Watching Private Practice I flashed back to watching the second season of American Idol, the only season I really got extremely invested in. Ryan Seacrest always made me so angry when he would talk for awhile about nothing while everyone really just wanted to hear who was going home, and then of course he would have to cut to a commercial break. That commercial break was sometimes so painful and I wanted nothing as much as I wanted to see the results. It wasn't until reading the article for class and learning about "gaps" and their use did I fully realize how common of a practice it is in many different types of media to withhold information to engage the audience.
This is a concept that I have experienced over and over again but never really defined until now. I think the viewer has the choice of how they handle these gap experiences. We can all shout out how stupid it is for whoever is in charge to make us wait and that they should just tell us the result or show us the next event in the story. We can also let our emotional roller coaster run its course, manipulated by the gap mechanism. I make my choice based off how much skill I think the artists has in producing their product, or how much I like the content of the show. I really did enjoy Private Practice on Monday because while it uses such tired soap-bopray conventions I think the actors/director/writers did a really great job. For them I suspended my disbelief and let my emotions be tugged and pulled because its fun to be invested in a story.
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