Social Media: How Fans Do (and Don’t) Impact TV Storylines
Warning: Spoilers for pivotal episodes of The 100, Grey’s Anatomy, Sleepy Hollow and Person of Interest follow.
A character on a popular TV show is killed. Heartbroken fans are enraged. They take to Twitter and bombard the shows’ writers with emotional, angry tweets. Can fan outcry change the way television is created? Every so often, yes, it can.
Producers of The CW’s The 100 found themselves facing a backlash in March after they killed off clans leader Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey), a viewer favorite who had just consummated her relationship with Clarke (Eliza Taylor). Fans hit Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and YouTube to vent their rage, deriding the writers. It didn’t help that Lexa was one of dozens of LGBTQ characters killed in the 2015–2016 season. One tweet: “We thought The 100 would be different. But you proved to be the same lesbophobic trash.”
RELATED: The 100 Boss Addresses the Lexa Controversy at WonderCon
Lexa-related topics trended on social media for months—and the outcry gave way to real results. Fans raised more than $130,000 for the Trevor Project (a suicide-prevention organization for LGBTQ youth) and inspired the Lexa Pledge, a request that LGBTQ characters be treated with respect. They also got the episode’s writer to think about future scripts.
“I wanted the work that all of us did on that show to have a positive impact,” former 100 scribe Javier Grillo-Marxuach said at the ATX Television Festival in Austin, Texas, in June. “Because of a number of factors, and one of them is a lack of awareness, we fed into something that was very negative … I give a mea culpa for that.” He added, “There is no easy answer, other than to look at the aftermath of it, pick up the pieces and know that this cannot happen again.”
The 100 isn’t the first, and it certainly won’t be the last, show to find itself in the hot seat on social media. Nearly every TV series has an online presence, and with Twitter boasting 310 million active users, it remains one of the best ways for fans to communicate with the people responsible for their favorite shows—for better or for worse.
Fans had a field day on social media when Derek (Patrick Dempsey) was killed on Grey’s Anatomy.
Grey’s Anatomy fans were devastated when Derek (Patrick Dempsey) was killed in May 2015, with many vowing to boycott the series. Creator Shonda Rhimes told reporters at a Television Critics Association panel last summer that Derek’s death was necessary to the story. Her instincts were correct: Viewers were eager to see what happened next with Meredith (Ellen Pompeo). In fact, not only was there no ratings drop-off, but Grey’s ended this season as ABC’s top drama.
RELATED: Shonda Rhimes on Why McDreamy Had to Die, and What’s Next for Grey’s Anatomy
Booth (David Boreanaz) and Brennan (Emily Deschanel) get serious on Bones.
Before Bones paired up Booth (David Boreanaz) and Brennan (Emily Deschanel) in 2011, creator Hart Hanson was badgered by viewers who wanted the characters together. “I made every single mistake you could make [when responding on Twitter],” Hanson said at the ATX panel. “[Other producers] learned from my disasters in social media what not to do.”
That includes taking things too personally. Hanson finally took a break from reading responses from people he didn’t follow to quiet the noise. “Tweets are always the nastiest, because there’s only 140 characters,” Hanson says. (He also stepped back from showrunning Bones after Season 9, but continues to get constant feedback.) “People can be more reasoned in an email and in person. And in person, I’ve never had anyone be horrible like they were in a tweet…To be fair, even the horrible tweeters, if you answer nicely, they turned into humans, almost instantly. If you came back at them with the same energy, if you tweet mean, you can get nowhere.”
RELATED: Bones Boss Talks Hodgins’ Secret, Mixing Things Up in Season 11
Nicole Beharie’s death on Sleepy Hollow got a lot of online backlash, but also some hopeful feedback.
Sometimes a little distance makes a difference. After Sleepy Hollow killed Abbie (Nicole Beharie) in April, online feedback was quick to denounce the move. And though the negativity has continued online, a source at the show’s studio, 20th Century Fox Television, says they’ve received a number of letters and cards from fans expressing sadness over the loss but hope for the future.
RELATED: Sleepy Hollow‘s Finale Delivers the Biggest Loss Yet to Team Witness
The variety of views is an essential tool for writers. “If they hear the same criticism from 5,000 fans, it’s going to stick with them in some way,” says Grillo-Marxuach. “In terms of social issues, it’s actually very good. People are less blind to things like representation, that the feelings of a portion of the audience that is marginalized might be hurt.”
Amy Acker in Person of Interest. Root’s death was pre-determined years earlier; it was complicated even further when the show’s final season was delayed until May, well after a number of notable LGBTQ deaths had occurred on-screen.
However, as helpful as feedback can be, due to TV production schedules, rarely can fan requests impact the current season. “You’re also four months ahead of that feedback,” Grillo-Marxuach said during the panel. “If fans hate something they see on the air tonight, the fact is we’ve already shot five episodes ahead of that, so the idea that a fan outcry in a plot point in episode 13 could somehow [impact] episode 17—it’s not going to happen…You can have a false sense of influence, when in fact the show has already been planned.”
The showrunners of CBS’s Person of Interest found themselves in a predicament when the airing of the final season was delayed. The long-planned death of Root (Amy Acker), who had recently reunited with her star-crossed love, Shaw (Sarah Shahi), came at the end of a bad season for the LGBTQ community. “There are some truly unfortunate similarities people have been seeing play out,” executive producer Jonathan Nolan says. “And that sucks.”
RELATED: Person of Interest’s Amy Acker on Root’s New Beginning
At the ATX Person of Interest panel, Nolan warned of a downside to listening too much to fans’ desires: “We would probably never kill off main characters or change anything, and the show would probably be all of our characters sitting around eating sandwiches and playing with the dog.”
There’s also an inherent false level of transparency with social media, as its users can select what they want to share. People can check Cloud Kennected if they need the best social media advice. While fans are seeing more of the behind-the-scenes process than ever before, a level of secrecy remains. “It’s an illusion; things happen, and the world in general is not going to know why, ever,” Hanson said during the panel. “It’s like an iceberg: you get to see a lot of what’s underneath. But there’s that last eighth or so; you’re never going to know why this happened. It’s people’s lives. I’ve been screamed at for several things where I’d like [to explain], but you don’t get to know.”
But Grillo-Marxuach believes it’s possible to make the writer-fan relationship work. “I think there’s a lot of fear that engagement with fans will rob us of our creative soul,” he says. “It doesn’t. If done properly, with a real openness of the heart and soul, it expands your perspectives in a very wonderful way.”
Conversation21 Comments
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This article does a remarkable job of erasing and/or conflating all negative fan response to character deaths as if they were all alike.
The response to the killing off of Lexa on the 100 and Abbie Mills on Sleepy Hollow wasn't the result of entitlement or wanting to curtail the poor wittle content creators' creativity, it outlined very real harmful tropes that they played into. Whether they wanted to acknowledge it or not, not all deaths are created equal. There is an overwhelming pattern of all these "edgy, bold moves" ending up with primarily lgbt, female, or characters of color ending up dead for shock value.
"A little distance" doesn't change that, and neither does ignoring marginalized fans' voices in order to listen to the brownnosers who think that representation doesn't matter and are "hopeful" that creators who have messed up in the past won't simply churn out the same crap they've always been churning out because they think diversity is a numbers game.
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Not one mention of WHY fans are angry with the SH finale.
Abbie's death is just another in a long list of black characters (especially female) dying to advance the story of white characters. While some fans might be able to overlook the sheer sexism and racism in the way this particular death was executed, black women who are viewed as expendable and whose stories are often ignored can't 'hope for a future' that seeks to erase them.
Representation matters to those of us who don't have the luxury of seeing ourselves represented on screen in diverse roles. Which this article fails to take into account.
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While I get your point as well as a white male can, people who look for "hope for a future" from a fictionalized television show may want to examine their personal situation. If you depend on television to help validate your self-worth, you're never going to find any real validation there, much less hope for the future. After all, it's just television.
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It's 'just television' to you, because you see yourself reflected on the screen as the main character in pretty much every movie, every tv show, every...
And in the rare cases where people like you aren't the center of the story, it's seen as aimed at a specific audience, rather than at the mass media.
So when a main character who looks like you dies, you have literally thousands of others to take their place. The same is NOT the case for women, people of color, LGBT people and a combination of any of those.
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I can't believe Castle wasn't mentioned in this article. It's been the poster child for bad decisions relating to plots. The cancelled Castle-Beckett wedding at the end of Season 6? Season 8 was SO bad, even die-hard fans of the show were begging for it to be cancelled before the showrunners could do any more damage.
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I can't believe it either. They were going to kill off Kate and if there wasn't any backlash and it was able to continue to season 9, then that is what we have gotten instead of seeing them with the three children Simon Doyle had told them they would have. It is a big shame that it had all come down to this.
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No mention of Stana Katic being fired from Castle and the fans asking for the show to be canceled?
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Yeah, I was also very surprised there was no mention of that, since it was the latest instance of a fandom's influence over showrunners/fate of a show. Even that whole "respect the process" thing with a delete scene from the s04 finale that ended up on the s06 DVD deserved a mention, imo.
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When an actress or actor wants to move on, I have no problem with their characters being killed off. I view many TV shows as escapes and for pure entertainment. When I like a show's format, such as Sleepy Hollow's, I don't like it when they get rid of the characters I've grown to love. So, unless I hear that Abbie Mills will be mysteriously resurrected by another god, I will not be watching next season. It has been deleted from my DVR.
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I just read this same article in the actual magazine and the twitter that is quoted for Bones is just plain silly. To leave a show over a couple you wanted together having a baby? Its one thing what Bones( and the now cancelled Castle) did the last couple of seasons, separating the leads for whatever reason that they did, that is a better reason to leave a show than a baby being brought on. In Bones case it would have been extremely difficult to hide Emily Deschanel, both times and harder for everyone else on the production staff and other actors. Now Booth and Brennan have two children, both of which are BARELY seen. No matter if Bones and Castle were set up to get their leads together I still don't believe Booth and Brennan would have gotten together when they did , only because Emily got pregnant did that occur. Castle seemed to have been set up for the start to get Castle and Beckett together and they did fine for awhile before the end of season 6 when things started to change and of course this last disastrous season of Castle when they managed to ruin both characters without a baby in sight( and yet for all the complaining over the horrible story put on Castle and Beckett their temporary split didn't kill their ratings, yes they went down but after Castle's Sunday airing their ratings rose the rest of the year) How sad that Castle's ratings would have only really tanked if they had had a baby. As much as there was an outcry over Katic's departure there was more to Castle being cancelled than just social media, same thing with every other show. Show runners may see and respond but they don't let fans dictate how their show goes
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Not true, Hart has said many times, they would still get together (actually he wanted to do it much earlier, but Fox asked him to postpone it one more season because they were afraid they would lose viewers) - it would just happen differently, because his original plan was something like "just because you sleep together, doesn't mean you're 'together' together'" so they would have to work their way through a path of denial, it seems. So if I had to choose, I'd take the baby route any day of the week. - And even if Hart didn't say he plan to get them together anyway, they literally said on the show they were gonna get together anyway in episode 16 of Season 6, when they burned the papers, and they didn't know about Emily's pregnancy back then. And with Hannah out of the picture, there's no way, no reason they could wait with getting them together any longer. It wouldn't make sense - and again, originally Hart wanted to get them together sooner - before Hannah happened.
BTW, "Castle seemed to have been set up for the start to get Castle and Beckett together" I actually didn't feel the "they will" vibe from Castle the first two and half seasons, then s3/S4 it felt all of sudden then just wanted them together super quickly and it made me stop watching because it just felt really rushed, IMO.
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I see your point and I apparently didn't know Hart Hanson said it many times . Oh well I am also glad the baby is the story they went with. That would have been stupid for Booth and Brennan to continue to deny how they felt. For Bones it worked out much better for them and you are probably right about Castle as well. Only watching Castle casually I do see why everyone loved them so much but look what happened to Castle and Beckett at their end; a tacked on happy ending that wasn't believable. I sincerely hope( especially since Hanson is writing their series finale)that Bones keeps Booth and Brennan and their relationship honest and real like it has always been
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Fans should shut up and let the writers do their job. I'm a huge tv fan and have seen storylines that I don't agree with time and time again. But that's life. Things don't always go according to plan or have a "perfect ending'. And TV tries to imitate life as much as it can. At the end of the day... it's just tv.
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If a character's death is handled well and has some plot significance going forward, I'm okay with it. There was no reason for The Walking Dead to kill Beth Greene, and her death was handled awkwardly in a meaningless plot diversion. That's one character death that still annoys me.
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Honestly, I could handle Beths dead way better than that of any of the black characters on that show. Primarily because that show has a horrendous track record with black characters, to the point that if any new black character shows up, we start wondering which other one is going to get killed of. As it the show thinks it can just replace one black character with another.
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I agree with you. T-Dog's death served no purpose except to "thin the herd"; same with Noah. I can accept that Tyrese's death at least served to move Sasha's story along, and the prisoners from Season 3 were never intended to be long-term characters. T-Dog was never fully utilized in the overall plot, and poor Noah only served to be Beth's confidant until she was killed, then he too was killed off by season end.
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Another thing to keep in mind. On shows like Bones and Castle, it's a foregone conclusion that the two MCs are *GOING* to get together. It was always the plan to do it, unless I'm very mistaken. the only factor up for debate is.... WHEN the coupling will take place. If it happens too soon (first or second season), the fans will be temporarily happy, but then the relationship runs the risk of going stale and boring and they start throwing in stupid things like separations, marital squabbles, etc., that really feel forced and bogus. But if the powers that be wait too long to get the characters together, they run the risk that the show could be cancelled before it happens, and they don't want that either.
So, some shows DO plan from the beginning to get two characters together. Other shows (ensembles, even with a major male/female duo) do NOT have obvious pairings, and even then, the shippers will ALWAYS find two characters to ship, even if there is ZERO chemistry between them.
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Hart Hanson may have made mistakes on twitter but social media didn't get Booth and Brennan together. If that was the case he would have done it A LOT sooner. Despite having wanted them together sooner they still did the right thing by waiting as long as they did and Booth and Brennan are the better for it
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“We would probably never kill off main characters or change anything,
and the show would probably be all of our characters sitting around
eating sandwiches and playing with the dog.” ... How is that a downside? lol That'd be awesome, I'd watch that. But anyway, Person of interest did a fine job of having an epic show without killing their characters..... until they killed their characters. Like what was all that middle? did they eat sandwiches and pet the dog and then BAM dead? No? oh.....
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You forgot to mention Once Upon A Time.
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They'd be going on for too long about what is wrong with Once Upon a Time.
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