Welcome to my pop culture corner of the Interwebs

For those of you who have enjoyed my sports blog, "The Sandlot," this blog is intended to give me a forum to write about the other aspects of American popular culture that capture my attention. You'll get more TV than anything, some movie and DVD reviews, and occasionally comments about books and music.

I want to get things started with something that's been bugging me for more than a year with several one-hour dramas on television right now. There are two shows in particular that I'm thinking of, both shows that I've watched since the beginning of their runs: ABC's "Once Upon a Time" and NBC's "Revolution."

Here's what's bugging me: Why are the protagonists so stupid? Both shows have great premises that are effectively portrayed in terms of plot, scenery, and special effects. But the lead characters—the heroes, if you will—are just dumb, dumb, dumb. Gomer Pyle dumb. Gilligan dumb. Vinnie Barbarino dumb.

The height of the stupidity is the utter inability of the main characters in each show to kill off an obvious villain—who in both cases has tried repeatedly to murder them—despite multiple opportunities. In "Once Upon a Time," they let the evil queen, Regina, pretty much do whatever she wants, even though she tries to destroy the town and everyone in it whenever she's left unsupervised.

In "Revolution," it's even worse. The psychotic, sadistic, douchebag dictator of the "Monroe Republic," Gen. Sebastian Monroe, has escaped certain death more often than the Road Runner. Even though killing him would be like killing Mussolini in 1933, no one seems capable of pulling the trigger. Even worse, his smarter (but even more sadistic) lieutenant, Tom Neville, has been able to shift loyalties as easily as regular people change their shirts, and it hasn't occurred to anyone yet to put a bullet through his head. As a result, the good guys keep losing.

Look, I'm a fiction writer too, and I know that sometimes you have to keep certain characters alive because the story would just end at that point if they died. But certainly professional Hollywood writers and producers can be more creative in keeping their villains alive than making the heroes too stupid to pull the trigger when they have the chance.

For the record, what makes HBO's "Game of Thrones" both great and emotionally frustrating is that the book's author and the show's creators punish stupidity with death—just like it often happens in real life. But that's a topic for another day. In the meantime, I like both the shows I mentioned, but it sure would be nice to see both sides act like real people at war: When you have a chance to kill the evil leader of your enemy, PULL THE TRIGGER!

Come to think of it, we could say the same thing to the Grimes Gang on "The Walking Dead," couldn't we? If Rick had a brain, he would have walked in that warehouse and shot the governor right in the head. Memo to writers: If you don't want to kill off your villain, be more creative than just making your hero an idiot.