In which Mez rambles and ponders vaguely about TV stuff...

[deird_lj]

I’ve been noticing POVs on TV recently.

…by which I mean that, with all the writing I’ve done over the last year, I’ve learnt a lot about POV in writing, and how it works, and what to call different types of it.
And I’ve just started to realise that TV often works the same way.


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Just to clarify…

There’s omniscient third person, which is how Jane Austen writes, there’s third person limited, which is how J.K.Rowling writes, and then there’s retrospective third person, which is how… um… I’m sure someone famous writes like that, but I can’t think of anyone right now.

They work like this:

(omniscient): Sally was having a very fun morning at the picnic – mostly because she had no idea that Mike was secretly plotting her death.

(limited): Sally was having a great time at the picnic, and eating lots of tuna sandwiches. For a moment, she thought Mike was looking at her rather weirdly – but she decided she must have been imagining it.

(retrospective): Sally’s picnic experience was fun, and carefree. Years later, she would kick herself for not stabbing Mike in the arm with the plastic cutlery, and running while she still had the chance – but, for the moment, she had no such concerns.

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So, back to television.

I’m used to assuming that all TV uses omniscient third – after all, the camera can see what’s going on, and just because the characters might be too obtuse to pick up on characters plotting the deaths of other characters, that doesn’t mean that we won’t.

But then, a little while ago, I was rewatching an episode of Dawson’s Creek, in which Pacey has a birthday.
And right near the end, having had a crappy not-really-that-surprising surprise party that he hated, Pacey had been in another part of town, having an Inspiring Talk with his dad. And the two of them walked back home together, where it was quite clear that the rest of the family had gone out (because the cars were gone, and the lights were out, and so forth) – and Pacey and his dad went “Oh, I guess they’ve gone out”, walked up the front steps, opened the door, and SURPRISE!
They’d given him another “surprise” bit of the surprise party, just so they could do it properly.

And I suddenly realised that the entire episode was in limited third.

Pacey didn’t know he was getting a surprise – so we didn’t know about it either.


That had really never occurred to me as a possibility.

But, actually, TV sort of does that all the time. An episode which focuses on Xander will only really have Buffy appear when she’s doing something that concerns Xander – and then, a few episodes later, Xander will fade into the background as we start focusing on Giles…


Some shows, though, take it a bit further.

Like Frasier.
Frasier doesn’t just give us limited third – it gives us unreliable narrators in limited third.

There’s an episode, for instance, called Perspectives On Christmas. And what happens is that Martin tells someone all about his week, and then Daphne tells the same person all about her week, and then Niles does, and then Roz, and then Frasier – which basically means that we get to see more and more context for the week, the further into the episode we go.
And very occasionally, we get to see bits of the same scenes over again.

Why is this interesting?

Because you get things like this:

“Ooh! That’s awfully dangerous, Daphne, standing there under that mistletoe!”
…and Niles moves forward, playfully, obviously intending to kiss her.

And then you get the same scene as Daphne sees it:

“Ooh. That’s awfully dangerous, Daphne, standing there under that mistletoe. A piece could fall into your eye.”
…says Niles, full of concern for his good friend.

Or, you get a moment when Roz throws open the door, incredibly mad, yells “Merry Christmas!”, throws her wrapped present down onto the floor with gusto (it hits the floor with a loud THUD), and walks off.

And then, from Roz’s perspective, we’re about to see the same thing, and Roz says this:

“Of course I still had to stop by Frasier's, I had to give him his champagne glasses.”

…and we see exactly the same thing happen – the door being thrown open, Roz yelling, the present being thrown down – except, this time, it hits the floor with the very clear sound of smashing glass.

It’s awesome. They’ve completely changed the scene depending on who the main character is, and what they know.


And actually, once you start looking for it, Frasier does that a lot.

In scenes where Frasier has the starring role, Niles will come across as a little bit more clumsy and naïve, and Martin will look just a bit more obtuse and sports-obsessed.
Whereas, in scenes from the perspective of Martin, his actions look a lot more rational, and Frasier looks just that little bit more pompous than usual.

After a while, you start wondering if you can ever completely trust what the camera’s showing you.


Buffy has moments like that, kind of (although not to the same extent).

In Earshot, for example, when the gang are in the library discussing Buffy’s sudden telepathy, we’re clearly supposed to be watching the characters from the perspective of how Buffy thinks about them.
Even just the way the camera’s moving – it’s following what Buffy’s looking at. She starts listening to what Xander’s thinking, and suddenly we’re watching Xander. Then she starts listening to Wesley, so the camera switches to him…

In Something Blue, when Buffy and Spike are busily making wedding plans, the POV character is actually Giles – who is watching them with approximately the same reactions as we’re supposed to be having.


…and, for people who find unreliable narrators interesting, I really recommend you track down the Farscape episode called The Ugly Truth. It’s fascinating.


I think, for the most part, I’ve decided that the majority of TV shows are actually in limited third. (Someday, I’m really going to have to sit down and figure out how much this happens in other shows.)

You do, though, get the occasional show in omniscient third – like Desperate Housewives, which clearly has an omniscient narrator.


And then there’s How I Met Your Mother – which, amazingly, manages to be in limited third, omniscient third, and retrospective third, all at the same time.

Seriously! All at once!

It’s in omniscient third because he’s heard all the stories from back then a million times, so he’s got a very good idea of what happened even when he wasn’t in the room.

It’s in retrospective third because he’s talking from the future – and you’ll have things like Marshall and Lily buying a new apartment, and Ted pointing out that they would, eventually, regret the purchase.
And also, there’s an episode set on his thirtieth birthday – where he spends the entire time telling his kids about the goat in his apartment, gets to the end of the episode, and goes “Oh, wait – the goat happened after Robin was living with us. That was my thirty-first birthday.” …and even though we haven’t reached that part of the story yet, he has, so he can tell us bits of what’s going to happen – when we finally get there.

And finally, it’s in limited third. Not only is it in a sort of imposed limited third, where Ted censors the story for the sake of his kids, but also in “Oops, I’ve forgotten that bit” limited third.
There’s an entire episode with everyone calling his girlfriend “blah blah”, because twenty years later, Ted can’t remember what her name was. We see Robin’s new boyfriend as being about 70, because that’s how Ted perceives him – even though he assures his kids that his imagination is probably running away with him, slightly…



I really have no underlying point, here, apart from “Cool! TV does the same stuff as books!”
I just wanted to share…

Comments

[deird1]

Which episode of MASH would that be? *is naive and uninformed*

[rahirah]

It's shot entirely from the POV of a wounded soldier - literally; the camera points only at what he sees. Several other shows have used the technique since, but MASH was the first and probably the best use of it.