Best Friends For... a rather limited time-span? (Spoilers for West Wing, BtVS, AtS and DS9)
Recently I rewatched some West Wing episodes (from early s3, and the one where the Republicans call a tax for millionaires "the death tax" to lobby against it made me go "zomg, Sorkin and friends really were prescient sometimes!"), and aside from revelling in dialogue, character affection etc., it reminded me of a suspension of disbelief problem of mine. It's there in several fandoms. In The West Wing, it affects the Sam-Toby relationship as presented in fanfiction. Now, Sam isn't the only character to fall unter the WW "out of sight, out of mind" category, i.e. once he's written off the show, he doesn't get mentioned by anyone anymore. In fact, Sam's exit is far more carefully executed then some other examples, in that he stops being a regular mid-season 4, but the fallout of his departure continues to be made an issue of for the rest of s4. (As opposed to Mandy, who simply disappears post s1 and never gets referenced again, Ainsley who does get to come back once or twice post early s3 but otherwise doesn't get mentioned again, either, Danny who in the years of his absence gets referenced once that I recall but no more, while once he's back we go immediately back to where he and CJ left of, etc.) Once season 4 is over, however, Sam is not heard of again until the very end of the show. Now, in s7 Toby's fall from grace is a big, big thing we see everyone react to. We get to see Josh call Toby throughout his campaigning, which makes for gradual reconciliation; we get the big "have it out" scene with him and CJ. What we don't get, neither as a scene or via a reference in dialogue, is any sign Sam was either unaware of what happened with Toby (unlikely, as it made the national headlines) or that he was aware and tried to contact Toby at any point, or that he was aware and deliberately decided not to contact Toby. It would have been easy to slip a reference to Sam into one of Josh's and Toby's phone calls, for example. Or in Sam's and Josh's conversations in the last episodes. (BTW, their scenes did the trick of convincing me Josh and Sam kept in contact off-screen. See, it can be done.) But Wells & Co. chose not to. So fanfic where Sam and Toby post-s4 are still close friends rather breaks my suspension of disbelief.
Now this isn't a WW-only phenomenon. In several shows, a close friendship suddenly basically disappears, either because the characters leave or because the writers for some reason or the other can't be bothered anymore. Cases in point: Spike and Dawn after the opening two parter of s6 of BTVS, Garak and Bashir after "Our Man Bashir" on DS9 (i.e. s4 - OMB was the last episode to feature them in a close relationship, they they do occasionally appear in the same scenes later on) until the very last episode, Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn after Disharmony in s2 (as I once said to likeadeuce, any scene between them post-Disharmony might as well have happened pre-Reunion, with the closer bond that developed during the time they were sans Angel being ignored). There might be Doylist reasons for this - for example, in the Garak/Bashir case persistant rumour in ST fandom has it that TPTB were discomforted by the perception of the two as lovers. It can be completely accidental - I think it was Jane Espenson who said this about Spike and Dawn, that in the writers' minds, their close friendship continued until Seeing Red, the scenes just didn't happen. But honestly, these Doylist reasons do not help on a Watsonian level. Don't help me as a viewer, I mean. Basically I have to decide either to assume a lot of missing scenes which I make up in my head, or to accept these friendships for some reasons dissolved, and then come up with a reason. In the case of Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn it's easiest, because at least they still were portrayed as friends per se until Wesley's mid-s3 arc, so I can tell myself they continued to be close until that point. With Garak and Bashir, however, I couldn't buy later season stories were they were still having daily lunches and were still as close as they were in early seasons anymore; it both jarred with what I saw (plus, you know, in late s5 there is even an episode where Garak sounds openly jealous about all the time Bashir spends with O'Brien, which he does bring up early in Empok Nor, so it's on screen canon), so I had to come up with possible reasons why not. (In my own take on the pairing, I let the enstragement start with Broken Link and Garek's attempt at genocide in this episode.) And with Spike and Dawn, the "they still continued to be close until the AR, we just didn't see it" explanation didn't wash, either, so basically my interpretation was that once Spike started his affair with Buffy, he spent less and less time with Dawn.
What do you do, oh flist? When characters are portrayed as good friends in canon (doesn't matter whether or not you also ship them in a romantic sense or see the relationship as platonic or the family type of bond; there just has to be an on screen closeness that awoke your interest), and then these characters cease to have scenes together, and don't reference each other in dialogue anymore, either. Do you go the denial route - "they're still friends, we just don't see a lot of scenes"/"they're still friends, I reject on screen canon" - or do you accomodate for the changed on screen circumstances in your perception of the relationship(s)?
***
And on another note, to wit, one of yesterday's two big subjects, the Marvel/Disney merger: out of all the responses, I like this one best. Because I feel like having a sense of humor this morning.:)
Now this isn't a WW-only phenomenon. In several shows, a close friendship suddenly basically disappears, either because the characters leave or because the writers for some reason or the other can't be bothered anymore. Cases in point: Spike and Dawn after the opening two parter of s6 of BTVS, Garak and Bashir after "Our Man Bashir" on DS9 (i.e. s4 - OMB was the last episode to feature them in a close relationship, they they do occasionally appear in the same scenes later on) until the very last episode, Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn after Disharmony in s2 (as I once said to likeadeuce, any scene between them post-Disharmony might as well have happened pre-Reunion, with the closer bond that developed during the time they were sans Angel being ignored). There might be Doylist reasons for this - for example, in the Garak/Bashir case persistant rumour in ST fandom has it that TPTB were discomforted by the perception of the two as lovers. It can be completely accidental - I think it was Jane Espenson who said this about Spike and Dawn, that in the writers' minds, their close friendship continued until Seeing Red, the scenes just didn't happen. But honestly, these Doylist reasons do not help on a Watsonian level. Don't help me as a viewer, I mean. Basically I have to decide either to assume a lot of missing scenes which I make up in my head, or to accept these friendships for some reasons dissolved, and then come up with a reason. In the case of Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn it's easiest, because at least they still were portrayed as friends per se until Wesley's mid-s3 arc, so I can tell myself they continued to be close until that point. With Garak and Bashir, however, I couldn't buy later season stories were they were still having daily lunches and were still as close as they were in early seasons anymore; it both jarred with what I saw (plus, you know, in late s5 there is even an episode where Garak sounds openly jealous about all the time Bashir spends with O'Brien, which he does bring up early in Empok Nor, so it's on screen canon), so I had to come up with possible reasons why not. (In my own take on the pairing, I let the enstragement start with Broken Link and Garek's attempt at genocide in this episode.) And with Spike and Dawn, the "they still continued to be close until the AR, we just didn't see it" explanation didn't wash, either, so basically my interpretation was that once Spike started his affair with Buffy, he spent less and less time with Dawn.
What do you do, oh flist? When characters are portrayed as good friends in canon (doesn't matter whether or not you also ship them in a romantic sense or see the relationship as platonic or the family type of bond; there just has to be an on screen closeness that awoke your interest), and then these characters cease to have scenes together, and don't reference each other in dialogue anymore, either. Do you go the denial route - "they're still friends, we just don't see a lot of scenes"/"they're still friends, I reject on screen canon" - or do you accomodate for the changed on screen circumstances in your perception of the relationship(s)?
***
And on another note, to wit, one of yesterday's two big subjects, the Marvel/Disney merger: out of all the responses, I like this one best. Because I feel like having a sense of humor this morning.:)