‘The Old Man’ and Why the Rug Pull is Bullshit

A common technique used in film and television narratives is hack work, pure and simple.

This is my facial expression any time someone dares to speak to me.

NEW STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This newsletter aggressively spoils things.

Life being a meaningless crawl towards oblivion, we really spend way too much time thinking about what we’re watching on TV¹. Hell, folks—you’re going to be dead way sooner than you think (you might not even make it to the end of this essay²), and I am confident that whether you meet a void of nothingness or a chortling superintelligent being after you go, the topic of conversation will not be why you continued to watch The Walking Dead for so long after it clearly sucked³. Nor will anyone care whether you spent 15 hours a day watching TV or zero⁴.

Yet we agonize over these decisions as if we’re not already wasting hours of our day doing other things that are likely even less mentally stimulating than a marathon of Say Yes to The Dress. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should just leave the TV on in the background 24 hours a day and just immerse yourself in whateverthefuck’s on at any given moment⁵—you can and should choose to watch programming that interests you and entertains you, so there’s nothing wrong with putting some effort into it.

Which is a long way of explaining that The Duchess and I started watching The Old Man on Hulu at a moment where we were frankly a bit exhausted by figuring out what to watch next. Sometimes a show comes along that just looks cromulent, you know? Decent production values, somewhat intriguing premise, recognizable talent. You know going in that it’s not going to change your life, but you figure it will be 6 hours of reliable entertainment, give or take.

And The Old Man is pretty much that. Jeff Bridges stars as the titular elderly gentleman, a former black-ops sort for the CIA who has been living in retirement under an assumed name for years with a lot of red in his ledger. When a man breaks into his house with a gun he knows some old enemies have found him, and he goes on the run, chased by a joint CIA-FBI task force run by his old handler, played by John Lithgow, who also wants all those secrets to stay buried, which means helping Jeff Bridges sometimes and actively trying to murder him other times⁶.

Notice I didn’t bother with character names. It doesn’t matter. Lithgow and Bridges and every other actor you recognize was hired to pretty much be themselves or their most recognizable public version of their persona, and it works⁷. The show is fine; Bridges (surprisingly jacked for a 72-year old man) sells the dangerous old coot thing, and it is kind of fun to watch everyone underestimate him only to see them killed while experiencing multiple layers of disbelief that a guy who looks like a Walmart Greeter is strangling them to death. I will forget this show within five minutes of its conclusion⁸—or I would have, if they hadn’t used a fucking Rug Pull and inspired this rant.

PSYCHE!

I mean, who hasn’t had that dream where a surprisingly jacked 72-year old Jeff Bridges murders you via strangulation?

A rug-pull, in Somers parlance, is that trick showrunners and filmmakers use where they show you a shocking, unexpected moment of action, usually but not always violent, and then back up and reveal it was all in the character’s head. In The Old Man, one pops up in episode two: Jeff Bridges has made a tactical error and gone out on a date with Amy Brenneman, the nice lady he’s renting a cabin from while laying low. They get stopped by a DUI checkpoint on the way home, and Bridges is worried he will be identified. When they’re asked to step out of the car, Bridges palms a knife, and the moment things look tense and hinky with the cops he slashes one’s throat, steals his gun, and shoots the other officer. Then he appeals to Brenneman, asking her to be cool and get back in the car, but she refuses, obviously terrified and not on Team Jeff Bridges anymore.

So he shoots her.

I didn’t put any of this behind a spoiler tag because it didn’t actually happen⁹. A moment later, we’re back to Jeff Bridges standing there with the cop, and then they’re allowed to go home without further incident. The entire shocking moment of badass violence was just Bridges imagining what would happen. It’s a rug pull, and it is hack work because it’s just a narrative cheat: The creators of this show felt they needed a moment of action here—it’s a talky, slow episode, and I can understand that concern. You want to punch the energy up to keep your audience interested and to remind them that as much as Jeff Bridges looks like a wacky grandpa his character is a ruthless and very effective killing machine.

The problem is, the creators want this punch of energy without actually complicating their plot—or their character, who needs to retain a sniff of moral high ground so we can root for him. If Bridges shoots Brenneman in the head we’re shocked—and when the rug is pulled we’re relieved.

And, if you’re me, irritated¹⁰, because it’s meaningless. You can’t know if Bridges would actually do what he just imagined, or if he was just worst-case-scenarioing everything, or if it means anything at all. The show just wasted twenty seconds of my precious time and attention with the writing equivalent of the “something’s on your shirt—PSYCHE!” trick.

Not a dream

At least they hired an actress within 2 decades of Jeff Bridges’ age.

My wife, The Duchess, often complains about dream sequences for similar reasons, but I don’t mind dream sequences so much because they can be used to illuminate a character’s psyche, their subconscious, in interesting ways. Could a rug pull also do this? It’s possible—but I’d argue only when the rug-pull is sudden and fast, making it very, very clear that what you’re seeing is not actually happening. A dream sequence is usually very obviously a dream sequence, and a sudden shock of a rug-pull that shows a violent moment and then snaps back to reality immediately can be a clear glimpse into the character’s thinking. The problem with most rug pulls, including the one in The Old Man, is the length of it, and the lack of any sort of visual clue. It’s filmed, blocked, and acted similarly to the rest of the show, so there’s no way to avoid being immediately invested in the scene—until the rug gets pulled, at which point you realize you learned nothing useful about any aspect of the story¹¹.

Any time I see a rug pull in a film or TV show, I downgrade that film or TV show a full letter grade. You should too. I feel like this is fair. It’s a waste of time and it’s essentially the creator playing a prank on you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go through 35 years worth of manuscripts to make sure I have never used this trick myself¹².

Next week: Hellraiser 2022 somehow makes sex demons boring.

1. The moment in any gathering when the conversation turns to “do you watch” discussions is a clear sign that the evening is over and we should all go home. Unless you bring up Mad Men in which case I am prepared to stay up until dawn like I’m 19 again.

2. Since I pre-schedule these essays, I might be dead as you read this. Is “I MIGHT BE DEAD AS YOU READ THIS” the title of my memoir? Yup. I’ll take my awards in the form of cash.

3. There is no satisfactory answer to this question, so don’t even try.

4. The only thing people will care less about is whether you owned a TV or not. Please stop trying to flex on being purposefully culturally stupid.

5. I have relatives who do that and going over to their house was creepy as heck because the TV was literally always on and this is why my extended family hasn’t seen me in decades and probably wonders if I am still alive.

6. This also describes my relationship with my brother, Yan. As children we tried to literally murder each other many times. As adults we sometimes help each other out. Someday the swicth will flick back again and I only hope I am ready when it does, because Yan is curiously strong for a Somers. See my memoir title, above.

7. Go ahead and read the rest of this essay in either Bridges’ or Lithgow’s voice and cadence. See? You’re doing it. And now you can’t stop doing it.

8. And likely started watching it again 5 years from now, slowly realizing I’ve watched it before with a deep sense of confused shame. This has actually happened to me, and it was horrifying.

9. And also because I find spoiler culture exhausting and have decided not to care anymore, hence the standard disclaimer above. I have to take 5 cats to the vet this month, I don’t have time to protect you from spoilers.

10. Increasingly, my resting state. I don’t want to be a cranky old man, but you people are forcing my hand.

11. And that you need a new television, because you’ve thrown a shoe at yours.

12. More spoilers: I certainly have, and I will somehow figure out why it’s a good thing when someone points it out to me.