Going from bad to good is not all that interesting...… (Right, JR?) going from good to bad is better. Being bad and staying that way is best.
I couldn't disagree more. Generally people watch stories, whether in the form of TV or movies, to see a reflection of life. When you spend your spend an hour every week watching a TV series for year after year, hopefully you want to see some type of character growth. Characters can progress or they can regress and actually become less than what they were. Few would want to watch a character regress, because what's the the point? In life, we sometimes, sadly, see people regress and become less good people than they used to be and it's a shame. Other times you meet someone who is a miserable person and whether it's put of sheer obliviousness, not realizing what a piece of sh*t they are, or whether it's out of laziness and not wanting to put forth the effort to better themselves, or because of the fear that prevents them from trying, lest they fail, they stay the same and nobody wants to be around them anymore because people have seen that person either cannot or will not better themselves. Unless they dramatically change, they don't have much to look forward to in life.
The great thing about fiction is that you can make whatever you want to happen, happen. You can even go as far as having a man marry the daughter of a man who has been feuding with his father most of their lives, who also has a brother eager and willing to pick up the battle, and then after eloping with her, moves her into his father and mother's house where his adult brother, who despises her, also lives. This is a family of millionaires with three generations of the family all living together even though they can barely get along and have constant arguments.
When you have a character who is bad, there is nothing better than a story of redemption. People absolutely love a well told story of redemption. One reason, is after watching, they feel good! People watch TV to have a good time and hopefully after watching they feel better, not worse, after watching. Which of the follwoing two stories do you think most people would feel better after watching, (keepng all other variables such as quality of storytelling the same):
1. You tell the story of a woman who while being beautiful and can be very charming, is a lousy woman. Her priorities are all screwed up. As the story progresses, she continues to act the same way, continues to alienate people, perhaps gaining money but losing out on the more important things life has to offer, and ultimately either ends up alone, or with someone equally screwed up. She manages to screw someone out of their money and thinks the rest of her life will be pure, uninterrupted bliss. She soon finds that the real gift of money is that it frees you from having to worry about money. That's what having a substantial amount of money does:it frees you from having to worry about money problems. OK, so the woman in the story has no money problems, but what does she jave in her life that makes it worthwhile? She has nothing that would make her life worthwhile. She has enough money to go shopping every day to buy beautiful clothes to impress men who are not in her life! Why would they want to be in her life, unless they intend to try to cheat her out of her money? She finds that her money offers no refuge from loneliness, that money doesn't provide companionship or the other good things that real friends have to offer. Alone, miserably alone and turns to heroin or cocaine in a desperate attempt to try to feel a little bit better. No hitting the streets to cop for her! She pays people to deliver drugs to her. She's wealthy enough to afford suicide on demand. One day she ends up dead of an overdose.
2. You tell the story of a woman who while being beautiful and charming, is a lousy woman. Her priorities are all screwed up. She thinks that as long as she gets rich, her life will be fulfilled. She gets rich, but she neglects all the other, more important facets of he life. She finds that while she's gotten the money she always wanted, she still feels empty inside. She got the money but she didn't get the happiness, the good relationships and the self-esteem that makes one truly happy and fulfilled. She realizes this and sets out to better herself. It's a painful process because when she first tries to befriend people, she still doesn't have the knowledge or the wisdom to discern between who would make a good friend and who wouldn't. She continues on despite some heartbreaking events taking place as she gets rejected time and again. She wonders if she's poisoned her reputation permanently. She has the resolve and the courage to persevere and along the way she gains the wisdom to discern between who will make a good friend and who won't. She's pursuing personal growth and it's a difficult process. Sometimes she still misjudges people and ends up being hurt. Because she does believe in herself and she does have courage, she continues that difficult process of personal growth and finds that she is making quality relationships. She's getting a taste of what true happiness is, but she's still not fulfilled. She lacks the one thing that will make her life fulfilled - true love. She meets the man of her dreams, but he thinks of her as the woman she used to be and doesn't show much interest in her, if any. She has to discover how to visibly show she has changed, that she is a far better woman than she used to be, with some wonderful qualities to offer. She is so persistent, and so determined to get what matters most to her in life, true love with the man who is her perfect match, that she continues on because she knows something he doesn't! She has gained self-esteem and refuses to compromise herself. She refuses to settle for a lesser man. Over a period of time, the man she has fallen in love with realizes that she is a remarkably changed woman and is just the type of woman he can envision spending the rest of his life with. They end up getting married.
Which of the two are you going to walk away from feeling better than before you started watching? The second one! It contains the elements we can all relate to or at least hope for - can we become as good as we'd like to be, can we find the things in life that will make us happy, and upon finding those things, will we be able to have those things? The story of redemption resonates in almost every single one of us and is immensely satisfying.
The only type of people that second story would not appeal to more than the first are people who know they are rotten people, don't believe they have any chance at redemption and are throughly miserable. Every day of their lives is a punishment and if God is angry enough at the, they'll live to be a hundred! They are so miserable that they cannot stand to see happiness in anyone else. They watch TV honestly hoping that they can find a show of such gross dysfunction that it has characters who are such abject failures in life and live in such misery that they can point to the screen and exclaim: "They're even worse off than I am! My life isn't so bad after all, compared to their lives"!
Wow. They're happy because they found someone who is doing even worse than they are. Not exactly the pinnacle of aspirations is it? Actually, they're bereft of aspirations because they've given up on life. They have no lives to speak of and find TV to be an escape from the torment that life is to them. They have long since given up on embarking on a process of personal growth, expending the effort to better themselves and actually build rewarding lives. TV is their last refuge from the constant suffering life brings them and they watch TV relentlessly, determined that they can make TV a substitute for having lives of their own. Their lives are miserable on a bad day and simply mundane on their best days. They like nothing better than to find yet another yet more dysfunctional TV show depicting people who are suffering even worse than they are, so they can find whatever solace their is in knowing that there are fictional characters whose lives are even more horrifying and bereft of hope than their own lives.
