Tue, October 10, 2006

Snif! It almost feels like graduation day – our last new dramas before the midseason. (And I'm counting the unspecified November premiere of Taye Diggs's Boomtown- meets- Groundhog Day thriller Day Break as "midseason." November is just too damn late to start a fall show. It looks great, though.) They're all dressed up and now we're sending them out into the world to fend for themselves. Keep your eyes on the prize, kids! Try to ignore Ray Liotta's dead body as you step over it.

Friday Night Lights

NBC, Tuesdays at 10:00

Events have been changed slightly from the 2004 film of the same name. They've moved from Odessa, Texas, to the fictional town of Dillon. Names have changed, and now it's the present day. Also – inexplicably – the tough guy bluster of Billy Bob Thornton has been traded for the smooth, soft-spoken demeanor of Early Edition's Kyle Chandler. Instead of firing his players up by getting in their faces, he delivers thoughtful locker room monologues at a tone barely above a whisper. If Friday Night Lights fails, this casting decision will be a key factor.

Some things haven't changed. (For one thing, they're still holding hands. The other team doesn't do this, so I think it must be a thing.) Peter Berg is still shooting everything in dreary, washed-out colors so the entire town has this pitiful, trailer-trash look. (For some reason, all the interiors are lit only with natural light. Did this town go off the grid? Is this Jericho?) Also the same is Connie Britton as the coach's wife, even though she has a new name and a new character. Britton is fantastic; I've never not liked her. Has anyone ever not liked her? I want names!

I enjoyed the movie plenty, so why did I find it so hard to buy into the show? Maybe certain ideas just make a better fit in book or movie form than they do as a TV series. Friday Night Lights is the anti-Buffy: better on the big screen than it is on the small. With so many characters in its real-life-inspired world, it would seem that having more time to explore their interactions would be interesting, but Friday Night Lights actually seems to have less time than its movie counterpart, not more. There isn't enough room in a one-hour show to do all the character stuff and still show a football game each week, so both get slighted. The game is edited so it's just an endless string of touchdowns – is that all they think TV viewers understand? And the town's characters (social bee ladies who grate on Britton's nerves; local businessmen who support Chandler, but second-guess him and pressure him relentlessly) are painted more broadly, making them even more like caricatures than they were in the film. (It's also left unexplained: if they have such a hard time fitting in in this town, why did he take the job?)

A TV show suffers a different set of challenges than a movie. A movie gets one set of numbers and it doesn't have to adjust along the way. TV shows get new ratings each week, and they usually must adapt to try to improve. Viewers can come and go, unlike in the theatre. The marketing is different, too. It seems fine for a movie like Friday Night Lights to basically ignore the female demographic, but a TV show has to appeal to everyone. The football-viewing audience is generally male and the non-football audience is generally female. (I'm in the second group, and Holly's in the first, so I acknowledge these are broad generalities – but I think they are true for the most part.) I think you're going to have trouble getting the football group interested in the dramatic parts of the story, and you're going to risk losing the non-football group during the game footage. In fact, if future episodes are much like the pilot, you might even lose the football group's interest during the games. (I think it might help to have graphics displaying the score, the way they would during an NFL game – with all the frenzied editing, it was sometimes tough to keep track.) I'm sure they tried very hard, but it seems like making this a TV show is a tough nut to crack.

In the process of developing the idea for television, I think the show would have benefited from a change in perspective. The camaraderie between the players (sometimes friendly, often not) could be fascinating. The military precision of each man doing his part; the way guys who might not get along off the field are intimately familiar with each other due to all the time shared practicing, drilling, and playing. It's almost like The Nine – these unrelated characters pulled together by fate. It would be interesting to explore that, but Friday Night Lights is focusing on the town and its relationship with Chandler.

Also, I don't know a lot about football, but is it really likely that in a town so obsessed with the game, they would be so short-sighted as to never practice their second-string quarterback? To the point where he doesn't even know how to call a play? And also to the point where it turns out he can throw a 60-plus-yard touchdown pass and they never knew it? I don't know; seems weird.

The Nine

ABC, Wednesdays at 10:00

It's unfair to compare this show to Lost; they're a lot more different than they seem. The Nine will never have the same problems Lost has, because it's set in the real world and its ensemble is smaller by a factor of five. But, it won't have Lost's ability to perpetuate the mystery either. At some point, we'll know everything that happened during the hostage crisis, and the show will have to start focusing on the future. So, they solved some problems and created others.

The show makes a rather impressive debut, though, despite the typical blunders like the whiplash-inducing nine-person exposi-blitz at the start. And those goddamned swishy camera moves. The revelations between the characters would still be plenty compelling without the split-second shaky-camera flashbacks – relax already! But the performances are good and the writing – which suffers a few awkward spots – is mostly great, illuminating with subtle touches.

The best feature is what the show gives you to think about, once the episode is through. What it would be like to share an ordeal like that with a small group. How tightly you would bond (at the end of the 52-hour standoff, they're all on a first-name basis) and how intimately you would know each other. In addition, many smaller groups or pairs shared certain experiences the others did not. People who would not have had any interaction before are suddenly deeply connected – and in some cases they're estranged from the people they originally entered with. I found that aspect fascinating.

You'd think the dual-timeline aspect would feel derivative, especially following right after Lost, but I actually like the way we experience the post-standoff time with them, while flashing back to the bank now and then. At least in the pilot, most of the focus is on the aftermath, with a few hints at what went on. This gives us a chance to meet these people in their new context, while they slowly open up to us about what they experienced in the bank. As long as they don't hold too many mysteries over our heads, it should be fun to watch.

By the end of the pilot, the hostages have formed a regular meeting group to stay in touch with each other. It's basically The Big Chill, except instead of going to college together, they watched each other being savagely beaten and shot at. Good times.

Returning Shows

(Beware: Lost spoilers – and spoilsport – ahead!)

Veronica Mars is back and it's improved its numbers by 50% over last year. Whee! I love the new opening credits because the new remix of the song is less grating and the new graphics lack the cutesy notebook-paper effect, which I always hated. Also, Mac's new roommate Parker is excellent. I hope she's around a lot, because everyone else is kind of bitter and ironic like Veronica – which is great – but it's more fun to have one person whose head all that flies right over. Parker's just having a good time. (Well, not all the time; but I'm sure Veronica can fix everything!)

Lost certainly did a fine job of surprising and intriguing us with its season opener. And, as usual, I get the sense that no one is more keenly aware of that than the Lost producers. Their hands must be sore from all the time they spend patting themselves on the back.

I don't mean to give Lost a hard time. It's an engrossing and interesting show when it's on track. It just needs to get out of its own way most of the time. The season premiere unfolded a new and magnificent layer of the story, which expands the world of the show and poses countless new questions (two things the season two finale did also – but that's not followed up at all). I like it a lot, but it has many of the same flaws the show always suffers from. For one thing, why not take a five minute break from Jack in the glass cage to check in with Hurley and the rest of the gang? The main personalities on the island always seem to forget that anyone else exists, and Lost isn't helping matters by ignoring most of its ensemble most of the time. There are too many concurrent threads, and they never wrap one up, they just add more. Beach, hatch, Eko, Locke, Michael, Desmond/Penny, Sayid/Jin/Sun, and now this. (And already it's showing signs of splintering into two separate stories: Jack in one, and Kate and Sawyer in the other.)

Also, as great as it is that there's been a little suburban village in the middle of the island all along – and it really is great; I don't even care how they get their clothes and Stephen King novels (wink!) and everything – it absolutely exemplifies the chief problem with the show. If I had to pick one issue with Lost, the one from which all the others spring, it's the monstrously conspicuous writing. You can just feel the writers looming over every little thing that happens. With most shows, you tune in to see what happens next; with Lost, you watch to see what's revealed next. Every episode is 10% forward narrative and 90% one character surprising another character with old information. And it's not like a mystery novel or a science experiment where the mystery is some definitive thing. The mystery is always changing, just below the surface. Whatever you haven't seen yet is subject to change. (Maybe small changes, maybe drastic ones.) It's irksome because it constantly reminds me that we're being toyed with by the writers.

It's not entirely their fault, of course. I blame the Internet. The hard core fans scrutinize every frame for clues (finding dozens more than were ever placed intentionally) and the writers are forced to keep trying to come up with more and more unexpected and outlandish schemes to stay ahead of it. Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed the new episode, and I'm eager to see where they go from here. But the show hasn't won back my love; not by a long shot. And the main reason? The Others have had J.Crew clothes all along. Why did they wear grungy island cutoffs all last season? For the same reason the people in The Village wore period garb – to hold back a surprise for the audience. Unforgivable.

Veronica Mars
Lost

Mini Mid-Term Update

Smith is gone, which is a very good thing. The show never made any sense, and I'd rather have Amy Smart freed up for movies. Kidnapped is basically gone, but they're putting it on Saturdays starting October 21. I respect this a lot. If it's not getting numbers, it's not getting numbers – I understand that they have to pull the show. I'm surprised, because I think it's a better show than Deal or No Deal or The Biggest Loser, but I'm finished despairing over America's utter lack of taste in TV. As soon as Grey's Anatomy hit number one, I gave up. (Remember what a dinky little midseason non-starter it was supposed to be? It was only borrowing Boston Legal's slot for a few weeks! What happened?!) What I respect is that NBC is trying to take care of the fans that have been enjoying the show, rather than leaving them without any closure about the show's ongoing story line. I also think that since the episodes are bought and paid for, they might as well air them. That's very rarely the way networks respond. Could NBC actually get better ratings with repeats of Dateline on Wednesday than it could with a dramatic show? Hard to say, but I guess they know best. In any case, it's menschy of them to give people a chance to keep watching. And, as I've said before, time slots won't matter in the future anyway. Heck, maybe the numbers will surprise them and the show will be uncanceled before they finish airing the episodes.

I haven't fast-forwarded through the third episode of Jericho yet, but based on a blurb from the EW review, I'm considering giving it a chance in regular-mo. "The show, unfortunately, flops about in its first two episodes, leaning too heavily on the action-adventure stuff." This implies it gets better? I doubt it can, but I admit that I am curious.

I meant to mention in last week's mid-term report: How I Met Your Mother totally stung me last week. They aired an entire episode with Michael Gross as Ted's dad and I didn't even realize it. (How is it possible he looks younger now than he did on Family Ties? What sort of fermented alpaca fetus anti-aging cream is he using? Will he please share it with Calista Flockhart?) When TiVo reaches the end of an episode and asks whether you want to delete it, the recording remains paused in the background. After you say "Delete," it remains for about a second while the show is deleted, and then you're returned to the menu. It was during this second that I happened to spy Gross's name in the credits at the end of the episode, and by then my precious evidence was erased. I just sat there, agog and trembling, for about a minute. It was like in a movie when the cops are interviewing a witness after some traumatic event – frantically scanning my rapidly fading memory to confirm whether this grainy mug shot is the same guy who pistol-whipped my daughter. I'm still kind of shell shocked.

Premiering This Week

Twenty Good Years: NBC, Wednesday at 8:00
30 Rock: NBC, Wednesday at 8:30

© onebee · all rights reserved