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Synchronicity
MOD
(4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
22nd May, 2017 09:56:56 AM
The Watson. See also Audience Surrogate, who reacts as a typical viewer would to a weird situation.
Madrugada
MOD
Since: Jan, 2001
22nd May, 2017 08:58:09 PM
If the character you're talking about asks questions that allow another character to explain, they're The Watson. If they do the explaining themselves, they're Mr. Exposition.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
This has to be a troupe but I can't find it. One the functions of this character is to explain technobabble. But they don't provide the information but ask questions that allow other characters to explain to this person and by default the audience the topic at hand.
Best explained as a few examples. On Bones one of the squints would say something about some evidence and Booth was there to say "Huh????" so in explaining to Booth they also explained it t the audience. Other wise there was no need for explanation since everyone in the scene knew exactly what they said. Angela also sometimes filled in this role.
This could be thought of in a larger context where in the Harry Potter movies, at least for the first few movies, "Harry" had this role.