Cheeky Monkey

Hey-O! Welcome back, and thanks for sticking with me for what is perhaps my current favorite television show ever. I go back and forth.

Now, this is a show that literally no one else I know watches. I’ve watched it by myself since the very beginning, and no, I haven’t finished it, so please don’t spoil it if you have. I’m planning on binge watching it as soon as I have time to do so, as I have all the remaining episodes on my DVR. 

12 Monkeys

It started out as a movie, apparently, though I haven’t seen that movie. What I have seen is an amazing television show that somehow managed to surprise me time and time again throughout the seasons.

So I’m going to try to write this without giving you any spoilers, because I really think you should watch it.

What’s it about?

Well, it’s a time-travel science-fiction story, about a post-apocalyptic world in which people are trying to go back in time to kill the guy who makes the apocalypse happen—only they get it wrong on the first try, and discover the end of the world isn't exactly what they thought it was. I’m not counting that as a spoiler because if you didn’t see that coming, you shouldn’t be writing. You should be able to predict some basic things, at the very least. ;-)

Through the duration of this series (up to what I’ve seen so far, of course) they’ve developed twists and turns in the opposite direction from what I expected of them. Almost literally everything was not what I expected it to be. Yes, there were some parts that contained some predictable moments, but overall, I found myself constantly shocked by what was going on in this television show.

And that’s really freaking inspiring.

See, there’s this thing that writers say these days, about how every story has already been written and if you can’t find a unique twist then what’s the point—but 12 Monkeys found a way to turn that on its head. They write a similar story to one that we’ve heard a hundred thousand times before, but they do it in a way that keeps us guessing.

That’s what I want to do. That’s what inspires me when I watch this show.

I want to write something like that, I want to keep my readers on their toes and keep them guessing. I want everyone to wonder what’s coming next from me, I want them all to read my books and be utterly surprised by what I’ve done.

And 12 Monkeys is a show that’s proved to me, time and time again, that it can indeed be done.

Because before this show, Inception was the only thing I’d ever watched where I didn’t know how the story would end (within the first twenty minutes).

[love]

{Rani D.}