Photo: Adult Swim
Narrative shows dramas and comedies alike depend on stakes. Actions need to have consequences in order for a story to work; not just in terms of building emotional investment and relatability (whatever that really means), but just as a way of establishing enough enough internal consistency for what we’re watching (or reading about) to have any meaning at all. Consequences lead to different potential outcomes, and the characters involved in those outcomes have preferences as to how things will work out; so does the audience. Sometimes our preferences mirror the characters’, sometimes they’re different, but on a basic level, we need a reason to be interested in what happens next. Which is a very convoluted way of explaining what I mean by “stakes.” And if you’re still awake after reading this paragraph, bravo to you, because I barely made it.
A camera dramatically pans over the night-time New York cityscape. A car radio blares with the voice of a news announcer, and we see the car itself a big, tacky, clunky 80s sedan driving toward us: “It also left a man s decapitated body lying on the floor next to his own severed head. The head, which of this time, has no name.” Inside the car, a throaty, ominous voice whispers, “I know his name,” as a hand puts a cassette into the car, cutting off the announcer. The soundtrack s power chord riffage is suddenly coming from the car stereo itself.