TV Tuesdays Free Talk

First, some vital context: the episodes we watched last night were 17 and 18. We thought Episode 16 was the end of the season because they killed off a major character, their chief, Amanda. The killer was a multi-episode antagonist who was the estranged bio-daughter of the guy who killed Will Trent's mom, and who had been killed in the season premiere. She had also kidnapped Will's uncle as some revenge ploy against Will since her dad was weirdly obsessive and affectionate with him. She had a network of people who worked for her, many of whom she tricked into thinking she was her father via letter—

What I'm getting at is that Episode 16 wrapped up multiple plot points that tied closely to Will's backstory. Amanda's death was the cliffhanger of Episode 15, and then Episode 16 was about everyone working to track down the antagonist and also save Will's kidnapped uncle. It ended with a nice memorial service, and everyone still a bit somber but at least relieved they'd gotten justice. That honestly SHOULD have been the season finale.

So, here's the cardinal sin of the actual season finale.

See, there's a character named Angie who has a long history with Will dating back to childhood. Very obviously they had one of those romantic "will-they-won't-they" romantic dynamics. Except by the time I started watching, Angie was now in a relationship with an ER doctor named Seth and pregnant. The season had her dealing with the pregnancy, and her and Seth getting married in a quiet ceremony. Their dynamic was very nice, and it was neat as a newcomer to see Angie and Will stay close friends while Will worked through the whole "the one who got away" thing and even befriended Seth and all that. No jealous ex dynamics going on, they all worked through it in a healthy and realistic way.

So, go to the finale, and Angie finally goes into labor and Seth drives her to the hospital. And guess what happens?

Their car gets t-boned on the passenger side where Angie is sitting, and after she's rushed into surgery Seth suddenly coughs blood in the waiting room and collapses and dies.

I want to emphasize that they were hit on the passenger side. Angie took the brunt of the crash, she was the one most directly hit since it hit HER door, and the scene was framed to make everyone worry about her and the baby. Seth was far more alert and barely banged up, able to get out of the car with a passerby's help and help her, and even help the other car's driver while waiting for the ambulance and fire truck to extract Angie (THAT is how serious the damage was to her side of the car). And I know internal injuries are a thing, but I cannot emphasize enough how out of no where and illogical it was that he was the one to receive fatal injuries from that crash.

And then you know what they did?

They had a time-skip montage of Will taking leave to take care of the baby and Angie while Angie recovers from grief, spanning past Halloween and Christmas, until they went back to work in spring.

They just skipped through Angie's entire grieving and healing process. Just had a brief montage, using holiday decorations while Will and his dog-walker walk the baby to showcase the passage of time. And then they go back to work, with Angie still a bit somber but now functional, and set up the next season's overarching plot.

This was all probably 10 minutes of footage total. From immediate aftermath of the car accident, Seth's death to the time skip montage showing several months before they go back to work. Just ten minutes of screen time.

This writing decision pisses me off because it was very clearly done purely to return to the status quo ASAP. Angie and Seth were too happy to ever break up naturally, so they just killed off the hypotenuse to resume the "will they, won't they" dynamic. Now with co-parenting! This is one of the most blatant and forced chain of events I've seen. Abrupt deaths happened, but the way it happened felt like a literal act of God to force Angie and Will back on a potential path together. Because they're sure as hell not getting together anytime soon with her still reeling from her husband dying while driving her to the hospital. They chose one of the most traumatic ways to kill him off, and then SKIPPED the worst of the trauma.

Apparently part of the reason for Seth's death was that his actor is in high demand, so they couldn't keep him around for Season 5. And I get it, their dynamic was too nice for them to break up, so killing him was the only option without making him a piece of shit. Also, the show's based on a book series (though apparently the characters are VERY different?) and Seth was added for the show, so the guy was doomed from the start. But killing him off in a car crash in the last FIFTEEN MINUTES and zooming through the aftermath is one of the worst options. Especially right after killing off ANOTHER major character.

I can already think of a couple better ways to handle it:

• Have the car crash earlier in the episode and be a major focus of the episode, so the situation has time to breathe. Give viewers time to process that Seth and Angie are in a precarious situation and someone's definitely going to die, rather than just blindside us
• Still have the crash, but don't have Angie present in the crash as another victim. Have her find out separately and go to the hospital to receive the news, give her a chance to say goodbye rather than go into surgery for labor and whatever injuries she got from the crash
• Have him die heroically. Like, give his life for someone else. The finale had a hostage situation episode earlier where he had to tend to a patient at gunpoint, they could've made THAT the finale
• Skip the death and reveal he had a crazy stalker ex or psycho relative who's tracked him down and will harass them until the end of time, so he and Angie reluctantly cut ties to protect the baby
• Wait for the baby to be born so he has time to meet her, and THEN kill him off and do the montage!! Heck, have a montage of Angie on maternity leave and bonding with Seth while others still work at the GBI, and then have a call about a car crash to end that montage. That'd at least alleviate the tragedy a little bit so it's not to the level of emotionally and PHYSICALLY breaking her right as she's giving birth
• The bare minimum: have the other car hit Seth's side, not Angie's, and skip the rug pull of worrying about the baby. Cut to commercial with the car hitting him, then skip the immediate aftermath of the crash and cut to everyone going to the hospital to see Angie getting the news and crying

Those are just ideas I came up with in the last 20 minutes while writing this rant. The writers had WAY more time to think of a better way to implement this, and they went with the most shocking and rushed death.

See, the biggest problem I have with Seth's death isn't just that it happened, but how it doesn't give us closure. And this ties back to Amanda's death.

Similar to Seth, Amanda's death was also sudden. She was investigating a lead, and the camera focused on her back a few seconds too long before she turned around and it cut to commercial. Next time we saw her was the episode's end, when she was already dead. The entire next episode was devoted to tracking down her killers, and dealing with their grief. One of the characters is Amanda's niece, and Amanda was also the one who found Will as a baby after his mom was murdered and eventually brought him into the GBI, so her death was even MORE personal than most major character deaths. Like I said, there's a reason we thought that Episode 16 was the season finale: it wrapped up so many plot threads, while leaving the show's dynamics permanently changed. Then Episode 17, the other episode we watched last night, explored Amanda's death further by being mostly Will trapped in his head with him flashing back to Amanda recruiting him, and her guiding him one last time. So she basically got two episodes to help address it.

And Seth meanwhile... Got literally fifteen minutes from the car crash to the episode's end. I expect we'll get plenty of mentions of him and Angie's grief next season, but no where near the focus it should've gotten thanks to that 3-minute time skip montage.

I don't think Seth's death is even directly stated out loud. They did the classic silent sequence of Will rushing to the hospital and talking to a doctor who shook his head, and then him visiting Angie and the baby, before cutting to him taking her to his house and talking to the baby to set up the time skip montage.

One of the worst parts is how the aftermath of his death mainly focused on Will. Going to the hospital, he was the one talking to the doctor, because Angie had just given birth after being seriously injured in a car wreck and was in shock. Then he was helping her into bed at his house, and went to talk to the baby. The montage focused mainly on Will and his dog-sitter taking the baby on walks, with periodic shots of Angie sitting on the bed with a blank look because of the grief.

The focus on Will in the montage makes sense to an extent, because Angie was heavily injured in the same crash that killed her husband on what should have been one of the happiest days of their lives. That's one of the most emotionally traumatic circumstances to lose someone, of course she'd mentally shut down. They set up a scenario where Angie can't react or really have agency because she's just too devastated—but they didn't have to choose THAT specific scenario. And that makes the show condensing his death and its aftermath so much worse.

That time skip montage includes a scene where Angie picks up the baby around Christmas and says "Hi baby... I'm your mommy." I got the impression that was maybe the first time she'd really held her daughter after 3+ months of wallowing in grief (maybe the first time at all). And that scene had zero emotional impact for us beyond wondering, "Wait, is THIS the first time she's interacting with her baby?" because they condensed her entire grieving and healing process down to a three minute montage. It really just highlighted how rushed the whole montage was.

They didn't just screw over Seth with an abrupt death, they screwed over Angie's character by emotionally devastating her with, and then just speed-running that same devastation. Death can be sudden and unexpected, sure, but the grief of those who survive is something long-lasting—yet they essentially made her grief just as sudden and short-lived as his death. It genuinely comes across as a choice made shock value rather than telling the tale of a tragedy. Made all the more obvious given how they'd handled Amanda's death just two episodes earlier. It shows the writers DO know how to give death and grief a sense of gravity, but they chose to skip that for Angie.

In those last 10 minutes, I stopped watching Will Trent because I could only see the writing choice. And that's what pisses me off the most. This wasn't a tragedy, it was an overhanded writing choice forcing events to reset the status quo via an act of God.