Granted, most of the time the plot holes in these movies/books/games that arise because the characters don't talk. It's usually something that freaks them out or they feel like they can't trust their friends or whatever. But seriously wth? Just once I'd like to see a MC do the smart thing and trust their companions/parents/whatever. Yeah they might get mad, but like, they get even more mad when this stuff is kept secret. (especially if 'IT' puts the group in danger, sometimes multiple times) Granted it depends on what 'IT' Is, but come on, someone really needs to subvert this trope already. To be perfectly clear, I'm talking about plot threads that can only properly function in the narrative, explicitly because the character does the 'it's nothing' bit. Or something similar. How would one actually go about subverting this trope, while putting a humorous spin on it? But also kinda playing along with said trope for a little bit.
I think they are talking about the Poor Communication Kills trope which is really a subset of the Could Have Avoided This trope.
Maybe it's a trope because people don't talk. A big cause of divorce and seems to be predominant in current political discourse.
It's insanely common, especially if you watch any TV drama these days. The whole issue could have been avoided with a simple 5-minute adult conversation, yet because the characters refuse to talk to each other and the contrived situation conspires to keep them from doing so, you get pointless "drama drama drama" that ultimately means nothing.
Just watch any relationship drama on TV. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Boyfriend does something innocent that girlfriend misunderstands. Girlfriend runs around freaking out, convinced that boyfriend is cheating on her. The whole thing could have been solved with a simple 5-minute adult conversation, but if they did that, they wouldn't have an episode, would they? This is the basis of most televised relationship drama today.
yeah, I suppose you see it in sitcoms as well. But often that's part of the joke in a sitcom. I guess I don't really watch television dramas.
Oh yeah, it's a massive sitcom staple—the misunderstanding that keeps blowing up bigger and bigger. Janet overhears Mr Roper talking on the phone about his elderly mother who's near death and she assumes he's talking about his wife (the OTHER Mrs Roper). Then the conversation switches to his mother's poor elderly dog that's dying, and he says "Yeah, we're just gonna put her out of her misery. No sense dragging it out." So naturally she freaks out and tells the roomies and not one of them stops to think maybe there was a misunderstanding. Of course their plot keeps escalating and things go from bad to worse to completely insane. —almost every sitcom plot.
Props for bringing up Three's Company! haha I think The Honeymooners made this a standard plot device. The Flintstones were famous for it too. Perfect Strangers from the '80s, as well. And I'm skipping many, many others. It'll probably never end.
Makes sense since the Flintstones was basically the Honeymooners with dinosaurs. I guess it works best with a certain kind of dynamic—something like 'helpful' neighbors who keep meddling in each other's lives.
That'd be the one. I forgot what the trope itself was called for a minute. TBH I don't mind it as bad if it only happens once and is an incredibly minor thing. But when it's an important plot detail? AND it puts the other protagonists in literal danger? And that particular plot point only functions because the characters refuse to communicate? It's agonizing. I get why the trope exists for sitcoms and such like, but for video games and such there are literally so many inter-personal conflicts that could be solved if the protagonists just...communicated.
You find the same thing in books too, this is just a really, really common trope on TV, which is why someone brought it up via TVTropes.
There's lots of real life reasons not to talk to people so this is not a problem in a fictional story.
That's why I keep specifying adult conversations because a lot of those reasons are very immature. For television though, it's just laziness on the part of the writers. They have 45 minutes to fill and they're doing it in the most simplistic, idiotic way that they can.
Most people who are of sound mind (even the more paranoid ones) would wise up when their fears of what everyone would think would put the group in actual danger though. That's usually the thing that gets me, it's not so much that they aren't talking, more that explicitly them not talking puts others in danger. I've lost count of the times a 'plot twist' is only a "twist" because a character either chooses not to talk or has some dumb plot reason to not talk about the plot. It's less the act of not talking and more the reasons, especially when that reason is 'this plot thread literally cannot exist/be interesting otherwise' It's especially bad in video games, when the player is shown the MC's personal thoughts front and center and sometimes we have to suffer through their hesitation. Sometimes the trope works, but there's no excuse for it to be done as much as it is. (especially in an interactive medium)
I was married for nearly 30 years to a woman I couldn't talk to. It's not ridiculous or contrived to have this situation in a fictional story.
The Wizard of Oz hinges on this - the ruby slippers - oh what do they do? Never asked by Dorothy. And yet she has the solution to her problem five minutes on landing in Oz. Soaps also do this all the time - I think the trouble is the writers know how they want the story to go and have forgotten to properly barricade how it might go. As a writer you have to be doing two things at once - writing the story but tying off the characters options so that they don't look idiots for having not taken the simple solution.
Absolutely. Many people are trapped in a compulsion/repetition cycle, acting out the same drama over and over through their entire life. The Absurdist playwright Pinter said this: "I feel that instead of any inability to communicate there is a deliberate evasion of communication. Communication itself between people is so frightening that rather than do that there is continual cross-talk, a continual talking about other things, rather than what is at the root of their relationship. - People talking to fill the empty spaces between them."
98% of real life problems boil down to somebody not speaking up. Nothing fictional or tropey about it at all.
Failure to communicate, a misunderstanding, or a lie is the basis of a great deal of comedy AND drama. There is nothing contrived about this.
I remember one episode of Daredevil in S3 (I think) which was a big deal in the fandom because of two seasons of the protagonists NOT talking to each other, they finally did talk to each other and laid everything straight and got the law firm back together. So, like, yeah. I get it. If it's two seasons' worth of not talking to each other, then that's frustrating.
