I’m beginning to lose patience with television shows where the entire episode’s drama revolves around the protagonist not telling the truth to someone when they need too.

To clarify, I’m fine with this premise when the truth will hurt someone, or for some other reason needs to be kept a secret. Those are fine. But when the truth is being kept back for no good reason (apart from the writer got lazy and decided this was a great way to create some tension) all it does is irritate me.

Ok, admittedly I’m someone who pretty much just says whatever I’m thinking (and whenever ;p ) so I’m the type who usually tries to explain what’s happening, and not everyone is like that, but when the main character is not telling her best friend she is also hanging out with some old work friends who she ran into a second ago(by happenstance) and just ends up running between the two groups causing anger and confusion and the WHOLE thing could be solved by taking two seconds and explaining things and the only repercussion of doing so is you might be a bit embarrassed in front of the old work colleagues all that happens is I, as a viewer, am frustrated.

If you are going to have a character keep a secret, give them a reason. Make the secret a good secret. Like one character killed someone protecting her friends, but she doesn’t want to burden the other friends (who have a lot on their plates at the moment) with her feelings. She also doesn’t want to make them feel guilty, or like it’s their fault, so she has to internalise all of it.

Sorry for the rant, just in this last week I’ve seen this done at least three times and, well, I’m losing patience.

Is there a device/cliche like this that drives you to distraction? (Permission to rant granted ;p )