Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Tuesday Talkback - Worst retcon?

I saw the pilot for The Carrie Diaries a while back and was somewhat surprised to discover that I found it rather cute and charming.  Given that I can't take more than 30 seconds of Sex & The City without wanting to vomit at the terrible acting and the worse puns.  (Full disclosure: thanks to my wife being a fan, I've seen about six full episodes... and one of those I've ended up seeing at least three times.  If your curious, it's the one with SJP and her current boyfriend having their cabin weekend ruined by Detective Logan from Law & Order.)

Anyway, I read a few reviews of the show today and one of them led me to this article complaining that Carrie's backstory in The Carrie Diaries is incompatible with what audiences learned of her history on Sex & the City.  And now an entire generation of Manolo Blahnik-wearing fans get to learn a term familiar to anyone who's read comics for any decent length of time: retcon.

"Retcon" is short for "retroactive continuity."  Basically, it refers to when some element of backstory is reestablished after the fact.  Over the years, it's mostly been used to call out examples when the new elements clash with older elements (as in the above example), but it can also refer to instances where the new detail fits in perfectly and brings new depth to the story.  Darth Vader being revealed as Luke's father is an example of this.  When Vader was introduced, it wasn't set in stone that he was going to turn out to be Anakin Skywalker, so the decision to go in that direction in Empire Strikes Back is a clear retcon.

This sort of thing happens a lot in comics, where new creators love to come in and say "Everything you know is a lie!"  Sometimes they work, but often they just make stories more confusing.  I don't know WHY comic creators like meddling with characters origins.  All I know is that whoever gave Jeph Loeb (in 2000's "Return to Krypton") and later Mark Waid (in "Superman: Birthright") permission to muck around with what had been a consistent Superman origin since 1986 deserves a kick in the balls.  That really ruined several years of stories as later writers tried to make sense of the mess they left.

I'm sure everyone reading this has seen some kind of retcon, so what are your least favorite examples?  TV is full of minor examples like the Cunninghams having an older son who only existed for a few episodes on Happy Days, or Jerry Seinfeld referring to his sister on Seinfeld before later episodes reaffirmed he was an only child.

But the big ones can really put you off of a show.  The example that leaps immediately to mind for me is from the TV show Brothers & Sisters.  I had checked out the show early in its run due to the involvement of Greg Berlanti, who among many other great shows, created Everwood, one of my all-time favorite series.  The first few eps didn't grab me, but I was motivated to return about 2/3 of the way through the first season when they added Everwood's Emily VanCamp to the cast.

VanCamp was introduced as Rebecca, who soon discovered she was the illegitimate daughter of the Walker family's deceased patriarch.  This led to a lot of conflict with the Walker siblings, but Rebecca soon was welcomed into the family... for about a season.  Towards the end of the second season, the writers reversed course and revealed that - SURPRISE - Rebecca was never a Walker at all.  So a full year's worth of stories about the family coming to terms with her presence and Rebecca dealing with gaining such a large family suddenly seemed to be rendered null and void.

(Supposedly this change was made so they could capitalize on the chemistry between VanCamp and David Annable, whose relationship on the show was that of siblings until the Rebecca retcon removed any hint of incest.)

At that point, I felt like they'd pushed an unneccesary reset button on Rebecca, and as she was the character who had gotten me into the show, I found myself with little incentive to stick around much past the start of the following season.  It's a shame because the show was generally well-acted and the writing was usually pretty solid, but that twist broke a lot of my investment in the characters.

Actually, that was the real shame.  I wanted to keep enjoying the show and there was a lot there that still was working (evidenced by the fact it ran a further three seasons).  The Rebecca aspect was just one aspect of a very large show, after all.  Thing is, there's a risk that comes with taking chances and sometimes your audience isn't going to be able to follow you after certain choices.  A viewer less invested in Rebecca's story might have rolled with the punches better.  For me, it had been one of my favorite aspects of the series, so the change-up was a bitter pill to swallow.

So do you have any similar examples?  What retcons have earned your ire?

16 comments:

  1. The best example of the worst Retcon is obviously the Star Wars prequels with its Midicloirans and Jar Jars, AND the re-released butchered original Star Wars with Greedo shooting first, and toned down violence.

    I think the worst violation from the prequels was the whole cop out explanation of the Midiclorians as the "thing" behind the force. Lucas pussed out and didn't want to explain the spiritual aspect of the force that he had established in the original movies: I.E. he didn't explain why Obi-wan was able to come back as a ghost, or the consequences of dying while being in service to the dark side.

    The best recent example of Good Retcon would be "Tron Uprising." The only thing really going against the series is that its release came too far out after "Tron: Legacy" was released. With the new Tron 3 movie supposedly being fast tracked, "Uprising" has become a red-headed step child at Disney, being bounced around the schedule, and even then it's only on that Disney XD channel that nobody gets.

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  2. There's a big reveal at the end of TNT's first Dallas season which, to be plausible, means the first reunion movie never happened. Which is a little awkward since moments from that movie are mentioned in the pilot, and it's weird for me, because "J.R. Returns" was the first I ever saw of the series. That retcon kinda stings.

    Following the trend of the Carrie Diaries/Sex And The City inconsistencies, I think that happens often with spin-offs... even if it's a sequel/prequel. Before Rhoda got her own spin-off from Mary Tyler Moore, she went to a sister Debbie's wedding, mentioned a brother named Arnold, and then neither were on the spin-off... not even mentioned.

    It might also be more annoying and obvious now that we have more DVD's and archives at our disposal. Near the end of The Facts Of Life, three of the girls from the early seasons returned sans Molly Ringwald... and none of them seemed to know Jo, even though they had scenes and classes together between Seasons 2-4.

    A retcon that turned out to be good, though? The revelation of who Tess Mercer was on Smallville. I liked that.

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    1. Actually was just thinking, on a similar note, with Smallville, I hated it when Chloe was revealed as a "meteor freak" and that she just happened to pass through town the day of the meteor shower. One thing I loved about early Chloe is that she WAS the normal everyday outside character the audience could identify with; that took it away a bit.

      Trying to fit Doomsday into the first meteor shower bugged me as well, especially since it goes against Lex's statement in the series pilot that his father never set foot in the mansion. (I did kinda dig the Veritas stuff though even though most Smallville fans didn't)

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    2. Frasier did the same thing. It was half-explained in one episode but I can't believe anyone much cared really. I guess they didn't have so obsessive a fanbase as modern cult hits.

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    3. My guess is that the FRASIER one had to do with CHEERS being in heavy syndication at the time and the writers wanted to make it fit. As I heard it, they knew from the start they were rewiting his backstory, so it seems like they wanted to make sure viewers understood this change didn't happen out of laziness or ignorance.

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  3. Great article on one of my biggest peeves in television. Here are some examples of my (old and new) 
    favorite shows...

    Detective Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo's character) in CSI:NY was introduced in interviews as being from a mob family; hints were given in season one's Tanglewood. Then in Season two episode Run Silent, Run Deep revealed that it was actually his brother who was mobbed up.  Finally, in Season five Danny says, out of the blue, "I come from a cop family" in episode The Party's Over. Guess fans were just the last to know about it. Totally ruined the character's intriguing backstory.

    Not sure if this qualifies as retcon, but Mentalist season three finale ended with Jane shooting his arch-nemesis RJ. Viewers had all summer to come to terms with it. Then season four's premiere revealed the guy  wasn't in fact RJ, just one of his henchmen. It was a huge waste of Bradley Whitford as he was phenomenal as Red John. 

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  4. One More Day/One Moment in Time in the Spider-Man comics. I'll be the first to admit that good stories have since come out of the established status quo, but the plot hinges on two characters making a decision that flies in the face of decades of their established character, and left the series with an as yet unresolved plot point of the main character having made a deal with the Devil. It was poorly conceived, poorly written, poorly drawn, and still needs fixing.

    I tried to think of TV/Film examples, but as soon as I got on to OMD I knew nothing would else would top my ire.

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    1. It's funny, the way I see it the act of making the deal with the Devil in OMD doesn't count as a retcon as it's more of a plot twist. However, it causes a retcon that fairly effectively makes much of Spidey's history a confusing muddle, so that definitely counts.

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  5. Oh, I think everybody in comics is still in tears over the 'One More Day' debacle in Amazing Spider-Man, just as we're bound to get over this 'Superior Spider-Man' nonsense in a year or so. You could even point to the muddled execution of the last stages of The Return of Bruce Wayne as a good example of a great idea fumbled at the last stages.

    'Lost' pulled this trick a few times, especially as they tried to rebuild and redevelop their own mythology in later seasons - by the final season, even the hardcore fans have to admit it was a jumbled mess of contradictory ideas. We could spend days picking that apart, so let's not!

    Quick shout out to Doctor Who spinoff 'Torchwood', which had a drug some characters used on civilians to erase their recent memory and help the team cover their tracks. The drug's name? 'Retcon' :)

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  7. This immediately makes me think of how they took a nose dive with HEROES and somehow managed to make very a badass villain into a weak lost puppy, and took the character of a young INVINCIBLE GIRL and made her hide in her room for most of the show. They constantly backtracked and re-wrote back stories to tie everyone together for the ending. It felt very forced - and a shame. It was such a cool first season.

    Sometimes it feels like when a writer(s) on a show get stuck on an idea for a plot point, they will change the whole dynamics of the show to fit it in. I'd never re-write my spec to fit a single gag in. I suppose writing on a massive show like that is far more complicated though, as there are so many voices influencing the story.

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    1. TOTALLY agree with this. For me, the worst instances were the rewites to the HRG/Syler/Elle backstory in season three. It really undermined a lot of the original characterizations. The further retcons to HRG's backstory in season 4 might have been dumber and all but killed my interest in the show.

      Not unlike the B&S scenario, HRG was my favorite character so I was a lot less forgiving to the messing around with his character.

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    2. The Writer's Strike killed Heroes. Watch Alphas instead; very similar, but much better emotional beats, and faster storytelling.

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  8. So far no one has named the twist that was my close #2. I'm not sure if it should be treated as a retcon or just a terrible reveal, so that might explain it going this long without a mention.

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  9. There's an episode of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER in Season 6 where we find out that Buffy had told her parents when she first became the Slayer, and they'd briefly committed her to a mental hospital. This goes completely against what we'd seen earlier in the series, when Buffy finally "comes out" to her baffled mom after years of being the Slayer. There's plenty of minor retcons in BUFFY, but for some reason that one really irked me.

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  10. So apparently no one shares my hatred for the Samantha Mulder retcon. Though in fairness to the writers, there's a decent case to be made that's more of a "terrible plot twist" than retcon.

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