Thursday Movie Picks - TMP Television Edition: Love Triangles

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week is TMP Television Edition: Romance Tropes / TMP Television Edition: Love Triangles.

The Walking Dead

At the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, Lori's led on by her family friend Shane that her husband Rick died while he was in a coma. After she takes comfort in Shane while trying to survive, Rick comes back, leaving Shane with a lot of lies to answer for. 

This love triangle was pretty iconic in the fandom in the first two seasons, especially with memes. Rick was more upset with Lori trying to take after-morning pills (four months too late for them to do anything) than finding out she slept with his best friend. So yeah, this relationship was where all the drama was at. 

The Office

A documentary crew tracks the lives of employees working at a mid-sized paper company in Scranton, PA.

When I first picked The Office, it was for Dwight, Andy, and Angela's love triangle. While Andy is engaged to Angela, she has an affair with Dwight around the office and his farm. Some of their funniest episodes include Dwight giving Angela and Andy a tour of the beetfarm as their wedding venue only to secretly wed Angela with an Amish minister, and Andy finally finding out about their affair and dueling Dwight in the office parking lot. By far, the series' worst love triangle was Jim/Karen/Pam because she was mainly used to separate Jim and Pam who were the show's most popular couple.

After settling on my initial love triangle pick, I realized how many other pairings there are - Michael/Jan/Carol, Jim/Roy/Pam, Kelly/Daryl/Ryan, Michael/Holly/ A.J., Oscar/Angela/Her husband Robert, Andy/Erin/Gabe, Andy/Erin/Pete - I don't know if there are more, but damn, the writers loved this trope.  

Pushing Daisies

Ned, also known as "The Piemaker", runs a restaurant calls the Pie-Hole with Olive Snook, a waitress whose hopelessly devoted to him. Secretly, Ned also has the power to awaken the dead. When he brings his childhood sweetheart back to life, Olive has to contend with their mysterious rekindled romance.

Pushing Daisies is one of my favorite shows. It's so offbeat and charming, it's kind of hard not to fall in love with. I was disappointed the series only lasted two seasons, namely because the love triangle took up a lot of Olive's storyline. But the sweet dynamic between Lee Pace, Kristin Chenworth, and Anna Friel couldn't be played by other actors. Overall, the show is so sweet, it will give you a tooth ache.