TV’s Unresolved Sexual Tension – 3 Resolutions

The moment you talk about Unresolved Sexual Tension (UST) between television characters, two things happen: 1) The audience (and maybe the actors) will split as to whether or not the pair should become a couple; and 2) Someone will bring up Moonlighting…more than once. The 2012 season gives us three examples of how to deal with UTS…or how not to deal with UTS. (Warning: spoilers depending on when you read this — especially end of season in spring 2012.)

BONES

For six season, the FOX series Bones dangled a Booth/Brennan romance before the audience like a catnip filled ball in front of a kitten. With series star Emily Deschanel becoming pregnant during the last half of the sixth season, the creative team decided to bite the bullet and consummate this relationship. Vaguely. Then a weak, brief, subtle romance before…boom, we jump ahead about six months.

While I don’t mind the Booth/Brennan romance, the truth is that none of the timing works in service of the story or in respect for the audience. First of all, six seasons was too long a wait. By that time the UST had evolved into a partnership/friendship forever bound by the missed opportunities. If the powers that be had decided that the characters have “the talk” and agree that it wasn’t going to work, then the series could go on. On the other hand, it might be doomed as the shippers start to evaporate.

Being a writerly person, I very much appreciate the timing of the beats of a story. I sort of have to. The Booth/Brennan pairing missed most of them. I blame this on the misguided fear of causing your show’s foundation to crumbled due to the Moonlighting effect. Too many clever distractions simply stretched the UST out too long, beyond the realm of credulity. After about four seasons (give-or-take) the creative powers that be have to commit to exploring a romance or throw up their hands and declare a sexless friendship.

This isn’t to condemn their current in-relationship status. It could evolve into something useful. Still, many opportunities were lost by waiting so long and tweaking the audience with increasingly dubious teases.

In Plain Sight

At the other end of the spectrum, you have the UST between Marshall and Mary. While they danced around the tension, the fact is that it wasn’t an exactly equal balance — Marshall was always more into Mary “with intent” than she was into him. In the fourth season, when Marshall starts dating Albuquerque detective Abigail Chaffee, it was clear that a story choice would need to be made. Would they stretch this out into a series of monogamous relationships (a la JAG), or would they drop the UST? In the end, they dropped the UTS. Marshall and Mary are still friends though they may always carry around with them some “what ifs”.

While IPS didn’t have the run of episodes that Bones has had, the fact is that either through design or circumstance the timing was correct. Mary and Marshall had been partners and best friends for a number of years. From a storytelling standpoint, they’d reached a turning point to resolve the UTS one way or another.

With the relationship Marshall had built with Abigail since the start of season 4, it would have been criminal for him to return to Mary. In fact, even if the show hadn’t ended its run and if Marshall broke up with Abby, there was no compelling story reason for the Mary/Marshall relationship to become anything more than it was. In this way, the show was able to respect the story and audience by creating a resolution that, while maybe not filled with fireworks, at least made sense and was satisfying.

Castle

And now, the current elephant in the room. At the end of season 3, Castle told Beckett that he loved her. She, having been shot, was otherwise distracted and didn’t answer him. At the start of the fourth season, Beckett told Castle she didn’t remember the events of the shooting. She later confided to her therapist that she remembered everything. As a result, the characters continued to do their UST dance as before (more or less). It isn’t until episode 19 that Castle eavesdropped on an interrogation and learned the truth. By the end of the season, episodes 22 & 23, the truth finally came out — at first in subtext and then overtly.

Personally, I’m happy with this. The thing that irks me is the wasted time. From a story standpoint, this UST resolution should ideally have occurred somewhere between episode 13-16. The audience was primed. When episode 19 finally came with the Beckett reveal without any immediate follow-up, and then there followed several episodes of Castle petulantly and passive-aggressively lashing out at Beckett, the creative team was in danger of scuttling their show.

Again, it’s that story beat sort of thing. Too often, show runners and/or network suits stick rigidly to when story reveals are supposed occur. The resolution to a UST, they think, is only appropriate at season-end or season-beginning. That wasn’t the case here. Season-middle-ish (or even two-thirds-ish) was the appropriate time. With Castle and Beckett finally in each other’s arms, the creative team may have dodged a ratings-slide bullet…just barely. (Spoiler: Though, to be fair, some fans are still screaming for an overt sex scene and/or a Kate “I love you”.)

Where to now? I think that a lot of lessons need to be learned from Bones, chief of which is: don’t do a significant time-jump. The audience waited patiently for UST resolution, so respect them enough to give them a romance. I’d say take it slower than each of the pair’s previous relationships…especially Castle’s. Show that this is different — special — and not something tawdry or transient. Based on season four’s dangling story threads, this could possibly be a rare show premise paradigm shift, e.g. Castle and Beckett (and Havi?) go rogue. That would be interesting and could open up future stories. Still, there’s more than enough time for idle speculation.

Wrapping Up

I’m hoping that we’ll soon put an end to this Moonlighting-curse idiocy. It is naive at best, usually disrespectful, and at worst career suicide. If you create a show designed for the leads to have UST and you don’t have a long-term plan and timetable for how you are going to deal with it, simply hoping that options will present themselves is lazy writing. There needs to be a plan from the start while allowing for the fact that as the story evolves that plan will need tweaking.

With Bones, we see an example where the UST went on too long. In Plain Sight not only gives us a non-pairing resolution to UST, but does it in a way that wasn’t rushed and makes good story sense. Castle almost crippled itself by waiting too long, but shows that they learned from what happened with Bones. My hope is that show runners recognize this not as a character retcon but as an evolution to their stories. It doesn’t have to be an abrupt change unless such a change is necessary. I guess we’ll have to see how this plays out. After all, the only way to accurately predict the future is to see it after it has become the past.