How Ya Gonna Pay For That?

The dream of money has to show up in fiction, at least to some degree - it's a very human driver/motivator.


Last week i talked about characters who are motivated by money. Here are some more thoughts on money and some of the different ways it's handled in different fictions.

Way back when, it was often brought up in articles how massively expensive the lifestyles of the characters on sitcoms like Friends would be in reality. The status of some of the characters (coffeeshop server, unemployed actor, unemployed chef…) would never be able to support the size of apartment and general lifestyle depicted on the show in New York. Ditto on Sex and the City with Carrie and her extravagant shoe-buying, cosmo-gulpin' lifestyle.

On those shows, there would be ONE storyline (on SatC) or a few storylines (Friends) that had to do with money, and the divide it could cause between the friends, or a similar story about Carrie borrowing money from one of her friends. Nice to see that aspect of life looked at for an episode - but those shows were not really about that, so the money issue would never be referenced again after the specific episode.

I mentioned in my last money-Newspost that I liked how the pursuit of money was not ignored as a motivator for the criminal characters in Better Call Saul. I may have mentioned the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, one of my favorite books some years ago, where the character is driven by acquiring money to buy land to achieve status and worthiness.

Other shows feature casts of characters who are ridiculously wealthy and money is never an issue - or casts of characters who have certain personalities because of their insular wealthy lifestyles, and are then struggling when the money goes away for whatever reason (Arrested Development and, I believe Schitt's Creek are about that).

So there are some money thoughts, anyway!

Have a good one!

Banes