re: #66 Eclectic Cyborg

Yep, TV Tropes calls it “Plot Armor.” Basically, characters will survive anything, no matter how unrealistic, until such point the script calls for them to be killed off.

it’s one of my frustrations with television (and yes, I understand a show about people being zombified by a fungus is basically space opera), and which I actually suspect does have some bearing on the coarsening of America. We watch a character get the shit kicked out of them by a group of folks continually kicking them while they’re on the ground. Are they in the hospital on life support, while doctors desperately work to reduce the hematoma that’s threatening to cut blood off in the brain? No, they’re waking up in somebody’s bed, and having a lovely lady mop their faces gently to get the dried blood off. Kiefer Sutherland is given a drug that effectively causes him to start drowning on fluid in his lungs as part of being tortured. Does he need two months of rehab after being rescued? Fuck no. He coughs a couple of times in the back of the car, and fifteen minutes after being rescued he’s good to go. Young, stupid people watch these shows and think they can wail on somebody for fifteen minutes, or straddle them while punching their faces back and forth, without killing them. Stupid Republicans think torturing folks is okay because hey, Kiefer got waterboarded on 24 and he turned out all right.