So, I’m watching the premiere of Lost six days later then the rest of humanity, and I got to thinking –
Is there a proper name for the Law of Disposable Characters in A Work of Fiction? I’d like to know exactly what I’m supposed to be yelling at the television set when, say, Jack roams around the submarine house and what’s going on finally occurs to me: “Oh no, now I get why he had that long random conversation with the fellow with a bad accent – it’s frigging [name here]’s Law in a horribly annoying fashion!”
Also, if things don’t start speeding up a little bit, Lost is going to be like those 12 DBZ episodes taking place during a 5 minute battle. We’ve been on the same day (or at least 24 hours) since the start of the 3 episode finale last year, and we can’t be moving on that much next week. Though, if they want to put a beeping clock on the screen, I guess I can handle it.
AND AND AND if they’re telling me what happened to all the survivors, they better tell me what happened to Rose.
(Stop typing. Watch more off the TiVo.)
I’m pretty sure what you’re talking about is the Law of Conservation of Characters.
The only person I can think of who might have such a law named for them is Ensign Red Shirt. Though some disposable characters don’t die, they just fade away.
I can forgive it taking four episodes of an hour-long show to cover a 24-hour period when nighttime events are important. It’s only when it gets really flashback heavy that it gets bad. Which is…pretty DBZesque, come to think of it. I think I officially called it quits when Future Trunks had a full-episode flashback while watching Cell fight Vegeta.
I don’t know if they were the first, but I always think the DEFINITIVE example of what you’re describing is like on Scooby Doo where they give you a “random” character in the first act and you never see them again until the very end because that’s always the dude whose face you see after they pull off the rubber mask.