Cell Phones Make Television A Lot Easier

I was watching one of my favorite shows, “Tracker,” the other day and something happened that brought about a question in my mind. The scene had three people in it and at the conclusion of the scene, one character was no longer needed to keep the story going. So how did the writers get that character out? Simple. Her cell phone rang, she responded, “I need to take this,” and she exited the scene.

Naturally, the question that arose in my mind: Before cell phones, how did writers remove characters from scenes? It’s not the easiest Google search but here is one result I got.

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That search result was more for permanent character disappearances but it kind of works for short-term, too. A character leaves the scene to join something else off-camera. Or they simply exit through a door. Or someone enters to take the character out of the scene. Or there’s a previous arrangement (an appointment or date) and the time has come for that character to go do that thing.

So the summarization is this: with the invention of the cell phone, scenes got a lot easier to write. What are your thoughts about this quandary?

-Out of the Wilderness