great parts to this episode particularly Valerie’s scene in the acting class as Doris puts into words how Timmy may be feeling. Even though the episode ends positively for the most part a lot of these episodes were downbeat.
Obviously death is part of life I just felt in 22 episodes that for the people in one small school to have gone through so much death in one school year seemed a little unrealistic to me. Yes there’s some good drama really death isn’t the only thing to cause drama however it is a very easy way to create it. I just think the writers should have been working a little harder to find more imaginative ways to create conflict and drama in our characters lives.
The Season of Death is my little nickname for Season 2. After a very upbeat season 1, I was always a bit disappointed by Season 2 for a number of reasons I didn’t think it lived up to magic of Season 1. Naturally individual episodes were great but as an actual season I felt it was a little downbeat. One of those reasons was the number of episodes that had storylines involving death or potential death. It’s a little difficult to have a rousing song & dance number in the cafeteria when someone has just died!
We started off in episode one with a small plot of Sherwood’s ex husband, Nick, dying and Sherwood going off work sick. We knew nothing about this character or even that Sherwood had even been married and divorced, so to suddenly throw it in seemed a little bizarre to me. Although we care about Sherwood, the audience has no emotional attachment to the character that has died. I’m sure they could have come up with a storyline more relevant to the school which would cause Sherwood to question her life.
In “Childhood’s End” Coco’s grandmother dies and causes her concern that pursuing her dreams of stardom is turning her into someone she doesn’t want to be. This is a great episode as we see a different side to the usually over confident Coco. Although did someone actually have to die for Coco to question what she’s turning into? Again it’s someone we’ve never heard of although do get to see briefly in the hospital.
Then, just 2 episodes latter the School is dealing with the death of Mr Crandell in “a Tough Act To Follow”. Now naturally Michael Thoma had died in real life and the show wanted to do a tribute to him, which is all fine and good and to be honest killing Crandell probably was the best way to go with this story. At least we knew and cared about this character so his death had an impact on the audience as well as our characters trying to adjust to the situation.
Then in the very next episode Will, Doris’ cowboy boyfriend is killed off suddenly and I was starting to think that the writers were struggling to think of other ways to create drama apart from having characters die and how this affected our core cast. Did Will have to die? If we were never to hear of him again couldn’t he have just have met someone his own age and not want to go out with a school girl anymore and broke Doris’ heart that way?
A few episodes later and we have an episode about teen suicide and we discover a couple of kids at the school maybe feeling suicidal. Again there are some great parts to this episode particularly Valerie’s scene in the acting class as Doris puts into words how Timmy may be feeling. Even though the episode ends positively for the most part a lot of these episodes were downbeat.
Obviously death is part of life I just felt in 22 episodes that for the people in one small school to have gone through so much death in one school year seemed a little unrealistic to me. Yes there’s some good drama really death isn’t the only thing to cause drama however it is a very easy way to create it. I just think the writers should have been working a little harder to find more imaginative ways to create conflict and drama in our characters lives.
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I think they learned their lesson, though. Not much death in season 4 or 5 that I recall. Oh wait, Chris's girlfriend OD'd in White Light. Sheesh!! Still, Nicole's death in season 6 was no less of a gut-punch. Lydia said she'd never lost a student before... is that true?
ReplyDeleteI don't recall a student actually dying or them mentioning a student died. They of course came close in season 2 when Timmy had a gun and left a suicide letter. I'd have to go back and rewatch that episode and WSOA which also deals with potential teen suicide to see if Lydia mentions anuthing about students dying.
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