Introducing The Eternal Problem of The Hamster Wheel

Every month I have one day I call my dead potato day. It’s the day my cramps are so bad that I give up trying to be productive and just let my brain and body rest. Usually I also use this day to binge watch TV shows old and new found on the streaming services we subscribe to. This was how I discovered the joys of shows like Castle, Bones, 911 and Gilmore Girls (to name a few).

Sometimes I barely make it through a season before I give up. (I simply could not get into Ugly Betty despite my best efforts.) But if a show catches enough of my attention, I’ll stick with it all the way through, even if not every season of the show holds the same level of quality. (I’m looking at you Criminal Minds.)

But the more of these shows I watch (both new and old) the more I notice a disturbing trend. I’m going to call it the Hamster Wheel. This is the tendency of story elements to repeat, sometimes to the point where shows start lamp-shading their caricature of their own creations. The Hamster Wheel combines a lack of character development with a conscious attempt to keep characters stuck in the same endless loop in order to perpetuate the drama of a show.

As you can imagine, it gets frustrating. Especially if you, like me, enjoy watching relationships mature. But worse than that, it gives viewers the idea that there really is only one stage to relationship development – and that’s the first one.

As a storyteller, I think it’s important to talk about the Hamster Wheel – because instead of embracing it, we should be avoiding it.

Stuck in a Loop

I’ve talked before about how a lack of character development can make a story feel like it drags. This is especially true for a long-running series. One of the key elements that resonates with a story’s audience is change. Everyone wants to see their favorite character progress in some way. If they’re stuck in a bad situation, we want to see them take steps to escape it. If they have bad habits or make bad decisions, we want to see them learn how to be better. And if they’re in a relationship, we want to see how that works out.

But when a series has no designated end point, one of the first things that happens is the goal posts for character and relationship development vanish. When the goal is to always get renewed for one more season or installment, the story stops being about getting a character where they need to go and starts being about perpetuating the cycle. In other words, how can we write this story in a way that the core premise never actually gets resolved?

The first show I can remember exhibiting a strong Hamster Wheel is Voyager. I first watched this show during its initial run when I was in high school. And even back then I could tell the show’s core premise was awkward. Because even though every episode was about the crew of Voyager trying to get home, they could never actually succeed. If they did, then the show would be over.

And that’s a pretty shitty paradox to be stuck in.

In retrospect, that’s probably why that show ends up being so bonkers. The writers constantly had to invent ways to progress the story without actually solving any of its core problems.

They Probably Won’t

Most of the time the Hamster Wheel is less obvious. But once you spot it, you’ll notice that it pops up everywhere.

In Bones, it was clear from pretty much the first season that the two main characters were going to end up in a romance at some point. Yet there was still a good five or six seasons of runaround before they finally decided to kiss on camera. And I firmly believe the only reason they finally took the leap was that the lead actress got pregnant – so they had to write a baby into the story, which forced their hand.

In my opinion, the interpersonal story in Bones improved a lot after they allowed the two main characters to start developing their romantic relationship. Mostly because it was forward momentum.

But this particular Hamster Wheel lives strong in a lot of currently running shows. It’s almost as if certain characters get earmarked to be the ‘will-they/won’t-they’ characters. You can identify these characters because they have a new love interest every season. Every now and then one will stick around for a little while. But the relationships never stick. Because then the show will have to give up its eligibility/dating character.

In Only Murders in the Building, Mabel is this character. In five seasons of the show, she’s had almost as many love interests. They took season 4 off. But since she had 2 love interests in the first season, the numbers still line up.

In 911 (the OG) these characters are Eddie and Buck. This Hamster Wheel is so strong that after running an entire plot about how Buck had matured enough to be ready for a serious long-lasting relationship, they bizarrely had him decide that he needed to learn to be alone for a little while.

The Long Breakup

Often when a show cycles through love interests, they hide the change between seasons. Characters break up off-camera so they don’t have to bring an actor back. 911 Lone Star was notorious for this.

It’s annoying. But I’ve noticed an even worse trend: as soon as two characters get together, the story starts being about breaking them up.

This is the most notorious Hamster Wheel in the Gilmore Girls. Every time Lorelai gets to a happy point in a relationship, something goes wrong. And instead of communicating and figuring out how to make it work, the long, slow slide to the breakup begins.

You can always tell when the other shoe has dropped because the show introduces Lorelai’s next love interest.

It’s so bad that, by season 6, the other characters constantly ridicule Lorelai because she can never ‘sink the deal.’ Even when the failure of a relationship isn’t her fault.

If I’m honest, even though I’ve mostly enjoyed the Gilmore Girls, it is one giant Hamster Wheel. The premise of the early seasons appeared to be the mending of toxic relationships. Lorelai ran away from a pair of controlling parents at age 16. But when she reached out to them for help with her daughter’s education, they started building a new relationship.

For awhile, even though the road was rough, it seemed like the Gilmore family would be able to overcome their old biases and tendencies to lash out at each other. But around season 4, they threw that premise out the window to perpetuate the cycle. You can tell when the show gave up trying to mask it because there was a long sequence that featured the entire family alternating between laughing and arguing while they re-hashed literally every issue ever brought up in the show.

How to Escape the Hamster Wheel

So how do we, as writers, avoid the Hamster Wheel?

Well this one seems pretty simple. Just allow your characters to experience forward momentum. Allow them to change. Allow those changes to stick. And if they’ve found a relationship, allow that relationship to grow.

There are stages of romance beyond the initial establishment of a relationship. And I promise there are people interested in reading about it, even though most romance series switch to a new couple and thus a new ‘will-they/won’t-they’ with each installment.

It helps to have endpoints in mind. Every story should, eventually, get some kind of satisfying ending.

If your story is designed to go on for a long time or even become generational, then you can’t necessarily plan a set ending. But you can still provide goal posts. Once a character or plot reaches those goal posts, then the changes that were established throughout the story arc should stick. Let the story become about something else. If it’s always about the same thing, people will get bored.

I stopped watching Downton Abbey shortly after they killed off Matthew. Not because I didn’t like the show anymore. But it was obvious they were going to do another 5 seasons of finding love for Mary, a story they had already spent the entire show developing.

I didn’t want to see the same story again. I wanted a new story. And I wanted other characters to get development. (I wanted the middle sister to stop constantly getting treated like crap.)

We all have our favorite characters and stories, and we think we want them to go on forever. But the fact is, it’s really easy to ruin a character or a story if either grows stagnant. So keep your series fresh and throw out the Hamster Wheel.