So I was watching the last episode of Orphan Black (S03E06) and...
Paul freakin' dies! I mean... WHAT?!?!?!?! In hindsight, I probably should have seen it coming, seeing as they had scenes from S01E01 in the 'Previously on...' section and I was wondering why they were showing Beth and Paul and all that. But still... It had me floored!
For awhile though, I was thinking, he'll survive. Surely they won't kill of Paul (and by proxy, Paul's abs)! He gets stabbed - he can still survive... He gets shot - people have come back from worse... He blows himself up TO SAVE THE ONE HE LOVES - yeah... There's no coming back from that...
Or is there??
No, not for Paul and (hopefully) Orphan Black won't give him a surprise revival, because, like the title says, people die! And I feel like there is an overabundance of shows these days that 'kill' off a big character... Just to have them magically come back to life! And no, I'm not talking The Walking Dead...
One such example of this is The Vampire Diaries... I think I've lost count how many 'near death' experiences every single person in this show has had! Bonnie herself has had a few deaths! Then Elena dies but oh no, oh no, she has vampire blood in her system! And Jeremy gets stabbed and drained of blood... That's ok, Bonnie's there to save the day. But who will save Bonnie? How convenient, we can make her the anchor and yay! She's alive! But then Stefan gets his heart ripped out... But again, the travellers can bring people back from the dead so they'll just use that spell to bring Stefan, Alaric, and Elena back from the dead! Not to mention Cole! And then omg, Bonnie and Damon are trapped and have they died? No, no, it's a prison world and luckily for Bonnie, she gets her witchy powers back and she can bring them back to the world of the living. I mean seriously? The first few times was pretty good... But now I can't take anything this show puts out seriously. Have they actually killed that character? Or will they just come back when it's convenient? Not to mention all the plot holes that they have! It's like the writers have completely forgotten the plots of several stories they've written and they've made up new ones to suit their needs at that moment in time!
I've gone off on a tangent grumbling about The Vampire Diaries... Which I will still watch the next season, mainly because it's the last one and if I've gone this far, I might as well finish it off!
But one of my favourite shows of all time has been Daredevil! The Netflix series, not the Ben Affleck Daredevil movie (which I didn't think was all that bad when I first watched it tbh). And I think what I've liked about that show is that they weren't afraid to actually kill off characters! It wasn't just senseless killing but killings that made the show move forward in plot and always made me wonder what was going to happen next and how were these characters going to deal with this? And for me, it just made the series more realistic. People die, people deal with it, people move on (with a vengeance). There's no surprise revivals, there's no "Oh, I was in the witness protection program", and there's definitely no magic behind it!
It was real and it was raw and it was an amazing TV show!
I know there are plenty of other TV shows that fall into both categories, these were just the two that stood out in my mind. I just think that if a TV show wants to be realistic (even with vampires, werewolves and witches), then they shouldn't be scared of killing people off. If you're in a war, supernatural or not, then people from both sides are going to die, not just the "bad guys".
