Mr. Robot vs. Gossip Girl: Why You NEED To Know Your Ending

there's nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others is there [Music] this video was made possible due to those who support me on patreon i'd like to give a big shout out to patrons bedside milk christopher spirit b conrad truett dan ray david paradise eric navarro flake frame by frame joseph abrams kb kyle kramer mafen majin weebu mariah matthew gay sophia narwicz and stephen dillon thank you all for your support question for you writers out there do you consider yourself a gardener or an architect simply put an architect is a writer who meticulously plans out their story whereas a gardener allows it to unfold more organically they may begin with some general ideas but then have them naturally develop as opposed to following a pre-planned story map right away you can probably note some pros and cons of each while the architect approach may lead to your story being very tight and cohesive it prevents the incorporation of new ideas without possibly compromising the entire structure while the gardner approach may allow for spontaneous inspiration this comes with the risk of your story becoming unfocused and or losing its way as much of a cop-out as it may be i'd say it's best to employ a mixture of both it should go without saying that the dichotomy between the gardener and the architect is a spectrum with most writers gravitating toward but not being solely one or the other i'm not here to tell you which way is best for you that is whatever allows you to get the words on the page however right now i need you to shut the [ __ ] up and listen because i am going to lay something down that is not up for discussion you need to know your ending or at least i really think you should your ending is the most important part of your story where the final emotional impact is delivered where every thematic contention comes to fruition and it is the most important aspect in defining what your story is all about if at the end the return of the jedi darth vader rather than betraying the emperor and reconciling with luke slaughtered his son and wiped out the remaining rebel alliance it would recontextualize the saga in its entirety as no longer the story of how even the most heinous of villains can be redeemed but rather not that let me be clear when i say know your ending i don't mean you have to have every single detail meticulously planned out in fact we have seen how being too dead set on a specific ending can lead to ruin how i met your mother that um that a d d esque show that ended a few years ago [ __ ] the names escaping me however the issue with these shows was not that they had planned out endings rather that they didn't properly guide their shows to said endings resulting in both of them having the course correct like a [ __ ] the mata consistency be damned it's more about having a general idea to keep your story from straying too far from your core ideas now here's the thing when writing a singular film or novel guiding your story to your desired ending is made a lot easier by the fact that you can always rewrite giving the impression that you knew exactly what you were doing from the beginning even if you had absolutely no idea what you were doing over the course of the first 273 drafts but writing a television series and this goes for a series of novels as well is a bit trickier since you deliver your story in installments if you are on season 3 of your show and you have a new direction you want to take the story in well what if something you wrote in season 1 or 2 prevents this you can't go back and edit [ __ ] to make it all fit together while this may be an argument in favor of planning out future season arcs ahead of time committing to story beats literally years into the future can be quite treacherous however when it comes to a tv series i still champion even if you don't have any other plot points mapped out knowing your ending as it at least gives you some direction as to what you are working towards allowing you to keep your story somewhat focused while some may argue that you can still tell a coherent story without knowing your endgame i'd retort that this runs the risk of your show losing its way we may become invested in the characters but at some point if we don't get a sense of where these characters are going to end up we begin to lose our investment the worst case scenario is of course what is known as jumping the shark where the writer does something so out of pocket the fandom becomes completely disenchanted with the show in an instant [ __ ] you oliver again at the very least i would say having a general sense of your end game even if it isn't super specific or fleshed out entirely will help you maintain consistency and coherence as you write your story to illustrate my point i am going to juxtapose two shows one in which the ending was planned out from the very beginning which in turn led to the series concluding its run as a thematically harmonious masterpiece and one in which the answer to the most pressing mystery of the series was not decided upon in advance which in turn led to a cascading avalanche of confusion plot holes and audience frustration let's start with the good shall we mr robot tells the story of elliot alderson socially awkward computer programmer by day cyber vigilante by night while the show on the surface is a plot heavy affair detailing elliot's attempt to destroy the world's debt by utilizing a complex encryption algorithm his run-ins with both the head of the largest international conglomerate in the world and the enigmatic leader of a dangerous hacking group and the inevitable showdown between them the series is truly about one man's journey to dispel his personal trauma and repair his fractured psyche it's one of my all-time favorite shows and i would hate to rob anyone of experiencing it however in order to properly conduct my analysis i need to go into major spoiler territory so if you intend to watch the show this is your warning but for those of you sticking around let's get into it mr robot is a case study in how effective knowing your ending can be in terms of delivering a satisfying payoff let's start off with the show's first major twist in the pilot episode elliot is originally brought on board with the plot to erase the world's dead by a mysterious man known only as mr robot late in season 1 we learned that mr robot is actually a second personality of elliot taking on the appearance of his late father i am mr robot he said it now while many other pieces of media have executed a similar kind of twist few put as much care and detail into executing it as mr robot because of this your second watch of the first season is i would say even more enjoyable since you now see all the hints and attention to detail you originally missed such as how in any scene in which elliot and mr robot are both present none of the other characters acknowledge them simultaneously however this particular twist doesn't exactly fit in with what we are talking about since the first season was written in isolation which brings us to two major twists that occur in the fourth and final season which were planned out from the very beginning and hinted at as early as the pilot episode the first is revealed about halfway through the final season while being held prisoner by vengeful drug king pinvera elliot's therapist krista helps elliot come to the realization that he was in fact molested by his father as a child and mr robot was created to shield him from this horrible truth not only are there several hints scouted throughout the series the most evident being elliot's aversion to being touched but it also re-contextualizes everything we have seen throughout the show the numerous flashback scenes between a young elliot and his father which presumably showed a close relationship between them suddenly take on a far more disturbing context but the biggest twist of all one that creator sam esmail had planned from the very beginning of the show comes in the series finale where it is revealed that the character whom we have been following all along is not the real elliot but rather another personality known as the mastermind a representation of elliot's anger and rage once again not only does this reveal suddenly make so many things click throughout the series it re-contextualizes literally everything relationship dynamics character motivations it even further enhances the larger thematic explorations of the series throughout the show's run a consistent theme is elliot struggling with trying to reconcile his conflicting personalities and define who he is but with the show's final twist we the audience are left to ponder despite the character we have been following not being the quote-unquote real elliot whether or not that makes him any less an individual these twists don't simply serve as shock value they enhance the thematic value of the tail so much so that even if you did just spoil one of the greatest television series of all time for yourself i would still urge you to check it out as for me personally my second watch of the series was far superior to the first while the first is a hell of a rollercoaster ride the second allows you to truly appreciate the time care and detail put into crafting such an incredibly cohesive story now those of you who are fans of the series are probably aware that creator sam esmail originally envisioned the series as a feature film so while he had several major plot points planned out from the very beginning he still had to expand his original 2-hour story into a 45-hour series thus he and his fellow writers still had a lot of story to flesh out but since they had these planned out beats to keep them on track it allowed them to run with new ideas while still having a guiding light if you will to keep the show from going too far off the rails allowing for both freedom and structure simultaneously and it turned out pretty [ __ ] well if i may say so myself as for the other end of the spectrum let's take a look at a show that most certainly did not have a general idea of its ending considering it didn't even decide on an answer to its most enduring mystery until it was too late i of course am talking about none other than so for those of you who lack culture gossip girl is a dramatic television series chronicling the trials and tribulations of a gaggle of insanely privileged teens and how their lives are just so super [ __ ] super hard for them like seriously the character of dan humphrey is like he's supposed to be like like the outsider who doesn't fit in with the posh upper east side crowd meanwhile his father is an ex-rock star and they live in a brooklyn flat the size of my middle school gymnasium gossip girl is a perfect example of a show that lost its way just as i discussed earlier by around season 3 or 4 it was very clear the writers were already running out of [ __ ] for their characters to do recycled plots random character paras chemistry or common sense be damned and by the time the fifth season rolled around most of the fandom was getting sick of it all but there was one mystery that kept the audience watching yearning for an answer in the show there is an anonymous online blogger known only as gossip girl who spreads got this gossip about the socialites of the upper east side which serves as the show's predominant source of dramatic conflict so naturally seeing as this catty [ __ ] has caught so much turmoil for our main characters fans needed to know gossip girl's identity and in the series finale they got their answer dan humphrey now while this grand reveal should have been a moment of catharsis for the audience finally having this six year long mystery answered it was kind of hampered by the fact that well you know a dan being gossip girl makes absolutely no [ __ ] sense see you would think that with gossip girl being such a big facet of the show the writers would have known for sure their identity but no if you read up on interviews with the writers they state that gossip girl's identity changed at least twice over the course of the series with it not being decided that dane would be gossip girl until the writing of the sixth and final season of the show in mr robot since sam esmail knew the show's big final twist from the very beginning he and the writers kept this in mind throughout production thus allowing them to avoid any contradictions or retroactive plot holes not so much with gossip girl upon the revelation that dane was the titular big male fans immediately called [ __ ] since there is a cornucopia of evidence that makes him being so completely nonsensical the several times throughout the show where dan reads something on gossip girl and reacts with utter shock even though he is alone by himself the absolutely baffling scene where he is supposedly having a text conversation with gossip girl implying that he's texting himself aside from these objective plot holes there are also a number of confounding developments that while not technically plot holes put into question dan's motivations as well as his general sanity in mr robot the reveal of elliot's father molesting him recontextualizes everything that came before it for example the scene in the pilot episode where elliott confronts a purveyor of child pornography while elliott does not recall that his father molested him at the time of the scene perhaps there is a part of him that subconsciously does recall his trauma which feeds his motivation to take the scumbag down but the reveal of dan being gossip girl only raises a number of questions such as say dan why is it that you decided to out yourself for cheating on multiple partners what exactly was going through your head the several times you spread damaging information about serena the girl you supposedly have very strong feelings for and of course what in god's [ __ ] name were you thinking every time you decided to spread rumors and gossip about your own little sister including her losing her virginity or when you added her as a drug dealer like like maybe some of it was done to avoid suspicion but like this is just ridiculous instead of re-contextualizing and fleshing out his motivations it only makes them confounding the really only plausible explanation you have at the end of the show is that dan is a seizing sociopath who possesses zero empathy and holds no remorse for spreading a plethora of gossip that [ __ ] with the lies of his friends and family yes it means that the entire time that even when i was ruining my own life and i was ruining the lives of those around me including my little sister so yeah the shame is that i think this could have been kind of cool if the writers had decided upon and stuck with dan being gossip girl from the very beginning of the series viewers could go back and see all the little hints the writers sprinkled in or see how it recontextualizes dan's motivations for doing certain things it could have made the second watch an interesting and rewarding experience but instead the big reveal only pissed off fans to an insurmountable degree again let me stress that i am not telling you there is a correct way to write your story i am simply giving you insight into what i have observed as a pretty consistent truth in regard to most tv shows that not having any sort of vision as to where the story is going will often spell disaster while shooting for a set end game can be both daunting and scary it not only will allow you to retain the thematic consistency and pacing of your story but also if done well may result in you crafting an absolute masterpiece to put it simply be a mr robot and not a gossip girl [Music] you

Channel: Macabre Storytelling

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Id: 7pEuBnVpWvA

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Wed May 18 2022