Golden Girls and James Frain: the Pain You're Familiar With

In The Closer, "Critical Missing," James Frain as Paul Andrews delivers the virtuoso performance of a cruel and dangerous man who keeps killing his imperfect wives, then burying/disposing of them where he and the wife married.

During the nearly episode-long interrogation, he presents himself as astute, self-reflective, and entirely innocent. In one of his justifying speeches, he states the following:

"Someone...I think it was my first Latin master...he told me that if you were locked in a library of the world's miseries, you would be led inexorably to choose your own because it's the pain you're familiar with." 

It's a great passage from a serial killer--like all great passages by evil characters, it contains a kernel of truth. 

A very young Clooney is on the bed.

Golden Girls highlights this truth. Dorothy complains about not getting dates/meeting decent guys, yet when, in Season 2, she meets a great guy, a police detective who is using Blanche's house to spy on the neighbors, she dumps him when he gets shot at (his partner is wounded). She just can't handle the worry. 

Her decision is a legitimate assessment of being the spouse of someone in a dangerous profession.

Nevertheless, the viewer sighs: When will Dorothy stop bouncing between deadbeat Stan and great guys she ends up dumping for ridiculous reasons? 

Except her behavior is entirely believable. It takes her 7 seasons to finally dump Stan completely and accept a good relationship. She chases the familiar. As Frain's character argues, the familiar--even the bad familiar--is comfortable, known, manageable (been there/done that).

The key, perhaps, is to do as Doc does in Hide & Seek: Instead of fighting one's inherent nature, find the variation-on-the-familiar-theme that works.