A Million Little Things - !!Spoiler Warning!!

[jackfaire]

So I didn't get into "This is Us" never even watched the pilot. I don't watch The Affair. Shows that are little more than Primetime soap operas have never really been my thing. I like a good balance of drama and comedy.

So this month I decided to check out the show 'A Million Little Things' because I like the casting. A few of the actors I have seen in other things and so I was all about giving it a shot. Here's the thing though why does a show have to have every single problem in the world?

Their best friend committed suicide and the call about it prevented another suicide in the friend group.

Then we find out that two of the friends are having an affair with each other and this may or may not have contributed to the suicide. This affair starts tearing the friends apart just when they need to come together.

New comer to the group who had survived breast cancer has had it reoccur.

And one of the character's dad's is suffering Alzheimer's

I mean okay so I understand that conflict makes for good story but is there such a thing as too much conflict? I mean hell I know homeless people who have less drama than these characters.

I am enjoying the show but at the same time I can't help but feel a little dirty it's like this show is emotional porn. "Oh you want to feel all of these emotions but without genuine human connections by spending time with other people we now have a TV show that gives you all of the humanity with none of the mess"

I mean if all of your emotional needs are met by a TV show when would you connect with real people?

Thoughts?

[TheHuckster]

My wife watches This is Us and from what she's said, it's like if Murphy's Law concentrated its entire energy on one family. I don't know about "A Million Little Things" but it sounds like that kind of show, and it seems this kind of "super-tragic drama" genre has been catching on in the last few years.

I know of people who seem to get the worst kind of luck, though. There's a family friend who was assaulted and abused as a child by her father and uncle, was in several serious car accidents as a passenger, one of which resulted in a miscarriage, was robbed a gunpoint at a drugstore and had a heart attack, had an absolute asshole for a husband who was basically living a double life without her knowledge, and had many misfortunes which left her in poverty, having to live with her mother for much of her life, while she had a son with mental health issues. And she herself has clinical depression.

So, in a sense, while these shows goes into tragic overdrive and is definitely all about tugging on heartstrings and such, there are people in real-life who do seem to just have shitty circumstances beyond their control, where if one thing goes right, it's somehow offset by a bunch of bad things that just seem to happen out of the blue and as if the universe conspired against them.

I know what you mean by shows like these being "emotional porn" where it seems the sole plotline is "how shitty can people's lives get?" for the purpose of invoking an sympathetic emotional response by the audience. Whether or not that is harmful or not probably depends on the individual viewer more than anything, though.

[Canarr]

Didn't they make fun of this on an episode of Castle?


Martha Rodgers: He was my love interest thirty years ago, on screen. And off. After my character married his character, Joseph Fox, she was kidnapped, buried alive, trapped in a cave with bears, uh... kidnapped again, and held hostage in the sewers of Paris.

Kate Beckett: How long were you on the show?

Martha Rodgers: Three weeks.


One life to lose, Ep. 3/18.