Warning: might contain mild spoilers for the beginning of The Signal Netflix series.
So I’ve been watching Netflix’s The Signal mini series and it’s been irritating the fuck out of me. Almost quit watching after the second episode. Why? It focuses too much on the characters, their emotions and reactions to events. But wait! Isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that what good fiction is all about? Yes, but only if you do it right.
As I watch the show, I find myself moaning in frustration, “I don’t care about how much this husband and his daughter are mourning the wife. I don’t care about the husband’s desperate attempts to protect his daughter from finding out her mom just died. I don’t care about other character’s reaction to their loved ones dying or their misplaced aggression. I care about the aliens. WHERE ARE MY GODDAMN ALIENS!! >:( >:( >:(“
See, the only reason the viewer/reader/listener would ever care about what happens to the characters, what those characters feel, how they react, etc is if they care about those characters first. There’s a huge difference between the death or the grief of a character you’ve only seen for 5 minutes and a character you’ve spent hours following through their adventures, a character you’ve learned to care about and empathize with because you’ve been on their long journey beside them. The death or grief of a character you’ve just met is just a fact. The same things for a character you know and empathize with already will devastate you & pull at your heart-strings.
That’s where The Signal fails. It spends the first two episodes doing nothing but wallowing in emotional reactions of characters you’ve just met, people you don’t know and don’t yet care about. That plane crash is just a news headline. Compare that to the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones, though. That shit literally put me into a depression for a day and a half.
Now, am I saying that it’s always wrong to start a story with some tragic event or to show how the characters you’ve just met are reacting to it? No, of course not. What IS wrong, however, is spending significant screen time on it & thinking that the audience will be entertained by long depictions of character’s internal struggles caused by the event this early on.
I still need to finish The Signal. I think I’m going to, despite wanting to quit two episodes in. The good news is that in the third episode action does pick up a bit. It’s still “meh,” though. I just want my aliens, goddammit! It better deliver.