A Ticking Time Bomb of Cuteness

(Yes, yes, I know I have written two posts in a row that have "cuteness" in the title. Consider this as "thematically resonant" rather than "Leopoldtulip cannot come up with new titles.")

My wife and I have recently been watching a show called Millennium, created by Chris Carter, the creator of The X-Files. After Millennium was cancelled, Chris Carter sneakily had the Millennium characters guest-star on The X-Files to wrap up some dangling plot-lines. Our curiosity piqued, we decided to give Millennium a try. About all we remember about The X-Files wrap-up episode is that the main character is re-united with his young daughter at the end.

Now that we've started watching Millennium, I'm not really surprised the series was cancelled. It's about the most depressing thing you can watch. The main character spends each episode "getting into the mind of" a social deviant. The opening credits show various torture scenes (such as a person who has had his eyes and mouth sewn shut), along with gloomy messages running across the screen such as "worry" and "who cares?" Amidst all the darkness every episode, whether it be someone who goes to funerals in order to kill the mourners, or someone who sets fire to priests, there is one bright, shining light (no pun intended): the main character has a young daughter. With curly hair. A friendly giggle. In other words, a ticking time bomb of cuteness.

Let me explain. There is no way that a show this dark is going to let a cute little girl peacefully coexist with the thorough-going darkness and evil you see each week. Something very bad has got to happen. Yes, I know that she must survive until the end of the series, because I've seen _The X-Files_ episode. But that doesn't mean that there's not going to be "the episode." "The episode" where the cute little girl is kidnapped by an enemy and tortured, and the ticking time bomb of cuteness explodes in a dazzling array of darkness and despair: the curly haired girl will not die; it's just that her suffering will make the viewer despair of living. So each time we watch an episode, we wonder, "Is this going to be the one?" The one where all the time they have spent showing her draw pictures of cute animals, of saying "I love Daddy," of pushing the boundaries of plausible cuteness, all this will come to a head. Sometimes, the writers fake you out: the little girl's pet dies, and you think that this is going to be the episode where they will exploit your weakness and her childhood innocence will be completely crushed. But no: lo, the husband and wife tell their daughter that her parents are immortal, and suddenly, the girl can be cute again. They keep toying with me. Something's going to happen. If the daughter is not tortured, than something's going to happen to her mom. One way or another, childhood innocence cannot last past season 2, max.

I realize it may seem silly to write a blog entry with my predictions about a show that has been over for years. What I'm interested in are two things: 1st, the principle involved, what I will term "The cost of cuteness." In a typical dark drama, babies, etc. are introduced primarily so that you will develop a rapport with them and then watch them be killed. God intends evil to serve a good purpose, while dark drama types intend cuteness to further some form of despair. That's how they work. Second, I'm interested in the experience of watching a depressing show just knowing that something bad will happen in one of the episodes to a cute character. This experience I shall term "The Hauntingness of Cuteness." There is just no way of inserting so much cuteness without suggesting something nasty's going to happen, so you have to just hide your face during all the cute parts.