Thu, November 9, 2006

I've got one sure-fire suggestion for how to cure TV forever:

1. TV show ratings come out five weeks after the episodes air.

2. Programming and development executives must stay in their jobs for two full TV seasons – they can't quit, nor can they be fired.

(Okay that was two. But they kind of go hand-in-hand, don't they?)

As I see it, the two things strangling the TV industry (and contributing to filmdom's doldrums, too) are: fear and short-term thinking. People are afraid to be fired. Networks are afraid to lose viewers, advertisers, or both. So everyone's under tremendous pressure to launch the next megahit show, the kind that gets season-three Grey's Anatomy numbers on its very first night. Any show that doesn't is immediately on "life support" as panic sets in. And nobody has any sense of ownership, because they know they'll be working two networks over by the time any of the shows they're developing sees a second season – so why develop lasting, timeless stories? Just slap together something that'll draw big numbers fast and let someone else worry about how to sustain viewership.

Slow it all way down, I say. Sure, there's an art/commerce struggle, but keep those sides in balance. Of course you need the bean-counters, but balance them out with equal numbers of gut-checkers. Statistics and instinct, side by side. Let the former take over, and shows are getting pulled after two or three airings before an audience can even warm to them; the latter, and morbid, meaningless treacle takes over. (A specialty of HBO – a network "artists" love to work with.)

The other thing to remember is: everything's in a downturn. (Goddamn Bush economy!) TV ratings are off, movie box office is plummeting, CD sales are down. But an ebb tide lowers all boats. Sure, NBC's in a free fall, but overall it's a common slump across all networks, across all film studios and music labels. Advertisers can't exactly abandon TV altogether, so let's not treat it like the end of the world just because viewers are finding cable (most channels owned by the same conglomerates that run the networks), the Internet, or – y'know, rolling hoops with sticks, or whatever these non-TV people do.

There are only two new shows this season that I specifically look forward to every week: shows that in the pre-TiVo era would be considered "appointment television": 30 Rock and Studio 60. It has nothing to do with their shared subject matter – their common late-night sketch-comedy setting that had everyone declaring them mutually exclusive all summer. They're just fantastically written shows with great casts; and they don't follow a formula, they just create great episodes that always entertain. Television industry, if you're not going to follow my earlier suggestions, then at least follow this one: make more shows like those.

Or, if you're interested in suggestions for specific shows, I have a few of those, too:

Jericho

Decide what the show is about and have it be about that. If it's about an adulterous husband feeling sorry for himself because he doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings (or stop having twice the sex), fine. But you've wasted a considerable budget staging this whole nuclear war scenario just to tell that story.

It seems like the show intended to be about how small-town life is affected by the end of civilization as we know it. This certainly has some interesting potential: what are people like without civilization to tell them how to behave? Do law and order break down? Basic civility? Property rights? Can a town become a civilization unto itself, learn to meet its own needs and defend its own interests? Instead, Jericho juxtaposes high-school drama (old feuds, love triangles, and some actual high-schoolers) with some kind of secret plot which seems intended to imply that the plotters are terrorists but I'm betting a much lamer reveal is coming – like they were intelligence agents who knew what was coming. If it turns out the government purposely nuked a handful of America's largest metropolitan areas to control population growth and reset the social order, that would be an interesting show, indeed. But somebody tampered with it, because that's not the show we got.

I don't get too bunched up about plausibility in a TV show. At least not in the grand sense. (Would water exist? Would the sky blacken?) I know they have limited resources at their disposal; I'm happy to just let them tell the story they want to tell. But I do think the characters should act plausibly and consistently unto themselves. This doesn't happen a lot in Jericho. People contradict themselves constantly. With every costume change comes a new motivation. I love you/I hate you. I'm leaving/I'm staying. You're a liar/you're my hero. And the woefully underused Ashley Scott is just orbiting idly in the periphery – helpless and aimless, she just drops in the story now and then to wear a shirt or something, and then she's gone again.

The show's tone is kind of all over the map, too. I guess this relates to the "decide what the show is about" point. I respect the fact that the townspeople are going to want to have a celebration and share an affirmation of their humanity and togetherness, but overall, it seems like a pretty glum story so shouldn't people be pretty glum? Specifically, shouldn't the music be pretty glum? It's all tweeny alt-pop goo, and it doesn't make any sense! ("Wooo! Birds dead from radiation exposure – rock ON!!")

The Nine

Get Kim Raver naked. (Hear me out.) I know this sounds like more of my usual clamoring for naked boobs on TV (or movies, or cereal boxes, or in my home), but I'm making a point here. In actuality, Kim Raver is kind of scrawny and gangly. Forced to list the boobs I'd want to see from this cast, I'd put hers dead last – even after John Billingsley's. It's not about that.

The point is, her character is constantly in sex scenes, and she's always fully clothed. It's just awkward and unreal for her to be constantly making love in full dress. There were two scenes last week where her secret workplace boyfriend rolled off her and there she was in a tank top or a slip or whatever. I completely respect her decision not to do nudity on the show. (It wouldn't be my choice, but to each his/her own.) But it seems like there's a better solution than putting her in a full leotard during sex. Why not move these scenes to sofa make-out time, or even just a few more moments post-coitus, so they've both slipped into a robe or – better yet – an oversized oxford shirt with some of the buttons left open?

(These are the important details about these new shows; if you want to talk plot and character, there are other blogs for that!)

Also, the pilot gave us plenty of character stuff, plenty of aftermath stuff, and plenty of bank heist stuff. Since then, we've seen precious little about what went on during that 52-hour ordeal. Let Lost be Lost. Your show can parcel out the details much more liberally and still hook us because it's all about how their lives changed after the bank. So, make with the details and quit wasting time on Lizzie's baby.

Lost

Kill Sawyer.

Too late; you already pussed out. You almost did it, though, and if you had, I'd have never said another bad thing about the show, ever. Now that Kate's chosen him and Jack has shown he can rise above the resulting jealousy, Sawyer's outlived his purpose. Taking him out would have been fucking bold, and although it would have been just another "expect the unexpected" moment to get the fan community buzzing, I'd have forgiven all that for a show so devoted to maintain its edge that it would ruthlessly reinvent itself in the process. Suffice it to say, this did not come to pass. Fucking Lost.

I will say, however: Evangeline Lilly and Nathan Fillion – Best. TV Couple. Ever. Watching her act against Fillion was ten times better than with Holloway or Fox; it goes to show, with the right chemistry and a little subtlety, you can really pull off something amazing.

Lost is still doing those dumb moments where they pull some bizarre rabbit out of a hat, just to throw the audience for a loop, and in the world of the story it means nothing whatsoever. Last week: "We tricked you just so we could tell you that we had tricked you"? Can someone explain the point of that? And, if so, why does Sawyer believe the Others immediately afterward, when they show him an island and tell him it's the one he came from? (We know it isn't, based on the season opener. Don't we?)

Why this show still bugs me like nothing else: I can't shake the sense that Julia's counterproposal to Ben's surgery proposal is a setup, a trap. Not because they've made Juliet out to be a particularly devious character, but because the show revels in turning the tables. Randomly, whenever they feel like it. Just to do it. So I'm fully expecting this to all be part of some master plan, but not because it's part of an interesting story – just because the show likes to fuck with us.

I'm quite fond of Elizabeth Mitchell, and I adore Kiele Sanchez – so I'm certainly looking forward to more of them. But I'm as delighted to have the show's "fall season finale" behind me as I am the mid-term elections. Let's just forget about it for a while.

***

In other mid-season news, the previews for ABC's winter Lost replacement Taye Break look pretty good. It's kind of Groundhog Day meets Boomtown, or like that one awesome X-Files episode where Mulder kept experiencing the same bank robbery over and over. (Or, like a small screen version of Tony Scott's upcoming gritty throw-an-Arri-down-a-flight-of-stairs actioner, Denzel Vu.)

CBS has a show about brain surgery called 3 lbs in a delicious reference to the weight of the average human brain. (Hey, it worked for 21 Grams!) When I first saw the ad in EW, which bears a striking unintentional resemblance to that Katherine Helmond scene from Brazil, I thought, "Ha! They'll be laughed out of Hollywood! Casting Mark Feuerstein as a brain surgeon is like casting Michael Clark Duncan as a small, ancient, Asian woman." But I had a sinking feeling that the guy in the middle of the picture didn't just look like Stanley Tucci, it might actually be him. Sure enough, the previews have confirmed this. And now I have to watch. That's how they get you! Damn them all to hell.

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