It has been a while since I have written a review because I don't see the point. However, I like to muse about storytelling and examine a story to learn from it.
With Post Mortem, I wanted to look at one of the biggest sins in storytelling: padding the runtime. Post Mortem is an excellent example of too much padding: it takes six episodes to tell a story that can be told in two.
But how do I know this?
By imagining if the story would make sense without a scene.
With Post Mortem, you find that many of the scenes are irrelevant. It is more than just that entire scenes can be left out; many go on for far too long.
The biggest culprit is the side story of Live's brother, who struggles to get his funeral services going. I think it is supposed to be funny, but it is pointless and eats up a sizeable part of the runtime.
The scenes with the police are also time eaters. They do a lot of talking but little else. It is as if the storytellers realized they needed to be in the story but did not know what to do with them.
I mention these two specifically because they could have become relevant to the main story with some changes.
It would have been easy to have Live and her brother run the Funeral Service together, with Live promoting the funeral services and her brother handling the burials and cremations. While Live causes people to die, her brother faces a dilemma as he finds out that something is wrong with his sister, but profits from her action.
The police could then get involved as they investigate the sudden rise of deaths in the city.
It took me a ten minutes to come up with an idea; a better writer will invent a better story in even less time.
I think that most people would skip scenes to get to the better parts like I did. But your mileage may vary. And if that happens to be the case; all the best to you.
With Post Mortem, I wanted to look at one of the biggest sins in storytelling: padding the runtime. Post Mortem is an excellent example of too much padding: it takes six episodes to tell a story that can be told in two.
But how do I know this?
By imagining if the story would make sense without a scene.
With Post Mortem, you find that many of the scenes are irrelevant. It is more than just that entire scenes can be left out; many go on for far too long.
The biggest culprit is the side story of Live's brother, who struggles to get his funeral services going. I think it is supposed to be funny, but it is pointless and eats up a sizeable part of the runtime.
The scenes with the police are also time eaters. They do a lot of talking but little else. It is as if the storytellers realized they needed to be in the story but did not know what to do with them.
I mention these two specifically because they could have become relevant to the main story with some changes.
It would have been easy to have Live and her brother run the Funeral Service together, with Live promoting the funeral services and her brother handling the burials and cremations. While Live causes people to die, her brother faces a dilemma as he finds out that something is wrong with his sister, but profits from her action.
The police could then get involved as they investigate the sudden rise of deaths in the city.
It took me a ten minutes to come up with an idea; a better writer will invent a better story in even less time.
I think that most people would skip scenes to get to the better parts like I did. But your mileage may vary. And if that happens to be the case; all the best to you.
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