Swingers on TV?

So I’m reading through this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly, which profiles the new summer shows coming on. One of them is Swingtown, which premiers tomorrow night at 10 p.m. Eastern on CBS. Swingtown is a show about suburbia in the mid 70’s, and surrounds a group of husbands and wives who just happen to be swappers. You know…people who swap their partners. :wideeyed:

Dude. Swappers? Swingers? Seriously? On CBS? Not on HBO?

Times have changed, huh?

I can’t wait to see it. It looks like a fun, stand around the water cooler and talk about it the next day kind of show. Though I’m sure it’ll have to be pretty tame since one of the major networks is carrying it instead of one of the cable networks. Still, we’ll see.

Anyway, reading about this upcoming premiere got me to thinking about television and movies vs romance books, and how we seem to be much more forgiving of the characters we fall in love with on tv and in movies than we do in our romance novels. On tv and in movies, some of our favorite characters are not always above reproach. They lie, cheat on their partners (sometimes more than once), divorce each other, fall in love with the wrong person, cheat, do really bad things, cheat, kill people, cheat…

If any of the main characters in a romance novel do those things, isn’t it pretty much unforgiveable? Won’t we take that book and toss it against the wall and call it a DNF?

Why are we so forgiving of characters we love in TV and movies, and yet so staunch in our rules for romance novel characters and what they can’t do?

Just a thought that popped into my head that I didn’t really have an answer for. So I thought I’d throw it out there and see what y’all think about it.

Is it because in a romance novel the hero and heroine can only love and be with each other? Is that the unwritten rule? That because there’s no long term story ARC for them to screw up and come back together over several books (well, usually), to make amends for their past mistakes? But even if they show up at the beginning of the story having already made those mistakes, wouldn’t we find it hard to forgive them for having made the mistakes in the first place?

I know….deep thoughts for hump day, huh? :giggle: