I’ve been binge-watching the TV series You.
It has a nice gimmick: the lead’s breathless inner monologue. More specifically, hours of the lead actor narrating and gushing about his love interest. “I am begging you to to love me, love me, because you are the ideal of all women, I can’t survive without you” and so on.
Essentially it’s porn. Because after a few hours of hearing “I love you” it begins to sound like “I love you, Ellen.” You can’t escape it. I’m sure that when men watch their porn love stories they put themselves in the action in a similar way. Not with the dialog, obviously, but with the .. moaning, I suppose.
One of my favorite gimmicks in other shows is the narration that breaks the third wall (ala House of Cards, Fleabag), and here we have narration that is designed to make me reach through the third wall and grab it. It’s really diabolical.