I’ve noticed a troubling trend in television dialogue for two characters to begin their conversation like this:
CHARACTER A: Hey.
CHARACTER B: Hey.
Now “Hey” is a perfectly reasonable word. I use it myself. But what bothers me so much about this recurrent exchange is that the actors always deliver their “Hey” like some languorous hipster, generally when in the middle of working on a farm or meditating on a porch or doing some kind of “thinking” in relation to an emotional exercise. Never mind the age or the character relationship. The double “Hey” is used among couples who have been together for multiple years, siblings, between shopkeepers and customers — in short, it now serves in lieu of a name. It is also used when one character has returned from some pressing errand and has just finished talking with the other character only an hour before! Instead of even a rudimentary exchange like:
CHARACTER A: Everything okay?
CHARACTER B: (silence, as CHARACTER B ponders death of a loved one)
CHARACTER A: Is there anything I can do?
CHARACTER B: Leave me alone.
we get
CHARACTER A: Hey.
CHARACTER B: Hey.
No sense of empathy. No sense of giving someone space. At the end of the day, there’s the lazy television writer’s trusted “Hey,” which signals to the audience that the show will go on and we will be right back for a message from our sponsors. And the characters don’t even bother to refer to each other by their first names!
Well, I’m sorry, but this is lazy writing. “Hey” has become the detached crutch that has now replaced beats and silent emotional reaction. Apparently, television space must be filled up with dialogue or an action scene at every moment, even if it’s a monosyllabic word. And instead of conveying excitement, the “Hey” is drawn out, as if Southern Californian vernacular could be found in every scenario.
Perhaps the solution to all this is for fans of television to count the number of “Heys” in any given episode and to publicly shame these writers into writing more convincing dialogue.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
I have a similar hate for ‘totally’ and ‘absolutely’. I’m waiting for the show that has the balls to use ‘partially’ and ‘relatively’.
Hey, Ed.
The etymology is interesting. I would have thought that “hey” and “hi” were diminutives of “hello.” But “hey” came first: 13th century, “used to express interrogation, surprise or exultation.” “Hi” is 15th-century. “Hello” (late 19c), which came about in tandem with the telephone, is a variation on “hollo” (14c), or holler, “used to call attention (as when a fox is spied during a fox hunt)”.
My favorite is this: The guy has just been shot three times; the chest, the leg, the side of his head. He’s bleeding and breathing rapidly. In severe pain. The woman, usually a love interest if they haven’t just made gratuituous love a few minutes before the shooting, rushes to the poor sod, leans over him, and says “Are you okay?” I’ve seen this over and over again on TV and movies. Once, the woman had been beaten and raped by three guys (fortunately not shown) She’s on the ground, messed, crying, panting, bleeding. The police officer, again the leaning in, says to her “Are you okay?” Sure fella, feel great. Let’s see how you feel after going through what I just did. Where did you get your training? Did you skip the part about assessing the state of the victim? Talk about tv and movies for idiots.
I miss TV.
A variation of the “Hey” exchange: The lovers who greet each other at poignant moments in time with an earnest: “Hey, You.”
So Ross/Rachel.
It’d be better if it were, “Hey, mon cherie.”
I like the way they wrap presents in sitcoms. Top and box are wrapped separately so you just have to pop the top off. No muss no fuss.
And scenes involving eating around a table: everyone sits with one side empty; heaven forbid that we have to look at people’s backs.
This only goes to show how nihlistic TV writers are. In “The Tick Vs. the Big Nothing”, it was explained that the Hey, were a fiendish group of aliens out to destroy the universe. Their nihlistic propaganda was always conveyed such: “Hey, Hey, Hey”. Which could only be countered by uttering the word “What”.
So a Hey without a What neutralizing it is nothing more than advocation the anihliation of all existence.
A defense of the phrase “Are you OK? ” What the asker is trying to determine is if the person is concious and how lucid they are. “Are you OK? may sound moronic. But its so simple even a person weak from blood loss would readily understand the sentiment. It’s practically a text message “R U OK?” 4 neat sylables.
The alternative is the dreadfully melodramatic imperative, “Speak to me! Speak to me!”