Saw the first episode and enjoyed it. I know what you mean by not taking it too seriously - family fun with some leaps in logic when it comes to the narrative.
Sometimes it takes me awhile to see exactly what she is up to. She seems almost like an agent of chaos. Until you finally figure out where’s she is going with her subtle and not so subtle manipulations.
It would be interesting to see which episodes show her as holistic and which linear. She definitely has a long game.
I guess I am enjoying the character because she actually makes me feel icky.
Also, they do seem to follow the “end every scene” in disaster advice in this series – which is good fun.
If you’re talking about GCD theory, disaster is a technical term meaning ‘something happens you weren’t counting on.’ It’s a Disaster if you get rich and it upsets your plans and you have to change direction, stopping a life of enslavement and beginning a life of luxury and philanthropy and universal recognition. If you look at it from the Dramatica Theory perspective, it’s an element in a quad with a possible negative or positive charge.
I’m looking at how it lines up with Dramatica. There are two quads:
Goal Conflict
Disaster Sequel
…
and then in Sequel:
Emotion Thought
Decision Action
…
The Sequel Quad (from GCD theory) lines up pretty perfectly with the stuff on scene in the Dramatica Theory book and in Jim’s writings.
My main reference is Jack Bickham’s book, and my audios of Dwight Swain.
I realize it’s generally discouraged to discuss other theories here, mainly because it’s not helpful to discussing others trying to understand the difficulties of Dramatica Theory, so I’ll refrain from further thoughts on this here. But there inevitably have to be overlaps with bits and pieces of the…what would I call them as a whole? I think I would call them “Guild Theories” that are out there, that are kind of like the passing of knowledge from a Guild member to an apprentice when that was how the whole world worked. Nuggets of timeworn practice. Dramatica is a horse of a different color.
Hmm this may be worth an article on Medium though…
June Harris, and can we just stop for a second to savor that name, is the Costanza of the series. You know, I’ve always wanted to pretend to be a psychologist.
For me, Dr. Smith seems to be a very strong Linear/Action character. Even when she acts otherwise, she is doing so for linear, active reasons.
And that is a great choice for the character in terms of story weaving. The authors don’t have to spend too much time on the character for the watcher to understand what she’s about. This allows her arc/plot to stay mostly in the background while other characters are being focused on.