A popular device in the world of writing, literary and screenwriting, is to kill off a beloved character regularly. Some of the great authors and screenwriters have done it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brutally eliminated his iconic detective Sherlock Holmes in “The Final Problem.” Apparently, Doyle felt his most famous creation distracted from other things he wanted to do, so he knocked off Holmes and his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, in one fell swoop with a fall from Reichenbach Falls. Doyle also advised Agatha Christie to “off” her famous detective Hercule Poirot. You could say that Doyle was a serial killer in his own right. Get it? The Holmes and Poirot stories were serials, and he wanted their leads dead…I guess if I have to explain it, it’s not funny. Let’s move on.
Like Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie grew tired of the little Belgium sleuth and wanted to move on to other things. Her publisher didn’t like that idea due to the popularity of Poirot and insisted she keep writing more stories featuring him. In the book “Curtain,” released in 1975 but written years earlier, Poirot goes out with a bang, so to say, as he murders his main suspect just before he succumbs to heart disease. Now, that’s how to put a nail into the coffin of an idea.
Offing popular characters is not limited to literature. Many television shows have killed off a fan’s favorite stars for many reasons. Some were eliminated to add some life to the show’s plot (that’s an oxymoron). Others ended because the actor wanted to pursue something else, had terrible behavior, and finally because the actor actually died. Boy, that was convenient.
Killing off a fan-favorite character can have its downside. Devoted fans have a hard time dealing with the sudden death of someone they have come to see as real. When Sherlock Holmes died, there was widespread mourning by fans not just in England but from fans around the world. Doyle had not expected that. When a TV show kills a character, producers will get swamped by a tsunami of mail from loyal fans upset by death. I can understand. For example, when Grey’s Anatomy killed Patrick Dempey’s Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd. How could they do that? You see that head of hair. I was living vicariously through his scalp. All you other bald men, don’t tell me you don’t dream of having a full, very moosed head of hair like Dempsey.
Sex in the City decided to write Chris Noth and his Mr. Big character out of the show when Noth got caught up in the sexual harassment scandals from a few years ago. I think he had a heart attack. I bet that put a bite on Mr. Big’s income.
Rosanne Barr said a few…sorry…many awful things that offended a lot of different groups. As a result, she was quietly killed off, and her show was changed from “Roseanne” to the “Conners.” They were nice enough to eulogize here on the first show with the new title…and she’s still saying awful things.
Charlie Sheen killed his cash cow when he got fired from “Two and a Half Men” for bad behavior. The show’s creators decided to have him virtually executed (No, they did not execute him, just his Charlie Harper character). Geez, don’t take everything literally.
Many of us old enough shed a tear, when Lt. Col. Henry Blake, played by McLean Stevenson, died when he wanted to leave M.A.S.H for greener pastures. Unfortunately, the grass was not greener on the other side of the fence. The sit-coms he headed all failed, and he spent much of the rest of his career guesting on game shows. He passed away at 68 in 1996.
The Goldbergs television series, which ran for ten years, lost two popular characters. Jeff Garlin, who played Murray Moshe Goldberg, was killed off when he was caught up in a sexual harassment scandal. George Segal, who played Albert “Pops” Solomon, left the show when…well…he died. That was sad. I could be funny and say Segal’s career has a better chance of resurrection than Garlin’s. Too much?
Then there are the shows who are trying to kill off all their cast. Two come to mind. Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. I doubt they have sentimental episodes to remember the fallen cast member. Not enough weeks in the year.
It’s time to breathe new life into my blog. I now have to make a decision. Which beloved character from my writings do I terminate? There are not too many to choose from. It’s my wife, one of my three sons, or me.
Can’t be my loving wife. There’s a chance she would eliminate my real-life character. How about one of my three sons? It’s not like they are intricate in the writing of the blog, but they are technically critical to the stories getting out to my loving fans (I can hear those giggles). That leaves me. Wow, that puts me in a difficult position. Would this be considered literary suicide? I have a solution: I need to create another character to be knocked off later. They will have to be beloved, good-looking, wise, and funny. This way, readers will fall in love with them, and their sudden demise will spread across all platforms, bringing much attention to my blog. In real life, they have to be a sleazeball, so I will be justified when they are summarily dismissed, reducing the chance of a lawsuit—elementary, my dear reader. See what I did there.
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