What makes for a believable texting – or sexting – exchange? And why has this suddenly become so crucial for a character’s credibility? We meet the teams who agonise over writing lines that only appear on screen for seconds
In the final episode of Ted Lasso’s second season, Ted sends a text to his ex-wife that reads simply: “Knock, knock.” Nothing too unusual about that you might think, but what is strange is that it appears to be the very first message he’s ever sent the mother of his son. Stranger still, she has never previously texted him either. The blank white space above and below their messages reveals that the characters share zero messaging history.
It’s a problem that used to plague TV. Why is the first message Emily in Paris has ever received from her boyfriend: “Hey, how is Paris?” When Rebecca accidentally sends a text to her crush instead of her best friend in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, why is their history blank when we saw him text her about a housewarming party a few episodes earlier? In 2021, Wired journalist Zak Jason named a whole litany of shows in which characters don’t have text histories – New Girl, Insecure, The Undoing – and argued that it was, “inexcusable, and unnerving to witness”.
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