Believability

By: Unknown public contributors

One episode was completely spoilt for me (the one with the Russian bloke who comes to Cicely) when Maurice and the Russian avoid death by Joel stepping out of character and becoming the actor playing Joel just before the end. OK, it's a bit wacky, but for me it just didn't work. The characters need to take themselves seriously however ridiculous the plot.

Is this just me, or was anyone else disappointed by this episode?

This is one of my _favorite_ episodes.

I like it when a program can poke fun at itself. Any program (or person) if it takes itself (him/herself) too seriously. Episode like "stepping out of character" don't 'ruin' anything for me because I am already aware that it is 'just a TV show'. I appreciate it when a program can 'smack me upside the head' like that. [Individual tastes vary, I realise.]

I still don't see this as anyone stepping out of character. In any show I've ever seen where a person stepped out of character, it was to talk to the viewer. This wasn't the case at all in NX. I've watched documentaries about the making of TV shows. In one about "Murphy Brown", the actors stopped the shotting many times during the filming to complain that the writer were having the characters do or say something they (the actor) knew the character wouldn't do or say. I'm sure this isn't any different on NX than on any other show. The only difference was that this time we got to see this happen. It wasn't so much that the people stepped out of character, as it was that the editors didn't cut the actors complaining out of the show. I thought it was a great show. We got to see how the characters think, in a way we wouldn't normally get to see just by what the writers wanted us to see.

Just because they didn't address the viewer doesn't mean they didn't step out of character. In the scene in question, the physical human actors ceased pretending to be Fleischmann, Maggie, Shelley, etc, and began to talk about how they have an intelligent TV audience, how could they resolve the scene, etc. This is not a conversation that Fleischmann, Maggie, etc would have had; the actors were indeed out of character.

(A devil's advocate could argue that Fleischmann et al were all insane and talking crazily. I.e., in theory people in real life can sit around talking as if they are characters in a TV show. Thus the actors were staying in character, as crazy people. I don't think anyone is seriously proposing this theory, however...)

Look, I'm sorry, but NX is not a show about a show. The characters are NOT actors, they're just people. OK, OK, so it is _just_ a TV show, but I thought the idea of fiction was the suspension of disbelief. However wacky the plot, however ridiculous it all is, I can accept it. Unless, that is, the characters stop pretending, as they did in that episode.

P.S. grumble grumble wasn't even an original idea.