Added Value in Bored to Death

Recently I was watching the HBO series "Bored to Death" when I came across a great example of added value. This series is about a writer (played by Jason Schwartzman) who is having trouble finding inspiration for writing his second book. In a search for a cure to his writers block, he starts taking cases as a private detective. In this particular episode, he had a case where he had to find and retrieve a stolen skateboard. After he finds the person who stole the skateboard, he proceeds to steal it back. This act results in a chase scene via skateboards. This scene is complemented by the roaring of skateboard wheels and it is used partially to familiarize the viewer with the sound of a moving skateboard for later in the episode. The writer ends up escaping the skateboarders and returning the stolen skateboard to it's previous owner, but in the final scene, when the writer is returning to his apartment, the sound of the moving skateboards returns causing the writer to look up and grow a concerned look. The episode then ends. In this example the sound of the skateboards moving is actually responsible for resolving the entire episode. The audience never sees the skateboarders approaching him, but they still experience it because of the sound. The sound also returns the sense of dread and uncertainty present in the chase scene thus adding not only physical information, but also emotional information. So in this example the sound was actually more important than the visual. If you played the video without sound, the viewer would end up being confused, but if you just heard the screaming of the moving skateboards, there would be no question about what was going on.