television

The Best of Television, 2012: Part 2 - The Joy of Cancellation

By the time I started watching “Bent”, the show had already been officially cancelled. NBC blew threw all six episodes they’d made in three weeks, then announced that the show wouldn’t be returning. I was not shocked to hear the news, the promotion for the show had been spotty and mostly dismal, and the ratings had been correspondingly tepid.

They had their work cut out for them on this one, anyway. With a show like “Bent,” you had to sit through a few minutes to catch on to the loose, conversational rhythm of the show. But TV promotions need to be about 10 seconds long (because that’s the only way they know how to market shows), so in every ad, NBC’s marketing department would just pick a quick clip of dialogue that sounded vaguely similar to a standard set up/joke delivery, and then trot that out during commercial breaks. It’s not particularly surprising the strategy didn’t work, and “Bent” disappeared before most people noticed it had ever been.

Most of the shows I watch seem perpetually on the verge of cancellation. Every week, it’s a rallying cry on Twitter, begging for “first-watch eyeballs” (that is, non-DVRed viewing) on the latest “Community” or “Bob’s Burgers.” “Parks and Recreation” is only alive because NBC has nothing else in the tank to replace it. Some are anointing “Happy Endings” the funniest show on TV, just in time for it to likely disappear at the end of the year. “30 Rock” was, at its peak, the 62nd most watched show on television, and it signed off two weeks ago with one of the characters shouting, “that’s our show! Not a lot of people watched, but joke’s on you, because we got paid anyway!”

I’ve taken part in the begging myself. I’ve submitted a few “watch this, please!” tweets in regards to all the shows above, and I pushed for people to watch “Awake” so it wouldn’t be cancelled (neither of those things happened, sadly). I even feel kinship for campaigns to save shows I don’t particularly enjoy, like the fans who clung to “Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23” until the day it died – though mostly, I feel relieved that I don’t feel attached enough to the show to have to summon the energy to get up in arms about it.

A lot of people harp against the unfairness of it all, but I’ve come to feel the other way about it. It might be unpopular to say, but I kind of…. love following shows that could leave me at any moment.

Television is a static medium. That’s part of the appeal. We meet and fall in love with characters, and every week they return to us.

The trouble is, there’s nowhere else for that relationship to go. The show may get better for a time, and we will grow to love it more, but eventually, inevitably, it will get worse. The experience of watching it will become a chore. The network might take it off the air, or we might give up on it, but the unshakable fact of the matter is that either they will leave us, or we will leave them.

The news that “How I Met Your Mother” had been renewed for a new season would once have filled me with gladness, but now it only brings a hollow dread. As each of the last few seasons has progressed, everything I loved about the show has slowly drained away, until now I find myself unable to root for any of the characters. Each episode only damages the goodwill I have towards the show, and a new season – which I will helplessly watch at least some of – will only damage my relationship with the show more.

Compare that to the early, heady days, when the show was constantly on the brink of cancellation, and only a few CBS execs who liked the show kept it hanging around in hopes of it finally finding an audience. That was a young, alive show, something that looked utterly distinct from this plodding thing that doesn’t know what it wants to be anymore.

Shows that realize that any moment the guillotine could fall are different from their steadier counterparts. The pace is faster, the jokes packed tighter, the showrunners take more chances. I remember someone on a DVD commentary (I think it was Joss Whedon talking about “Firefly,” but who knows) saying that the threat of cancellation is bad for your health, bad for your sleep pattern, bad for your family life, bad for your marriage – but good for your show.

A show like “Modern Family” doesn’t have that attitude. It’s a massive hit, ABC counts on them to anchor a Wednesday night full of unproven comedies, and so everything they do seems safe, predictable. I saw about half-a-dozen episodes of the show this year. They were the exact same as the episodes I watched last year.

I once loved the show, but now there’s no reason to get excited when it airs, because I know there’s nothing I’ll watch that’s any different from anything I’ve seen before.

Of course, part of that may just be me. Knowing I can click away from the show and come back a few weeks later, and the show will still be there… that’s part of what a lot of people like about TV. Television is a dependable bedrock, sending you the same content every week, never messing up something you love. That’s a harder thing to do than I often admit, and it’s not like “NCIS” would be a better or more daring show if they only made ten episodes a season, anyway. It’s steady as a train, and it always arrives at the same station. One day it will be gone, but only when it has outlived its usefulness, and not before.

But a show like “Parks and Recreation,” where at any moment the powers at be can just say, “well, that’s enough of that,” and it’s abruptly gone from my life – it makes me appreciate the show that I’m watching while I’m watching it. Because I know that it’s going to leave me long before I want to leave it.

The Best 5 Shows On Television

Patty asked me to rank the top five shows on television. At first I was torn between trying to decide between my favorite five shows and what I considered the best five shows, but it turned out not to be an issue. Times have changed, and the critical darlings that I appreciated but never managed to warm to ('The Sopranos,' 'The Wire') are now retired, leaving the difference between what I and admire the most and love the dearest completely negligible.

Also, I generally think that whatever I like is probably what’s best for America. Onward!

With apologies to: ‘The Office,’ ‘Family Guy,’ ‘Entourage,’ ‘House,’ ‘Flight of the Conchords,’ ‘The Colbert Report,’ and ‘Weeds.’

5. (tie) ‘Pushing Daisies' (ABC) and ‘Friday Night Lights.’ (NBC and DirectTV)
The two shows couldn’t be more different: one’s a fanciful, vibrant fairy tale about a man who can bring back the dead for 60 seconds, the other a cinéma vérité look at Texas high school football. A year ago it would’ve been FNL by a landslide (a year ago “Daisies’ wasn’t on the air yet, so I guess the point is moot), but FNL’s second season maintained its excellent direction and writing but lost narrative direction, to say the least – by the end of the season, it was inexplicably a show about girl’s volleyball. Still, hope springs eternal, and with promise by its creators of better focus this year, it remains a top-five show. Meanwhile, ‘Daisies’ remains the most original show on broadcast television – a little Harry Potter, a little Amelie, all in sparkling highly saturated color. Extra points for breakout stars Anna Friel and Houston’s own Lee Pace

4. 'Californication.' (Showtime)
This one was a shock to me, but Showtime’s rather purple take on a struggling writer’s attempt to win back his ex-wife turned out to be one of the best shows I watched last year. David Duchovny found a role that fits him even better than Fox Mulder – as Hank Moody, he’s profane, narcissistic, and vicious, yet in a quiet, self-loathingly Zen-like manner that seems almost admirable. The James Dean of failing authors. Having a show on HBO or Showtime is often a boon – the shows spend more money over less episodes in order to keep quality high, and on shows like this one, it’s definitely clear that the strategy is working.

3. 'Mad Men.' (AMC)
Brilliant and verbose, with picture perfect culture landmarks to envelop the viewer into the world of advertising in the 1960’s, ‘Mad Men’ is everything to me that ‘Sopranos’ never could be – quiet, slowly developing, completely gripping intrigue. John Hamm is perfection as Don Draper – a dapper, self-absorbed yet completely brilliant ad exec – somehow managing to win the affection of the audience while holding them off with one hand. By the end of the first season, you feel that you both barely know him and know him better than he knows himself. Remarkable that this is AMC’s first ever narrative show.

2. 'Lost.' (ABC)
We have now crossed the threshold completely – after a below-par second season and an up-and-down third, ‘Lost’ broke out and completely reinvented itself, moving the narrative so quickly that the show has become a tornado of half-answered questions and dizzying plot devices. You are either entranced or you’ve given up completely, and I find myself in the first category. One way or another, the series finale will almost certainly be one of the most debated and rehashed television events of my generation.

1. '30 Rock.' (NBC)
Both one of the most sharply written and consistently funny shows on television, they have with their triumphant Emmy sweep now become its standard bearer for comedy. Somehow managing to be both NBC’s signature comedy (even over ‘The Office’) and yet remain a cult show (low ratings will do that to you), ’30 Rock’ seems willing to go anywhere for a laugh – the ensemble cast appears and disappears without conscience, only appearing if they actually fit into a storyline, a decidedly original strategy for sitcom television. Throw in virtually every good celebrity cameo on television this year – 7 out of the 11 nominees for Best Guest Actor or Actress in a Comedy Series were from ’30 Rock’ – and the selection’s a lock.

Time to switch out those TVs, people!

Well, the Smart Growth Conference has ended, and it seems to have gone pretty well. There were a number of little idiosyncrasies, though: for example, you know how I said I had just discovered I was hosting a tour of our facilities? Well, unfortunately, that tour ended up getting printed a couple of different times in the program in spots where it wasn't supposed to, so I ended up having to do a number of different tours in spots where I'd been counting on crashing for an hour or two. By the time the first day finished up late last night, I was running camera for a one-man interpretation of "Blue Like Jazz" (it was pretty good, by the way. Much better than you'd ever think), and I was falling asleep at the camera. I don't mean like "oh, I'm not on screen right now, I can snooze for a bit." I mean, "doing a slow zoom in on the lead actor and blacking out for a split second midway" sort of falling asleep. I was that tired.

Anyway, the post today highlights my friend Taylor Vinson, who graduated from Asbury in May, and after only two and a half months working in the shadows as a production assistant at a news station, has gotten on a piece on the six o'clock news - as on-air talent. For those of you who don't know how the hierarchy in news stations work and what it takes to get on air: that's a big deal.

Here's a link to the story. And here's to Taylor!