Joshua James at 2008-11-29 16:05:00:
I watch the show, and I quite like it.

One thing they did recently, which I thought was smart, was they had an episode where Jane didn't know "everything" and ironically enough, it came at the expense of a medium who spoke to the dead.

In the end, it was shown his conclusion about her to be wrong. That's smart ... we'll be less interested in a show where the hero is ALWAYS right and ALWAYS wins ... especially a guy like this ... it showed his vulnerability and that was a great thing ...
Scott at 2008-11-29 19:07:00:
Joshua, that's such a good point. There's that story -- not sure if it's true or not -- that Harrison Ford told George Lucas re his Indiana Jones character (this is in pre-production for Raiders of the Lost Ark) that Jones was too perfect, they had to give him some sort of flaw so the audience could have something to identify with the character. That led to Indy's fear of snakes.
Joshua James at 2008-11-29 21:28:00:
That's a great story, but ... Indy also loses the statue in the first teaser act, so he fails there, too ... Lawrence Kasdan wrote the script and has a fine history of writing great characters who fail at more things than they succeed ... I wrote about EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (also by Kasdan) and the power of failure in great movies, it's here: http://writerjoshuajames.com/dailydojo/?p=710

I think it's really important to have characters fail from time to time ... Charlie Brown works for us so much because he's such a failure (I point out that all PEANUTS characters fail at something here: http://writerjoshuajames.com/dailydojo/?p=487)

One reason I like LAW & ORDER so much is that you truly don't know how it will end, if the good guys will win or not ... a lot of times, they don't. That makes the show very powerful, I think.

Anyway, I'm blabbing at the mouth, but this is a subject I obsess about and write about a lot on the dear old blog.