Scene opens with two best friends/brothers/lovers/dogs staring at each other intently. The camera zooms out to show they are wielding guns/swords/gunswords/swordguns/swords AND guns/oversized carp and it is obvious they are wondering how they could have gotten to this place. Before they can answer the question there is the sound of a gun/sword slash/fish slap, a scream, and the camera fades to black or red. Then the previous words flash across the screen..

24 Hours Earlier...

The camera fades back in and you see those same two characters happily eating a hamburger or tofu salad. The story then progresses as normal, only you already know what happens during the climax.

In high school we learned the construction of a story goes something like this: Introduction, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Conclusion. That might be a little too complicated for most of the United States (who make up 60% of my 5 readers) so here we go:

Introduction: Introduces the characters, setting, background, and includes the event which sets the story in motion. In the case of a television show with recurring characters the introduction would be less about character development and more about the ever-changing setting. In the case of a show like Full House, the introduction was Uncle Jesse and the slow and painful transition from an ugly mullet to the beautiful man we saw on Glee last week.

Rising Action: To put it simply, this is where the good shit happens. This is everything after the inciting event which leads up to the climax. The climax is important, and the key of my entire complaint.

Climax: A story needs something to remember. The climax is the peak of emotion in a story, usually excitement, but it could also be another emotion such as fear, anticipation, or anger. A good climax is one of the most important aspects of a story and its position within said story is extremely important. I will expand in a moment.

Falling Action: After the climax, but before the conclusion, you have the events which go into the falling action. Because of how many times the word climax is in this page it's obligatory that I use some sort of sexual reference so here it is: the falling action is like after you've blown your load and you're stuck cuddling until you can reach your sex phone to send its scripted text message to your regular phone so you can say your friend was arrested and you need to bail him out. Depending on how often you bring a girl to your place you can get a second phone to keep under your pillow for as little as $10 per month.

Conclusion: Also called the Resolution, this is when the story finishes. Often this is a declaration of the protagonist's victory, a glimpse into the future, or a sex scene. If the show is aimed at gays it might also contain a heart to heart between two manly men, but there absolutely must not be any touching, or the gays will lose a big part of the sexual fantasy building that comes after.

So back to the climax. I did not plan to say climax after gay sexual fantasies but there it is. I am going to use the show Supernatural as an example of just how horrible this storytelling "tool" is. I use Supernatural because although I have generally enjoyed the show for the past five years, I feel they have grossly overused this tool in favor of actually writing something meaningful and interesting. Also because it has a surprisingly large amount of gay/inbreeding fanfiction which is just creepy.

Last season I would hazard a guess that at least half of the episodes used the "24 Hours Earlier" tool. The amount of time involved in this varied from 6 hours to 20 years, but it was there more often than not. Typically the fast-forward would be a peek at the climax, which is supposed to put you in a state of excitement right from the very beginning. Good writers can use this to make you interested from the very beginning. Supernatural writers use this to skip the Introduction and just get right into hunting some random beast. This is important. Supernatural writers use this tool to allow for lazy writing, giving them more time to blow each other and write fanfiction instead.

Supernatural took what could have been a useful and interesting storytelling mechanic and raped it, its mother, and its dog before throwing them in front of a truck and then pretending to be a witness of their attempted group suicide so police wouldn't suspect them of shitty writing. In an episode last season we opened to Dean and Sam having an interaction straight from one of those terrible sitcoms from when I was a kid. Dean looked like he was doing a Kirk Cameron impression, including a nearly-perfect mimic of Kirk's classic smile. The scene ends with Dean looking at a giant sandwich and making some slapstick remark about needing a bigger mouth. It then skipped back several hours or days to show you the events leading up to that hilarious moment in time, until finally they repeated the same scene in its correct chronological place. In the process you discover that the trickster, who was really an angel in disguise, was behind the whole thing. By teasing you with a taste of the climax at the beginning you remove some of the surprise, and actually remove some of the suspense as well. Even if the opening scene is incredibly emotional or suspenseful it's still not effective when you repeat it every damn week.

Supernatural has now gone two episodes into its sixth season and so far they haven't repeated this. You could put a ghost into a show and then spit on the audience in every episode and I'll probably still watch it because I have a massive boner for ghost shows (I still watch the Ghost Whisperer, and I am probably the only person who doesn't watch it for Jennifer Love Hewitt's breasts). I've taken it upon myself to write an episode of Supernatural because I figure I am better than the current writers simply because I don't use time travel storytelling. My use of the word time travel is not to be confused with episodes of Supernatural in which the brothers actually time travel, because that is a whole other level of stupid bullshit. Here is a brief rundown of the episode:

Sam and Dean are sitting in a hotel room eating Wendy's Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers when suddenly Sam's laptop beeps. He checks his email to discover he has an email from Dean, but Dean is sitting right beside him! Inside the email "Dean" tells him to meet him at Pier 21. He says he sent him a Facebook event invite and a link to Google Maps for directions. Sam looks to Dean, puzzled. Dean says the obviously inobvious, "Dude, I didn't email you. I don't even know what a Facemap or Google Event is." (it is hilarious to pretend you don't understand the most popular internet tools. This will add real depth to Dean's character).

Despite this being a trap, the brothers go because this could shed some light on some mystery in their lives. Like who resurrected Sam, or why the burgers they get from every city have the same paper and yet do not belong to any chain restaurant. It turns out to be a trap, the brothers act surprised, and yet they still brought enough firepower for a small army. Considering how weak everyone thinks demons and ghosts are to guns and salt, it's amazing how they never work. But what if this time, they DID work? Sam and Dean capture the demon who trapped them, he is badly injured and they put him in Bobby's crazy demon panic room, locking themselves in with the demon. They wake him up by splashing holy water on his face which burns him badly, but after a few seconds his face heals completely. The demon smiles a demonic smile (find an actor with a good demonic smile, maybe Kirk Cameron is available). He then says something only a demon would say.. like "is that all you've got?" After several minutes of questioning who sent the demon he refuses to talk. Dean reluctantly mentions he could get the information, the watcher is expected to remember that Dean has years of torture experience. Then Sam says, "No, that won't be necessary." He puts his hand on the demon's face and a flash of light which resembles both the angels' exorcism and a demon's smoking effect surrounds Sam's hand. The demon's smoke comes out, mixed with light, and enters Sam's eyes. After a few seconds his eyes return to normal and he calmly says, "He didn't know who sent him. Orders arrived in an envelope." It's important to link demons to people, like using envelopes, to give them a level of humanity.

For the rest of the episode you have Dean asking what the hell Sam did and Sam avoiding the question, until finally Bobby calls them to tell them he has a lead. They go to an abandoned warehouse (use any one of our three abandoned warehouse sets, maybe this time fill it with exercise machines) and discover that orders were sent by Castiel. Castiel is testing the brothers because they haven't been through enough yet. It turns out Castiel wants Samuel back in heaven but that means Sam needs to go back to hell (balance, Yin Yang and all that shit). They discover that if Samuel or Sam die, the other will instantly die as well. Dean is unhappy because he thinks Samuel to be a trigger-happy fool who already got himself killed once and will surely get himself killed again, meaning he will lose his brother again. Dean relays all of this to Samuel, who punches Dean in the face for disrespecting his grandfather, even though everything Dean says is true. Samuel is a dick, we need to make the audience believe that too.

Castiel sends an angel assassin to kill Samuel but Dean intercepts the assassin. He captures the angel and uses a blood spell to trap it in Bobby's panic room like a demon. Dean, smiling, says to the confused angel, "A little something I learned from your boss." Using an archangel's blade they just happen to have, they torture the angel until he reveals that he was sent by Castiel to kill Samuel. Dean feels betrayed that Cas would try to kill Sam. Castiel explains that Samuel simply cannot leave heaven, because he is in a special type of heaven - basically Samuel is on heaven house-arrest. Even though he got into heaven he broke several commandments both before and after death and was awaiting his angel trial. At angel court the accused, if found guilty, could have his membership in heaven revoked and be sent to hell. Samuel shows up with a second archangel blade and stabs Castiel in the back, killing him. He says, "I hate angels."

The falling action is full of just a bunch of stupid conversations and eventually the brothers leave despite the fact that they both now think Samuel will get Sam killed. While in the car they hear the Angel teleport flapping wings sound and Castiel is in the back seat. He explains that he used the same doppleganger power Gabriel had used last season so Samuel would believe he was safe. Castiel tells Sam it is only a matter of time, then he vanishes.

Even though this is an important storyline development, it is vitally important that Supernatural does not advance this aspect of the story until after at least two filler episodes with no main storyline content. Maybe have the brothers fight a vampire and a witch, except make it interesting by having each brother get hospitalized or chased by police or something, as long as they recover by the end.

See? In the ten minutes before I go to bed I've written an episode of Supernatural that is better than the last two seasons. I'm a fucking genius.