October 5, 2008

Diminishing Returns

Everyone, I have some shocking news: ratings are down. In a trend blamed largely on the writers’ strike, second-year shows are especially down, but all television shows are down overall. Networks want to blame the strike, citing the apparent no-brain that when the shows went off for too long, it didn’t occur to viewers that they’d come back this fall. Thanks for treating TV owners like a gaggle of simple-minded rubes, networks! That’ll really draw in the viewers!

Look, in the day and age of TiVo, thousands of free online TV guides, digital downloads, streaming and the thousands of other ways people can find out about—and watch—their favorite shows, it’s asinine to suggest nobody realizes the shows have come back. It’s asinine to suggest that maybe viewers forgot these shows’ alleged greatness. For the past three or four years, 24 has aired in a five-month shot from January to May, leaving a seven-month gap in between—yet it still manages to find an audience. Same deal with Lost and Medium, both of which recently attempted the same airing pattern. Basic-cable shows often air in the same way, in 13-week chunks with a nine-month break in the middle, and while they never managed the ratings of the networks, they don’t lose viewers who just forgot the show existed.

Most of the articles referencing this alleged decline use season averages—for instance, ABC’s Dirty Sexy Money had 7.1 million viewers for this week’s premiere, down one million from last season’s average, but up from its finale in December (6.5 million); Pushing Daisies did see a sharp decrease, but not as sharp as they’d like you to think. While it lost around three million viewers from its average, the premiere (6.8 million) dropped around half a million viewers from its December finale (6.3 million). However, while Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles—last season’s best new show—performed reasonably well last season, (averaging eight million and scoring slightly above average in its season finale), it debuted to 6.33 million viewers and has seen a drop of nearly one million viewers since then.

You might think that proves the network’s case—viewers just plain forgot about it. Except for one thing: Terminator started its run in January and ended in March.

I’d put it down to the quality of the shows, except Terminator is still great (and getting better), while I saw the Pushing Daisies premiere as a bit of a disappointment, and I’ve already lost interest in Dirty Sexy Money (see below). I could chalk it up to Fox’s notoriously bad promotion of its own shows, or their bastard-stepchild treatment of it, or the fact that sci-fi is a hard sell (even if it comes packaged with the Terminator brand).

The fact is, I don’t know why people aren’t watching. Maybe they don’t see what I see. Whatever the reason, it’s not because they forgot about it.

Bones (Fox) — What a lackluster episode. A nonsense story about Booth wanting a chair, making the Angela-Hodgins breakup even stupider by having Angela conflicted about the awkwardness and a meager mystery enhanced only by casting a guy who acted guilty as a ruse. Bones set itself apart from usual half-assed procedurals with strong characters and amusing writing. After last week, I guess I expected too much. I’d like to think of this as a craptacular cool-down. Hopefully they’ll put more thought into next week’s episode.

Dirty Sexy Money (ABC) — I figured its second-season premiere is the best time to let you all know that I’ve bailed on this show. Although it’s not a bad show, it started to make creative decisions that made me less and less enthusiastic about it as the weeks went by—mainly the emphasis on the Nick-Karen relationship nobody cares about. The final nail in the coffin actually came during the hiatus, when ABC announced that Samaire Armstrong’s real-life shenanigans forced them to reduce her from a regular to a recurring character until such time as they can write her off the show completely. Armstrong didn’t make or break the show, but the twins’ relationship was one of the highlights.

At the end of the day, I just watch too much TV, and this was at the bottom of the list of shows I would watch if I had more time. But I don’t, so I won’t.

Everybody Hates Chris (The CW) — Paul Ben-Victor (who memorably played Vondas on The Wire but has been in no fewer than 800,000 other TV series and movies) joins the Everybody Hates Chris as a new foil for Chris; unlike Ms. Morello, he’s bigoted out of dickishness, not ignorance. The story did little more than establish new ground for Chris, so I don’t know where they intend to take the conflict, but let’s hope they give his character some more dimension (as they did with Ms. Morello). On other fronts, I’m glad to see Greg’s still kicking around, and Tanya’s subplot working in the beauty shop was pretty amusing for what little screen time it got. This was a solid, funny episode, but because of the natural focus on Chris, we didn’t get quite so much of the sharp, well-observed comedy from the vast supporting cast. But hey, there’s time for that.

Fringe (Fox) — Let me start, as Fringe often does, by laying down a straightforward idea in the most confusing possible way: for many of the same reasons, the past week’s show was both Fringe’s best and worst episode.

The good: details on “The Pattern,” giving one of the characters (Peter) a legitimate conflict to work through and resolve by episode’s end, the creepy hairless guy, the “good” vs. “bad” mind-readers. Even the overall plot, as nonsensical and unresolved as it was, kept me more interested than the usual “new spin on a shitty B-movie” storytelling.

The bad: thanks to the details on “The Pattern” and the introduction of the creepy hairless guy who may or may not be an alien or a time-traveler or something otherworldly, Fringe won’t shed its “X-Files Lite” image any time soon. Living in the shadow of such an iconic show is a double-edged sword: The X-Files’ best material makes Fringe look like something written in crayon by Young Authors participant; The X-Files’ worst leads me to assume Fringe will succumb to an enormous decline in quality and coherency, making it seem like a wasteful time investment. (The fact that Alias suffered the same fate doesn’t help Fringe’s case, either.)

The ugly: Walter’s monologue. More interesting than anything ever featured on the show, achingly delivered by John Noble, this could have been Fringe’s defining moment. But the underlying ideas—that Walter met the Observer once before, that he saved both Walter’s and Peter’s lives, and that one day he “might need” Walter—undid the good things brimming to the surface in this episode. Peter accepting the notion of The Pattern was enough; we don’t need to put these two main characters at the center of The Pattern. It makes everything both too neat and too convoluted…

Then again, that’s pretty much Fringe in a nutshell.

Heroes (NBC) — My heart sank when I saw the promo pairing Noah Bennet and Sylar. After my enormous disappointment with last week’s premiere, I wondered how much further the show could sink. That promo answered the question.

So it surprised the hell out of me that I didn’t hate the episode. Granted, I still didn’t like the Bennet-Sylar team. I don’t like anything about Mama Petrelli being Sylar’s mother, either. Christine Rose brought an alarming, incestuous quality to their scenes together that made the whole concept much more interesting than anything in the writing—but I’m still not on board. None of it’s as terrible as I expected, but it heads all of these characters down roads that will get worse before they get better.

The disappointment train continues in the Hiro/Ando subplot. Thankfully, they ignored the premiere’s “Hiro no longer trust Ando” conceit until the end of the episode, which returned us to a bit of the old-school fun and charm of their friendship. However, the Flash girl—whose name I haven’t committed to memory—managed to drag the subplot down with her. When will television producers (and actors, for that matter) realize there’s very little cuteness to smug, obnoxious characters? If they’re trying to set up a possible romance between Hiro and the Flash girl, they need to try much, much harder. Even the tedium of his romance with the Japanese princess was more rewarding.

Meanwhile, the writers self-corrected some of their mistakes pretty quickly—yanking Nathan off the crazy train (sort of), yanking Peter out of Francis Capra’s evil, shout-powered body, and letting the two villains escape. The bank-heist subplot, rote as it was, actually worked for me. The writers showed more skill in presenting these new villain characters, even the ones that died, than they have in giving new twists on characters we already know. Even Parkman’s African safari has already come to the point and will, hopefully, end within the next episode or two. Most surprisingly, the storyline with “Tracy Strauss” got suddenly and surprisingly interesting. Her sad scenes with Micah were very affecting, but the “crazy ol’ doctor” stuff is what really piqued my interest.

I’m still not sure how I feel about this show, but unlike last week, the good outweighed the bad.

King of the Hill (Fox) — I tend to like Bill-focused episodes. Although he is, by far, the most tragic character in the Hills’ universe, his unbridled, misguided optimism always dulls the black-edged comedy of his existence. In this case, he’s diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes, and a hostile, House-like doctor browbeats Bill into buying a wheelchair, which convinces everyone he knows he’s disabled. Greedy for the attention, he lets them think this, befriends some actual disabled people—and, well, it gets kind of ugly from there.

One of the great things about the way the writers attacked this episode is that it doesn’t rely on humiliating Bill repeatedly; he makes a drunken mistake (by getting up and walking in front of his new, wheelchair-bound friends) and has to pay the price, but nobody laughs at him, nor does he laugh at anyone. He wants friends, he wants attention and—in one of the show’s funniest ironies—he really did have a problem, but hanging with the athletic disabled guys got him into the shape to keep his diabetes under control. They don’t vilify Bill or his new friends; in fact, Thunder (voiced by Jake “Body by Jake/Big Brother Jake” Steinfeld) works with Hank and the alley boys to pull Bill out of his post-humiliation funk.

They also did a good job of tying this into a Peggy-Bobby subplot in which she wants him to eat healthy so he doesn’t end up like Bill. It didn’t get much screen time, but it had a surprising—and satisfying—resolution. It offset Bill’s more-obvious “beat up Dr. House” ending.

Mad Men (AMC) — A friend once grumbled that he won’t watch Mad Men because he doesn’t like the idea of 21st-century writers saying “that’s how people were” in the ’60s. I could have mocked him for coming to this conclusion without ever seeing the show. I could have mocked him because, even if nobody on the writing staff was alive in the ’60s (which might not be true—I honestly don’t know), neither was my friend. Instead, I tried to reason that this isn’t a show about “the ’60s.” It may use the period to reflect on contemporary society, but it’s not trying to say, “This is how all people were at this time in history.” It’s saying, “This is how these people were at this time in their lives.” If he forced me to cite an example, this is the episode I’d choose.

So Freddy Rumsen pisses himself just before an important pitch, leading Duck and Roger to decide he has to go. It’s interesting, again, how they use Duck as a glowering villain—he’s a teetotaler!—instead of making him into a compelling character. Granted, I love the irony of calling him a teetotaler when he’s an ex-drunk, but he does nothing here but make Don angry, and we’re forced to pick Don’s side.

Freddy, Roger and Don go for one last night on the town before they send Freddy away for “the cure” and a six-month leave of absence, which even Freddy knows is a permanent vacation. With the exception of the high theatrics of Don slugging Jimmy Barrett, it was pretty much just a depressing, quiet night between three sad drunks. And yet, I’d wager it was a pivotal night for each of them—for Freddy, the change is obvious; for Don—well, I can’t imagine punching Jimmy will end well for either of them; and Roger, after listening to Don’s drunken ramblings justifying his own amoral behavior, decides to leave his wife… For Jane. I gotta say, I didn’t see that one coming, especially after Roger’s scene with Joan. And yet, you watch the scene again and realize it makes perfect sense. Well played, Mad Men.

Pushing Daisies (ABC) — The return of Pushing Daisies marks the return of my doubts about the show continuing its success in the long term. I still love the cast (Chenoweth excepted, though she’s 10% more tolerable when I can skip through her song-and-dance crap), they have great guest stars, and this week’s mystery might have been the most well-crafted since the pilot—

But they can’t keep up the pace. At a certain point, the “talking quickly = hilarity” formula will stop paying dividends. By the end of the first season, cracks formed in the cutesy façade. They started taking it into a character-focused, soap-opera direction, which normally I like but, for some intangible reason, it just didn’t work for me. Maybe it’s because these characters are so far from reality, I have a hard time feeling the empathy. Maybe it’s because the depressing moon-eyes between Ned and Chuck got less effective each time they repeated it. It’s telling that the only character whose story remains interesting is Emerson Cod’s. He’s the closest thing to a grounded, real character they have, and the pop-up book he’s designed to help his estranged daughter find him is as depressing as it is sweet. Will they abuse this the same way they abused Ned and Chuck?

I haven’t stopped watching, but I fear Pushing Daisies’ future.

Raising the Bar (TNT) — Raising the Bar may not be the best show on television, but this week offered a textbook example of what the show wants to do—and, unlike last week, they did it pretty well. The closing bar scene between Jerry and Bobbi might have taken it from subtle to obvious, but the he finally articulated the difficulties of the criminal justice system without coming across like a whiner. The writers also focused more on this complicated case—and Jerry’s complicated defense—than on the interpersonal shenanigans. Ernhardt barely appeared in this episode, and the awkward “Bobbi’s married but flirting with Jerry and her husband’s kind of a dick” subplot actually worked for me. It was marginal enough to not distract from the cases, but it also didn’t feel extraneous. Well done.

Sons of Anarchy (FX) — I realized something about Sons of Anarchy that doesn’t bode well for its future, unless the writers get their acts together. Creator Kurt Sutter has fashioned a modern-day Hamlet story from this biker gang, but I find the story of recent ex-con Opie (Ryan Hurst) and his put-upon wife, Donna (played by Jericho’s Sprague Grayden), much more compelling than storylines that get infinitely more screen-time.

The other characters do interest me, but the situations the writers have put them in, so far, have not piqued my interest. Some subplots have worked better than others, but it shouldn’t be such a crap-shoot. More than that, they shouldn’t keep the most interesting story and character relationship on the furthest back-burner—even in an episode that featured Opie prominently, his actual conflict took a backseat to the way the others felt about Kyle coming to town.

I have the patience to see the season through, but this episode just underscored all the mistakes the writers have made thus far, and it didn’t declare any intentions of repairing them. I don’t know how I feel about that; if they don’t want to improve the show, why should anyone keep watching it?

Supernatural (The CW) — Sometimes I’m shocked by how good this show is. Actually, it shocks me more often than I’d like to admit. I always want to lump this show in with middling sci-fi/horror fare like Charmed and The Ghost Whisperer, what with its pretty-boy cast and its EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: McG credit. Over the years, though, it’s grown into something great, and episodes like this week’s remind me of just how far it’s come since its pilot.

Aided by a thoroughly bad-ass guest appearance by The X-Files’ Mitch Pileggi (who seems to be everywhere these days—not that I’m complaining), the episode took Dean back in time and explored the unusual history of the Winchester brood. They packed a whole lot of revelations into this: turns out, the Campbell side of the family were all hunters. The Yellow-Eyed Demon—who will kill the boys’ mother and torment them—comes prowling around Lawrence, making unfair “deal-with-the-Devil”-type trades to build some sort of half-human, half-demon army. That’s right, Sam’s psychic powers came straight from him and suggest he’ll go bad. Oh, and John Winchester knew nothing of the hunter ways at all, making it depressing and ironic that the lifestyle consumed him after her death. Also, the Yellow-Eyed Demon killed both of Dean’s grandparents, but not before letting Pileggi rock out as the demon-possessed old man. Then Dean’s mother had to make the deal to bring John back to life.

Got all that? In between, they shoved in a complex mystery, a metric ton of Back to the Future references, more conflict with Castiel the Bad-Ass Angel—and they kept Sam and Dean separated but it didn’t bother me a bit. I don’t know how I’ll feel if this season is all about Sam going to the dark side, but if they keep up the top-notch writing, I’ll probably love it.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox) — I want to knock some points off because of the writers’ reliance on “Cameron has a glitch, does something weird” plots, but they always handle it so well, I can’t complain.

Also, how can you go wrong with something resembling a terminator Ark? Am I crazy? I saw a bunch of caged humans—but, more importantly, a bunch of caged animals—on a big-ass boat. What are those future terminators up to? What is Shirley Manson up to? What does she really want with Ellison? What’s the deal with her “daughter”? Could she have sent herself back in time to protect the person whose identity she will steal in the future? Or are they actually going for the “Terminator Baby” thing? Busy Philipps’ pregnancy has turned into an important element in the show thus far, and I can’t imagine it ending well for anyone involved. But what’s the deal? Is her ex-boyfriend some kind of special machine? An Impregnator?

So many questions, so few answers. On to the matter at hand—the fascinating story of Cameron forgetting herself and believing she is the girl whose DNA she effectively “stole” in the future. Teaming up with guest star Leah Pipes (former star of the late but unlamented CW series Life Is Wild), who did a pretty good job as a rebellious street urchin. This might sound weird, but my one complaint about the episode is that Cameron didn’t kill her. They just had to give us the shot of her regaining consciousness, gasping for breath. It would have been much more ballsy to off her, but I’m guessing the network had some problems with that.

As for Future Cameron (or, um… Past Cameron, considering in her “lifetime,” these events took place earlier), they still managed to answer a couple of questions about her while still keeping the overall agenda mysterious. Did Future John reprogram her, or did they dig up more dirt from the machines? Time will tell…

D. B. Bates is a film critic and television viewer who has often shouted at fictional characters who probably wouldn’t listen to him even if they could hear him and existed in reality. Interested in explaining to D. B. the many ways he got it wrong? E-mail him.

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