"Every question met with another question. Never an answer. Only 'why?'" —
Borehinder Mohindrance Mohinder Suresh,
Heroes
The dropoff in viewership that occurs when the fans have lost confidence in the writing team's ability to ever resolve its plots.
It's said that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the viewing public, but sometimes a show comes along that promises stories so complex and subtle that it'll make
War And Peace look like "Frog And Toad Are Friends". If done right, this is catnip to
a certain sector of the viewing public, who will often give such a show a surprisingly long time to set up its plot arcs before getting antsy for a resolution. The catch, for a creator, is that the longer an arc runs and the more complicated it gets, the more awesome its payoff must be in order for it to feel satisfying to the fans. It's much easier for a writer to keep kicking the can—piling mysteries on top of mysteries—rather than close off storylines, but even the most patient and indulgent viewers will want at least
some mysteries solved
eventually.
Named for
Chris Carter, creator of
The X Files, which made wide use of
Myth Arc plots (in fact, it was the
Trope Namer for "
Myth Arc"). For the first half of the 1990s, the fans were convinced that Carter had plotted an elaborate and minutely thought-out web of deceit and lies for his FBI agents to unravel. Forests of
Epileptic Trees sprouted around every new tantalizing hint revealed. No reference was too obscure for devoted X-Philes, who cheerfully threw themselves into history, folklore, myth, science, or any other branch of human knowledge that seemed like it might shed some light on the story. By mid-decade, though, the
Myth Arc story had churned along for years without really answering any of the questions raised. It had, in fact, mutated into a dense
Kudzu Plot, and fans began to suspect what
Chris Carter would later sheepishly confirm: there
was no intricately plotted story. He'd been making it all up as he went along.
X-Files fans had, as they'd demonstrated, a tremendous willingness to invest time and brainpower into slowly building plots... but finding out that they'd been putting so much mental effort into
no plot was a bit much. The
Myth Arc plot eventually limped to a conclusion, but by then the only people watching were Mulder/Scully
UST fans. When, around this time, a certain
J Michael Straczynski was starting up
his new show, he took pains to assure everyone that he'd written the story in advance.
In some series, an additional possibility is that the viewer will spend months or years watching each new episode only to have them all
get erased from continuity, leaving them at the same point in the story they'd be at if they hadn't bothered.
See also
Kudzu Plot and
Commitment Anxiety. The Chris Carter effect is when bad writing and/or plotting cause fans to give up on the show; if fans—suspicious that such a story-driven show would even
survive to tell its stories—were wary of even watching it in the first place, that's
The Firefly Effect. Contrast
Leave The Plot Threads Hanging.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Neon Genesis Evangelion and The Big O. The Big O never got to complete the overall story that was planned, but it's hard to believe that it really would have suddenly started explaining all the bizarre events and cryptic utterances that were being built up continuously over the first 26 episodes; NGE, meanwhile, led to enough speculation, supplemental material and enough Mind Screwing confusion to fill 175 pages of Wikipedia articles.
- The Big O's problem was that they had planned on wrapping everything up - and then were ordered by Cartoon Network to leave in SequelHooks for a third season that never came to fruition. Concept art from the time the episodes were made shows a number of ideas that were left out of series two for this very reason - the show may well have wrapped things up with more finality had the original plan been left intact.
- The Pokemon cartoon seems to have no real set goals for the characters in mind despite having heavy references to "pokemon mastery" and the like. None of the characters have truly achieved any of their goals as of yet.
Comic Books
- Many of the plot elements related to the Spider-Totem introduced by J Michael Straczynski during his run on Spider-Man from 2001 to 2007 gave readers a lot of doubletalk and mystical mumbo-jumbo, but very little in the way of concrete resolution, like exactly why Peter had to "evolve", why one cosmic entity wanted to bring him back from the dead while another thought he should stay deceased, the mysterious entities that resurrected Mysterio and Miss Arrow and what they wanted with Peter, etc. None of this was ever really explained.
Literature
- Robert Jordan's Doorstopper series The Wheel Of Time spent so many books getting more and more complicated, that it seemed impossible for anyone to ever wrap everything up. Jordan himself stated that he would conclude the series with book 12 "whether it's 15,000 pages, Tor has to invent a new binding system, or it comes with its own library cart," since it was very unlikely that he could write a coherent thirteenth book. Robert Jordan's death shortly before finishing the last book sure isn't going to help matters — Brandon Sanderson, the writer tapped to finish the series in Jordan's stead, eventually deciding that resolving every arc properly would take no less than three
books.
- The rest of Sanderson's writing averts this trope with a vengeance. If anyone could tie up all the loose ends in another author's epic, it's him.
- Daniel "Lemony Snicket" Handler deliberately exploited this.
Live Action TV
- Lost. At any given time, exactly half of its fanbase will believe that the show's creators are making the next Twin Peaks and have no idea what endgame they desire, while the other half will argue that the threads are finally coming together, and a satisfactory revelation is all but guaranteed.
- Now that ABC has signed a deal that extends Lost to definite endpoint in 2010 and there are a set number of episodes in between now and then, they can't possibly screw it up! Right? Right?
- This strip of Order Of The Stick takes a subtle jab at this.
- In a Saturday Night Live episode, Amy Poehler said "ABC announced this week that it has renewed Lost for a fourth season. Said the show's writers, 'oh, crap.'"
- The Guardian's guide magazine once had a feature on several theories as to what was going on in Lost: it's all a dream (Word Of God denies this), Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory (ditto), it's an elaborate version of The Truman Show etc., etc., before reaching the final theory: "They're just making it up as they go along."
- Are you a fan of Lost? Here's a fun game. Find someone who's never watched it. Explain the premise in one sentence - "people mysteriously marooned on an island and they have to get off". Ask them if they would watch it. They would? Great. Explain everything that happened next in very simple terms. Ask them what they think. Almost always they answer will be, "WTF?!?! They're totally making it up as they go along!".
- With the Season 5 finale there is now a distinct possibility of the second variant, the reset button.
- Suspected contributor to the failure of The Lone Gunmen
- Demonstrated failure of Twin Peaks. But really, what did they expect from David Lynch? Writer and committed Lynch fan David Foster Wallace opined in an essay that the second season of Twin Peaks was some of the best television he'd ever watched, in that it was some of the worst television he'd ever watched. If you watch it all in a row, it's pretty clear that it's one long nervous breakdown on the part of David Lynch as he realizes there's no way in hell he can fulfill any of the promises he made to the viewers with season one. The desperation is palpable. Executive Meddling was only the start of its problems.
- Perhaps the ultimate example is The Prisoner, which posed lots of ongoing questions — Who runs the Village? Why did Number Six resign? Who is Number One? — but ended with an utterly incomprehensible Grand Finale that answered none of them.
- Maybe if the show hadn't been cancelled nine episodes early they would have come up with a more conventional (and therefore less interesting) finale.
- This was pretty much what got The 4400 cancelled. The long-awaited elaboration of the fabled 'Future People' was half-answered very late in the show, but then about twice as many new questions cropped up. The cancellation then abruptly cut off any hope of the rest of it being resolved. Damn shame, really.
- Heroes first season was hailed as great, tightly-plotted and well-written storytelling, with a clear goal in mind. Its second and third seasons, though, were prime examples of the Chris Carter effect in action—the writing team flailing around, directionless, at war with its own continuity—and it's only started to re-establish its arc as of the fourth "volume".
- Babylon 5's spin-off Crusade, didn't manage so well. It spent half a season creating mysteries to solve later in its planned five year arc, and then got canceled. Whoops.
- Also by Chris Carter, Millennium is a good example of this. The show got increasingly bizarre and difficult to follow as it went on, and the end of the third season (the last one filmed, and for good reason) provided no closure at all. Each season had a different show runner(s), each with a very different idea of what the show should be and no one from above willing to set boundaries.
- We're getting there with Burn Notice. The second season ended teasing the same reveal it teased at the end of the first, and we still don't know much of anything about who "burned" Michael or why. It's entertaining enough watching Michael smack around drug dealers and loan sharks, but we could use just a little information here...
- And then the Season 2 finale happened. Yeah, welcome to season 3.
- Similar to Veronica Mars, Desperate Housewives features a single ongoing mystery for every season which is solved in the season finale. Though the fans still complain that one or more of these revelations have been less than satisfactory. In particular, there's widespread suspicion among the fanbase that the solution to season four's mystery was changed halfway through after Marc Cherry decided he wanted to keep Dana Delany (one of his favorite actresses and the original choice for regular character Bree) on the show.
- The limited duration of Harper's Island, together with the expectation that there'll be no one left standing in the end, is probably intended to preemptively avert this trope.
- Battlestar Galactica began suffering hard from this in to a lesser extent in its third and a much larger one in its fourth season, as the focus shifted more from survival drama to mythology.
Video Games
- The Legacy of Kain series seems to be suffering from a fatal case of Chris Carter. The meat of the story comes from immortal, nigh indestructible evolving vampires traveling through time and fighting extra-dimensional demons. The series' timeline spans thousands of years, and each additional game either flagrantly retcons and/or reset buttons the previous installations. It still could turn out to be one of the greatest series ever, provided they manage to put a bow on it. However, so far news from the developer seems to suggest that another sequel is unlikely.
- "Making it up as he goes along" seems to describe what Nomura is doing with Kingdom Hearts to a tee. Trying to figure out what the cosmology is exactly is like trying to put together a 1000 piece puzzle in which most the pieces are identical, and several are missing. Tying things up without contradicting something in the canon seems pretty much impossible even though it's only 3 games into the series. Nomura's been accused of Retconning his own canon since the announcement of a 14th Organization member. And some of the pieces to be put together are exclusive to Japan, making it even more fun!
Webcomics
- Sluggy Freelance has been suffering from this problem for some time. During the first six or seven years of the strip's existence, artist Pete Abrams created a veritable arsenal of Chekhov's guns... then stopped firing any of them. To make matters even more frustrating, Abrams has spent many months working on side plots that do not play a major role in advancing the numerous plot threads he already created. Things are beginning to move again, but at this point it's hard to believe Abrams could possibly wrap up the strip in less than four or five years, even if he created no new plot elements. Every resolution adds a few more questions. Arguably, though, Abrams has been lampshading this with the "fate spider" comics.
- Averted in that many Sluggy fans don't really WANT the series to end.
Western Animation
- Sort of inverted in Avatar The Last Airbender. Most fans were absolutely confident that the writers would neatly resolve all the loose ends, especially the ones they made great big deals out of. But at the end of it all where is Zuko's mommy? (and other things.)
Web Original
- Many of the plot elements from the first season of lonelygirl15 seem to have been completely forgotten. Cassie, anyone?
- KateModern is much more successful in this regard, but still left a few threads hanging at the end.
