In my opinion, I feel like it’s easy to find plot holes or poorly executed plot lines even in our favorite series.
In Pretty Little Liars, why did we never find out how Eddie Lamb knew Aria Montgomery? In Gossip Girl, how could Type-A Blair Waldorf not have applied to a few backup Ivies? Don’t forget Modern Family, which built up Haley Dunphy’s entrepreneurial moxie and instinctual talent for fashion blogging, only to do her so dirty with that fate.
As audiences, I think that we often believe that we can spot “bad writing.”
It can be easy to tell when dialogue feels unnatural, the plot doesn’t follow, or characters lack substance. While some characteristics might seem more cut-and-dry, I’ve noticed that many plot lines falling under the public’s concept of “bad writing” seem more unpopular or unsatisfying rather than poorly executed.
In fact, I would go as far as to argue that many of the most unpopular arcs on recent television shows have made most sense when you break them down.
Let’s look at a popular example. One of the most famous character devolutions of modern television is that of Rory Gilmore in Gilmore Girls.
When we are introduced to Rory, she is a clever, studious, and motivated young girl. She is very clear about her goals from the get-go: she wants to go to Harvard, and then she wants to be Christiane Amanpour. She repeats this almost like a mantra throughout the early seasons of the show, but it does not come to fruition.
Instead, Rory’s character spirals in later seasons.
Her more controversial moments include: sleeping with a married man, stealing a yacht, dropping out of college, going no contact with her mother, and moving in to freeload off her wealthy grandparents. Although the entire arc is widely criticized, many claim the catalyst of Rory’s devolution was her choosing to go to Yale University, even after getting into Harvard.
Rory’s decision to go to Yale makes sense when you look at the practical implications from the show’s perspective. If Rory was at school in Boston, the Gilmore girls would have been separated, effectively killing the point of the show.
I’ll be petty and break it down: in the episode “Happy Birthday, Baby,” Jess Mariano informs us (and Rory) that Yale University is 22.8 miles away from Stars Hollow. According to Google Maps search, Harvard University is 134 miles away from Yale, which is about a 2.5 hour drive.
Since we don’t know the exact location of Stars Hollow, using the information we got from Jess, we can use that 22.8 miles to approximate that Stars Hollow is between 111.2 to 156.8 miles away from Harvard.
Whether the true amount is on the higher or lower side, this remains a very different commute from the aforementioned 22.8 miles. This distance would certainly change the dynamic from Rory popping over every Friday night and every other weekend for visits.
I also feel that they also couldn’t necessarily change the location of Stars Hollow for the sake of proximity to Harvard, since it was by that point a well-established fact where the town was in relation to Hartford.
To retain some semblance of the early seasons’ structure, Rory choosing a closer school makes sense from a logistical perspective.
But outside of the implications for the show, I would argue that Rory’s decision to go to Yale makes sense when you look at the setup of her character and her dynamic with Lorelai. Rory was shown throughout the show to be very family first.
She goes out of her way to include her grandparents in situations or events, even when Lorelai directly objects, repeatedly articulating her belief in the importance of family and showing up for one another.
In my opinion, Rory also just shows herself to be a bit of a pushover. She is presented in a debutante ball at her grandparents’ wishes. She participates in town events because she feels a responsibility to her neighbors. Also, above all, she is shown to be a mommy’s girl.
Facing the pressure from her alumni grandparents in addition to the potential to be closer to her mother and her town, we can see how (via her pro-con list) Rory arrived at Yale for her final decision.
I feel that Rory lacks the independence and clear identity needed to truly sever ties from her (arguably co-dependent) mother and her small town. This dependency is even demonstrated by Rory’s first relationship after starting college. With an entire college of new people in front of her, Rory instead chooses to… go back to her first ex-boyfriend and become the other woman in his marriage.
Rory Gilmore’s spiral was disappointing, but in many ways, it made sense. She’s our classic case of gifted-kid burnout, unable to let go of the world of her youth.
I would argue that another example of good “bad writing” is the infamous Dan and Blair relationship in later seasons of Gossip Girl.
Many audience members scorned this pairing, pointing to their early enemy status, their apparently polar opposite wishes for life, and the overall ickiness of Blair getting with her best friend’s ex. In my opinion, the last is the most valid here.
But, when you look at the writing, it’s easy to see a clear development in their relationship. The first time we see Blair and Dan really interact below the surface level, he comforts her after Serena steals the spotlight from Blair at her mother’s shoot.
As the audience, we see Dan immediately see past Blair’s glamorous queen-bee persona to what she really is— an insecure girl who craves the love and approval of her mother. Blair and Dan are also shown to have very similar interests on an individual basis.
They are two of the smartest characters we are introduced to, and the most academically driven. They’re both readers, museum-goers, and old movies fanatics, interests that are well-established before they are even given the chance to bond over them.
Still, people love to insist that their relationship just came out of nowhere, when I would argue the ground was being laid in the earliest episodes.
I think that “bad writing” is, often, an idea weaponized against writing we just don’t like, while some actual “poor writing” is excused when it gives us the result we wanted. I hate to do it, but let’s take Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, for example.
Shadow and Bone was an adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s eponymous series that concurrently adapted pieces of Bardugo’s Six of Crows duology in a way that hinted at building a possible separate adaptation after the conclusion of the main storyline. The show was beloved by Six of Crows fans, and its cancellation after two seasons was met with backlash, and even audience-driven efforts to save the show.
The reality is, though, the construction of the show made it very hard to adapt the original Six of Crows story at all. The point of the duology is that the group, the “crows,” is met with their greatest challenge yet.
However, in the show, we see them easily clear a much more difficult task with little-to-no-planning right out the gate. There was also the issue of relationship dynamics, with two out of three of the series’ main relationships progressing much faster than they did in their original material, leaving less room for further development.
Yet, even with the lingering question of how they could have possibly moved forward with the group, the cancellation brought upset because it provided audiences the opportunity to hope for the adaptation they wanted, however impossible it had become.
Often, I do think we can, as audiences, identify poor writing. We know that “spider-monkey” was a weird term to use in Twilight, and we know that Ted should have just ended up with Robin in the first place in How I Met Your Mother. But, I think it’s important to examine the relationship between audience satisfaction and what we consider to be well-crafted.
Sometimes, I believe a show is made more effective by its ability to dissatisfy us. We wish better for Rory, but we understand how she turned out so far from what was expected. We can love Blair and Chuck (or, you can, I don’t) and admit that Blair had healthier options.
And, sometimes, we can look at the things that bring us joy and admit that maybe they weren’t the most well-executed. That doesn’t mean they can’t bring you joy. It just reminds us that art is meant to be analyzed and criticized.
Writing for shows, like any art, is a continuous work in progress. Sometimes, things hit, and sometimes things are missing. It’s cool to look at some of the misses and think about what could have been done differently, because that allows us to think critically about the material.
I also think it’s cool to look at some of our least favorite plot lines and admit, albeit begrudgingly, that some of them were hits we just don’t want to appreciate.