Gripes are not fair. Complaining sucks, and there is always a far more sensible choice than offhandedly slinging disappointment and bitterness. Whenever I complain, I feel like I cut too broad a swathe. Unrestrained contempt is, after all, not a fine cutting tool. And didn't your Mom ever tell you nobody likes a whiner? Oh, what's that, you don't have a Mom? Sorry.
Now we're done with disclaimin' and down to complainin'! This is the internet, bitches.
Why does television insist on continuing to drop mysterious exes on the love interests of our protagonists? More importantly, how do the exes have such impeccable timing? Oh, oh so close to the moment of deliverance from weekly tension and frustration, our hero finally admits his or her feelings to his or herself! Or maybe to a friend! They prepare in dramatic fashion to catch up to the spurned love interest, only to find that at that very second in space and time, love interest is sucking face with the ex. I hurl my slipper at the screen to the befuddlement of my viewing partner, real or imagined, pause, and swear I'm done with this series forever for fifteen seconds before I can unpause again.
Maybe the problem is endemic to serial fiction. Dickens sometimes used the format as a kind of character history strip-tease ("It was the money left me, and the gains of the first few year wot I sent home to Mr. Jaggers"), but TV, unfortunately, doesn't have the luxury of letting characters work through their shit psychologically. Well, I guess they could, but it's TV. Why not just put the issue on the screen for us to see, right? And it's just so damned... logical. Structurally and whatnot. One of the best episodes of Wonderfalls is the one after Heidi comes back; Grey's Anatomy got a whole season (and a shitty spin-off show) out of Addison dropping by; can't think of any others off the top of my head but the inappropriate use of semi-colons excites me; OH, what's that another semi-colon.
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