𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕’𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆 𝑻𝒂𝒍𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈

(“Trope”: a common or overused theme or device.)

The inherent nature of a genre trope is that nearly everyone engaged with the genre can recognize it. A genre writer can’t break the trope or they risk losing their audience. Take the “cozy” murder mystery trope, for instance. In order to sustain its recognition factors, the writer’s main characters need to be gathered from the trope’s pool of identifiable archetypes. The audience expects the killer, victim, detective, and coroner archetypes to show up. In this genre, it’s best to have a broad mix of suspects, which brings in yet more archetypes: greedy heir, innocent rich elder, bankrupt business person, jealous lover, nosy neighbor, and more.

All that is a circuitous lead-in to reveal that I’ve been binge-watching a British cozy murder mystery series that generally handles the trope quite well. (Not Miss Marple, but good try.) Despite the show’s excellence in handling the trope, every once in a while the writers break it with an archetypal character that rings false to this particular viewer. When the first break happened, I couldn’t pin down exactly what was off. I really thought maybe that actor just wasn’t as good as the rest of the cast.

Keeping in mind that this is a British show, when the writers needed an unsettling plot element, they sometimes brought in – Americans. Not American actors, mind you, they had British actors portraying American characters. Their characters’ American accents were unintentionally hilarious. I was enthralled to see the British interpretation of a handful of American archetypical characters: brash New York lawyer, offensive LA film producer, and best of all, the Texas oilman. Together with the accent, perhaps the most noticeable part of an archetype’s presentation is the costuming. The Texas oilman’s string-tie was present, but the crucial American cowboy hat looked like the type of fedora Indiana Jones always wore. I mean, they didn’t even put the guy in real cowboy boots.

A few episodes after the one with the Texas oilman, there was an episode entirely devoted to the murderous doings of a British village’s “Wild West Club”. It was one of the most entertaining shows I’ve seen on television in some time. The episode’s producers did a much better job with the costumes this time, but they were a little lax about some of the horses in the episode. Costume notwithstanding, you can’t put a Western-style saddle on an animal that is clearly a farm horse and call the rider a cowboy.

You could tell from the horse’s puzzled attitude that the whole setup was just wrong.