Saturday, 6 May 2006

And Featuring: Ian Actor, as The Murderer, It Turns Out.

Don't you hate it when... start to watch an episode of some long-running US drama, and at the end of the opening credits, you get this: 'Special Guest Starring : Ego McSpoilsport, as That Villain You Thought Was Killed Off Two Seasons Ago, But Will Be Reappearing In This Episode, In What Would Have Been A Fantastic Twist, Had Ego's Agent Not Ruined It By Insisting His Name Appear Here, In The Opening Titles.'

Oh. Don't you? What do you hate then? Oh. Right, third world poverty. Yeah, that's bad too.


James Aylett said...

It's usually not strictly the agent's fault - it's often just SAG rules, as I understand it. Note that if they don't have a speaking role, they can be left off the credits (there's an episode of Angel where Juliet Landau isn't credited because they carefully arranged for her to appear at the end of the episode and not say anything). It is, however, incredibly annoying, and I do wish SAG would just be more sensible about things. There are situations where producers have chosen not to bring back a character in a shock twist precisely because it wouldn't actually be a shock twist - which doesn't serve the actors at all well.

Not that SAG is anything like Equity in how well it represents its members, oh no.

James Lark said...

As a Doctor Who fan I've learned to keep my eyes tightly closed until about a minute into any episode of anything. So as to avoid the announcement, say, "Doctor Who and the Dalek that Surprisingly Appears in a Surprising Place at the End of Episode One: episode one".

Of course, in its new format I've had to start quickly switching off the TV as soon as the final credits begin, so as to avoid "Next week on Doctor Who: the Doctor IS alive after all, and here's the rest of the story's surprises truncated into twenty seconds!"