I saw a critique of the Marvel Cinematic Universe the other day that’s stuck in my head, saying (much more coherently and with examples) that partially what went wrong was they gave up on tying together characters and developing their relations because the overarching plot and big battle scenes took precedence, that they threw characters into scenes without development or introductions that were satisfying. (And etc. Link if you have the post with that extension please)
I’ve also been thinking of the moment in “Supernatural” when Becky and Chuck have an argument about what people really want in a story: monsters or domestic scenes that develop characters in a quiet way (They like monsters- no, they like laundry)
I finished watching a show called Warehouse 13 like a month or more ago. And yet, I feel fondly (mostly) for how they developed the characters, how they were introduced, and I remember this scene. This guy, Steve, is packing up his stuff to move back into the B&B with his coworkers/friends, and the last thing he need to pack is this.
ID: A man is holding a gilded picture frame. In it, a man is on the left wearing a grey uniform, smiling at the camera. Next to him, a shorter woman in a similiar uniform looks at him smiling, her nose scrunched up, an arm extended to suggest it’s a selfie. End ID.
The scene in the photo? Yeah, it was a whole episode from a previous season that helped explore and cement their friendship and their personalities. They could have had him just pack up and leave, but they wanted to remind the viewer of their friendship, which we saw play out on screen. (We never saw this selfie taken, implying they hung around and enjoyed the re-enactment they went undercover for)
So, picture frame test: have you properly developed the friendships between the two characters on-screen or well enough in conversations (Remember when…) to have picture frames or cell-phone backgrounds (or whatever you kids do) that have context for the viewer that are not there “just because” they’re cannonically friends?