In POSE 205 Ricky and Damon both get the chance to audition for Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour. It’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened to either of them or their houses. There’s a lot of excitement but in Ricky’s house some urgency, too, as Mother Elektra considers how she can parley his opportunity into her own. She even tells her children to break Damon’s foot to rule him out.
There's a "hijinks ensue" version of this episode where that back and forth of undermining and competition is the episode's engine. But instead Blanca finds out pretty much right away and talks Elektra down.
And yet I still spent the remainder of the episode on pins and needles, worried about one of them getting injured or Ricky betraying Damon. Was it just because the episode set up those possibilities early? You’d think, except I was just as terrified of them when they were leaving their Solid Gold pilot shoot at the very end and Damon steps into the street (where once again nothing happens).
One of the lessons that I heard again and again at UCLA was that you want conflict in every scene. It's the magnet that pulls us in.
But we've all also seen so much TV at this point, we anticipate that. And it turns out the longer that an episode refuses to give us real danger, the more certain we become that something is coming, and that it's probably horrible. Seriously, Damon just walking into the street at the end was about as scary a moment as I've ever seen on the show.
If the stakes are high enough and the characters loved enough, maybe sometimes writers don't have to do anything other than have the characters living their lives. Lacking external stimuli we in the audience will take care of the rest.
I don't always post on Saturdays and Sundays, but I do have one more thought on POSE to offer. So look for that over the weekend!
