The Madness to the Method

The one thing scripted drama can learn from unscripted chaos

A lot of people have been talking about the wild ending to Sunday night's Texas A&M-Northern Iowa game in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. But since I couldn't watch that one, let's instead use the game that got Northern Iowa there as an example. I'm sure most people missed it since it happened on a Friday night, but the Panthers game against Texas (sans A&M) was just as wild.
All the talk surrounding that game centered on UNI's stunning upset, but there's another emotion lying in the weeds. While you can feel euphoria on behalf of Northern Iowa, you also feel anguish on behalf of Texas. Watching your season come to an end on a half court bank shot has to be one of the most deflating ways to go. In theory, the Longhorns could have built a bigger lead to prevent it from happening, but it still feels very much out of their control. It's that mix of emotion--that joy for dramatic winner and sorrow for the traumatic losers--that gives March Madness its true character. And it's something all the best dramas understand as well.

Let's talk about everyone's favorite TV couple for a second, Jaime and Cersei Lannister. For those of you who've been living under a rock made of dragonglass for the past five years, those two Game of Thrones characters share a last name because they're married. They're relationship is gross, slimy, and incestuous. It's also passionate and fascinating to the point where I don't really know how to feel about it. That's what makes the relationship such a compelling piece of drama. It pulls you in two polarizing directions and leaves you oscillating between them.

In much the same way Hodor oscillates between "Hodor" and "Hodor"

Jaime, himself, is one of the most polarizing characters out there. He's a loving father of three children he had via twincest. He's a silver-tongued charmer and a sniveling asshole. Just like all the other "difficult men" we've seen throughout television and cinema, we as viewers wind up liking him even though we understand he's an awful person. That's why we see something bad happen to him (spoiler alert link), we end up both upset and enthralled. And once we start to learn more about the circumstances that made them such complicated characters, our sympathy grows for them even more.

HBO's new drama Vinyl is struggling in several ways, but one of the most glaring flaws is its lead character. That's no knock on actor Bobby Cannavale, who does a very good job portraying the character provided to him. But Richie Finestra is just a bad guy. There's no sympathy coming his way when another record executive or a musician screws him over because there's nothing about his character that earns that sympathy. That lack of emotional investment spreads like a parasite over the rest of the show, and viewers eventually lose interest altogether. Even in a fascinating setting like the early 70s punk rock scene, you have to be following the right people through it.

I've rambled off from my main point here, but it still holds true. There's pure good, there's pure evil, but neither is felt as strongly if they stand alone. You can only understand the jubilation from the Northern Iowa squad if also understand the misery the Texas team is feeling. You can't understand Daenerys's thrill when she rides Drogon for the first time if you don't understand her horror when her demon children lash out at her. It's supposed to happen in drama even more than it happens in sports because it's when art imitates life in the truest sense.

More shows ought to learn this. They would be better for it, and quite possibly become more popular than the unscripted chaos of March Madness.