Handling Flashback Scenes and Respecting Your Audience

Some recent anime episodes led me to discuss flashbacks in a bit more length; I think this topic is interesting enough to devote more time to. The discussion and examples used will follow anime, western television, films and books. It is not an anime-only topic, but anime might get a bit more space and examples because I have examples on hand and it’s what made me revisit the topic conceptually.

Flashbacks obviously can come in the form of showing us content from earlier episodes, say, so we’ll remember what happened. An anime infamous for flashbacks in this way, which had episodes where up to a third of the content was recycled was Naruto – this was done because the anime was catching up to the source material and they wanted to use as little content per episode as they could. We’ve even had some examples of a flashback within an episode to something that happened the very same episode.

Note, however, that sometimes such “remembrance” sequences aren’t only required, but drive a point home – you can see it where someone is surprised by a new development and the flashback serves to have them narrate to us what actually happened, or show it again now that we’re armed with new knowledge and can put in the proper context – it’s very common in thrillers – think of the resolution of The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, or recently in anime the case of Akatsuki in Log Horizon thinking of how Shiro and Nyanta had defeated Demiklas – we’ve seen the content we’ve just seen, in slow motion, accompanied with her trying to work out what happened which we’ve missed.

Damages (TV show). Not so Cliched.

This is about the TV show Damages. The one that has Glenn Close in it.

Anyway, this will be mostly about the first season, because the second season is currently airing here and we’re only at the third episode, I think.

Ok, when I originally saw the show, I thought to myself, “Good show, but cliched.” I think that overall, it’s both true and misses the point.
It’s basically a thriller movie, or a really well written thriller book. It has flashback, or future-flash glimpses. Where you get to see several moments of what happens, and then the main story is “6 months ago”. Each episode you get to see another several moments of the “now” while the “past” keeps progressing, until at some point they meet.

Politics, subterfuge, lies, relations. It’s a really tight show, with really great acting by most players involved. Shout-outs to Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, and really, most of all, to Zeljko Ivanek in his role of Ray Fiske. BTW, we were watching this while watching daily Becker reruns, and it was quite a shock to realize Ted Danson is so old, and over-tanned :D

So. Here is why to say Damages is cliched misses the point: It is cliched if you look at it as a suspense novel, or even a suspense book. But see, when you switch your medium, and you make something work? That takes skill, that makes it no longer cliched, in that medium.
Each episode of Damages is like a really good part of a movie, and the series as a whole is just really good. And you know, it reminds me of a discussion I’ve had with my mother regarding season 1 of Prisonbreak before, I’ll need to get back to it.

This gets a 9 out of 10 for superb acting and plot-construction. Watch it, y’all.