Deconstruction / Live-Action TV

Deconstruction in Live-Action TV.

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• Greenleaf is a deconstruction of mega-churches with a bit too much power. The show essentially demonstrates the hypocrisy of a family of God utilizing their wealth that they gain from their patrons for ultimately self-serving purposes. Despite the family’s “holiness”, they seem a bit departed from reality and live in the lap of luxury.
  • It could also be a deconstruction of the Big, Screwed-Up Family trope, demonstrating just what the end result of generational abuse and manipulation does to a family. Nearly all of the children harmed, as adults, are either just barely functional, cynical and depressed, emotionally immature, or any combination of the three.
• Gen V: Whereas The Boys deconstructs superheroes as a whole, Gen V takes apart the Superhero School. While Godolkin University is an Extranormal Institute, it still has to deal with the problems a normal college would have to deal with (such as students being restless and getting high on narcotics), which are exacerbated by how many of its students have superpowers that can easily hurt or kill people if used recklessly. Additionally, the institute is perfectly willing to throw students under the bus to save its reputation, as Marie nearly finds out. Lastly, as the main series showed, Supes are just people with powers, and have a plethora of issues, some of which are worsened by said powers - Emma's powers, for instance, involve shrinking herself by vomiting / growing by binge-eating, which has not only caused her to lose the enamel on her back teeth, but is also implied to have given her bulimia.
• Some reality shows, game shows and documentaries deconstruct fiction genres, or fiction tropes, by playing them out in real life. Survivor deconstructs the Robinsonade. Mythbusters deconstructs several tropes by testing their (mostly) scientific accuracy.
• The final few episodes of the 8th season of 24 end up being a deconstruction of several of the series' own tropes, turning much of the show's formula on its head.
  • Jack's usual employment of the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique ends up providing nothing for him, as despite giving the receiving mook one of the most brutal, gruesome torture sequences in the entire series, the man has been conditioned so well that he refuses to talk and tell Jack what he wants to know, forcing him to look for alternate means to gather information.
  • Jack's entire shtick of ignoring the law and trying to carry out justice deconstructs just how much "good" he truly accomplishes by doing so. Not only does he end up leaving a nasty trail of death and destruction but his endgame involves assassinating the President of Russia, and regardless of his hand on the conspiracy he's still the president of a foreign superpower. Successfully carrying it out could end up inciting a third world war - meaning Jack would end up making things worse than even the terrorists of the season were trying to.
  • Jack's Cowboy Cop behavior is deconstructed over the course of his rampage, and as his acts get more ruthless and dangerous the show quits painting it in any sort of glorious light, showing that anyone carrying out some sort of vigilante killing spree would have to be pretty unhinged to do so regardless of whether the victims deserved it or not, ultimately barely being any better than those they're going after. This gets made most evident during one scene where we see the aftermath of a roomful of henchmen that Jack slaughtered offscreen. It's not portrayed as any sort of awesome moment of Jack laying down a Curbstomp Battle against a bunch of minions; instead shown being as horrifying as it would be in real life.
  • Jack killing those behind the death of his friends and loved ones in revenge gets deconstructed as it involves murdering the man who ordered the death of Renee Walker, and though he succeeds in killing him the man is also a high-ranking member of the Russian government. This ends up ultimately ruining his life for good, as not only does it leave him a fugitive but it ends up having tragic repercussions come Day 9.
  • Finally, Jack's ability to withstand untold amounts of punishment is deconstructed in the final episode when he's taken hostage by a squad of hitmen. Despite being caught in a car crash, getting shot multiple times, and receiving a nasty stab wound, Jack still attempts to fight his captors off. They overpower him with little to no difficulty, as three trained men in peak condition can easily handle a man who's been so battered he can barely stand, leaving him at their mercy, and it's only through the timely arrival of his friends to call off the hit that he narrowly avoids getting executed.
• Black Mirror: "USS Callister" is a fairly disturbing deconstruction of Video Game Cruelty Potential and Video Games as Power Fantasy. How much of a monster would you have to be to inflict torment on sentient video game characters — or more specifically, digital AI copies of your co-workers who are smart enough to pass the Turing Test?
• The B plot of Community episode "English as a Second Language" is a deconstruction of Good Will Hunting. Abed pulls a paraphrasing of Ben Affleck's "the best part of my day" speech from Good Will Hunting on Troy, to try to get him to 'use his gift' and become a plumber. The next day, Abed turns to find that Troy is no longer sitting next to him in class... but not because he's inspired and has dropped out, but because Troy has switched seats because he's offended that his best friend would actually think the prospect of him just leaving without a word would be the best part of his day. Turns out, that would actually be a really horrible and offensive thing to say to a friend, no matter how gifted.
  • Abed's main problem is that he doesn't explain WHY he thinks this would be good for Troy, unlike Affleck's character.
• Continuum deconstructs everything about time travel in season three. In one episode, Liber 8 learned that in their attempts to prevent their future from happening, they ended up helping to create an even worse one! Not only that, the fact that multiple people kept time-traveling to prevent multiple futures from happening left them wondering if anything they did in the present really mattered.
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a deconstruction of the Psycho Ex-Girlfriend and Stalker with a Crush tropes: Rebecca Bunch is a highly successful lawyer in New York, but she is also completely miserable, suffering from anxiety, insomnia, and depression. After accidentally running into her old ex-boyfriend Josh Chan, she remembers a time when she was truly happy...and so she decides to quit her job and move out to West Covina, California, where Josh lives. However, Rebecca has legitimate mental problems, which isn't helped by her throwing away her medication and lying to herself about why she moved to West Covina.
• Doctor Who:
  • "Aliens of London" deconstructs the Doctor's usual MO, in the classic series, of recruiting a young woman as a companion and taking her on adventures. Rose leaves her loved ones without saying goodbye, as usual. The TARDIS lands in the wrong time, as usual. Only this time, it means that Rose has been missing for a year, her ex-boyfriend (the only person who knew she'd left with the Doctor) is suspected of murdering her, and her mother left distraught. The Doctor also has to explain to a police officer that his relationship with Rose isn't sexual.
  • "Midnight" deconstructs nearly everything we've come to know about the Tenth Doctor. No one believes him when he says his name is "John Smith". The passengers treat Ten's "normal" eccentricities and mannerisms with scorn and suspicion, so once it becomes clear that the Monster of the Week has possessed one of the passengers, he's immediately suspected as the host. The Doctor is completely unable to identify the monster. It turns literally all of his usual tactics against him, and literally the only reason the monster is foiled is by a last-second Deus ex Machina. And we don't even know if the monster is actually dead.
• Glee was once "Deconstruction: The Show". For example, musicals were deconstructed with most of the musical numbers in the show taking place either as a stage performance or in somebody's imagination, and random "bursting into song" rarely turned out well. However, as the show has gone on, the creators have largely abandoned these rules, and on the contrary, "solve it through singing about it!" has become the show's go-to method for solving problems, no matter how serious. In addition, the show used to pride itself on its mockery of the Very Special Episode and various high school stereotypes; now, the acclaim it's received for its pro-LGBT storylines has led it to take being a "message" show more seriously (with varying levels of success).
• The finale of How I Met Your Mother can easily be viewed as a deconstruction of a HUGE number of tropes, from TV shows to character tropes to audience reactions. It is so biting that it is a main reason why the Grand Finale was so controversial, all along the irony of the episode name "Last Forever." A brief rundown goes as follows:
  • After so much time and effort with building Robin and Barney together and spending a season on a "legendary" wedding, their marriage lasted only three years because of fundamental differences they ignored, Robin's Married to the Job and Barney had abandoned so many of his own interests to be with her that he had nothing to do. There is also significant foreshadowing in retrospect that their relationship will not end well, with them riding off the belief that just because they love each other it will work out. Most weddings tend to be amazing but the success rate remains the same.
  • After they divorce, Barney goes back to his womanizing ways and it is fully depicted as pathetic. His excuse for reverting after so much Character Development is THE SAME excuse after his first relationship with Robin, that if he couldn't make it work with her there was no one else who could make it work. It also runs on the precept that characters can grow but they are still fundamentally the same person, changing that makes them someone else entirely. Him eventually fathering a child is the most logical endpoint for a man who has had as many sexual partners as he has.
  • After they divorce, Robin's job takes her away from the city for long periods of time and whenever she visits the old gang, all she sees is her ex-husband picking up random skanks and two sets of friends being Happily Married with their own families. Seeing Ted with Tracy, Robin feels that choosing Barney over him was a mistake and missed out on real happiness by rejecting Ted. She spent several years estranged from the group before reconciling during Ted and Tracy's marriage.
  • Marshall passes on a prestigious judgeship offer to give Lily a chance to fulfill her dream of working in the artistic field. He justifies it by saying things will work out eventually. They do, but it takes several years and he had to suffer as a corporate lawyer once more before things start going their way. Lily appreciates the sacrifice but regrets being a part of why he is miserable now. Plus she takes Robin leaving the group the hardest, being one of her closest female friends.
  • Ted meets Tracy, the love of his life and the mother of his children. They were absolutely perfect for each other, but their history isn't exactly a fairy tale as their engagement lasted years because of Ted being a stickler for the perfect wedding and Tracy getting pregnant with their daughter Penny around the same time of their first wedding date, with Luke following soon after. Tracy ended up dying from an unspecified illness, leaving this perfect couple only able to be together for 11 years. True love and a happy relationship don't always last forever. The final shot of the series is Ted reconsidering his love for Robin, as despite everything he went through to be happy with Tracy that doesn't mean he doesn't still love Robin in some way.
  • At the end the group just drifts apart. It's a sad reality that many people have encountered in real life and is a harsh truth nobody wants to face, that life is unpredictable, everyone has a different path, and people do grow up and change. Nothing will ever be the same again.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Ryuki adds some aspect of Mons to Kamen Rider. Except the monsters have no loyalty to their masters and will eat them, should the contract card be destroyed. The same thing would occur if the monsters aren't well-fed, meaning you must continue fighting to feed your mons, even if you want to quit — and the more mons you have, the harder it is to feed them. Oh, there's another way to get around this; the mons also eat humans. At least one Rider is more than happy to lets his mon eat random people. It also deconstructs the idea of Kamen Riders being phlebotinum rebels, since the Big Bad arranging the Riders to fight always has the upper hand, either by sending his overtly powered Kamen Rider to hunt down the rebels, or in a special movie, rally all the Riders who want to fight to kill the Riders who want to end the war. Given the concept of the show, the former greatly outweigh the latter.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim also deconstructs the Mons genre with its Invess, as it is made clear that the Invess are dangerous monsters and it's very easy to lose control of them. Then it turns out that creatures from another world carry diseases totally unknown to the human immune system, which in turn leads to the protagonists being alienated by the public for their participation in the Invess Games. And this in turn leads to another deconstruction of just what happens when you give teenagers superpowers, as one Rider actually sets Invess on the public after they call him out and a group of teens use them to rob banks because they might as well with all the bad rap going on. A villainous Rider deconstructs the entire premise of Kamen Rider by delivering the following line after killing a monster who was actually a human transformed by the fruit of Helheim.
    I destroyed a monster that was attacking our civilians. [..] I'd say that's pretty heroic.
  • In Shuriken Sentai Ninninger vs. Kamen Rider Drive Spring Vacation Combination Special, The Ninningers defeat giant Roidmudes by using the Otomo-nin. They are promptly arrested and labeled public enemies because of all of the collateral damage done, something that isn't discussed in a Super Sentai series but would be quite a real thing in a Kamen Rider series where the main characters are cops.
• Kevin Can F**k Himself deconstructs the Bumbling Dad and Foolish Husband, Responsible Wife tropes by showing just how awful it would be for someone to live with or be friends with a person who acted like the fathers/husbands seen in most sitcoms. The titular Kevin is a completely selfish Manchild who regularly manipulates and abuse his friends and his wife for his own benefit and amusement and thinks they all love him anyway. This is shown by Kevin's view being seen through a "sitcom filter" where everything in his eyes is all bright and cheerful, he gets a Studio Audience, and thinks he's the center of the world. Outside of the filter, everything and everyone is dour and Kevin's behavior on other people is shown much more realistically. It comes to a boil in the finale where Kevin's friends eventually get sick of his antics and abandon him while his wife states she's filing for divorce and will never love him. This sends Kevin into a fit of rage since he's no longer being loved unconditionally or getting any attention anymore, so he attempts to burn his wife's belongings as a form of revenge, only for the fire to spread out of control and kill him in the process.
  • In addition to the above, the show regularly examines how the "wacky" antics seen on typical Sitcoms would not be as fun if they occurred in real life. In addition, there is no Negative Continuity in the series, meaning that problems build up and have a lasting effect. Lastly, it breaks down the misogyny that is often inherent to the typical American sitcom, showing how much darkness can be masked with a laugh track.
    • When Kevin spends all of his and Allison's savings on a sports memorabilia scam, it's presented as being the immature and reckless act that it is, rather than brushed off as it normally would be in these situations.
    • As miserable as she is, you may wonder why Allison doesn't just divorce Kevin and leave. The series lays out exactly why escaping an abusive marriage can be so hard — it costs money to get a divorce and start over, and he controls what little money they have left. And because he's spent so long isolating and abusing her, all the people Allison sees regularly are his friends; she doesn't even have anyone who could put her up on their couch for a few weeks or something.
    • Patty's casual relationship acquaintance and Dogged Nice Guy Kurt impulsively proposes to her in the aftermath of her drug supplier getting arrested. In a sitcom world, it might have worked, but here we see why that's frequently a terrible idea, as Kurt realizes he knows next-to-nothing about her and rescinds his offer just as Patty's warming up to it.
    • As Patty makes it very clear to Allison, her plan to kill Kevin with pills only has a guaranteed chance of working if she is absolutely certain Kevin will actually die. There's a chance that he will just wake up the next day after blacking out.
    • Played with at the end of the finale, where it's actually inverted in that Neil's sitcom-standard buffoon behavior in falling for Kevin's lie about a hide-and-seek contest ends up with him overhearing that Allison planned to kill Kevin — then snaps back to this when instead of talking him down, Patty smashes a bottle over his head to keep him from choking Allison out.
• Midsomer Murders: "Last Year's Model" is a deconstruction of the usual Midsomer Murders episode. The actual murder occurred almost a year earlier, and a major plot point is that Barnaby wonders if he got it wrong. Even the crazy scheme at the end to catch the killer is both a.) an act of desperation brought on because they don't have time to gather evidence before an innocent person is convicted and b.) very nearly fails.
• Mr. Robot is a deconstruction of anti-capitalist anarchist beliefs, the use of terrorist actions to act on those beliefs, and the mindset of anyone who believed Project Mayhem was a good idea. While the first season is about a bunch of plucky weirdo hackers sticking it to The Man by destroying the infrastructure of a major corporation, as the series goes on it shows that the people at the very top did not get to the top by how many fancy buildings they have or how many computers they own, but through the good old-fashioned way of stepping on people until they get what they want, and if the rules of society and the companies they own are taken away, they'll still be on top because they'll be smart enough to back up their power, and will just step on people more directly. Meanwhile everyone under them, their employees, anyone who associates with their employees, random families, the friends and loved ones of the plucky weirdo hackers, they will be the ones who suffer under societal collapse.
• Once Upon a Time serves largely as a deconstruction of the fairy-tale concept of receiving magical assistance from beings like a Fairy Godmother or a Genie. They can give you a shortcut that saves you from poverty or give you the power to protect the people you love, but in the end, it always comes with a price.
• Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon ended up deconstructing its own source material in increasingly surprising ways as it diverged from the original story, until, by the end, Sailor Moon herself has become the Omnicidal Maniac villain; the senshi's power source, the Silver Crystal, turns out to have really been an Artifact of Doom; and erstwhile villain Queen Beryl is revealed to have actually been trying to save the world (albeit only so she could rule it). The deconstruction arises here as a result of the audience's own genre expectations about the senshi's Power of Friendship and the motivation of the Card Carrying Villains, and how naïve and dangerous it'd actually be for the heroines to make such assumptions.
• Power Rangers Jungle Fury has one with Casey being a Deconstruction of a Rookie Red Ranger. In most Power Rangers shows before and after, whether the Red Ranger is a Rookie or not, the Red Ranger usually has some form of experience in something, be it leadership or martial arts, if not both. Not always, though; the Live-Action TV page of the Rookie Red Ranger trope gives a whole host of examples from the trope namers of Power Rangers and Super Sentai, among others.
• The Sopranos:
  • The show serves largely as a deconstruction of Undying Loyalty in The Mafia. Easily one of the biggest deconstructions. Instead of portraying The Mafia as a synonym of loyalty (like The Godfather), here is the opposite. Very few members are really loyal (it's telling something that Silvio was the single most loyal member of the mob) and most of them are more than willing to betray their partners for vengeance, resentment, or greed.
  • The show deconstructs The Mafia in the modern-day too. The Mafia here is nowhere near as powerful as they were in movies like GoodFellas and Casino thanks to the combination of rats revealing their crimes, modern forensics, and technology making it more difficult to steal or murder, government crackdowns, RICO law, hostility from other families, and drugs. Not helping matters is that the older generation has been dying off and the younger members lack their intelligence and restraint. Basically, they are no longer the criminal organization of the old days, making them less of a government target and more of a group of violent street thugs living in the past and escaping the police.
• Star Trek experienced a successful Deconstruction with Deep Space Nine, and a mildly successful Reconstruction with Voyager.
• Supernatural
  • The show spent several seasons deconstructing the relationship between Sam and Dean, to the point where it is depicted as unhealthy and destructive. In season nine, Dean made a deal with a rogue angel to save Sam, only to learn that he had been tricked and got Kevin killed in the process. Sam stayed angry with Dean for most of the season. And as a direct consequence of Sam going to extraordinary lengths to save Dean from the Mark of Cain and being a demon in season 10, they unleash The Darkness
  • ''The Heroes' Journey'' deconstructs their fighting prowess, lucky moments, and other things they take for granted (not having regular colds or cavities, no serious money problems even though they don't work regular jobs) as Plot Armor, and shows us what happens when it gets taken away.
    Sam: So could we ever actually pick locks, or was it Chuck this whole time?
• The Ten Commandments miniseries shows the many hard choices that Moses had to make in following God: abandoning his family, alienating his adoptive mother, causing his blood brother to do a Face–Heel Turn, killing his most loyal comrade to enforce God's authority.
• Ultra Series:
  • Ultraman Nexus (and prequel movie Ultraman: The Next) is a deconstruction of the usual Kaiju and Ultra Series shows. It shows what will happen if giant aliens and monsters actually appeared in real life and no, it isn't pleasant. It also explores the realities behind a human suddenly merging with an alien being to become a superhero and not every host takes it well, along with how people would react if they saw a giant humanoid being suddenly appear to battle the monsters. This is why Nexus is considered Darker and Edgier than most Tokusatsu as well as one of the darkest entries in the Ultra Series.
    • The series' themes were re-explored in the Ultraman X episode "Bond -Unite-", which had Xio's Lieutenant Sayuri Tachibana gain the power to become Ultraman Nexus until the end of the episode, anyways. It features her children almost getting killed by the monster Bemular in Canada as well as having Tachibana try to cope with the fact that she suddenly could now transform into a giant superhero at will. The episode's Monster of the Week was even the Nexus monster Bugbuzun.
  • Before it, Ultra Q Dark Fantasy deconstructs its 1966 original (which although a Sci-Fi Horror series, sought to maintain a family-friendly tone the best it could), having many of its elements later used in Ultraman Nexus. Both series were actually part of a project to reboot the franchise for an older audience that went nowhere.
  • Ultraman Leo did it before it was cool, with lots of death and violence. It deconstructed almost every happy trope the Ultra Series had, despite coming right off the back of Ultraman Taro, a Denser and Wackier kids' comedy! Not surprisingly, Ultraman Leo is thought of as the darkest of the Showa era entries in the franchise.
  • Ultraseven X took what Nexus did up to eleven and combined it with Ultraseven, a more sci-fi series far more serious and thought-provoking than any Showa Ultra Series. It also deconstructs the Spy Fiction genre since the defense team in the series turns out to be Evil All Along, the city population being bizzare, and the Seven X's design is a darker take on both the Ultramen and the professional wrestlers.
• In a very unusual example, as the vast majority of deconstructions are very cynical in nature, The West Wing (a highly idealistic show) could be seen as a deconstruction of the popular conventions of what constitutes political immorality: the Press Secretary spins information not to cover up the government's guilt, but to protect the jobs of heads of state and militaries from the influence of political whims; politicians make unsavory deals with amoral lobbyists and scheming congressmen not for personal gain, but to rescue legislation that would help out thousands of people; the President's speeches and public appearances are carefully scripted not to make him look good, but to prevent confusion and possible panic from people who don't have Masters' in public policy; etc, etc.
• The Vampire Diaries deconstructed the whole woman scorned trope in season 5. a witch was cheated on, so she used her powers to a) trap the mistress in stone and use her for b) an anchor to a terrible afterlife that she created for supernatural beings while c) trapping her ex in a tomb for over two thousand years, in the hopes that he will take an immortality cure that will ensure his death and send him to the Other Side. Considering the lengths that she took to get her revenge, and the attacks that she launched on the main characters, it is clear that getting payback on a man can turn someone into a bigger bad guy than he was.
• Stranger Things deconstructs the Eldritch Abomination with its Big Bad, the Mind Flayer. Yes, the Mind Flayer is an immensely powerful, wholly unique being, but because it's so powerful and thus so used to getting what it wants, it essentially has the mindset of a toddler. It doesn't know how to deal with resistance or setbacks to its plans, only being able to throw a temper tantrum in response. And since it's so unique and self-reliant, it has no idea how to interact with and blend into a social species like humans, to the point where it has to effectively leave its hosts on autopilot most of the time, because when it takes them over directly, it can't act in a way that doesn't immediately clue every human into what it actually is. Furthermore, since its sheer power makes it used to easy victory, whenever it is significantly harmed, or especially defeated in one of its plans, it will launch into a full-blown petty revenge mode from which it will never leave, even when the petty revenge is severely detrimental to its long-term goals. In short, while it is powerful and dangerous, it also showcases all the ways that existing as an Eldritch Abomination would limit a person psychologically.
• The Twilight Zone (2019): In "Try Try" the plot can be seen as for Groundhog Day and loops like it depicts in general. Mark has concluded no one else matters or is even truly real, since after each day that version of them simply vanishes when it's reset. Thus he's grown to feel no compunction about murder or rape. Unlike Phil in the film, he's too self-centered to change and thus it's implied will be stuck in the loop forever.
• Wednesday: Unlike previous versions of The Addams Family, which would have written off Wednesday unleashing ravenous piranhas on Pugsley's bullies as yet another example of Amusing Injury or Rule of Funny, this time there are serious consequences. There's a copious amount of blood as the piranhas attack and one of the boys ends up losing a testicle. Not only does Wednesday get expelled, but the victim's family also wanted her charged with attempted murder; it's implied that she got off lightly because of her family's money. Her parents are actually concerned by what she did, if only because the aforementioned charges won't look good on her record and could harm her future (which again shows that consequences stick around even after the Black Comedy scene has finished) and pack her off to boarding school to try and help her, where Principal Weems forces her to attend therapy sessions with Dr. Kinbott.
• The Wire
  • Mainly deconstructs the Police Procedural, as the showrunners sought to create the most realistic, intelligent, and well-researched version they could. They also had a brutally honest message about the failure of the War On Drugs (instead of praising it like every other Cop Show).
  • It also deconstructs the Criminal Procedural, showing with equal intensity the lives of characters on both sides of the law.
  • Finally, the show deconstructs The American Dream by showing how corrupt our institutions are, and any attempt to reform them is crushed by the system. The most positive embodiment of the dream is the character of Omar Little, who values self-sufficiency and individualism, all while being an inveterate criminal who has helped his community far more than the capitalist system has.
• Wynonna Earp deconstructs The Chosen One by having the title character be a hard-drinking Anti-Hero who occasionally alienates everyone around her. She spends most of the series trying to rid herself and her family of a curse put on them by an old enemy over a century ago, only for said enemy to destroy the curse himself in the third season finale. She then spends the first half of the fourth season aimless and looking for a way to stay in the fight, only to start going off the rails once she finds a way back in, going after people who aren't enemies because they might become one.

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