One Manager’s Awful TV Take Has Us Stunned

One truly horrific take about movies and TV shows has people up in arms. And, it’s got to do with everyone’s favorite fake controversy: “filler.”

Adriana Verhagen probably didn’t think she would begin a daylong argument on the Internet with a post on LinkedIn. But, we live in the worst possible timeline. So, feast your eyes on a truly woeful opinion on TV and films.

Basically, the Senior Product Manager thinks anyone in a movie or show that doesn’t immediately aid the “main plot” is a “filler character.” You’re starting to see this kind of thinking pop-up more online. And, that doesn’t mean it gets any less depressing over time.

“Films and series have filler characters, it sucks for the viewer, it takes up space but doesn’t add anything to the story. I tend to skip through these scenes manually,” Verhagen wonders. “So, why isn’t there a way to deselect scenes of certain characters on Netflix or pretty much any content viewing platform, and have that configuration be applied throughout the show?” 

 Where do you even start when a person expresses an opinion like this. Unfortunately, I don’t even know if it was written by a person or an AI chatbot. In some ways, maybe it would be better if AI wrote it. But I’m not that hopeful about our future or our current climate. The idea of a “filler character” is farcical.

Can there be a “filler” character in a TV show?

In short, no! There are even a couple of high profile examples of characters put into shows to feel like filler characters. 

But, they actually end up serving the purpose of lamp shading a creative direction given to the writing team by people overseeing them or showing how the other characters are lacking something because of how they react to that character.

 In good writing, every character is providing something to that heralded main narrative that this lady seems to be driving at. I’d also like to reaffirm that I don’t completely believe that a human being wrote these posts. This particular firm she works at seems to be all in on AI and different machine learning architecture. The manager had more to say?

“Begs to as what about experiencing the web in general?,” Verhagen asked? “Why isn’t there a way to instantly see a website, how you want to experience it, what information should or shouldn’t be there, how it is organized and it instantly adapts to your needs and wishes.”

She continued, “It gets better over time. I don’t think this is sci-fi level thinking, it feels close. An autonomous and highly adaptable UI, it makes me hopeful that digital experiences can become more beautiful and intuitive.”

I mean, not to invoke the legendary Subway tweet. But, we build the web experience for ourselves and can just leave when it’s no longer serving us. No need to rewrite the entire web for something like this.

Still, this is a hall-of-fame LinkedIn post. Like, nothing quite encapsulates how different that platform is than any other social media post.

(featured image: Netflix)

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