Backward?

First, a confession: I watch The Young and the Restless. I know, I know. It's cheesy/campy, melodramatic. But I've watched it since college, and it's a guilty pleasure I just can't quit.

Anyway--yesterday's episode was....unusual. And not in a good way. The writers tried to get all creative and have an entire episode written BACKWARD. Like, every scene was in reverse of the bigger picture. It started out with something shocking (Nikki marrying Deacon Sharpe!), and then kept reverting back - 20 minutes earlier....40 minutes earlier....4 hours earlier....to show, at the very end, what led up to that event.

On the surface, yes, it does seem creative. I understand the motive--to create suspense, interest. But as a viewer, I've always hated "backward" episodes. Seinfeld did it once, and even my favorite show, Thirtysomething (which was better written than any "backward" episodes I've ever seen).

Here's my beef with this kind of episode. It forces the viewer to work too hard. Now, don't get me wrong--I love to watch or read something that makes me think, makes me ponder. But watching an episode backward is like trying to fit in missing puzzle pieces that are being kept from us. We don't have all the information we need to form conclusions. And all that does is frustrate me.

I realize this is a personal choice, my loathing of backward episodes/stories. And some writers can clearly handle them better than others (again, the Thirtysomething episode was more than tolerable, though I still didn't enjoy it very much).

Maybe it's just a pet peeve I have, but I think stories should generally be told in the order in which events occurred. I mean, we don't live life backward, do we? So, it just feels unnatural to watch a story unfold that way. *shrug*