How many couples can you think of in books, movies, or TV shows that are happy together? You know, the couples that might have problems here and there, but overall, they are stable. Underappreciated.
Probably not many. For me, only a handful come to mind.
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At some point, writers seemed to decide that break-up and make-up relationships were exciting and that if a couple was happy together, one of them needed to die.
It's a pattern that appears in countless shows, books, and movies, but the main examples I'm going to use are "Veronica Mars" and "Jane the Virgin," so if you don't want to be spoiled, you have been warned.
I just recently finished season four of "Veronica Mars" after obsessively watching it for the past month.
Throughout the show, Veronica and Logan have a whirlwind of a relationship. It starts out with them hiding the relationship, then once it comes out that they're dating, there is a series of happy periods followed by one of them being upset with the other, not telling them, then exploding until they break up again. Then the cycle continues.
I don't know if this is what viewers want, but personally, I was sick and tired of their lack of communication and oversensitivity.
That's why I was so happy when in the new season (which takes place 13 years after the original show ended), the couple finally starts to be healthy. Though it's not perfect, by the last episode, they are making strides toward being more open with each other and they even get married.
Then Logan is promptly blown up. Seriously. Not even a few minutes after their wedding scene, Logan is killed off.
I read that one of the show's writers said they did this because they wanted to make "Veronica Mars" a serious crime show and that Veronica having a husband at home would take away from that.
However, I think the writers missed out on a major opportunity to show audiences in future seasons what Veronica's life as a famous PI is like with a husband.
To think you can't do what you love while also having a stable relationship is not only toxic but flat out incorrect. I'm sure there are plenty of real-life detectives who balance home lives as well.
The same goes for "Jane the Virgin." After seasons of love triangles and other dramatic twists, Jane finally chose and married Michael.
And the night of their wedding, Michael is shot.
Luckily, Michael survives and the two begin a marriage story arc. The show started to explore their married life for a few episodes and I was genuinely excited to see where they would go with it.
Then Michael "died" because god forbid any show has a stable, non-toxic relationship.
No, we go back to the dreaded love triangle after it is revealed five years later that Michael is actually alive and Jane chooses Rafael, who had proved himself time and time again to be toxic.
I don't know when we as a society started equating toxic to exciting and stable to boring, but I would love for it to stop.
Showing people this teaches them that if you're not over-obsessed with your partner, you must be doing something wrong.
And it's not like exciting stable relationships haven't been successfully done before.
Jake and Amy from "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and Marshall and Lily from "How I Met Your Mother" are great examples of this. After some initial will-they-won't-they, both couples remain strong. Both shows did a great job of exploring their married life without turning any of the relationships unhealthy.
It can be done and it's compelling when done right.
I dare writers to start getting more creative when writing romantic relationships. Stability is underrated and in today's world, we could all use seeing that kind of relationship in our media.
It's not boring or stifling to characters' plots. It's real.
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