Death as schtick to appeal to a particular kind of audience - no.
Dangerous work is dangerous, and sometimes results in injury and death. When the progress of the story calls for a character, (any character,) to die, it moves the story forward and hopefully generates some kind of emotional reaction among the audience. On the other hand, I fear that killing off characters has become a kind of 'feature' in which characters must die so the show can be 'gritty'.
The second kind of character death can become a joke. Death for the sake of having a character die lacks impact. As an example, I cite Tasha's two 'deaths'. In the first she is killed for no reason other than to die. Her death won no goals, it was not a final defeat after struggling, no cause was ultimately lost. It simply removed a character from the roster and gave Spiner the opportunity to emote robotic grief. Her second 'death', though never seen on screen, had far greater impact because she chose to die for something, and her choice had an impact on the story. (The fact that her actual death came much later doesn't diminish the impact of her choice.)
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Death as schtick to appeal to a particular kind of audience - no.
Dangerous work is dangerous, and sometimes results in injury and death. When the progress of the story calls for a character, (any character,) to die, it moves the story forward and hopefully generates some kind of emotional reaction among the audience. On the other hand, I fear that killing off characters has become a kind of 'feature' in which characters must die so the show can be 'gritty'.
The second kind of character death can become a joke. Death for the sake of having a character die lacks impact. As an example, I cite Tasha's two 'deaths'. In the first she is killed for no reason other than to die. Her death won no goals, it was not a final defeat after struggling, no cause was ultimately lost. It simply removed a character from the roster and gave Spiner the opportunity to emote robotic grief. Her second 'death', though never seen on screen, had far greater impact because she chose to die for something, and her choice had an impact on the story. (The fact that her actual death came much later doesn't diminish the impact of her choice.)