Let’s Talk About Death

Potential spoilers ahead for fans of Jane the Virgin, This Is Us and Nashville.
It’s time to talk about death. As an avid TV fan, it’s been a rough few weeks. Towards the summer you start to tense up and become worried, especially as a Shonda Rhimes fan, about what will be happening to your favourite characters and shows as the seasons come to a close. But there seems to be a new and more heartbreaking trend – random mid-season character deaths.
That’s right, characters are no longer neatly being lost at the end of season with pre-warning and 3 months over the summer to grieve for them. As the last few weeks have shown me, no-one is safe. And honestly, I think this is a good thing.
I lost my father a few years ago to a long battle with cancer. I tried (and still do) to compartmentalize his illness and his subsequent death. I made plans and arrangements for when he would die. He would do it neatly, at the end of June or July, after my exam students had finished and I could take the last month of school off to help my mother nurse him, then spend my summer break grieving and return in September a stronger and more graceful butterfly. But that obviously didn’t happen. My Dad died June 9th, at 3am on my then boyfriend’s birthday. It wasn’t how we had planned it, it didn’t fit my schedule. But death rarely does. I’ve lost friends in my early 20s, killed at random on an afternoon drive. Death can hit anyone you love at any time and you can’t be prepared.
TV writers seem to be realizing this – or maybe they’re just trying to keep us all entertained in a post Netflix/Game of Thrones world when everyone seems to die every week. In the last month I have lost Michael (Jane the Virgin), William (This Is Us) and Rayna (Nashville). None of them gave me any morning before the episode that this would be our last. Starting with the most obvious of the three, This Is Us, I was aware William was sick, but just the episode before I had thought about what a hard moment his death would be for us to watch and how much it would affect Randall, knowing they would leave it until the season finale to really kick us when we’re down, and subsequently sealing Randall’s development arc for season two. Well boy was I wrong.
Memphis (written by Dan Fogelman and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa) started out as a fun boys jaunt, a mini road trip movie, and boy was I down for this. Flashbacks to William’s past lent a welcome change from seeing Jack and Rebecca fight and the energy was infectious. So why, oh why, did it suddenly take such a dark turn? When William became too weak it was a familiar sight for me, and I realized the end was nigh. We weren’t getting to the end of the season, hell we didn’t even get to the end of the episode. Watching Randall hold his head in his hands as he passed on was heartbreaking and brought up a lot of my own issues – but isn’t that the point? By showing us these sorts of deaths, by making them come at us at random, mid-week, mid-season, they allow us to see and feel with the characters, to slowly understand and come to terms with the meaningless feel of death.
Of course I still had issues with the typical representation and glamorization of death on TV. This Is Us did a lot better than other shows (we’ll talk about Nashville in a second) but as someone who has lost a family member to cancer, it doesn’t tie up that neatly. After my father deteriorated to the end, he still hung on for a week after being told he would have weeks to live. In that last week he couldn’t walk and could barely talk – when he did it made no sense. This Is Us presented us a pretty package where a man who had less than hours to live died quickly and quietly with minimal suffering of loss of everyday life. Not quite so true to me and anyone I know who has watched someone they live succumb to the awful disease.
Nashville took the cake with this one. Rayna, having survived a car crash, goes in to hospital and whilst it looks like she’s all set for a speedy recovery it becomes clear life won’t be that easy this time. Now there’s some great bits to see here. The reactions to her accident and rapid decline from Lennon and Maisy Stella were excellent and I feel captured a range of various thoughts and feelings, and Rayna’s internal injuries and subsequent death from them make up for Nashville’s constant life threatening accidents that characters recover from in an instant (we’re looking at you, Rayna’s multiple other car crashes and Juliette’s paralysis from plane crash that lasted an episode.)
My issues with Rayna’s death was that she ‘knew’ she was dying and got to spend her last day telling all of those who she loved how much they meant to her and all the things they needed to hear from her before she died. Life just isn’t that kind. People who are that ill and that close to dying don’t always get those moments of clarity. People don’t die surrounded by those they love and most of the time they can’t share coherent thoughts. It felt like a hark back to that tired trope of ‘person with dead parent gets meaningful letter from beyond the grave they never knew about’. Yes I know sometimes these things can happen, but form my experiences and knowledge, it’s not half as common as TV will have you think.
This leads us to Jane the Virgin – the most ridiculous of the 3 shows and the death that gave us the least warning. Stuck in at the end of a 40 minute episode, Michael, the love of Jane’s life, is killed from internal injuries sustained from a previous gunshot wound. Again, well done writers for showing us how dangerous internal injuries can be – too often in TV shows characters are flung through cars, windows and all sorts and walk away without a scratch. Hasn’t anyone ever heard of brain injuries, internal bleeding etc?!? The bug I had to pick with Jane the Virgin, was that after this heartbreaking, shocking surprise (and the stellar paralyzing cries and agony shown by Gina Rodriguez) was that they decided to do a 3 year flash forward. This is another quick fix that we’re seeing way too often in TV these days and one that is really starting to get old. But, two episodes in to this brave new Jane world we are seeing that despite moving the show on 3 years to ‘skip the grief’ as I thought, they are actually showing it to us slowly, whilst also highlighting how long the loss of a loved one can stay with you. Here we have Jane, becoming successful and living her life, but the loss still haunts her. Not all the time, but it still hits her in waves. This is the most accurate description of loss and grief I know, so to see it shown in this way, not melodramatized and turned in to an all singing and dancing fiasco (*cough* Glee *cough*) we are able to understand how many people still walk around shrouded by their losses.
I’m interested to see the next episodes of This is Us and Nashville. They have a responsibility, not just to see of their characters well, but to deal with all the various shades of grief. To show audiences it’s ok to still grieve for month’s even years afterwards, but that it’s also still ok to go outside, drink and dance and feel loved.
I hope these shows serve their audiences well, especially those like myself who have lost someone close. These episodes bought up a lot of triggers for me, but have also forced me to talk about issues I have long buried and start to open up. That has always been the primary focus of art in my opinion, to put into words or image something that others cannot speak of. Dear writers – please keep using your words for those of us still struggling, and please continue to put these raw emotions in to your shows and characters. As audiences – we’re ready to grow up.