Reprint: Oedipus Rex: Or Where a Simple Toy Teaches Our Hero About Drama and Fridge Logic and the Perils of the Internet

MEET REX. Rex is an I-Dog : an electronic device with LED lights on its nose. A tiny microphone inside, and a headphone jack mean that Rex reacts to music you play to him. That's how you feed him. In return for a bit of music, Rex will display patterns of lights, move his ears, and bark. Occasionally he'll play a jaunty little tune. Like the long-ago Tamagotchi craze, Rex is interactive, in the sense that he demands attention, "learns" and has different moods depending on how you interact with him.

Someone very cool who clearly has my number sent me Rex for my birthday. I opened up his box this morning, expecting it to be the HDMI cable I ordered from Best Buy. Imagine my surprise.

I've been playing with Rex all morning, as I read the paper and drink coffee. I've got the XM Radio on, and I've been switching between singer songwriter stuff, hip hop, blues, alt country, jazz, and punk to see the different ways Rex reacts. And he does react differently to different types of music. Sometimes he even dances.

Clearly, Rex is a good boy.

What's that?

Oh, I know.

Rex actually has a computer chip inside, and a microphone that reacts to sound waves and converts those sound waves to trigger certain sequences of LED's because of some algorhythm. Rex's barks are a recording. And his motions are motor-driven.

Now, that being said, if you diss my dog again, I'll fucking kill you.

See, I've wanted a dog for a while now. Dogs and writers just seem to go together. Sadly, I don't feel like getting a dog that looks more like a rat, and the condo I live in is too small and cluttered for a satisfyingly- sized doggie. So I've put off the dog until the next time I move.

I know all this, and the stuff about Rex being an electronic device from Hasbro, and yet within a few minutes, I'm reacting to this toy like, you know, it really is a dog. Like its mood is a mood, and not a program.

See, we humans are programmed to react to things. And pretend, and buy into things that we know in our hearts aren't real. In school, one of the first literary techniques you learn about is the concept of personification.

But it goes beyond that. Way beyond. We take steps to buy into things that we know are not true every single day.

On Facebook, I've added this dumb zombies application. I have a zombie army. Recently they introduced fighting. Now, I know that the fighting is just mathematically determined, that there's no skill and nothing going on there. But yet, I have a complex series of moves I do when I lose a fight. I fight weaker opponents in order to amass a few wins before I can take on the next, stronger opponent. (By the way, in this context, "taking on the next opponent" really means clicking the mouse twice.) I know this helps me win more, even though I know it has nothing to do with me winning more.

Confused?

Okay, what about this? Steve Jobs constantly fields queries from people who insist that the Ipod has some super secret proprietary algorhythm that somehow knows exactly the right song to play next when you shuffle. Seriously, otherwise, how would it know to follow up "I Wish it Would Rain?" with "Aint No Sunshine?" I mean, come on.

The idea of randomness, true randomness, is so scary to us in most contexts that we will jump through all manner of hoops in order NOT to face it. I've sat through many dates where I got to hear all about horoscopes -- and people (okay, sorry about this, but it's mostly true) women -- explain why this and that means this and that and the other, and besides the fact that maybe being born at a certain time in the year influences your behavior slightly -- come on, deep down, you know it's all bullshit. But try saying that to a believer.

(And yes, yes, I know my atheist friends will insist this applies equally to all manner of religious faith too, but I'm not going there, a) because I'm a once and, let's face it, probably future Catholic boy, and b) because I think so long as faith is kept personal and not put out in the world in an attempt to codify or judge the behavior of others, hey, it's nobody's damn business but your own.)

The net result of our incredible fear of randomness is that we look for patterns in everything. We try to make sense of things. Our minds fill in the blanks. So we see shapes and animals in clouds of water vapor. So we look at multicolored dots in the newspaper and see them as an image.

It's a good thing we do this, because if we didn't, I wouldn't have a job. And storytelling for film and TV wouldn't exist.

When you watch a TV show, you intuit a lot. You follow narrative, you fill in blanks. You follow clues, and search for the pattern. If it's a hero journey, you identify with the quest. If it's a mystery, you try to figure it out.

Your audience will work with you to understand the story. They're desperate to do it, they're looking to be entertained, to learn something, to distract themselves from the randomness.

So as storytellers, we do a little dance. Our job, whichever crafty technique we use, is to give enough detail, to provide enough information or imagery or character or data so that our audience deciphers our pattern. They work to fill in the blanks we've left and get to the end.

Now, I've said before -- there's all sorts of stuff we have to do to make that work within the frame of the restrictions of the medium: whether that me a limited number of sets, or the 43 minute running time, or a small budget.

Stories use coincidence, they use shorthand to hide exposition, they use recognizable tropes to signal things to the audience that you don't want to take the time to explain because the meat of the story -- the thing that people are going to enjoy -- lies elsewhere.

"Fridge logic" is a much maligned and misunderstood term outside the TV writing community. Technically, it's those small details that won't bother the audience until later, the ones that if they think about them at all -- it's a half hour later when you're at the fridge making a sandwich and you go, "hey, wait a minute."

Arguably, the most famous example of "fridge logic" are the Letters of Transit in Casablanca. Think about it. If they get those letters, Ilsa and Lazlo are free -- the letters can't be rescinded, they can't even be questioned!

That's actually said in the movie.

They can't be questioned. By the Nazis. In WWII.

Riiiight.

There's a moment in the construction of every drama script where you have to decide, and discuss, whether you need to explain or justify something, or whether you can just let it slide. The problem is that every thing you explain takes time. And if you take the time to explain, you have less time for story, and emotion -- which is what people buy into. If you err on the side of explaining too much, your story becomes like a hull with lots and lots of crusty barnacles clinging to it. You can't slide through the water gracefully anymore -- you're this big, ungainly, crusty thing.

I'm not trying to excuse bumps here -- bumps are things that take your audience out of the story...and woe betide someone who tries to excuse something that's actually a bump as fridge logic." If you jar your audience out of their state of willing disbelief, they stop filling in the patterns you want them to fill in. And they start looking for fault.

But the thing you must keep in mind is this: People want to believe things. They want you to fool them. They WANT to see patterns -- they're programmed for it. In a very real sense, they are more on your side than you (or even they) think they are.

But...

(Man, if you didn't know that was coming then I'm afraid you've missed the DTOS pattern.)

The social ramifications of some of the TV discussion sites, like Television Without Pity can be serious for a writer who's just starting out, or even for those of us who've been doing it for awhile.

Because TWOP and some of these other sites reverse the dynamic that's at play in the wider audience.

See, rather than doing what the majority of people do when they watch -- try to buy in, try to see the pattern, try to fill in the blanks -- a lot of the posters on these sites watch to find fault, so that they have something to snark about.

It's the difference between meeting your friend's new girl or boyfriend, and your ex's new love. In the case of the former, you're going to do whatever you can to find the parts of that person you like. You want to buy in because you want your friend to be happy. In the latter case, you're looking for any fault you can possibly find because hating that person is going to make you feel better about yourself.

Yes, I'm aware that I just called the posters on TWOP bitter exes.

Give me a minute to coil out some more rope --

The peculiar socialization rituals of online messageboards mean you can earn bonafides for being critical. Or even overly critical. You saw something first. You're building yourself up and tearing them down. So, yeah, those LOST writers sure are stupid, because they completely missed this inconsistency...

...now, some of the time whatever they point to will be apt. It may indeed be a flaw in the writing. Or it may be one of those things that happen in production. The director didn't direct the scene the right way, or the actor didn't bring it or any one of a number of things.

But more often than not the thing that they're pointing to is either an absolutely concrete case of fridge logic -- ie: if you weren't watching to LOOK for a fault, it wouldn't bother you -- or it's not a fault at all.

Come on, it wouldn't be the first time somebody found fault when one wasn't there.

I'm amused and amazed when I read a post from someone pointing out a "fault" that shows a complete lack of understanding of a) history, b) society, c) science, d) logic, e) human nature, f) relationships (I could keep going to zz but I'm already bored.)

So why do I read these posts? Why do they fascinate me? Well, because I'm hooked. Hooked by how the way people critique things always reveals more about their character than the work they're critiquing. I think you probably get a pretty good, if not complete, picture of me and how I think from the entries on this blog. Roger Ebert is pretty knowable through his reviews and opinions, I think. So is John Doyle. Anyone who posts regularly on any site related to TV is no different.

If you started writing after the rise of the net and these sites, then you've got to work extra hard to insulate yourself from the deleterious effects of nitpicking criticism. It's a social expression of a community way more than it's a useful learning tool. If you use the kind of dissection you see on TWOP as a baseline when you're constructing story, you are never going to get anywhere. You will spend way too much time trying to bullet proof your story, adding barnacle after barnacle of explanation that doesn't matter to the 90% of the audience that doesn't derive some self-esteem from complaining about Jack or Sawyer or that girl with the short haircut on Cold Case.

Just remember: most people want to see the dog.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Rex is geting antsy.