If you wanted to put together the drinking game with the highest possible fatality rate, you could scarcely do better than having someone drink every time a show introduced a romantic subplot.  It’s one of, if not THE, most commonly used tropes in storytelling. In my opinion, overly so.

Now, that’s not to say that taking a character relationship in a romantic direction is on its own a bad thing. Just like any other narrative choice, it opens up  new possibilities for plot and character growth,  as the new dynamic influences the way that characters respond to a certain situation. However. by that same token, new narrative directions also limit choices for the same reason. That normally wouldn’t make playing the romance card any worse than any other trope, but the film and TV industry in particular make it almost a prerequisite for creatives to include them. This results in a homogeneity of story where things become lackluster and predictable and potentially fruitful directions (particularly having to do with male-female friendships) go unexplored because a given character dynamic is placed within the tiny box of “romance.”

Freedom of Agency

The main issue I tend to have with romantic subplots is that once invoked, they pigeonhole character development into a limited number of ‘approved’ directions. The characters in the couple can A) Fight for the first time B) Struggle with splitting time with their significant other and their friends C) Question the long-term sustainability of their relationship, or any of the usual suspects that show up when writing couples.

Again: not always a bad thing, but problems arise when the character arc(s) that existed  before a given coupling happened get completely derailed by the romance. In its worst form, the component characters cease being individuals, and begin only existing for the overall story as a single entity rather than distinct individuals: as “The Couple.” I take, as my central example, the shitstorm that followed the Black Widow/Bruce Banner plotline in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

-Written by Vincent Mendoza