November 24, 2008

‘Heroes’ and Dipshits

So, Heroes is terrible. Nobody disputes that. But the plot thickened this week when creator Tim Kring spoke at a screenwriting expo and said the following:

It’s a very flawed way of telling stories on network television right now, because of the advent of the DVR and online streaming. The engine that drove [serialized TV] was you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on air. So [watching it] on air is related to the saps and the dipshits who can’t figure out how to watch it in a superior way. [Source: IGN]

Okay. It sounds like he tried to say the current problem he and his writers are having is merging the old model of serialized content designed for a once-a-week audience—which means, among other things, excessive previouslies plus repeated scenes and poorly written exposition to remind audiences of what happened last week—with the new way of watching. He calls these new methods “superior to watching it on air,” followed immediately by the now-infamous “saps and dipshits” remark—which refers to “on air” viewers.

I won’t deny it’s horribly stated, and I also won’t deny that it’s very difficult to parse and find the meaning of what he said. It’s a series of contradictions: DVR and streaming make serial shows harder to watch, but it’s the superior way to view it? Serial shows are modeled for “on air” viewing rather than collecting a big clump of episodes and watching in a marathon over Thanksgiving weekend?

Was this merely an excuse for low ratings or an excuse for bad writing? The show would seem quite a bit better watched in a marathon. It’s having a week between episodes to let the show fester that you realize how awful it is. For the record, I TiVo the show but—by necessity of this column—I watch it each week. I guess this makes me a sap but not a dipshit? Or vice-versa?

Time’s James Poniewozik has some pretty good insight into the ratings aspect of Kring’s comments, while the Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan spews a lot of bile about the creative direction of the show. While I don’t disagree with their points, I do feel like both of them misinterpreted Kring’s comments and overreacted. But then, I’m still puzzling over what the hell he meant by them, so I can’t blame them for ascribing meaning that I don’t see.

24: Redemption (Fox) — I wish this show’s writers would realize that 24 doesn’t work as a political thriller. In the first season, the hook that Jack Bauer had to save Senator David Palmer from an assassination attempt worked not because of the politics surrounding it—which, “first black presidential candidate” aside, were marginal at best, serving only to create a very public, very difficult to stop assassination—but because they took action-movie archetypes and made them into interesting people. I can understand why the writers shifted to Palmer’s presidency in the second season—because Dennis Haysbert and Penny Johnson-Jerald made the characters compelling, the writers anticipated audiences wanting more of them.

They weren’t wrong, but from the second season on, it’s been The Jack Bauer Show—the writers have never even come close to giving the supporting characters stories as interesting or intense as what Jack has to go through. I can understand the lack of intensity, but it’s the lack of interest that bugs me. When I stopped caring about what would happen to Palmer, Tony Almeida and Kim, I started wondering why they occupied so much of the show’s time. Other than the practical explanations—if he were the only character, Kiefer Sutherland couldn’t keep up that much intensity on a weekly basis, and most TV budgets can’t afford the type of action he finds himself embroiled in each hour—there is rarely a dramatic purpose to the other characters’ subplots. They don’t intersect or fold in on themselves the way they did in the first season, and aside from the typical “Jack calls Chloe and begs for help” scenes, he hardly even interacts with any of these characters anymore.

The CTU soap opera is a little more palatable than 24’s increasing emphasis on White House politics. I know the show wants to tackle issues, but they just take it too seriously. Most action movies include some kind of political-potboiler element, but it’s always the MacGuffin, alluded to but rarely dwelled on or taken seriously as political issues; when 24 tries to make the MacGuffin a central storyline, it leads to a shitload of goofiness like Wayne Palmer’s truncated presidency and the goofy pseudo-coup. The fifth season contained the show’s only decent political storyline—as with the rest of the show during that glorious season, I thought the writers had learned from past mistakes and figured out the formula that made the first season so great. And then the sixth season showed me how wrong I was.

So, Sunday night gave us a fresh start with the seventh-season “prequel” “movie” Redemption, which—true to the show’s formula—gives us a compelling Jack Bauer story and a metric assload of people and problems I don’t care about. I know it’s a prelude to what’s coming in the seventh season, but notice that Bauer’s story had a complete arc: he’s in hiding in the (fictitious) African nation of Sangala, ducking a subpoena that would force him to return to the U.S. He’s preparing to flee again when a group of militants attempt to kidnap a group of children. These children attend a school run by his ex-Special Forces buddy (the awesome Robert Carlyle) and a creepy Charles Bronson lookalike, so Jack’s convinced to stay long enough to get them to the Embassy and out of Sangala. At every opportunity, he tries to ditch them, but after enough setbacks, he ends up leading them straight to the embassy. “Redemption” comes when Jack gives himself up to U.S. custody so the kids can get out of Sangala.

That’s what people in “the biz” call an “arc.” Both the story and Jack’s character growth have distinctive and complete changes over the course of the two hours. It’s not without its flaws: these militants have planned a hostile coup to assume power in the country and transform it into a dictatorship, so what about all the other people clamoring to get out? Eh, we don’t have time for them—also, they aren’t adorable little kids. Really, though, the biggest problem was the poor introduction to a variety of dull new characters in a grouping of subplots that had nothing to do with Jack’s story and had no distinctive, compelling arcs of their own. They’re what longtime 24 viewers derisively refer to as “filler”—not the best way to introduce new characters.

We got to meet the new President (Cherry Jones). I’d call her bland, but she has a grinning-so-wide-she’s-probably-evil air reminiscent of Imelda Staunton in the last Harry Potter movie. Still, she did very little but whine that Powers Boothe wouldn’t include her in his decisions regarding military support in Sangala. Meanwhile, the President’s dopey son (Eric Lively) and his super-hot girlfriend (Carly Pope) deal with his drug-addicted investment-banker friend (Kris Lemche, doing his best to channel Heathers-era Christian Slater), who’s stumbled across some information about Jon Voight doing…something for…some reason? He doesn’t know much, but we find out Voight is funding the coup in Sangala. I’d say this wraps everything up in a neat little bow, except the references to Sangala in these subplots occupy maybe 30 seconds of the 75 years these people are on the screen.

I know I’m supposed to be cautiously intrigued by these new characters, but the only two who really grabbed me were Carlyle (who died) and Hakeem Kae-Kazim as the thoroughly bad-ass colonel pursuing Jack (who presumably also died). This doesn’t bode well for the new supporting players, but like I said, the show usually makes CTU a few shades more interesting. I’ve always like Colm Feore, but he was hardly around enough to make an impression (beyond “Wow, he looks emaciated—has he been sick?”).

So there you have it: a perfect example of 24. Solid, action-packed Jack story; half-assed everything else. Can’t wait for January!

Bones (Fox) — The plane story tore me because I wanted it to have a Murder on the Orient Express-style “everyone’s a suspect” concept, but they only introduced us to a select few passengers and crew members. On the plus side, from this limited group, they did create a compelling mystery—even guessing early that somebody from the fractured family did it, they kept us guessing who did it. I also like that they brought back a conflict that hasn’t reared its head in awhile—Brennan’s secret desire to do “serious” work instead of investigating murders. I’m obviously not a big fan of the Angela/Hodgins/Roxy pseudo-triangle, but the writers wisely kept the subplot as close to the sidelines as possible. All in all, a good episode with a lot of funny material, but not as great as it’s been lately.

Everybody Hates Chris (The CW) — I only had one problem with this episode, which had a great concept and was funny as ever. Nina Mansker, who played “Big Bird,” is (1) obviously about 10 years older than everyone else at Tattaglia, and (2) was clearly a model of some kind. I wonder when TV producers will realize that simply making a woman wear glasses and pull their hair into a bun doesn’t make them ugly. I did like the fact that they didn’t mock her for the glasses or the bun or the hideous clothes—true to high school kids everywhere, they picked the most obvious “flaw” (her runway-model height). Despite all the good things in this episode, the ending was obvious from the moment Big Bird stepped onto the screen.

King of the Hill (Fox) — I like Bill-focused episodes because he’s the most lovably pathetic character on TV. However, Bill episodes have a tendency to stick the rest of the Rainey Street crew into the background while Bill develops alternate interests or new friends and realizes he needs his real friends to clean up his messes. This one worked a little different, playing up Bill’s pathological need to be liked, which leads to the Peggy/Dale/Minh stock-market subplot, which leads to the Hank/Bobby HDTV subplot. (As a side-note, I love it when Dale is portrayed as a “house-husband”—he’s such a nut, it makes coffee klatches with Peggy and Minh strangely incongruous.) And, of course, things go wrong when Bill realizes people are finally listening to him—and he begins to change, losing the essence of what made the others follow him around in the first place. Bill’s fundamental lack of understanding why people might like him—or, in this case, why they might be exploiting him—is one thing that makes him a compelling character.

The Office (NBC) — See how much better this show works when they concentrate more on dynamics within the office rather than romantic relationships? As I’ve said, I don’t mind Jim and Pam (especially now that it’s stopped being a Jim-Pam-Roy triangle), but dividing everyone up into relationship subgroups just doesn’t work for me. But Ryan and Kelly work, and even the triangle with Darryl made sense with this group of characters. It’s just, on some levels, impossible to believe that nearly everyone in the office would have some sort of romantic alliance. Unrequited crushes, like Toby and Pam? That works. Having them all dating or fooling around doesn’t. I was thrilled that they made the central conflict between Michael and Toby, leaving the cute Jim-Pam house subplot and the irritating “Schrute Farms” subplot on the sidelines. The show should always be like this.

Pushing Daisies (ABC) — Man, Stephen Root and Fred Willard? They have to start letting Kristin Chenoweth sing again so I don’t miss this show so much after its inevitable cancellation. (Yeah, yeah—I know ABC’s spin is that they’ve simply “opted not to order more episodes at this time,” but I think that’s the new and more cumbersome “on hiatus.”) Admittedly, the magic-show setting was a little too cutesy (not unlike the circus setting from a few weeks back), but how can I complain when the setting gave us Fred Willard and Kerri Kenney-Silver.

Supernatural (The CW) — After this episode, I’m a little irritated that this show’s going off the air for two months. They did a terrific job of expanding the current “angel vs. demon” mythology while piling new layers onto Sam and Dean (and to a lesser extent, Castiel, Uriel, Anna and Ruby). Even the “grace” thing with Anna, which could have ended up being very, very silly, worked. I don’t know where they’re going with it, but I’m hooked…and now it’s going away for the holidays. Good planning, CW.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox) — Wow. I admit I’m not always the best at predicting the course an episode will take, but this one threw me more surprises than usual.

In the first place, I assumed the future-tormenter played by the unparalleled Richard Schiff (The West Wing) would actually turn out to be sincere in his pleas that he’s just a regular old watchmaker. Anyone who has read this column before knows that I don’t trust Jesse at all, and I had a sinking suspicion she had lured Derek into the “let’s kill this future guy—together” to further solidify their connection and allow her to manipulate him. I figured she just pulled a random dude off the street for this purpose, but it went in a totally different direction. That in mind, I still don’t trust her. In fact, I find it more suspicious that they’d introduce the idea of “grays” (humans who work for the machines) in a subplot prominently featuring Jesse—to me, it reeks of foreshadowing.

The other big surprise was the outcome of last week’s speculation that Ellison would unintentionally tip his hand about what went down in Mexico, which would lead Weaver to nab Cromartie’s body. I thought this was all but confirmed with Ellison’s surprisingly believable denials. The fact that he had the body in his trunk amazed the hell out of me—first the surprise factor, then the fact that Ellison was lying. Last season, I found his character a little, er…tedious, and it seemed like this season would continue that trend. Instead, they’ve fleshed him out while making him even more of an enigma. (As a side-note, I loved Cameron’s flipping Ellison onto his back to relieve his pain.)

This isn’t quite a surprise, but I liked that the writers are getting back to addressing what’s going on in Sarah’s head. After all, the show has her name in the title—it’s gotten away from her (admittedly annoying) voiceovers, and she’s basically turned into an emotionally numb sourpuss. The symbolic but (thankfully) not weird for weird’s sake dream sequences, and her visit with Dr. Sherman, let us know that she isn’t numb—by the nature of what they have to do, she just has to put things aside and let them fester. This might assuage some of the criticism that Lena Headey doesn’t play Sarah as intense as Linda Hamilton did in T2 (which would be virtually impossible on TV schedule). I think Headey (and the writers) are hitting the best of both worlds—the middle-ground personality that we never saw in the movies because everything happened between the events of the first two. The backstory has her as a caring but troubled mother who was doing the best to “train” John for his future until she snapped. Ostensibly, the events of T2 helped her realize what she needs to do to get control over her life: she has to put everything aside for John’s sake. How long can she keep it up before she snaps again? I think this is ground the writers will address with if the show lasts long enough.

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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