The Plot: People doing stupid things.

We've been watching The 100, which is a better than most Y.A. science-fictiony show on CW.  Pretty (and) young people.  It's a tolerable premise, and the plot mostly makes sense.

But it does depend a little too much on people doing stupid things to advance the plot.  Not as bad as most of these shows, but as the season progresses there have been more "Why the hell did he/she do that?" moments.

I generally call these "moron" shows.  I can watch about five minutes of any show and figure out if the show runners give a shit.  That covers probably 70% of dramas on T.V.  Another 20% are mediocre; you can see they are trying, but are either held back or can't quite get there.

Thankfully there is the 10% that meets Sturgeon's Law.

For instance, The Good Wife is absolutely brilliant.  Linda and I were laughing hard at the romance between the quirky lawyer and the federal prosecutor last night.  Just great.  I wonder how a show can be so well written and be surrounded by so much dreck.

I figure that most of these "People doing stupid Things" are done because there is a formula.  X-amount of romance, X-amount of conflict, X-amount of action.  So they come up with stupid reasons for these things to happen.

You just don't see that in books as much.  I think because there is more time to develop the story, you don't have to use so many short-cuts.  But mostly, I think it's just lazy storytelling.

Millions of dollars spend on movies, and they couldn't take the time to iron out the kinks in the plot?  We went to see Dracula Untold the other day.  Why would you have such great special effects attached to such a lame story?  I kept thinking, "Why did he do that?"  "Why didn't he do that?"

What's sad is that most of those questions could have been answered in a few short sentences, or a small scene here or there, just an acknowledgment that the viewer may wonder why.

I wonder why people like these idiotic shows where the characters "quirks" are supposed to character development.  (NCIS? Bones? CSI? Supernatural?)  I wonder if people prefer these lazy shows for some reason. I wonder if the creators dumb them down on purpose, or are forced by studio bigwigs to dumb them down.

I mean, somebody is hiring Micheal Bay.