I’m an eager connoisseur of all shows circa 2009, give or take a few years.

And I’ve observed something about writers…something I’m sure you’re sick of too.

Am I the only one who feels like sometimes writers are really good at making boxes for themselves? They’re like bad mimes–really good at making invisible prisons, really bad at getting out of them.

It all comes back to that age-old question. You know the one.

“Can men and women ever really be friends?”

I know what When Harry Met Sally thinks…

But how does it apply to writers?

(PS, this blog has spoilers for a show that ended, like, ten years ago, so be warned, haha.)

Impatience!

And let me let you in on a little not-so-secret secret: I jump the gun, when it comes to TV shows. I’m impatient. I like to know the facts, generally, before committing. (I wonder how that will affect my love life…)

Picture this:

I’m watching a show. Alias, for example, by J.J. Abrams. I’m five episodes in. “Hmm,” I think to myself. “I bet those two characters end up. I don’t care how, but they better. And Will–HE BETTER NOT DIE. And what happened to that one side character–was she important?”

And because I’m not a cheap date who wastes her time, I turn to the wiki.

“TELL ME,” I scream at the forum search bar. “TELL ME THE ANSWERS.”

And voila, my anxieties are quelled, and I can watch in confidence knowing that, somehow, things end up the way I want.

Now, am I proud of this fact? No.

Am I consistent? Yes.

I blame binge-culture. The ease of streaming. I almost miss the days when the only way I could watch Avatar: The Last Airbender was to get it book-by-book at the library, forced to wait in the lengthly holds-cue until it was our turn. Then, of course, as the parents ruled, we could only watch one or two episodes a night.

Tough old days, those. But fair.

And not as lame, on my part.

I was determined to do things differently this time…

Platonic partners.

I was watching this show called Warehouse 13. It’s campy, and the effects are pretty dated…so obviously I loved it. I was determined to ride it out.

“Let’s have fun this time, Lucy,” I thought. “Good old fashioned fun, with no Wikis and no line-cutting.”

And to my credit, I made it through two whole seasons without peaking at the last proverbial pages.

Besides the premise of finding artifacts imbued with the life-force/personality traits of certain historical figures, famous authors, and storybook characters that turned out to be real, what kept me hooked through the first two seasons of the show was the dynamic between the two main characters.

It’d been a long time since I’d seen such a well-written sibling dynamic.

The two main characters are Secret Service agents. They work for Warehouse 13 (shocker) and are constantly in life-or-death situations. They’re partners, in the buddy-cop sense. They go out and stop the bad things from happening.

And they’re funny about it. They’d goof off. They hated each other at the start, as all good buddy-cops do. But slowly they became friends. They confided in each other and had this link of the soul. They cared. But there wasn’t any undercurrent of sexual tension.

I was loving it. They played off each other so well, like Merry and Pippin or Dipper and Mable.

But perhaps what I thought was platonic writing done well was, in fact, romantic writing done poorly.

But…they’re the leads!

Alas, this magic-crime-stopping duo is made up of the show’s leads.

A guy. A girl. Both considerably attractive.

And we all know what that means: It can’t stay platonic. If they’re not enemies, they’re lovers. That’s just how the television cookie crumbles.

I started predicting I was wrong about their relationship–just by noticing little things, which unfortunately had nothing to do with how their actual relationship was written.

I kept looking up the actors on IMDb, as one does. And slowly, I noticed that there are really only a handful of characters that are in most of the episodes. There seemed to be…only about five or six super consistent characters.

“Uh oh,” I thought. “That doesn’t bode well.”

Because if there was anything obvious about the way the two leads were written, it was the fact that they were clearly not meant to end up alone.

So if not with others…who else was left but each other?

I caved.

I pulled up the wiki.

DESPAIR. The fandom had spoken: they end up together.

I sighed, resigned to the nature of these things. Of course they did. Why did I even think to hope otherwise?

And you can laugh, go ahead. I get it. It’s silly and trivial and a show that ended in 2014.

But personally, I find it very interesting. I’ll have to watch the rest of the show to see how they end up there, but from where I stand right now, “romance” really didn’t seem like the original intention.

Or, if it was, the writers ignored the something-better that they accidentally created.

I can only imagine that they were so set on the formula. The “guy lead and girl lead end up together, and that’s just how it goes,” formula. They ignored the depth they actually had–the more complicated, more interesting relationship.

“Romance isn’t deep?” I hear you say, judging me with a well-practiced side-glance.

Of course romance can be deep.

But it’s not the only option, and I’m sick of it being treated like it is!

We lose so much when we view every on-screen relationship through a romantic lens. It makes things shallower. More formulaic. People aren’t really like that.

I know what Harry says. There’s truth to it, probably. I don’t know.

But I know that writers can be more creative than that. Platonic love is just as interesting as romance.

Who are some of your favorite characters with a sibling dynamic? Comment below, I’d love to learn about them!

And we’re going to ignore the fact that I just finished my first novel (woo!) and that the guy and girl DO have a romance subplot in that. They’re teen versions Robin Hood and Maid Marian, so I think I get a pass. Right?

---