Wit & Attitude Quote by Jim McKay

The tell in Jim McKay's line is the phrase "manage it so it doesn't get too cute". He's describing a journalist's tightrope walk: use surprise as a tool, not a gimmick. McKay isn't talking about "gotcha" in the cheap sense; he's talking about the productive moment when an audience realizes its own assumptions were doing the steering. That pivot - being tripped up, then learning - is the engine of good storytelling and good reporting. It creates motion: you thought you knew what you were watching, then the frame widens and the world snaps into a different shape.

The intent feels less like showmanship than craft discipline. McKay came up in an era when broadcast journalism was learning how to borrow pacing and suspense from entertainment without surrendering credibility. "Having fun" acknowledges the medium: TV is intimacy and performance, and a journalist who pretends otherwise is lying. But "too cute" is the mortal sin of the form, the moment the audience can see the gears. Once the trick becomes the point, the piece stops being about reality and starts being about the reporter's cleverness.

Subtext: respect the viewer. You're allowed to orchestrate revelation, even to set a little trap, as long as the payoff is clarity rather than smugness. McKay is articulating a pragmatic ethics of narrative: surprise is justified when it leaves the audience smarter, not merely impressed that you could pull it off.