a fun game?

occasionally i really want to hear english spoken, so i passively watch downloaded television programs in the background (heroes, 24, the hills!!!!) while i’m doing something else, like writing or drawing or cooking. sometimes i glance up to see what the on-screen action is and 7 out of 10 times it’s a pretty predictable scene given the dialogue or narration. which makes me wonder two things :

when storyboarding these shows/scenes do the artists just write “generic heart-to-heart,” “typical highschool cafeteria confrontation,” “disappointing interaction with a superior”?

are clichéd visuals used because : they’re easy to relate to? comforting? simple to execute? the most effective means of encapsulating the meaning of the scene?

superficially, it often seems redundant and gratuitous.

if it’s boring as a viewer, i wonder how it is for the actors/directors. maybe they’re more concerned with the story and so the banality of a given scene isn’t interesting or important to them… maybe it’s like complaining that authors use the same words over and over again. …it’s also inevitable that we’ll develop a routine mode of expression in any medium, which just aids in communicating the meat of the story and it’s this typical mode of expression which allows the more creative (or, maybe, ambitious) practitioners to subvert the stereotypes of a medium or genre or whatever. maybe it’s a different concern altogether from story-telling, concerns of form - but when they unite complementarily it’s the most exciting to partake.

all that being said, OMG! can you believe heidi is still with spencer?!