I love a great British spy show, and just after Christmas Netflix released TREASON, a five part British spy thriller starring Charlie Cox (Daredevil) as the acting head of MI6 after his boss gets poisoned by what seem to be Russians.
There's a lot of twists and countertwists and of course you don't know who you can trust. But watching the first couple episodes I was particularly struck by a repeated move writer Matt Charman makes. It's not a great one, unfortunately, but it is pretty common in suspense stories: Dumbing Your Characters Down.
Here's what I'm talking about. We've got our hero Adam Lawrence who is made the head of MI6 because his boss is poisoned and near death. With that event Lawrence gains complete authority. He is the new head of MI6, with all the power that comes with it.
And that's really important, because Adam soon learns that a Russian agent who he worked with and had an affair with abroad has in fact been working behind the scenes to set up each of the successful missions that got him to where he is today, including now poisoning his boss. So without ever knowing it, he's been set up as a double agent, and she is now going to use him to get information she wants.
The problem is, from that moment forward in the first two episodes, Adam goes from one erratic act to another, ditching his detail repeatedly, providing key information from her to his men that they knew nothing about. And no one raises an eyebrow. Apparently we're supposed to say, Well, he's the boss, but especially in light of the attack on his boss, it's impossible to understand people not asking questions about what's going on here. And no one does. They've been written dumber than they must be.
The same thing happens with Adam's wife Maddy. When he takes on this new job she is right there for him, 100% supportive and encouraging. But then within 20 or 30 minutes she is upset that he's working so much and then doubting what he's telling her to such a degree that she's willing to tell her friend the CIA operative in town and to use her recording equipment to try and record him when he's on the phone. Which all seems like the opposite of how she should be, given how she is introduced.
When this kind of stuff happens, it's for a pretty simple reason: the writer feels stuck. They think the story needs to go one way, but don't see an authentic way to get there. They basically cheat to get to the hand they want, in this case Adam free both to act to save his daughter (who gets kidnapped) and also able to be constantly tempted by the Russian agent, and Maddy drawn into his story in a big way. (She ends up becoming a sort of operative for the CIA, even planting a tracker on him, all of which is insane.)
There's really two lessons here. First, Respect the Rules of Storytelling. If you establish someone "gets" their partner's life and challenges, then it should have to take an awful lot to change their mind. You have to earn that change of heart. And that's not just about information that is revealed; it's about time spent on letting that information eat away at the character. Turns on a dime just make a character look crazy.
Second, Write Your Characters to the Top of Your Intelligence. The smarter you allow your characters to be, the harder you make things for your protagonist, and the most satisfying the story is. When you cheat and let a character or organization go dumb, you don't just distract the audience, which is suddenly checked out of the story and questioning the writing/directing; you undermine the hero's journey. Their successes feel less earned, and suddenly we're not on the hero's side in the same way that we were.
It's sort of like having a little kid's older brother come and play on the grade school football team with them. That grade schooler may be great, but all we're noticing is how the presence of his older brother is preventing the grade schooler from experiencing any real challenge. His greatness is immaterial now; he's being babied.
