Suicide Squad

There’s a moment in far too many dramas where the tension is building nicely. The police have the place surrounded, the villain is cornered, everyone’s shouting, and you think, right, this could be good.

Then the baddie does the thing. Out he runs into the open, standing bolt upright like he’s about to take a penalty at Wembley, and starts firing wildly at armed police. Not from cover, not from a doorway, not even from behind a wheelie bin. Just out there in the middle of nowhere, waving a gun around like it’s a wand and he’s trying to summon plot armour. And obviously he gets shredded, because he’s basically volunteered for the firing squad.

It’s stupid, and it ruins a perfectly good scene because it turns the whole thing into a cartoon. It’s always framed as some brave last stand, but it isn’t bravery. It’s a character suddenly becoming too thick to breathe because the writer wants the scene over in 20 seconds and can’t be bothered with the hard work of a proper standoff.

A realistic villain doesn’t sprint into open ground to have a gunfight with a dozen trained officers. They hide, they bargain, they run, they wait, they do anything except step into the kill zone like they’ve forgotten how bullets work. If the script allowed them to behave like an actual human being with survival instincts, the ending would have to be earned with patience, fear, tactics and negotiation, and the police would have to look methodical rather than heroic.

And when it’s a gang it’s even more ridiculous, because you’re not just watching one idiot do it, you’re watching a whole group of idiots take turns. A gang is supposed to have two advantages: numbers and intimidation. In real life that usually translates into caution, control of territory, and a strong preference for not getting perforated. They melt away, scatter, use cover, and live to fight another day because that’s the whole point of being organised. But TV gangs behave like a queue at the Post Office. One runs out firing wildly, gets dropped. Then another. Then another. It’s basically whack-a-mole, except the moles have guns and no interest in self-preservation. You stop thinking “these people are dangerous” and start thinking “these people couldn’t organise a crisp packet in a gale”.

The maddening part is it’s not even necessary. A tense, believable standoff is gripping. Two sides behind cover, time stretching, one wrong move changing everything. That’s drama. But instead we get the magic idiot run because the plot needs a tidy full stop, and the moment you notice it you can’t unsee it. A lot of dramas don’t have gangs or villains at that point, they’ve got a firing-range with dialogue.