Overused Plots in Movies and TV

[blackaerin]

someone getting amnesia and something very popular in korean dramas is a character getting cancer or some other terminal illness.

 

[dwmckim]

I brought up amnesia awhile ago. Though i must say that sometimes there's a reason for overused stories - the same reason why cliches often tend to have an element of truth - when they are done well, they can be very effective.

Case in point...i HATE amnesia stories. They're done all too frequently in both comedies and dramas. Whenever i hear one of my fave shows are going the amnesia route, a small part of my soul feels like dying. However One Life to Live is doing an amnesia story right now that oddly enough is one of my favorite stories on the show right now due to a combination of the actress totally nailing it and the writers hitting all the right notes. It's not just an "amnesia just for the sake of it story" but also is rooted in history and allows other stories/complications to arise (both comic and dramatic).

A 30 year old ends up with the last 13 years of her life wiped out after being given electroshock treatments by her deranged cult leader father who had kidnapped her (she also ended up shot afterwards when a bullet intended for her father hit her). This is a woman who has experienced tragedy after tragedy during her adult life so she's unaware of a lot of the worst stuff (her family and friends are telling her bits and pieces as she can handle them). There's good moments of lightness as she is a lot more naive and adolescent (hanging on to her crush on her high school boyfriend...who had later married her twin sister...and she also was almost married to his older brother - she doesn't know this yet!) and great dramatic moments well played and written such as trying not to upset her young daughter by letting her on that she doesn't remember her or finding out that her grandfather that she was very close to passed away two years ago. She's having to meet a sister she grew up not knowing about, finding out the person she thought was her father really wasn't and that her own father is a dangerous madman...and she still has yet to learn about her battles with insanity/mental institutions and an alternate personality of hers contracting Hepatitis C or the details of how her daughter's husband had died. OLTL really excels at their psychological-based stories and this latest is a real winner so far despite my usual loathing of amnesia plots.

 

[Gelfling Girl]

I brought up amnesia awhile ago.

Hmm...seems we had forgotten that. *gets pelted with rotten fruit for such a corny joke*

 

[D'Snowth]

Here's one, that you see often, and half of the time, it seems like it takes place in Disney movies...

A widowed parent finds a new significant other, after the original had died years ago, and the kid doesn't take well to the newbie, and towards the end of the movie, the kid realizes how special the new person is in his or her own unique way, and eventually comes to accept them.

 

[Drtooth]

On that subject... what about the age old age alteration gag? The one where someone tries to be older or younger slightly and winds up on the extreme end of things... older person turning into a baby, young people turning older... like Dexter says "I am NOT Grampah!"

 

[APRena]

In gym classes, everyone has to pratice mouth-to-mouth. The protagonist just so happens to get paired with their CRUSH! *squee* They're going to have their first inadvertent, awkward lip-touch, WITH THEIR CRUSH.

Even though it's shown with middle-school aged kids, (is there a specific age for people to be certified?) and using real people. We're only going to start learning CPR in May, with the plastic dummy. Much less romantic.

 

[D'Snowth]

That's even been done in commercials to a degree...

I remember several years ago a commercial for either McDonalds or Burger King where a guy pretended to be drowning in a swimming pool, so the hot girl he was lusting after would "save" him, and give him mouth-to-mouth (during every pause, he'd face the camera and smile, before quickly returning to acting unconscious).

The commercial even ended with her giving him an suspicious look as she shared her burger meal with him.

 

[ZeppoAndFriends]

Then there's the one where one of the main characters gets into a fight with the school bully by, either intentionally or unintentionally, insulting or humiliating him/her. The he/she spends most of the episode:

A. Trying to get out of it

2. Attempting to become a bodybuilder in the course of an hour or two

3. Being cocky and overconfident and getting the tar beat outta them

The list goes on and on and on and on, but they've all been overused!

 

[Gelfling Girl]

So, we've been taking these online tests in reading class, and they all involve answering questions about an excerpt of a story or article. The first test we took included a story about a boy moving from Texas to California and having trouble finding friends. The second test had the story of a boy who moved from California to Texas and had trouble finding friends. Because that hasn't already been done a million times.

 

[D'Snowth]

I'm actually amused at finding this thread again (unintentionally, actually), because I have just commited a big one myself in my own writing for Steve's upcoming new show.

This one is done a lot more in children's fair (even though I'm not doing kiddy shows): one of the kids of the show develops a crush on a grown-up of the opposite sex in their life (a teacher, a mentor, someone from the neighborhood, etc), but the kid becomes devastated when he/she sees that the grown-up he/she has a crush on has a boy/girlfriend, or is getting married, etc, then the grown-up gives the kid a lecture on "different kinds of love" and tells that kid that one day he/she will find someone his/her own age, etc.