Well, it's necessary to confront the forces of opposition, which may or may not be the villain, depending on the nature of the central conflict.
For example, I recently watched the late-seventies British espionage drama The Sandbaggers, which is a Cold War procedural about a beleaguered special operations director of the British SIS. The nominal villains of most episodes are the Russians or their satellite states, but in a dramatic sense, the forces of antagonism are Burnside's own superiors and colleagues, against whom he schemes to get things done and who sometimes scheme against him. The villains of any given storyline may not appear at all, and the action plot is often resolved off screen (in part because the show's total budget is about what the average American production spent on catering). The central dramatic impetus of the episode, however, is "Will Burnside unravel the complex scheme?" or "Will Burnside and his men realize they've been set up as patsies?" The force of the dramatic conflict is not in the action plot, so we often don't need to see the KGB officers or the Bulgarian policemen or what have you.
By the same token, in a romance or romantic comedy, the force of opposition is the love interest, not the bad guy. This played out in over-the-top fashion in Moonlighting, where the villain would often stumble in out of exasperation that no one was chasing him, or the mystery would go unresolved -- the central conflict was the will-they-or-won't-they tension between David and Maddie Hayes.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-11-16 05:09 pm (UTC)For example, I recently watched the late-seventies British espionage drama The Sandbaggers, which is a Cold War procedural about a beleaguered special operations director of the British SIS. The nominal villains of most episodes are the Russians or their satellite states, but in a dramatic sense, the forces of antagonism are Burnside's own superiors and colleagues, against whom he schemes to get things done and who sometimes scheme against him. The villains of any given storyline may not appear at all, and the action plot is often resolved off screen (in part because the show's total budget is about what the average American production spent on catering). The central dramatic impetus of the episode, however, is "Will Burnside unravel the complex scheme?" or "Will Burnside and his men realize they've been set up as patsies?" The force of the dramatic conflict is not in the action plot, so we often don't need to see the KGB officers or the Bulgarian policemen or what have you.
By the same token, in a romance or romantic comedy, the force of opposition is the love interest, not the bad guy. This played out in over-the-top fashion in Moonlighting, where the villain would often stumble in out of exasperation that no one was chasing him, or the mystery would go unresolved -- the central conflict was the will-they-or-won't-they tension between David and Maddie Hayes.