The accused: Dexter, “The British Invasion” (Season 2, Episode 12)

The crime: Allowing its lead character to avoid major consequences and therefore damaging the narrative forever

How much impact, both positive and negative, can one bad episode have on an entire series? How do long-running series continue onward in the aftermath of an episodic failure? Is it possible that individual, episodic failures of television’s most respected series tell us more than the failings of a much-hyped about pilot or series finale? And how do we really define “failure” anyway? These are just a few of the questions that I hope to answer with #TVFail, a nexus of television failure, small, large and in-between.

Welcome back, failure fans. Sorry about the delay between entries, it’s been a stressful, busy time in Casa de Surveillance. Hopefully there will be no more unscheduled breaks any time soon.

I have covered all kinds of failure here with #TVFail, from loudly-scorned efforts to somewhat-secret stumbles, but the episode central to today’s entry is perhaps the most influential on its full series. Maybe the Heroes season one finale is reflective of larger problems that the series could never, ever overcome and perhaps an early season six episode of 24 was a point of no return for that series’ use of “shocking” moments. Yet, neither of those episodes touches the ultimate impact of today’s focus. The second season finale of Dexter substantially altered the trajectory of its lead character and the series as whole. Planning the “what if” game is rarely productive, but it is hard for me to not think about what kind of story Dexter could have been had things gone differently with this episode, and the conclusion of the season’s story.

The other thing that makes “The British Invasion” a different representative of television failure is that for the most part, Dexter had few major issues before this episode aired. The first season sometimes dragged and the supporting characters were a bit flimsy, but overall, it was a success (mostly because of Michael C. Hall’s performance, but still). And the second season? It is very, very good. Doakes is not the most interesting character as an individual person, but as an antagonistic, threatening force breathing down Dexter’s neck, he is perfect. Despite her annoying tendencies, Lila initially appeared to serve a purpose for Dexter, giving him an out to tap into the animalistic and passionate portions of his personality.

Generally speaking, if the story is about a vigilante “savior” who stops criminals by murdering them, it is smart to pressure that character with the possibility of revealing his identity and all his secrets. And doing it sooner, rather than later, is even smarter. As a result, the first 11 episodes of Dexter season two are tremendous (typical supporting character nonsense aside). The story kept moving forward at a nice clip, the stakes felt real and Dexter looked to be boxed into circumstances that he couldn’t weasel out of, at least without major consequences.

In most of my cases thus far at #TVFail, the context for the failure makes a lot of sense. We could see Heroes struggles coming. Many elements of 24’s premise were already strained once season six came around (despite the quality of season five). Even something like the struggles of Friday Night Lights during season two made sense immediately because we could bet NBC wanted them to “spice” it up and we knew that Jason Katims was working on multiple projects at once. But the events of “The British Invasion” made little sense in 2007 and even though they make a certain modicum of sense in 2012, they only do so for all the wrong reasons.

Therefore, I do not want to flat-out say that this episode ruined the series, because there have a number of satisfying episodes and individual moments in the subsequent four years of Dexter. Nevertheless, I will say that “The British Invasion” severely damaged Dexter the character and Dexter the series and although there have been times where it seems like both are on their way to coming out of their respective ruts, the issues that started here work their way to the surface yet again. The events of this episode are the root for most of the problems Dexter has had throughout the rest of its run, and choices made as to how to end season two’s story robbed audiences of what could have been one of television’s truly great cable dramas.

Dexter is, obviously, a morally ambiguous character. He is the protagonist character of Dexter the series and his work keeping the proverbial streets safe can be read as somewhat heroic. But all of the character’s heroic tendencies are canceled out by his selfish desires and psychological damage. Sure, he kills “bad” people (most of the time), but he does so for himself more so than for the citizens of Miami. He is chasing a feeling and trying to suppress certain urges at the same time. This is all obvious and Dexter’s ambiguity is more or less the hook of the entire story.

However, season two is really the only season to truly interrogate Dexter’s reasoning in any great detail. In the first season and later years, the writers found ways to address why Dexter kills and what kind of impact that has on everyone around him, but I never got/get the sense that the series was actively challenging Dexter’s process or his beliefs. But in season two, things are different. Dexter himself questions the logic and value of The Code and considers turning himself in multiple times. He agrees to go to Narcotics Anonymous when Rita suspects he has a drug problem and finds some value in the lessons. And most importantly, Dexter loses control and starts treating people like crap (while bedding the appealingly crazy Lila), just as one of the few other sympathetic characters on the series starts to suspect his actions.

It is one thing for Dexter to cunningly plot to avoid being caught by the police. The audience expects the anti-hero to take sketchy actions to save his/her own skin. It is something else entirely (but not “bad,” more on that in a second) for Dexter to purposefully plot against Doakes, an officer of the law who is simply trying to do the right thing and catch a criminal. Obviously, the audience knows more about Dexter’s reasons for taking certain actions and that makes him more sympathetic, but it is hard to identify Dexter’s actions in season two as anything other than “sufficiently evil.” He works overtime to cover his own tracks, but those selfish actions in the name of self-preservation lead Dexter to attempt to pin all of the Bay Harbor Butcher murders on Doakes. Doakes isn’t the most appealing or lovable character ever, but he doesn’t especially deserve the things that happen to him throughout season two either.

Amid his plotting against Doakes, Dexter’s personal life spirals as well. His relationship with Rita is fractured once he succumbs to Lila’s advances. He commits small, typical sins like lying, but also starts to give in to his more fundamentally vicious urges – urges that certainly have an impact on his treatment of Doakes.

In the first season, Dexter’s primary foe is someone who is obviously more villainous than he is. Even the weekly easy kills are described in such a way that it’s fairly easy for the series to justify Dexter dispatching of them. But in season two, the primary foe (Doakes) is not more villainous than Dexter, far from it. That shift in antagonist, combined with Dexter’s personal descent into more overtly “bad” behavior, makes the character dramatically less admirable throughout the season.

And don’t get me wrong, this is not a bad thing, at all. A series like Breaking Bad succeeds because it is not afraid to let its lead character(s) make terrible decisions that hurt people, both good and bad, and keep moving down a path of evil. The more complicated the actions by the “antihero” character, the more compelling, and arguably, better, the story is. Challenging the audience to identify with someone who does just as many horrible, selfish things to good people as he does to bad people is, again, a good thing.

Dexter should have taken this route, as it appeared it was truly on its way to doing. The way I see it, the whole arc of the second season is leading to a moment where Dexter turns into something more complicated (read: evil) than he (or the audience) initially thought. At worst, the story is leading to a moment where Dexter has to make a choice about the kind of monster he wants to be: Does he kill Doakes? And if not, how does he keep him alive? Relatedly: Does The Code matter, or when do the ends justify the means? You could add a number of similar questions here.

Unfortunately, “The British Invasion” not only fails to accomplish the first feat, it somehow also strips Dexter of even having to make a choice at all. Lila discovers the abandoned cabin that Dexter is using to hold Doakes, and convinced that she is Dexter’s soul-mate, sets the house ablaze. Doakes dies; Dexter is relieved, freed from having to make the hard decision. And of course, by the end of the episode, Dexter also travels abroad and takes care of Lila, just for good measure. After all that tension, all those questions, everything is resolved neatly and conveniently.

Erik King, the actor who played Doakes, said in an interview that “Dexter could not kill Doakes because he is an innocent man.” The implication from King’s statement is that Dexter is too good to kill an innocent man and that as the antihero protagonist of a popular television series there are certain lines the character apparently cannot cross. And of course, I understand some of the realities and necessities of television, wherein certain events or changes cannot occur because this is a business, the series have to go on as long as possible, etc.

However, what King’s statement disregards and where the realities of the business do not matter, is how the story developed up to “The British Invasion.” If Doakes had to die – and the producers insisted that he did – then fine. But perhaps do not build the season’s narrative around Dexter’s declining morality and increased state of unhinged-ness or ask big, important questions about the character’s modus operandi. Because if Doakes does die and his death completely undercuts everything that came before for the lead character (who will still be alive and have to deal with all this in future seasons), the whole story breaks down and ultimately, the resolution feels like a massive cop-out. That is, of course, exactly what happened here.

The majority of season two is about Dexter not caring about his already-muddled versions of right and wrong and to allow him to slip out of a final beat in that regard is staggering. To not even put Dexter in a situation where he’s forced, even begrudgingly, to frame Doakes for all the Bay Harbor Butcher nonsense is staggering. To not even put Dexter within miles of event where Doakes does die and to take everything out of his hands is STAGGERING.

“The British Invasion” should have actively engaged with moral ambiguity, and at worst, should have maintained its pre-established gray area. But instead, the finale runs away from any hard choices so it can keep the series’ lead character at a certain level of comfortability. Somehow, after a season dedicated to showing the audience how much of a hero Dexter is not, the finale ends with him positioned as heroic for taking out the admittedly-annoying Lila, the woman who actually had the gall to do what Dexter could not.

Oddly, in the aftermath of “The British Invasion” various Dexter writers and produced talked about killing Doakes to avoid repeating storylines or staying stagnant. The problem with those statements is Dexter almost immediately became repetitive and stagnant because of the choices made for “The British Invasion.” With Doakes out of the picture, there were no police characters around to truly pose a threat for Dexter. Instead, he has appeared to be unbelievably more intelligent than everyone around him, every week for four years. The only time Dexter gets into hot water these days is when he slips up, not when really anyone else does something right. As a result, there have been few instances where Dexter has been able to touch the tension of those great season two episodes, at least in regard to Dexter being “discovered.” The stakes feel less important because the series has proven time and time again, starting with “The British Invasion,” that Dexter will get out of whatever jam he is in by the end.

And arguably more importantly, all of Dexter’s primary foes in season three through six have been obviously more “evil” than him. That approach to antagonist construction makes the story immediately less interesting because it allows Dexter to be positioned in the moral high ground (relatively speaking, of course). Clearly, Dexter’s relationship with Trinity had some compelling moments and connected nicely with Dexter’s inner turmoil over his family life. Nevertheless, there was still never any question about who was “more evil” between Trinity and Dexter and the way Rita’s murder was used to evoke sympathy for the latter proves that even more. Trinity was the villain taking something away from the hero. There was not enough in the series, either before or after, that addressed how Dexter caused Rita’s death by being an awful monster himself.*

*To be fair, the season five premiere does a great job with this. But it was forgotten too quickly so the story could move on to its typical rhythms.

Every season, Dexter’s way of life is reinforced and justified. It does not matter what he does in that year’s 12 episodes. The story basically ends up at the same place. The series’ one big card left to play is Deb finding out that Dexter is this monster, but to get there, the writers decided it would be wise to make Deb A.) Agree with a certain level of vigilante justice (in season five) and B.) Fall in love with Dexter. So even though she walked in on him murdering Travis at the end of season six, she’s already predisposed to make excuses – and this doesn’t even include the fact that she already knows Travis was a terrible murderer, so Dexter killing him is kind of okay anyway.  

Dexter has stopped asking the compelling questions it was asking before “The British Invasion.” It has stopped forcing its lead character into circumstances where the audience is forced to question their sympathy for him. I see the logic behind “softening” Dexter over time as part of some kind of character development, but the man hasn’t changed. The series allows him to do the same awful things he has always done, it just keeps making excuses for him. The worldview of Dexter the series always reinforces the worldview of Dexter the character. Not challenging them is such a mistake.

Maybe Dexter did not have to be as ambitious as something like Breaking Bad. But it could have taken a real risk every once and a while.* But it did not, and as a result, the series and the character have become exactly what the writers did not want at the end of season two: repetitive (see also: borderline terrible).

*I’m not sure if I would call killing Rita as a real “risk.” That choice was certainly shocking and provided the series a great cliffhanger. But removing her from the equation only allowed the writers to avoid establishing much real tension for Dexter even more. Now he has no one to answer to but his son and the moral pull of a baby apparently isn’t enough (and certainly isn’t compelling enough narratively).  

If you follow me on Twitter, you likely know that I love professional wrestling. I get crap for it all the time, but I am not here to discuss why wrestling is unfairly disregarded as a cultural artifact or get into those obvious taste arguments. Instead, I am going to pretend that wrestling is as respected as it should be and then spend the next hundreds and hundreds of words talking about how unfortunate certain events are and how interesting other, related events are. For those of you who like reading my stuff but are not familiar with wrestling or current-era WWE, I will do my best to either explain the details or link you to places where you can fill in the blanks quickly.

Wrestling has an unfortunate history with its treatment of women. It also has an unfortunate history with its treatment of people of other races, people with alternative lifestyles, people with certain political ideologies, etc. Basically, if you are not a white male, wrestling has and likely continues to do you wrong pretty handily. Chances are, even if you do not watch a second of wrestling each week, you know this. It is an unfortunate truth.*

*To be fair, the independent wrestling scene does a much better job with female performers and really anything with subtlety. But for better or for worse, WWE dominates the pro wrestling (or as they call it, the sports entertainment) landscape and it is impossible to say that Vince McMahon’s company doesn’t define mainstream culture’s assumptions about the “sport.”

Throughout my time as a pro wrestling fan (which dates back more than 15 years), female performers get to fall into two roles: overly-sexualized prop or hateful bitch. That’s basically it. During the so-called heyday of pro wrestling (1997-2001), the most visible females were WCW’s “Nitro Girls,” a group that basically functioned as more provocative cheerleaders, a bunch of WWF/E “Divas” who looked like this, this and this and served as a feeder system for the yearly Playboy cover and Mae Young, an elderly former women’s champion who sporadically appeared to have sex with random male superstars and give birth to a hand.*

*I wish I was making that up. Actually, no I don’t.

That era, also known as the “Attitude Era,” featured dozens of pillow fights, lingerie matches, swimsuit competitions and god knows what else. Stacey Keibler, George Clooney’s current love-of-the-moment, became popular because she did this. Over the last 10 years, major WWE Divas (even those who were legitimately good wrestlers) have been forced to get on their knees and bark like a dog in front of CEO McMahon. They have been at the center of stories primarily making fun of their weight. They have been part of “live sex celebrations.” And fairly constantly, they have heard the “WWE Universe” yell “Slut! Slut! Slut!” at them.

Obviously, pro wrestling is a super-weird world where typical or progressive representations of gender (or race or class or sexuality or again anything that’s not big muscular white dude) are few and far between. WWE’s representations of masculinity are just as heightened and stereotypical as its representations of femininity, though those are typically not as offensive. And arguably, the fans, excuse me, the Universe, is as much to blame for this as anyone. WWE creates characters or storylines solely to get a reaction out of the audience. Wrestling fans (who are, shockingly, mostly white males) have responded to a certain construction of femininity and female characters the same way for decades, only now it tends to stand out more because the rest of society has moved on a bit more (though not completely, obviously).

I bring all this up to contextualize what has been a really odd week for the WWE and its relationship to women, a relationship that points out the weird place pro wrestling/sports entertainment finds itself in with the rise of social media.

This all started, as most things do, on Monday Night Raw. Well, let me back-track and explain some of the convoluted portions of the story that came to a head on this week’s Raw. Over the past few months, WWE’s primary hero John Cena has been battling with the ridiculous character Kane. I won’t spend too much time explaining Kane’s muddled backstory (check Wikipedia for it all), but just know that in canon, Kane can control fire, appear wherever he wants at any time and may or may not have a set of keys for hell. In any event, Kane returned to WWE action in December and randomly decided to set his sights on Cena, in hopes of getting the ever-positive and milqtoast Cena to “embrace the hate” (which is of course fitting since Cena’s new T-shirt says “Rise Above Hate”).

In any event, getting Cena to embrace the hate meant that Kane had to torment Cena’s best friend, the up and coming Zack Ryder, the Jersey Shore-aping “Long Island Iced-Z.” And to get to Ryder to get to Cena (I think I mentioned this was convoluted), Kane had to torment Ryder’s mega-crush, Eve. After weeks of thinly-veiled language that suggested he would rape and murder (or vice versa, because he has the history of doing so) Eve, Kane attacked Ryder and left him with a broken back that was, a day later, upgraded to something much less severe because apparently WWE doctors are not good at their jobs. ANYWAY, with Ryder out of the way, Kane tried to put Eve in ambulance (because he and Cena were about to have an ambulance match, duh) and take her somewhere (probably hell). Of course, Cena prevented this and saved Eve, who returned the favor by planting an in-the-moment kiss on him (which Ryder saw, in one of the legitimately great moments in WWE history). Cena, who I think is married in canon, definitely didn’t stop the kiss, at least at first.

CUT TO: This week’s Raw. One night earlier, Cena defeated Kane in said ambulance match and although he lost his friendship with Ryder, he was ready to move on to his hyped showdown with The Rock at April 1’s Wrestlemania. Unfortunately, the WWE needed a way to get out of the storyline outside of just telling the audience the truth, which was that the writers needed to give Cena something to do for two months before Wrestlemania. So, instead of using the story to actually force Cena to even remotely embrace the proverbial hate (something much of the audience has been waiting on for years), everything basically boiled down to “SuperCena” triumphing again while pointing to his shirt and saying, “I told you.”

The solution for the story’s resolution? Turning Eve heel and subsequently slut-shaming her to death. This past Monday’s Raw opened with Eve backstage, discussing how her “relationship” with the still-wheelchair-bound Ryder was all about raising her profile. Eve claimed she used Ryder to raise her profile and that she hoped to use Cena even more to do the same. Of course, Cena just happened to be standing right behind her. He made his way to the ring with Eve following, crying her eyes out for being caught.

The next six or seven minutes were some of the most uncomfortable and disparaging that I can remember in recent WWE history. Cena, the guy wearing the Rise Above Hate T-shirt, the company’s hero, and the man who has literally cashed in more Make-A-Wish wishes than any other person on the planet, called Eve a “Hoeski,” a play on Ryder’s “Broski” gimmick.* He noted that Eve had been “sipping the skank juice” and called her a “scandalous bitch.” Eve then got on her knees, weeping, and asking for forgiveness.** Well, until she tried to kiss Cena again, just for good measure. Sometime later, I recall Cena saying something about Eve being diseased.

*Of course, the WWE Universe immediately chanted “Hoeski” in response. You’re welcome.

**At this point, the Universe booed heavily and continued to chant, you guessed it, “Hoeski.” Seriously, you’re welcome.

It is 2012. The WWE is a publicly-traded company. It and its superstars, most notably Cena, have hands in all sorts of media properties. Raw airs on USA Network, basic cable’s highest rated network. Wrestling isn’t just some backwards performance for people in various small territories around the United States (and the world, to be fair). Vince McMahon wants the WWE to be a global entertainment entity and brand. Not to mention, he has guided WWE into what’s referred to as the “PG Era,” where the blood and sex and controversy of the halcyon late 1990s are gone. This is supposed to be entertainment for youths, and Cena is supposed to be their hero.

There is absolutely no excuse for this sort of story. There is no context where this okay. It is sexist and degrading. Everyone involved, from Cena to Eve to the writing staff, should be embarrassed (and hopefully they are). It is moments like this that prevent people from ever taking pro wrestling seriously as a cultural artifact or as an art form. Unfortunately, it is hard to see a world where mainstream wrestling, guided by the WWE, allows women to do anything other than crap like this. In recent weeks, female superstar Natalya, a member of the famous Hart wrestling family and a fantastic performer, has been caught up in a story where she cannot stop farting. Seriously. Every week, she ruins a situation because she can’t keep her bowels in check. This is a thing that’s happening.

What is especially interesting about WWE’s treatment of Eve or Natalya (or all the women before them) is how it rubs up against the other big reason the company is in the news this week. The current WWE Champion is the outspoken (both on-screen and in real life) CM Punk, a sarcastic, straight edge performer who came up through the indie ranks and raised all sorts of hell this summer when he considered leaving the company amid a battle over the title with Cena. Punk delivered a “worked shoot” promo taking down McMahon, Cena and other WWE hypocrisies that set the internet wrestling community on fire. Although he eventually re-signed with the company and lost a bit of that spark, Punk still set off what he and Grantland’s David Shoemaker have dubbed wrestling’s new “Reality Era.” The Punk fans see on-screen each week is more or less the Punk his family presumably loves and that sense of “real”-ness is what makes Punk such an appealing hero (and alternative to Cena’s somewhat strained larger-than-life persona).

Punk’s identity is, like so many of us, on display on Twitter. This past weekend, Punk caused a bit of a stir when he took to Twitter to criticize the deserving Chris Brown for his treatment of women. Brown, as he is wont to do lately, responded in an immature and ridiculously misguided fashion by accusing Punk (who, again his straight edge) of using steroids. The Twitter fight continued through Monday and Tuesday, with the two exchanging barbs and Punk eventually publishing a two-minute TwitVid discussing how he never meant to start a controversy, but he certainly didn’t back down. The Punk-Brown issues have been covered by all the major entertainment publications, from TMZ to E! It is now officially “a thing” in current popular culture.  

To me, the weirdest thing about all of this is how the WWE is actively directing its viewers to the Punk-Brown nonsense. The company “discovered” Twitter this summer, right around the same time that Punk became a super-duper star, and so anything Twitter-related is going to get at least a mention on WWE TV, but I was a bit surprised to see how many times it was mentioned on Tuesday’s live episode of Syfy’s Smackdown and how detailed it has been covered on the WWE’s official web site. Well, I shouldn’t say I was surprised per se, because the WWE loves mainstream media attention more than anything else, but I was compelled and perplexed by this.

On Monday night, the WWE opens its programming with a contemporary version of The Scarlet Letter, with the constant use of the word “Hoeski” to refer to one of its most visible female performers and the most visible male star degrading her ad-nauseum. On Tuesday night, the WWE constantly refers to a story about one of its biggest male superstars defending the treatment of women and addresses the most visible case of harmful action towards women in popular culture. I don’t know about you, but that’s a heck of a 24-hour period with a boat-load of dissonance.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I admire Punk for standing up against Chris Brown because let’s face it, Chris Brown is a son of a bitch. I would pay money to watch Punk beat the living hell out of Brown for real. And I sort of, in some way, appreciate that the WWE is pointing their feud out, if only because it implicitly celebrates a better treatment of women. Nevertheless, Punk’s actions as an individual who certainly controls his own Twitter account and would never agree to get into it with Chris Brown for some backwards publicity stunt (even the WWE is smarter than that, I think) doesn’t negate all the horrible things the company let happen the night before. There is something very uncomfortable with how the WWE presents women in these two contexts.

Ultimately though, these two events reflect another complex issue pro wrestling is facing in contemporary culture. Punk started all this with social media. And as I said, he decided to suggest he would like to stomp on Chris Brown because, well, that’s what he believes as a man, not just because he is a performer. Obviously, the WWE is capitalizing on this because the publicity is astronomical (though, I’m guessing if Punk knew it would cause a storm like this, he would have avoided it altogether), but this event still shows us how challenging it is for something like wrestling to fold in social media.

“Real” actions can become part of the less-real WWE presentation, which both reinforces and subverts the façade of pro wrestling’s existence and presentation. Punk’s actions and his hope for a Reality Era overtly challenge wrestling’s outdated mode of thinking in a lot of ways, and this is just another instance of that. I’m not sure if Punk’s stance on women is going to have much of an overall impact on the WWE’s handling of the gender, but at least he (unintentionally) shook things up in a way that was actually progressive in a larger sense, and not just in a wrestling sense. 

For quality writing about the Eve-Cena events of this week’s Raw, check out the work of Brandon Stroud, K Sawyer Paul and Razor. All those folks write about wrestling much more often and much better than I do.  

Watching and writing about television is a pretty painless experience in the grand scheme of things. But disregarding the world’s real problems for a moment, watching and writing about Glee can be fairly traumatic, you guys. Every time I think the series has lost its way for good, it pulls me back in with a scene, sequence or even full act that’s full of life (and often despair, but hey, I like my Glee sad). And then, just when I think maybe the writers stumbled into a quality premise or, shockingly, a completely good episode, that goodwill is quickly squandered, often by awkward white guy rapping.

“On My Way” exemplifies the Glee experience about as well as any episode in recent memory. There are 12-18 minutes of legitimately FANTASTIC television within this episode’s running time. But the problem is those minutes are followed up by a half-hour of typical Glee crap: disregarded stories from five minutes ago, poorly-conceived musical selections, random personality transplants for characters, lots of “telling” instead of showing and of course, awkward white guy rapping. I can deal with Glee when it operates within its typical rhythms of unreality full of overstuffed plotting and overheated, preaching themes. But when the series ropes me in with 15 minutes of real, powerful emotion and then jumps right back into that unreality, I want to punch myself in the face for deciding to watch that damn pilot in May 2009 in the first place.

Seriously, if someone ever questions Glee’s ability to create powerful moments, I’ll show them the opening minutes of this episode. This season has been especially adept at using the musical performances in a montage-like sequence to tell multiple stories or evoke multiple, related emotions at once and Karofsky’s suicide attempt set to Blaine’s performance of “Cough Syrup” is the best of them all. Sure, the sequence would have had even more impact had Karofsky been in more than three episodes this season, but even those short moments we’ve spent with him (especially in last week’s episodes), Glee has done a solid job of building up his inability to achieve peace with his identity. And of course it was completely manipulative of the series to use Karofsky’s issues to cast a shadow over the Regionals proceedings, but this is Glee and sometimes its manipulation can be quite effective.

But like so many stories this season, Karofsky’s suicide attempt was quickly disregarded as an A-plot so that the episode could turn its focus to the typical performance episode nonsense and its already-established mediocre plot-lines. My assumption was that Regionals would be the big showdown between New Directions and the now-evil Warblers, but moments after the Karofsky news, Sebastian is completely apologetic about all his actions, mostly because he was also an awful human being to Karofsky as well.

Instead of moving forward with the already-established tension, “On My Way” decides to add a new layer of tension, one that evokes powerful emotions in the moment but completely erases everything that was in-place beforehand. Thus, after one (admittedly heartfelt) apology from Sebastian, his legitimately insane actions over the last month are completely forgiven. I understand that in light of an attempted suicide, attempted blinding by rock salt slushie loses its meaning, but I find it a bit hard to believe that either group of kids was that attached to Karofsky that they’d drop the previous beef so quickly. This is only exacerbated further by the actual dreaded performance part of the episode, which sinks back into the same exact pattern the series established two and a half years ago: Weird judges, poorly-planned performances and a whole lot of friendly competition. Finn and Mike Chang dance along to the Warbler’s performances. Sam blows them a kiss, he thinks they are so good. And the Warblers are similarly enthused by the New Directions truly miserable and uninspired performances.

The episode makes some half-hearted attempt to make Regionals about Karofsky’s problems, but the performances never give the impression that they’re about him, in his honor or about anything, really. The groups just sing because this is a series about singing and this is the episode where they sing even more than normal. Much like Santana’s slapping of Finn earlier in the season, Glee uses Karofsky’s suicide attempt as a way to evoke extremely moving emotions in the moment, but fails to capitalize on them or contextualize them so they matter in the long-run.

And by the time all the typical Regionals nonsense is out of the way, all the emotion and power is sucked out of the episode, replaced by empty victories and uninspired clichés about the future. In a world where Glee isn’t the series it has become, there is a great story to be told about how Karofsky’s suicide attempt coalesces with the graduating seniors’ final Regionals performance and what that means for that ambiguous thing known as the future. And to be fair, the episode tried to do that with the group scene in the auditorium where Will’s almost-suicide. Matthew Morrison did a tremendous job with that kind of hackneyed dialogue and the whole atmosphere of the moment was given a certain amount of reverence and weight that aligned well with what happened to Karofsky. But outside of that short moment and the one conversation between Kurt and Karofsky, “On My Way” uses the tragedy surrounding Karofsky when it wants to and then disregards it when it is perhaps too difficult to actually engage with the issues and tension the event could, in theory, create.

Of course, this analysis disregards the stupidity of the episode’s final five minutes. Only Glee can start the episode with a “It Gets Better” Public Service Announcement, transition to a predictable glut of mediocrity and then finish with a DON’T TEXT WHILE DRIVING PSA. Listen, I agree. We probably shouldn’t text while driving. But Glee is a series where the lead protagonist sending a foe to a crack house was basically disregarded as “oh well, it happens” and where teen drinking is overlooked as “kids, they are cray.” And to use Quinn, a character who has already experienced a stupid amount of tragedy and character assassination, as a way to teach this lesson is even more stupefying. I get the desire to have a big cliffhanger for the extended break, but after the opening 15 minutes of the episode and all that was squandered in the following 20, I can’t even begin to understand why anyone thought this was a good idea, story-wise.

But…this is Glee. Reasons aren’t needed, apparently.

Other thoughts:

• I didn’t even get to mention Sue’s pregnancy. I’ll say this: Jane Lynch is doing very fine work as this reborn version of Sue and I actually kind of like the character. But A) It’s unfortunate that the writers are making hormones the cause of all her horrible previous actions and B.) We know that they will pull the rug out from under us eventually anyway.
• Mid-way through New Direction’s Regionals performance, the extra girls from the TroubleTones showed up to sing with Santana and Brittany. I assumed that was supposed to be some sort of culmination of a story about Will valuing everyone’s talent, but, LOL.
• There were so many fantastic reaction shots during the Regionals performances: The aforementioned Sam Evans kiss-blowing, Will’s awkward white guy dancing and everything that Jeff Goldblum was doing. 

ABSTRACT: “Why is this being reviewed?”: Examining taste, distinction and the review choices of television critics online

These days it feels like everyone, from well-known critics like Alan Sepinwall to Gawker to people on personal blogs, is writing television reviews or recaps online. Amid the sea of digital opinions, there is one question stands out to me: What is the impact of which series are chosen for review?

Dig deep enough and you will find reviews of any kind of series, from scripted to unscripted, comedy to drama, new to “classic.” But if we are working from the assumption that television criticism has never been as popular or as important as it is right now – a topic numerous2011articles discussed – consideration must be made for what is regularly reviewed by all types of critics and how those choices craft the image of television and television criticism in today’s modern media landscape. Why does Alan Sepinwall choose to review what he reviews? Why would The A.V. Club regularly review the famously terrible The Cape but not the generally liked Nikita?

Of course, the easy answer is “some combination of reviewer preference, buzz and audience desire,” yet the review choices of all critics raise questions about taste and distinction within critical circles and among critics and viewers/readers. It is easy to expect someone to write a 4,000-word essay about AMC’s Breaking Bad, but if the same critic or same publication produces a recap of Big Brother that reaches a similar word count, should they be judged differently?

Are the series regularly reviewed by the “best” critics the “best” or “most important” the medium has to offer? (This is particularly relevant in light of the recent focus on reviews of “classic” series since gone from the airwaves.) What if those series regularly covered are reviewed negatively? Are certain reviews more “important” than others? Is there value in covering so many series to begin with? What kind of role – if any – do readers play in this process? My presentation will explore these questions in an attempt to discover how the review choices of television critics shape the field of television criticism and reflect certain hierarchies in taste and distinction.

If you have any desire to talk about contemporary criticism or just want to help me make this conference presentation as great as I want it to be, please contact me via e-mail at barkerc65@gmail.com (or on Twitter).

When you run in certain circles online or follow a bunch of people in the same field on Twitter, certain events or pieces become “things.” Over the last 36 hours, the “thing” has been Ryan McGee’s piece about The Sopranos and the HBO model’s impact on television narrative. McGee’s well-reasoned and detailed piece created a bit of a stir among TVitterati and spurred Time’s James Poniewozik and scholar Jason Mittell to concoct similarly well-reasoned and detailed responses. Although the three thinkers had different perspectives on that matter, their respective points were logical, diverse and intelligent, an discursive environment I think most of us have grown accustomed to over the last few years.

Which is why it is so disappointing for me that the conversation has now turned to something else. Today, Atlantic writer Richard Lawson suggested that McGee, Poniewozik and any other “TV nerds” “need to stop taking TV so damn seriously.”

I don’t want to spend much time discussing the tone of Lawson’s piece, which I (and many others, based on today’s Twitter chatter) find as snarky and a bit demeaning, but the tonal issues I have happen to further impact an argument I don’t particularly agree with either. Lawson makes a fantastic point about the sheer amount of television and television “criticism” (however you want to define the term is up to you) out there on the internet. No, we likely don’t need 981 3,000-word reviews of Breaking Bad or worse, 541 recaps of The Bachelor that simply tell the reader exactly what happened with no analysis or opinion whatsoever. I also think that Lawson does an okay job of positioning his argument as light-hearted and letting the reader know that he isn’t one of those people who continues to disregard television as an “important” artistic medium. And I especially agree that we need to consider writing about things like Unforgettable or The Finder.

But amid his handful of great points, Lawson’s primary thesis remains troublesome, and ultimately, undercuts any of those solid arguments. From my perspective, the idea that we (critics, quasi-critics, those who love criticism, whomever) are talking about television too much or thinking about it too much is ridiculous. Again, in his opening sentence, Lawson refers to McGee and Poniewozik, gentlemen who are more or less his peers, as “nerds.” I’m guessing that Lawson never intended to be malicious with that usage, but the connotation of the word, combined with his general tone and the argument itself all evoke a certain level of disregard for the medium, the field of criticism and those writers.

We know that the internet is the catalyst in the explosion of television criticism on the internet. You could argue that the internet criticism era just happens to coincide with a certain “golden age” of television quality. However, you could also argue that the way television criticism has shifted online has gone a long way in helping legitimize television as an art form in ways the medium wasn’t thought of 20 years ago. There are certainly other issues at play in why television and television criticism have both been “legitimized,” but it’s hard to ignore the connections between the rise of the cable drama and the rise of The A.V. Club’s TV Club or Sepinwall’s Blogspot.

To suggest that well-reasoned pieces of media criticism like those from McGee and Poniewozik are “ruining” television makes me sad. We should always be thinking about the media, no matter how much it is shifting, and we should always want to make observations about the media’s influence/impact/reflection on audiences, industries or what have you.* 10 years ago, a piece like McGee’s or responses like those from Poniewozik and Mittell wouldn’t have been published in places that a sizable audience could see. While Lawson might see those kinds of conversations as “taking television too seriously,” I see them as part of a larger discussion that provokes, stimulates and interrogates deeper thinking about a medium that has – and will continue to – struggle with its place as the supposed “idiot box.” The amount of discussions being had about television might “rage on and on for weeks” and sometimes certain points feel like they are getting beat into the ground a bit. However, I would much rather be in a situation where some think critics are talking about television too much than not enough.

* For me, talking about television is so interesting because of its constant presence. Being able to evaluate immediately, then re-evaluate and then re-re-evaluate is something that makes the internet great, right?

Perhaps the connection between the prestige cable drama and internet criticism is too entrenched. And maybe the field of television criticism still tends to ignore traditionally popular and middlebrow content. However, the intense focus on a certain “type” of programming doesn’t necessarily mean that focus is useless and/or misguided. Discussing only cable dramas reinforces cultural hierarchies and tastes, but assumptions about networks, series or any cultural text for that matter exist for some reason. Critics put a lot of value and think quite a bit about HBO dramas because HBO has more or less earned that reputation. The reason we bicker over The Walking Dead and The Killing is because we thought AMC had similarly gained that cultural clout. The fact that most of us were wrong or surprised or continue to argue over it doesn’t mean that the function of those discussions is meaningless. Those networks and those series want to be taken seriously. Critics aren’t wrong for obliging and it’s not as if they are reading into things that aren’t there at all.

Lawson wants to move away from cultural assumptions about HBO, FX, Showtime and AMC prestige dramas and focus on something like Holmes on Holmes. That’s my dream! But shifting the focus to non-prestige cable dramas doesn’t mean not talking about television, it just means talking about a different kind of television, but still in a serious manner. I would love nothing more than to see Todd VanDerWerff or Noel Murray write 4,000 words about Holmes. But if they did, wouldn’t they still be taking it seriously? Would it still be starting a discourse about a still-in-progress cultural artifact that could change within the week? Would those essays over-analyze Holmes on Holmes? What even dictates over-analysis? Maybe the field of television criticism relies too much on HBO or other cable networks for much of its content, but even if the focus changes, I’m not sure the approach would. *

*Plus, Lawson’s suggestion omits the fact that places like AVC have tried to rectify that with drop-in coverage and sometimes weekly coverage of fairly straight-forward procedurals.

Ultimately, I see “talking” about television as one of the best things to ever happen to television. And wanting to do so shouldn’t make you a nerd, or shouldn’t mean that you take something too seriously or belabor a point too often. We need to be smarter. We need to discuss more. Even suggesting otherwise makes me feel as if we’re returning to a mode of thinking that asks us to simply shut our brains off and enjoy the idiot box. Television deserves better than that. 

I talk television with a lot of people. Friends, family, other critics on Twitter, vagrants on the street. I just love talking about TV. Because I don’t have the time and resources to do a podcast like I used to in college, I’m going to sort of replicate that experience in textual form in a new recurring feature. Basically, I’ll just exchange a few emails with someone on a particular topic. You’ve seen this kind of thing done tons of other places, but it’s something I enjoy doing so expect more of it here on TVS.

Hiya, folks! As you may or may not know, I am current in the midst of a period that necessitates I keep my television criticism to a minimum. But although I do not really have the time to fit much in, I cannot stay away. There are too many interesting things to discuss. That is where a feature like Chitchat comes in handy. Today, my buddy Brad Sanders joins me to discuss an important question: Why are The Office’s Jim and Pam kind of the worst?

Cory: Brad, you and I exchanged a few emails about the new season of The Office back in the fall when the series was first ramping up the post-Steve Carell era, but I wanted to check in with you on a slightly different Dunder-Mifflin-related topic (although we can address the series’ overall quality later): The Halperts. There has been a lot of discussion about the series’ treatment of their once adored couple for a lot of years now, but it’s something that seems to be bubbling back up in recent weeks, spurred on by their actions in “Jury Duty.” Sepinwall touched on it in his review and my buddy Myles McNutt addressed it a little bit in his piece on last week’s episode. There’s no question in my mind that the series has struggled to find real stories for Jim or Pam or really for them as a couple for a while now (whether you believe the problem started once they got together or sometime later, say after they got married, is up to you). But eight years in, how do you feel about the way the series represents the golden romantic couple of the aughts? Do you, like Sepinwall, hate Jim and Pam? Why or why not?

Brad: Cory, I think hate is probably too strong a word for how I feel about Jim and Pam at this point. In moments like Jim’s charade in “Jury Duty” or that cold open from earlier this season where Pam constantly faked labor to get out of meetings, what I saw was a desperate writer’s room trying to find ways to make this couple stop boring us. If Jim and Pam finally getting together sucked a lot of the excitement out of their dynamic, their wedding was the death blow. That was a great episode, but its subtext was pretty clearly “This relationship will never be interesting again, so you’d might as well cry it up now.” Now we’re trapped in a glut of episodes that are a reaction to the stasis. What do you think? Are a despicable Jim and Pam like what we’ve seen this season better than a boring Jim and Pam?

Cory: I’ve long been a proponent of post-coupled or post-marriage Jim and Pam. While I totally agree that putting the two of them together suck a substantial amount of life and narrative drive out of the series, I think that it was ultimately the right move and arguably, has led to some really intriguing stories. If you look at Jim and Pam’s lives as a whole, based on what we’ve seen from The Office, I think it’s actually kind of wonderful how the writers have handled them. The early-season versions of Halpert and Beasley were both so full of life, optimism and hope that eventually, one day, they’ll get away from Dunder-Mifflin. Everyone points to that talking head segment with Jim from the pilot where he talks about DM not being his career and we all remember how much time the series spent on Pam’s dreams. For a young series and for a romantic couple, Jim and Pam’s brazen desire to improve their lives and to escape made perfect sense. It connected perfectly to their position as the will-they-or-won’t-they Unresolved Sexual Tension Couple because not only did we want them to JUST KISS ALREADY, we wanted them to find a better, happier life. We rooted for Jim and Pam. As a couple, both also as individuals. We saw ourselves in them, both in a romantic context but in a professional context as well. They were us. That absolutely powered the series in the first three seasons, maybe into the fourth and fifth (though I’d argue that it began to focus more on Michael and sort of Dwight at that point). 

In the series’ later years, however, Jim and Pam can be defined by one word: Complacency. Or settling, whichever you prefer. Pam went to New York, realized that she missed Jim (also: the writers were TERRIFIED to even hint at breaking them up, even if it meant Pam might kiss Mad Men‘s Harry Crane). Jim considered being manager, realized that he was somewhat bad at it and ultimately decided that he was too busy being the cool guy to really make the changes necessary to be the boss (also: again, the writers were TERRIFIED to take Jim away from his camera glances). Jim awkwardly bought his parents his as a gift to Pam, she sort of underwhelmingly accepted. They accidentally got pregnant. Twice. They stopped having friends outside of the office and allowed people like Ryan Howard come to their Christening. Some of these events happened because of writer stupidity or fear, but the point remains: Jim and Pam settled. They ultimately decided that their heart-stopping love was the most important thing in the world to them, but along the way, that love also consumed whatever ambition they had to do other things. When you’re young and maybe in love, you displace all sorts of meaning. “One day, I’m going to marry that girl and I’m going to get the hell out of here.” Well, you can marry that girl (and get her pregnant), but that doesn’t solve your other problem and if you’re too wrapped up in finally marrying that girl, you probably don’t have time — or even care to find time — to solve said problem.

This complacency, I think, rubs people the wrong way. Although this version of The Office is, at its core, much more optimistic and uplifting when compared to the original, it has always found a way to solidly represent contemporary American workplace culture quite well. This is definitely less true in later seasons, but where I think it is most true is with Jim and Pam. The Halperts embody the lifespan of someone working in an office in the 21st century. They come in, full of piss and vinegar, with hopes, dreams and ambition and maybe even some real talent. But once the system sucks you in and you start getting that steady paycheck and those benefits, it’s hard to drop everything and move to Philadelphia and become a sports writer, or whatever the hell it is Jim pretended he wanted to do in 2005 — especially when you have a family. Why risk it? Why not just be happy with what you have and who you are? Now, I think there are some issues with who, exactly, Jim and Pam are at this point and we’ll get to that, but I think people don’t give the series enough credit in this regard. I hate to be the person that tells everyone they are wrong, but is it possible that we just wanted more for Jim and Pam and their ultimate decision to settle (or avoid real challenges) therefore rubs us the wrong way? What do you think?

Brad: It’s definitely valid that they’ve settled, but in the context of what the show has become, does it really make any sense that they settled? In a universe where Dwight Schrute has an Ahab-like obsession with managing a small branch of a paper company in addition to owning a beet farm, where Michael Scott shows that he should be fired on a weekly basis for eight years before eloping, and where Robert California exists, are people going to take away that Jim and Pam are the part of the show that’s supposed to be rooted in cold, hard reality? I’m doubtful. It’s practically irrelevant that their lives are following a realistic trajectory when they exist in such an unrealistic world.

I say practically irrelevant because, of course, it isn’t. The writers have made a conscious effort to show that these are post-dreams Jim and Pam, and that their bitterness that occasionally manifests in machinations like those we saw in “Jury Duty” because they’ve given up on their dreams. That really doesn’t make them likeable, though. Relatable, maybe, though I’m still too young to say “Yeah, settling!” But certainly not likeable. And what does The Office need more than likeable characters right now? Desperate plot lines in the past few seasons have ruined almost everyone in the entire company at this point. You’re right. We wanted Jim and Pam to find a better life. They didn’t, and now we have to deal with the consequences of that. But would it kill the writers to make them worth rooting for? Why can’t Jim want to be a corporate suit in Florida? Why can’t we get scenes of Pam being an awesome mother? When do we get to live vicariously through these people again, and if the answer is never, who the hell are we supposed to live through? Sometimes I feel like I’m the one who’s settling by continuing to watch this show.

Cory: Your point about the balance between “reality” and “unreality” is a great one. Perhaps in that regard, Jim and Pam’s “real-ness” only serves to remind the audience further how “unreal” everything else around them is. And I think it is ever-important to remember that we wouldn’t be having this conversation if the writers made a substantial effort with the characters over time. It’s possible that I am too naive and simply choose to view the creative team’s inabilities as purposeful character change, just as I accuse the rest of the audience for naively hoping they’d be more than this in 2012. 

However, let’s pretend I’m not naive for a few minutes longer. You briefly addressed the character’s lack of likability, and I think that is a perfect place to move next. I almost entirely agree that the two of them aren’t likable anymore, at least not consistently, yet, again, I find that interesting. In a lot ways, this extends from what I was already talking about previously: If Jim and Pam are the quintessential representation of lost potential and complacency, it stands to reason that they would, in fact, kind of suck. Their biggest problem (or at least the biggest problem in how the series represents them) is that they still act like they did six years ago. They still think they’re cute. They still think they’re funny. The problem is that all the energy that was narratively behind that initial cuteness is gone and so our investment in seeing them act that way is similarly gone. So, if you follow my quasi-warped logic here, it also stands to reason that not only would Jim and Pam suck, they would also lack the self-awareness to know they suck. Perhaps their immaturity in the office is part of some attempt on their part to connect back to the people they once were, or perhaps they’re just immature. I’m not sure. But their journey from office Most Likely to just another one of the sheep is an arc, just not the one we assumed it would be. 

On a related note, I think their declining Q score could also be interpreted as a backhanded comment on what happens to that flirty underdog couple that television always wants you to root for. As viewers, we are trained to expect these sort of relationships to either avoid resolution until the very end, where we can ultimately fill in the blanks of happy endings, 2.5 kids, picket fences, etc. or progress like a live-action checklist of engagement, wedding and baby. But in both cases, we’re also trained to assume that the happy endings and the sparks last forever. With Jim and Pam, The Office again brings us all back to reality and the reality is that people who are supposedly in TRUE LOVE are pretty annoying to be around, especially when you’re a middle-aged dude just trying to punch a clock so your kid can go to community college. Jim and Pam’s “love story” makes for great television, but it probably makes Stanley want to stab his eyes out with his crossword pencil (but he can’t do that, because he has to watch Burn Notice).*

*You could say the same thing for new parents. God. Those people. Yes, I “definitely” want to see more pictures of your newborn.  

So perhaps Jim and Pam’s lack of motivation to reach their dreams makes them unlikable. Or their true love is annoying. Or it’s a combination of both and their complacency crashes up against the figure of what they thought their true love would be, I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that I think they lack any self-awareness at all, which is again sort of painfully fitting for the only two characters who presumed to have self-awareness when this story began. However, where I do think my argument trails off and yours makes more sense is thinking about the purposefulness of all this. It’s easy for me to sit in my Critic Ivory Tower (not my mom’s basement, but you can imagine) and project or interpret all these different readings onto The Office. 

The more likely answer is that the writers have failed to tell stories that would give Jim and Pam a certain level of self-awareness or at least provide a rationale for why they’ve lost it. As you mentioned, scenes at home would help tenfold in this regard. It’s never made sense to me why the story goes outside of the office for some things — like Michael’s love life, various nonsense with Dwight and Andy — but fails to even try to account for other things, like Jim and Pam’s home life. Theoretically, I get keeping everything “in office.” Babies don’t go in the office (and when they do, they suck the life out of proceedings, as we saw). But doesn’t mean that Jim and Pam’s babies don’t have an impact on the versions of them we see inside Dunder-Mifflin or wherever gimmick location the series goes. That’s why I actually really liked “Jury Duty and even Jim’s little story in the house-party episode a few weeks ago. Making an effort to show an “out of office” element impact an “in office” element isn’t that hard, especially when it’s associated with your lead characters. Are the writers solely to blame here? And am I wrong to interpret versions of the story or characters that might not be purposefully, diegetically present?

Brad: I think the fact that The Office has been on for so long is why we like to read non-diegetic elements into its characters’ lives. There was a time before the writing spiraled out of control that these were the characters in our TV lives that felt the most like people in our actual lives, and when things started to unravel, it was only natural to put our own emotions into the way we wish the characters were being presented. So no, I don’t think you’re wrong to interpret your version of the story in that way, mostly because I don’t think you can help it – and the writers have absolutely failed because of the fact that we’re forced to do this.

But I also don’t think it’s such an easy fix that the writers could show us more reasons for Jim and Pam’s general awfulness in the office, at least from a viewer’s perspective. It’s sort of immaterial why Jim and Pam are the way that they are if viewers don’t perceive them as protagonists. Listen, I “get it.” This is exactly how two people would act if their lives had gone exactly this way, and the verisimilitude is commendable, but somehow pouring our hopes and dreams into Darryl and Andy doesn’t feel like what we’ve bargained for. There’s dozens of reasons why it feels like The Office has simply been on the air for too long, but maybe none is more compelling than the fact that the people we once fancied ourselves spiritually kin to have just given up. 

I know I’ve said it already, but Jim could really stand to commit to this job already. The fact that when Dwight was assembling a task force for Florida and Robert California wanted him to come down to hit the links with him shows feet-dragging immaturity. I was not sympathetic because he is a father. I was angry because he’s been working at Dunder-Mifflin for close to a decade and he won’t put himself in a position to succeed. I think you nailed it when you mentioned that Jim and Pam still think they can act like they did at the beginning of the series. They can’t, but it’s more than just unfunny. It’s frustrating. I’m kind of just impotently raging against the idea of 2012 Jim & Pam within the context of 2012 The Office at this point, so direct my rage. What’s the solution?

Cory: The problem Jim and Pam were always going to have, in some way, is that they are fictional characters in a popular television series. That’s obvious, but let me explain. Jim and Pam can’t leave the office because The Office (meaning the TV series) is NBC’s most popular series and not too long ago, it was one of the most popular series on all of television. So, for better or for worse, The Office‘s popularity was always going to restrict characters to stay somewhat the same because that’s basically how mainstream sitcoms on a broadcast network operate. Either you leave the series entirely (Steve Carell is one smart son of a bitch) or you moderately “shift” within the constraints the series has already established. The series has presented the appearance of change with Jim taking the promotion to co-manager or Pam pushing her way into a better job and honestly, those are interesting little shifts that could have reflected the changes within the characters.  

So not only are the characters, as real as they once seemed, unable to truly grow or change based on how we assumed they would, but even when the series kind of allows them to, the writers quickly de-commit to any idea. I thought Jim as co-manager was a GREAT idea. Pam in her new job (whatever the hell it is) could have led to some interesting stories. But no, the writers used those shifts as episodic plots to create tension for 22 or maybe 44 minutes and then just moved on. Few “great” series are afraid of change and ultimately, The Office‘s inability to change will keep it from being remembered as great. Look at Parks and Recreation. Schur and Daniels shift the narrative every season. And again, we could interpret all this lack of change as purposeful, but even I can’t go that far. It’s just laziness and honestly, a bit of fear. 

You’re right though, the only way this improves (if you follow most people’s logic that Jim and Pam suck and that’s bad, unlike my “they suck and that’s good” theory) is if Jim quits his job. There’s been lots of scuttlebutt about a possible spin-off starring Rainn Wilson’s Dwight. Why not have the Halperts quit their jobs and move somewhere far away from Scranton? Isn’t that, a romantic-leaning family sitcom about one television’s all-time best couples, a better idea for a spin-off than Schrute Farms? What else would you do, and do you think Jim and Pam leaving The Office actually makes the mothership series better? I think it might. 

Brad: Let me say quickly that while I’m more closely aligned with “they suck and that’s bad” than “they suck and that’s good,” I do find your point of view fascinating. It feels a bit strange that I’m more likely to defend the show itself at this point than its handling of Jim and Pam, but that’s where we are. I couldn’t agree more with your point that The Office‘s safeness will be what ultimately prevents it from attaining canonical greatness. Maybe you could have convinced me during the third season that I’d someday remember The Office as one of TV’s best-ever comedies, but now, it’s laughable that we ever considered that.
That brings us to Jim and Pam’s hypothetical departure that you’ve proposed here. On one level, it works. Their spinoff could actually have some heart, whereas Schrute Farms would undoubtedly just be cynicism piled onto ridiculousness with three minutes of pathos every five episodes to keep us watching. I like it on paper, so yeah, let’s cross our fingers for a pilot of The Halperts as an alternative to the Dwight spin-off. Where I might differ from you is where you say it would make the mothership series better. It would as a television show, I suppose, but the departure of Jim and Pam would be the definition of a death knell for The Office. No one wanted it to come back after Carell left, but it did, and it’s been watchable but far from necessary. If the next-best-known characters head for the hills, you’re looking at an absolutely gutted program that has no business existing. I’d watch it, of course, but its massive audience might finally bail at that point, and neither The Halperts nor Schrute Farms could make the flagship franchise succeed in that state.

I feel like we’re getting to the point in any Office conversation where we realize that what we would really like is for the once-beloved show to hang it up for good, what we have is a mediocre but generally worthwhile shadow of the version we loved, and what we suggest will never actually happen. When a show gets as huge as The Office has, all this critical finger-wagging is mostly moot. Since that’s true, let’s tell it like it is: you and I should write Season Nine ourselves. Hope you’re ready for some weltschmerz, America!

Test Pilot #37: Cupid

Debut date: September 26, 1998

Series legacy: Intriguing high-concept (but not too high-concept) premise cut down not once, but twice in a decade

Welcome back to Test Pilot guys and gals! With that extra-special Joss Whedon Theme Week behind us, it’s time to fall back into the typical, but still lovely rhythms of the feature. Today, we continue our fun exploration of one television’s most discussed subjects: One-season wonders.

Most series crash and burn before a prospective second season, but there are some that stick in our mind many years after cancellation. There is a large fascination with television series that only manage to produce a single season (often at a short order at that) before they are chopped down by “the man.” We are compelled by the possibilities and the what could have been for programs that projected all sorts of promise and upside but were never actually able to cash in on either. This theme hopes to explore some of the most celebrated one-season wonders and consider what, exactly, made audiences latch on to them so spectacularly.

I know I often say that “today’s case is very interesting” or whatever, but guys, today’s case is pretty interesting. In 1998, Rob Thomas brought Cupid to ABC and it lasted 15 episodes.* Like all the series we are talking about in this theme, fans grew attached to it, especially as the years passed and Thomas gained more exposure for his work on another series gone-too-soon, Veronica Mars. Then, 10 years after the first series ended, Thomas brought Cupid back to ABC, starting over with basically the same characters and the same premise. All that changed (more or less) were the actors and the location (from Chicago to New York). Cupid 2.0 lasted just seven episodes and really never got much of a push from ABC in the first place. It was dead. Again.

*Here’s an insane tidbit: The 1998 version of the series aired on SATURDAYS at 10 p.m. It wasn’t moved there after a poor start. It started there. I can’t even begin to process that. The business has changed dramatically in a decade-plus.

It’s very, very rare that something like this happens in the television industry. The only other example I can think of right now is Parenthood, which started as a film and then was turned into a television series soon after the film’s release, but the series failed and then NBC decided to try again a decade later. But theoretically, Parenthood had some name-brand recognition behind it (or at least that’s what I’m assuming NBC thought at the time). Cupid did not. It was a series with a small following from the beginning and yet, it made it back to life. Why? That’s what I hope we can discuss a little bit today as we journey through Cupid 1.0 and also consider 2.0 as well.

Joining me today is Anthony Strand. Anthony is here for his second go-around with Test Pilot after helping out with The Comeback in November. For those of you that don’t remember, Anthony is a North Dakota native, but now makes a living doing archival and map-related work at the University of Missouri. Anthony’s also a contributor to ToughPigs.com, and used to have a blog that he hasn’t updated in three years.” He often thinks about getting back in that habit, but life keeps getting in the way. You can, and should, follow him on Twitter. Anthony, tell us how you feel about Rob Thomas’ Cupid 1.0:

Man, what happened to Jeremy Piven? He used to be so likeable!

Watching the Cupid pilot in 2012, it’s impossible for me to avoid wondering that. Like most humans, years of Entourage-adjacent interviews and appearances have left me with a strong resentment towards the sight of Jeremy Piven’s stupid face* (and make no mistake – I am talking about appearances, not the series itself. I’ve seen two episodes of Entourage total. It’s Jeremy Piven the interview subject I can’t stand these days, never mind the actor.) I watched all of The Larry Sanders Show over the past year or so, and that intense, burning dislike actually helped my enjoyment of his character there – like so many people on that series, Jerry’s a terrible person and the audience is encouraged to despise him.

*Also, Piven seems to be in a transitional hair phase here. He’s not quite as bald as he was on Larry Sanders, but balder than he is now. The man just keeps getting younger and younger.

Going into this episode, I was worried I’d feel the same way about Trevor, who claims he’s Cupid and needs to unite one hundred couples before he’ll be allowed back on Olympus. That’s a great hook for a series, and I was a big Veronica Mars fan, so I wanted to trust creator Rob Thomas’s instincts in casting Piven. I also saw and enjoyed a couple of episodes of ABC back in 1998. But I was just a 13-year-old kid back then – what did I know?

Initially I did find him off-putting. There’s a moment towards the beginning when Dr. Claire Allen (Paula Marshall, aka “Not Carla Gugino”) reminds him that they’re “Doctor/Patient” and he replies “Yes, and it’s one of my favorite games to play. I’ve got hernia!” At that point, I was worried Cupid was going to be nothing more than the Smug Jerk Show, but I warmed up to him pretty fast. By the time he started talking about the personality quirks of the various gods on Olympus, Trevor had completely won me over.

It helps that Piven has a terrific partner to play off of in Paula Marshall. Claire is designed to be unlikeable at first. She’s uptight, by-the-book, and – when they first meet – 100% certain that Trevor’s completely crazy. She shouldn’t be much fun to watch, and she wouldn’t be with just about any other actress in the role. But Marshall brings a warmth and sweetness to her performance from the very beginning. And even when she’s loudly protesting that Trevor’s being crazy, you can see that she’s amused by him underneath it all. Basically, she’s Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby, and Trevor is Katharine Hepburn.

The series feels very much like a classic Hollywood romantic comedy in general, and it has a lot of fun playing with the expectations of the genre. For example, about ten minutes into the pilot, a judge declares that Trevor has been cured of his delusion and he’s free to go. Now, obviously he isn’t actually cured at that point. Claire and Trevor exit the courtroom, and then Trevor shrugs and immediately starts talking about his assignment again. She feigns surprise for a moment, but moves on pretty quickly to tolerating him. The viewer knows it’s a technicality, and so does the series. She’s going to be putting up with his shenanigans for years, hopefully.

Of course, they can’t come to a complete understanding by the end of the pilot, but the closing scene nicely sets up their points of view for the rest of the series – he’s trying to “cure his homesickness,” and she’s gathering material for her book. This allows them to keep their respective beliefs about Trevor’s identity. I suppose Thomas planned to eventually solve the issue of whether Trevor was crazy or not, but here I like that we don’t know. For now, at least, Trevor reminds me a lot of Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34^th Street. It doesn’t matter if he’s Cupid or not. All that matters is that he believes he is.

Well, to be really convincing, Trevor also needs to be able to actually match people with their true loves. Fortunately, the series sets him up with a number of venues for future stories – During the pilot, Trevor becomes a regular in Claire’s singles therapy group, he gets a job in a bar, and he moves in with an aspiring actor named Champ* (Jeffrey D. Sams, later of Veronica Mars), whose acting gigs might provide story fodder as well.

*Champ doesn’t get much to do in the pilot, but in his one big scene, he gets a speech about how “I don’t want to play the black actor game,” which sets him up as a character with a lot of potential.

The pilot also offers Trevor’s first successfully matched couple – some guy named Dave (George Newbern) and some woman named Madeline (Connie Britton). The pilot is mostly focused on setting up the Trevor/Claire dynamic, so Madeline and Dave’s courtship isn’t very well-developed. In fact, it’s based mostly on exchanging favorite items in obscure categories such as “comic book ad” and “conquistador.” Whatever affection I have for those characters comes from the casting – those actors grew up to be Tami Taylor on Friday Night Lights and Superman on the animated Justice League, respectively. Of course I’m happy to see them! (That said, it took me a while to accept that Britton’s dream guy could possibly be anything other than a level-headed high school football coach.)

We’ll never know how Cupid would have played out if it had reached its 100^th couple and been forced to resolve the issue of Trevor’s divinity. But as it stands, there are fourteen episodes, the first of which is terrific and features a guy in a bear suit holding a boom box. I definitely plan to watch the rest in the near future.

–AS

And now, my quasi-veteran thoughts on Cupid:

When series get canceled, we have a lot of different reactions. If we are emotionally invested in the characters or we’ve changed our Twitter avatars in support, chances are the cancellation evokes some anger and sadness (as it should). But as someone who at least tries to think about these things differently or put them in a larger context, cancellations often make me ask a lot of questions. My first question is almost always “What went wrong?” as in, “Why did people not watch this series?” Obviously, those are good questions to start with in light of cancellations, but they often lead to solid explanations. Timeslot problems. Bad pilot. Horrible casting. Premise too gimmicky (or not gimmicky enough). Not a good fit for the network.

Most of the time, series probably deserve to be canceled or end up being canceled for one of those reasons and although I might be upset with a specific case or outcome, I get it. I understand why the audience didn’t come or why the network didn’t want to play ball anymore. Television is a business, blah blah blah.

But re-watching the Cupid 1.0 pilot (I checked out a lot of the series before the second version hit airwaves a few years ago), I’m reminded of how frustrating this business can be. Taking all emotional investment or taste out of it, I think I will forever be confused as to why Cupid wasn’t a more popular series. The premise is great, and not in an obnoxious TV nerd kind of way. This is a supremely consumable premise with a built-in structure, mystery, Unresolved Sexual Tension couple and even a bit of name recognition. This is the kind of story that could only really work this well on television and its one that Entertainment Weekly cover stories are made for.

I get why audiences didn’t latch on to something dark and weird like Profit. Hell, I even understand why they didn’t snuggle up to Freaks and Geeks or Undeclared. But this? Perfect middlebrow television. Rock-solid, fun and infectious.

We love to admire pilots with overly-complex character work or similarly-deep “mythology,” but there is a lot of value in a pilot like Cupid. Its premise is both simple and engaging, where you are immediately invested in the mystery that is Trevor Hale. Is he Cupid? Is he crazy? Does it matter? Those are all simple, but effective questions to power a hundred episodes of television. And as Anthony touched on in its portion, this is a fantastic Jeremy Piven performance. I’ve seen every episode of Entourage and seen many of Piven’s film roles in this era, and I think he’s been better than we now give him credit for since he’s so clearly a douche and reveling in his douche-dom. But still, this is his definitely his best work.

As Trevor, he brings the now-typical Piven smarm and acerbic tongue, but it’s the quieter moments, like when Trevor honestly engages with Dave at the bar or when he pours his heart out to Claire on the phone, where he actually shines. Rob Thomas’ script is very good and it provides Piven multiple opportunities to create a very complex character from the outset, but still, the success of this pilot is almost entirely on Piven’s shoulders and he nails it. Trevor is simply a great television character. He is engaging and funny, but caring, and has this personal baggage that could be real or part of a possibly even more compelling façade.

The pilot has other strengths, though. Thomas’ script finds a really solid balance between cynicism and romanticism amid the constant conversations about how love does or does not exist in contemporary society. Paula Marshall’s Claire could come off as a major wet blanket (especially when paired with Piven’s Trevor) and the monologues about divorce rates and broken homes could grate, but they don’t. Most writers have the tendency to make the will-they-or-won’t-they couple overly antagonistic towards one another at the beginning, which leads to a whole lot of bickering that’s supposed to codify television’s version of foreplay. Cupid avoids that for the most part. Claire is obviously skeptical of Trevor and his intentions, but she’s also immediately intrigued by him in a way that doesn’t manifest in constant arguing. They banter, sure, but it’s not hostile at all.

And finally, the story engine allows Cupid to be a fun little anthology series about love and coupling (in the way that Love Bites tried to be, I guess). The pilot couple, Madeline and Dave, aren’t as interesting as some of the later pairings, but they have some solid moments together (most notably when Dave realizes that Madeline also loves the Chicago White Sox and basically immediately falls in love). Later, this becomes even more prominent, as many of the couple stories are legitimately great and moving.

Cupid is everything you want from a broadcast network pilot. Why, then, did the series fail? I hate to go this route, but I think this one has to be on the network. In the late 1990s, ABC was a mess. The network had no real brand identity and certainly didn’t have a quality development strategy. The first few years of the Disney era did not go well, and this was even before ABC scored bit with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And then immediately ran it into the ground. But you know why ABC ran it into the ground: the network had nothing else. When you combine a network in dire straits with a seriously laughable timeslot or two (I believe the series was moved around a couple of times), you get 15 episodes and out. That’s what happens.

And although it is just as misguided as it is easy to blame the network for a series failure, the fact that ABC asked Thomas to take another run at Cupid a decade later plays like an admission of failure to me. When ABC came to Thomas again, it was in much, much better shape, riding the waves of success that Lost, Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy brought to them, and just as important, the network had an identity. Cupid made perfect sense for ABC’s target demographic of young, but not super-young women (the Trevor-Claire banter was tailor-made for ABC’s jaunty THIS IS FUNNY music) and so, Thomas went to bat again.

The quality and simplicity of Thomas’ idea is only further reinforced in Cupid 2.0 because he barely changed a thing. The premise is exactly the same. The 100 couple rule is still in effect. The unresolved sexual tension is still there. The anthology feel is still there. Even the no-look dart shots are still there. Unfortunately, the spark of the original is not there. Bobby Cannavale is often fun as Trevor, but doesn’t bring the same kind of depth that Piven did (I know, I can’t believe I typed that either) and even though Sarah Paulson is actually better than Marshall as Claire, things just aren’t the same. Cupid 2.0 seems to focus both more on the couple of the week who are unfortunately even more boring than their first iteration and more on the witty, wacky humor. 1.0 had a certain grasp on emotion and depth, and 2.0 plays more like a gimmicky sitcom.

I’m not sure who is to blame for Cupid 2.0’s failure. It lasted only a half-dozen episodes and clearly wasn’t as compelling as the original, but ABC never seemed totally invested in making it work anyway. Whereas the original’s slightly more-serious tone would have fit well on ABC in 2009, it appears the network asked Thomas to “make it funnier and wackier” so it could fit alongside something like Ugly Betty.

Ultimately, ABC knew that Thomas’ idea was fantastic. He wouldn’t have gotten to trot it out twice otherwise. But perhaps what makes a great idea doesn’t make a great or appealing series, no matter how obvious it seems to me. It’s rare that you get two times to screw up one of the better premises in recent television history, but ABC made it happen with Cupid.

–CB

Series legacy: Great idea with all sorts of potential, but for whatever reason, it just didn’t work

By now, you know that my schedule/workload/life changes keep me from writing as much as I would like here at TV Surveillance. Of all series I miss writing about, Glee someone still tops the list (well, since Community is still trapped out there in the ether). I don’t even understand how that’s really true, but it is. I haven’t written about the series in a long time (that of course doesn’t keep me from burning up the Twitter highway with the rest of the TVitterati) and that makes me sad. Not because Glee has any good in 2012, of course. “Yes/No” was a minor disaster, “Michael” was a legitimate disaster and somehow “The Spanish Teacher” bordered offensive but still managed to be the most moving of the three. What can I say, I’m a sucker for sad Will Schuester stories.

No matter what though, I knew I was writing about tonight’s episode. Last year’s Valentine’s Day episode, “Silly Love Songs,” is one of my favorite Glee episodes ever and one of two episodes I’d ever just sit down to watch randomly (the other is obviously “Duets,” y’all). Despite all its madness, Glee still knows how to tell stories about characters in love, characters out of love, characters in between love and all variations on that theme. I’ve said this time and again, but those are the kinds of stories where the stupid, heightened emotions still work, no matter the context. With that said, I actually had really high expectations for “Heart.” And although the episode is basically Ali Adler’s attempt to do “Silly Love Songs,” only it happens to be grafted onto the series’ terrible season three EVERYTHING AT ONCE formula, “Heart” still worked more often than not. I think. Let’s not think these things through too much.

I just mentioned it, but the biggest problem this season of Glee has had is one of excess. We expect the series to be over-the-top and have a lot of songs, but this season, it has been especially jam-packed with around an average of six storylines an episode, many of them concocted on the spot (a problem the series is simply never going to overcome or even try to, frankly) and so it seems like every week, we’re left wondering about a somewhat engaging thread that was introduced in the second act that doesn’t get mentioned until a throwaway resolution in the final three minutes. Not only does that leave you wanting to see good versions of those stories play out in a theoretically better Glee, but it creates a severely jumbled, disjointed “whole” where nothing was given enough attention to be substantial and so ultimately it’s all just there.

“Heart,” unsurprisingly suffers from this problem. Let’s quickly go through the number of “plots” that this episode tackles: Reactions to Finn and Rachel’s engagement; Mercedes and Sam further dealing with the consequences of their feelings; Kurt’s secret valentine; Santana and Brittany kissing and the stir it causes; the introduction of the “God Squad” and Joe Hart, the previously-homeschooled naïve Christian boy that Quinn’s definitely to ruin (played by Sam of The Glee Project, or as I know him, the guy who pretended to love God once the guy who actually loved God quit and Ryan Murphy still just really wanted a kid who loved God [see: this character]); a brand-new love triangle between Sugar, Artie and Rory; and somewhere in there, the group was supposed to belt out music’s greatest love songs.

Depending how you count those various elements, that’s at least a half-dozen stories.  I would absolutely love to watch an episode of Glee that was basically the choir-room discussion between Finn and Rachel and the rest of the group. It is nice that the series at least recognizes the stupidity of the characters’ decision instead of glamorizing and romanticizing it, but the more of that, the better, even if it means Quinn gets to espouse mega-wise advice like the World’s Greatest Guidance Counselor because YALE YALE YALE. Relatedly, I would love nothing more than to watch a serious episode about how homosexual teens deal with Valentine’s Day in a public school setting, where we follow Santana and Brittany and Kurt and Blaine (and Karofsky). That sounds awesome and I have no doubt that Ryan Murphy or Ian Brennan could kill that. I’d even watch another episode about religion, since “Grilled Cheesus” somehow worked in spite of itself.

But as part of one episode, where there are 12 other things happening at the same time? There’s simply not enough time. Certain stories get more time than others, so Finn and Rachel’s stupidity gets played out at home as well with the introduction of Rachel’s parents (Jeff Goldblum and Brian Stoke Mitchell are pretty great in their roles), but even then, Adler’s script gives the characters an out. The plan to convince Rachel and Finn of their errors by letting them have a sleepover is so dumb (even the characters admitting so doesn’t salvage it) and then to make matters worse, the two of them argue about where Finn can and cannot take a dump but ultimately get over it because, well, I don’t know, it happened during the commercial break, where the two of them also checked with FOX to make sure it was okay they got married during May sweeps.

The other two appealing plotlines aren’t even given that much burn. Santana and Brittany’s relationship is unbelievably cute (why isn’t this entire series built around them again?) and again, that conflict with religion and high school decorum could be engaging as hell, but the whole story plays out across three short scenes. Tension is introduced, Santana complains, new Jesus guy Joe considers their feelings and ultimately decides, you know what, God says it is okay for me to sing you a bad love song on Valentine’s Day, Lucifer’s children. And while I think Samuel Larsen is going to fit in pretty well on Glee because he’s a solid performer and he can sing, his introduction didn’t overwhelm me.

Sam and Mercedes’ relationship is sort of an interesting beast to me. Obviously, it’s entirely stupid that the relationship is built entirely on telling instead of showing and so we’re working backwards here as the series now tries to convince us that they have this epic love story when we didn’t see any of it (wonder why they didn’t even try flashbacks?) all the while they quasi-break up even though they weren’t together in the first place. And yet, it more or less works for me and at this point, we have to appreciate it when the series can sustain a story across multiple episodes that isn’t Finn and Rachel-related. Thus, I liked the Sam-Mercedes stuff in the last two episodes and I liked it here just the same. Sure, it’s ridiculous to hear them talk about how much they love each other as if they’re the most star-crossed lovers in high school glee club history, but those are the kind of heightened emotions I can buy because high school kids are stupid and ignorant and blissfully so. Glee is built to tell stories where characters just sing their feelings to one another week in and week out and these two have done that for four weeks. Amber Riley nailed “I Will Always Love You” about as well as she could have (weird timing there) and Chord Overstreet yet again proved that he can actually act a little bit when the series asks him to do more than take his shirt off and have weird parts in his hair.

To be fair, none of this was bad, or even really mediocre. Most of it was just all so rushed. Speaking of rushed, the plot of the episode that came completely out of nowhere (as opposed to only moderately out of nowhere), was similarly burned-through with little meditation – and yet, devoid of context, many of the individual moments worked quite wonderfully.

The Sugar-Artie-Rory triangle is likely one of the most random love-shapes of all-time and no one cares about two-thirds of the people in it, but the scenes with the two men plotting and then dueling for Sugar’s affection were actually well-executed. The montage sequence (intercut with Tina and Mike lovingly singing to one another because lest we forget they’re in love and always awesome the three minutes every four episodes we get to spend time with them) right before the first commercial break was solid, fun Glee. And I thought Rory pulling a Barney Stinson and claiming his visa couldn’t be renewed (and getting EVERYONE TO CRY ABOUT IT for some reason) just so he could maybe kiss crazy Sugar was a hilarious beat that the series could do all sorts of obnoxiously ridiculous stuff with in the future. Rory should immediately pull out that sympathy card anytime something even bordering on uncomfortable happens to him. Now, do we care about Sugar, Rory or even Artie? Absolutely not. But as a little minor story about three random single characters in the Valentine’s Day episode, sure, I’ll go with it.

If “Heart” stripped away the fluff and focused on some of the things I discussed, it could have been a perfect companion to “Silly Love Songs.” But, it didn’t, because that’s just not how Glee operates at this point. Nevertheless, the episode was still entertaining, amiable and not offensively stupid. For Glee season three, especially after a few really poor episodes in the last batch, that’s a fine accomplishment.

 Other thoughts:

• Tonight didn’t make much use of the music narratively, in that after Will said find the best love songs people just performed whatever, but the song choices were both solid and well-performed. 
• I know Glee loves its formulas, but ending this episode on a big Breadstix number was perhaps too obvious for me to not immediately think of “Silly Love Songs.” I get that they might not have the money to build another set, but come on. 
• As always, I’m sad when the series gives us some really interesting (not necessarily “good”) Will material one week and then turns him into the human episode theme generator the next. Why couldn’t we see him and Emma spend Valentine’s Day together? Why couldn’t we see him ruin it by belittling her about a gift? Why didn’t he dress up as Cupid and kiss a student? HIS LIFE IS AWFUL. Don’t let us forget it. 

Welcome back to the Showrunner Series, an occasional TVS feature where I discuss the work of one or more major television voice(s).

When a great, popular television series says goodbye, members of that series’ writing staff are going to be hot commodities. They’re going to be asked to run their own series, pitch their own pilots, move into film, whatever. Relatedly, those writers are going to be under something of a microscope, as critics will be looking to see if individual staff writers or producers can swing it without the safety net of a major series. For example, Richard Rusfield wrote a really great piece not too long ago chronicling the systematic failure of the dozens of former Friends writers who have been given – and continue to be given – opportunities to run other series. For those of interested in television so deeply, we know about the great writers rooms – Hill Street Blues, Buffy, The X-Files, you name it.

Lost and its writers room is an interesting case (partially because the series has only been off the air for a short period of time). Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse had a major handle on that series’ narrative and were given a lot of the credit (and blame) for what happened on-screen. Some of the best writers to work on Lost didn’t stay very long. David Fury didn’t last past the first half of season one, Javier Grillo-Marxuach was gone by season two and the glut of great writers that were part of the season three staff (odd that the season most-derided by fans had the best room) like Jeff Pinker, Drew Goddard and Brian K. Vaughn moved on to other, bigger and depending on your opinion of how Lost turned out, better things relatively quickly. In the final few seasons, the writing staff turnover was minimal. Lindelof and Cuse ran the ship, while Adam Horowitz and Eddie Kitsis top-lined a group that also included Elizabeth Sarnoff, Melinda Tsu Taylor and script coordinator Greggory Nations. Taylor now works on Falling Skies, Nations apparently doesn’t work anywhere (according to IMDb) and Sarnoff was booted from Alcatraz late last year.

This leaves us with Horowitz and Kitsis, who wrote the script for Tron: Legacy and then quickly brought Once Upon a Time to ABC (under the general guise of Lindelof, though I have to assume he’s working in the same kind of capacity J.J. Abrams did after a few episodes of Lost and by that I mean basically not at all). After watching the first dozen episodes of Once Upon a Time* (and seeing Tron: Legacy in theaters, although that won’t be a primary focus here), I started to really think about Horowitz and Kitsis’ approach to storytelling and how it is related to their time on Lost.

*Again, this is the part of this feature where I point out that obviously, not one person or duo singlehandedly creates the script, or even the quality and direction of a television series. Horowitz and Kitsis are the creators and showrunners of Once and they are credited writers on four episodes of the series. But for the purposes of argument, we can at least assume that they have some sort of final say as to how each episode comes out. Well, sort of, just follow my argument.

There are a lot of things that Lost is going to be remembered for as time passes (and if you angry people on Twitter have your way, those “things” are going to lean more and more towards the negative side, unfortunately). It was an once-in-a-lifetime kind of television program that will likely never be replicated for so many different reasons. But one of the things that I thought would be forgotten amid the sea of discussion about Smoke Monsters, mishandled resolutions and not-purgatory purgatories is the series’ structure, specifically the flashback structure.

Although they could sometimes be boring depending on the character they focused on and eventually drew tiresome and needed to be swapped out for something else, Lost’s use of flashbacks in each episode made a heck of an impact on its narrative and character development. Flashbacks obviously worked to fill in important (or sometimes not-so-important) blanks in the lives of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 and to sketch a larger picture of the series’ fascinating world. But they also did a really fine job of evoking thematic and emotional symmetry between the on- and off-island lives of the survivors. The combination of scavenger hunt and emotional punch resonated with audiences from the get-go.

I was afraid this was going to be forgotten. However, it is now apparent than Horowitz and Kitsis will never let the Lost flashback structure be forgotten because they are over-reliant on it to power the narrative of Once Upon a Time. Instead of running away from the central conceit of their former series, the duo have embraced it tighter and in the process, stripped away many of the elements that it made it so effective in the first place. Once Upon a Time takes short-cuts. It, like Lost, is a scavenger hunt; it just happens to exist almost solely as a scavenger hunt. It, like Lost, tries to use the symmetry of between its two worlds to evoke emotionally powerful moments; it just happens to not really earn any of those moments.

During their time on Lost, Horowitz and Kitsis were known for the series’ lighter, but not-so-secretly emotionally satisfying episodes. They wrote a number of great Hurley-related episodes, including “Everybody Hates Hugo,” “Dave,” “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead,” “The Lie” and “Everybody Loves Hugo.” So, actually, they wrote all the Hurley-centric episodes from season two on except season four’s “The Beginning of The End.” They also penned the lovely “Exposé” and one of the series’ all-time best efforts that no one talks about enough “Greatest Hits” (I dare you not to cry).

Lost used the flashback structure, especially in the first season, to constantly surprise the audience and subvert their expectations. We all remember the flashbacks in “Walkabout,” or even “Tabula Rasa.” The flashback device was built to induce shock and create dramatic ironies or inversions as much as it was built to point out symmetry. In that regard, it is no surprise to see some of the writing choices Horowitz and Kitsis have made while working on Once. But what is curious about many of the episodes I just listed is that they rely on characters who were self-aware and who recognized the symmetry of their circumstances.

Despite the initial mystery surrounding his pre-island life, Hurley often directly discussed how he wanted to change things or how a certain island situation reminded him of a certain “real world” situation. And in “Greatest Hits,” Charlie’s diegetic experience of the scenes we experience as his flashback isn’t that different from our own. As he thinks back on the best moments of his life, we see them. He is engaging with the series’ narrative device without being meta in an Abed-like way.* You could argue that Hurley and Charlie’s “awareness” made them easier to love, but also made it easier to build an episode around more light-hearted symmetry. The emotional payoffs of a Locke or Juliet or Desmond episode might have been more wrenching, but the sense of temporary fulfillment for Hurley or presumed-final calm for Charlie had a different impact.

*”Exposé” is, of course, the series Abed-like moment.

On Once Upon a Time, Horowitz and Kitsis use the flashback device in basically the same way, structurally. But the purpose of the flashbacks and how they relate to the series’ overall narrative and perhaps most importantly, the characters, is not the same and it is in these differences that the issues with Once start to manifest.* On the new series, Horowitz and Kitsis’ characters lack the self-awareness that Hurley or Charlie had on Lost – outside of Henry, but since he’s not part of both worlds he often becomes an afterthought anyway – and when combined with the inherent reason for the flashback structure to exist in the first place, the resulting series is odd to say the least.

*There’s no question that Once has a lot of problems. The characterization is random and the visuals are sometimes hard to stomach, but I think what I’m talking about today reflect the biggest problems. And despite all this, I still kind of like it. I don’t understand myself, at all.

In theory, it is fine for characters to lack self-awareness. Most of the characters on Lost seemed to lack self-awareness at all times (Jack and Kate were particularly stubborn) and perhaps that’s part of what made Hurley and Charlie so charming in the first place. But even though characters like Jack sometimes failed to see that off-island lessons could be re-learned on the island, he was still aware of both “timelines” that we saw, at least when Lost used flashbacks (flash-forwards and flash-sideways are completely different animals). He lived his flashback life.

So although the experiences were new to us and helped us learn more about Jack or Kate or Sawyer, the characters themselves were aware, in some way, of the things that had already happened to them. The mystery appeal of the flashback structure of Lost was appealing for us, not for the characters. Sure, they kept secrets from one another, but those secrets were part of typical on-island tensions. Knowing that Sawyer hung out with Jack’s dad or that Boone and Shannon hooked up didn’t fundamentally alter what was happening on the first 45 days on the island. Being self-aware like Hurley helped, but it wasn’t necessary.

Once Upon a Time, however, is devoid of self-awareness (in so many ways). In fact, the narrative is defined by the characters not knowing the connections between the two worlds that we see every Sunday night. The ultimate payoff is supposed to be that Henry convinces Emma who convinces Mary-Margaret and so on and they do know, but getting there, especially in the way that the series is trying to get there, is more than a chore. In the interim, the audience is left to point out the dramatic ironies in the lives of Snow White and Mary-Margaret or David and Prince Charming. While there is some value in that and Lost certainly took a similar approach, the lack of “real” connection between the two worlds creates a situation where we in the audience know that something is ironic or symmetrical or whatever, but the characters themselves do not – and might not ever because the series has done such a bad job of really explaining what could happen if they “wake up.”

At its core, Once Upon a Time is a story defined by one large mystery device that the audience already knows. We know, more or less, what the Evil Queen did, we know why she did it and we know that the characters themselves are going to take a long time to catch up with us. Lost was a series built around a certain air of mystery, but the characters, despite their ignorance, were actively trying to solve those mysteries. Locke wanted to know what was in the hatch. Charlie asked “Where are we?” Those characters were active participants in the mystery, Once’s characters are not.

Horowitz and Kitsis use the flashback structure to conjure symmetry and emotional responses from the audience, but don’t really do anything to earn it. The two sets of characters are only “the same” because the series inelegantly tells us they are through obvious, sometimes sloppy storytelling. Henry tells Emma about how this person is actually that fairy tale character and then, golly, wouldn’t you know it, he’s right. Mary-Margaret and David are together now? Well here is how they got together the first time! Instead of methodically using subtext and theme to draw parallels and feelings together, Once just throws it all out there and expects you to care. And to make matters worse, Horowitz and Kitsis have the full use of recognizable characters, which makes their approach even “easier.”  Therefore, when MM and David kiss, you’re supposed to care because duh, that’s Snow White and Prince Charming. The series doesn’t earn it, though.

It is no surprise, then, that one of the series’ strongest episodes is “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.” In that episode, Graham gained an awareness of his place in both worlds and acted accordingly. It created a certain level of dramatic tension, but also made the character relationships more intriguing. The schism between the two worlds brought on by the narrative device wasn’t as pronounced in that episode and it felt like Once could tell stories where characters learn from past experiences to change the present. I don’t think the series earned whatever relationship they were trying to establish between Graham and Emma, but there were some individually powerful moments within “Lonely Hunter.” So of course, Graham had to die and the series had to go back to its basic structure and exploration.

Again, I understand that the series is fundamentally built around the characters not knowing the things that the audience knows and the flashbacks exist to point out how tragic or moving or funny that lack of knowledge really is. And it is readily apparent that Horowitz and Kitsis keep broadening the scope and bringing in new characters so that they can keep playing with this flawed structure (and keep hooking in people who have random allegiances to Belle or Cinderella or whomever). However, if that is how the series is built at a fundamental level, then it is simply fundamentally flawed. The characters cannot be that devoid of awareness and the flashbacks can’t keep just pointing out just how devoid of said awareness they actually are. It is inarticulate, but it also sucks the emotional punch of the series, at least until characters actively embrace the possibility that the two worlds we get to see might be related.

If the emotional payoffs aren’t there and the character depth is there, what’s left? A scavenger hunt. In Lost, the scavenger hunt was about finding out how the people were connected as well as answering the larger, mythology-like questions. In Once Upon a Time, we already know how these people are connected and there isn’t really much of a larger question outside of “When will these people wake up?” Like there is no real emotional punch, there is no true grand mystery to Once and yet, the flashbacks present new information as if it were part of some impressive unknown.

What remains is a scavenger hunt on a smaller scale, wherein Horowitz, Kitsis and the rest of the staff change the traits of or the relationships between characters that the audience already has a familiarity with in the first place. I’m sure the duo would argue that there is a purpose behind why they crafted a love story between Belle and Rumpelstiltskin this week, but in the short term, it sure feels like they did so because it subverted expectations about Beauty and the Beast. Undercutting audience assumptions is fine and can often be fun for a series like this one, but only when there’s also more of substance going on as well. Thus far on Once Upon a Time, there isn’t.

Horowitz and Kitsis might not live in the shadow of their work on Lost forever, if only because people don’t automatically remember them in the first place (no offense to their work, we just remember Lindelof, Cuse and unfortunately still, Abrams, despite is lack of real involvement for the duration of the series’ run). However, their reliance on the flashback structure* exemplifies the kind of approach we expect writers in their position to take: They borrow from the great series they worked on before, but don’t quite know how to make the things they borrow matter in the same way in the new context.

*Oddly, the one project they’ve worked on recently that didn’t include tons of flash-somethings is Tron: Legacy (which had a few flashbacks, but wasn’t powered by them) and arguably, that’s the story that could have used them the most. The flashbacks to what happened on the grid were much better than the horrible scenes of characters just didactically explaining what happened. I don’t want to suggest that Horowitz and Kitsis don’t have skills because I think they do, but if Tron fails because they can’t craft a good story with flashbacks and Once struggles because its over-reliant on flashbacks, I’m not sure what that says about their abilities. 

I talk television with a lot of people. Friends, family, other critics on Twitter, vagrants on the street. I just love talking about TV. Because I don’t have the time and resources to do a podcast like I used to in college, I’m going to sort of replicate that experience in textual form in a new recurring feature. Basically, I’ll just exchange a few emails with someone on a particular topic. You’ve seen this kind of thing done tons of other places, but it’s something I enjoy doing so expect more of it here on TVS.

Hiya, folks! As you may or may not know, I am current in the midst of a period that necessitates I keep my television criticism to a minimum. But although I do not really have the time to fit much in, I cannot stay away. There are too many interesting things to discuss. That is where a feature like Chitchat comes in handy. After his minor Twitter rant about Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope over the weekend (and a few negative pieces from other folks), I had to contact Les Chappell and pick his brain on all things Citizen Knope.

Cory: Les, if Twitter is to believed, something is bothering you. Well, many things might be bothering you, but one thing in particular sticks out to me. You seem frustrated with the way Parks and Recreation is currently handling its beloved lead character, Leslie Knope. In fact, on the Twitters, you called her “insufferable.” I know there’s been some discussion about the shift in Leslie’s character here in season four, most notably an American Prospect piece that caused a sizable amount of hubbub in criticism circles at the tail-end of last week. My hope is that we’ll get into that piece as we move along here, but tell me Les, what’s bugging you in regard to Leslie? Are you, like Amanda Marcotte, concerned that Leslie’s shifted from feminist superstar to a cliché representative of her gender? Or is it something else?

Les: The particular issue I have with Leslie’s character isn’t that she’s been sabotaged as a feminist icon – one of many complaints I have about the American Prospect article, which I’m sure we’ll get to – but rather, I feel the show has been leaning too heavily on the negative side of Leslie’s focus. When I was getting caught up on the show last night I watched the episode “Bowling for Votes,” and not for the first time this season I found myself irritated at the way Leslie was going about her affairs. As opposed to trying to win over everyone and do the best thing for her town, she fixated obsessively on winning over one guy who made a comment anyone else would dismiss. She didn’t listen to a thing Ben said to her and essentially marginalized him to get the voter’s attention, and when she couldn’t get him on her side she turned ultra-competitive and set out to bully him into submission. She says at one point in the episode “I’ve never been very good at letting things go,” and while that’s led to some great moments for the character (i.e. chaining herself to a mansion gate to save a gazebo) it’s starting to feel petty as opposed to endearing. Am I alone in this? 

Cory: I don’t mean to over-analyze your prose, but your word choice interests me: You note that Leslie’s obsessive stubbornness is “starting” to feel petty. I’m curious if you think that Leslie has somehow changed this season or if you’re just personally reached a point where that behavior grates on you. As I see it, Leslie’s always been obsessive, stubborn and obsessively stubborn. Chaining herself to the mansion gate is a great example, but you could point to countless others, from refusing to acknowledge the government shut-down and the cancellation of Freddy Spaghetti to disregarding medical care while substantially sick so she could pitch local businesses on the benefits of the Harvest Festival. Leslie has, and I think always be, obsessive and stubborn. Right?

Les: Certainly that’s always been part of who she is – as she herself said in season two “I care a lot. it’s kind of my thing.” But I think there is a core difference here, and it’s one that finally distills some of the lingering concerns I’ve had over this campaign story arc. All of those other examples you mentioned, when Leslie went crazy she was doing it for her coworkers, her boyfriend or for Pawnee; now, she’s doing it for herself. She wasn’t thinking about helping anyone when she tried to win Derrick over, or even if she could help him by getting his vote, she was thinking about her wounded pride.

And there’s been a lot of moments like that this season: she essentially declared war on Peru when Ben tried to move on from her, exaggerated the smallest park project to purposely stretch out their time together, and basically tuned out Ann every time she tried to express concerns about being the campaign manager. She is, as you mention, a passionate and driven person, but I think it’s easier to accept when she’s working for a good cause. And regardless of how you personally feel about Knope 2012, it hasn’t felt like as much of a good cause as when she’s building a time capsule or community garden. 

Also, as some evidence for this theory (and to reassure people I do still love Parks) I watched the “Operation Ann” episode right after “Bowling for Votes,” and I thought it was a much stronger outing – possibly because it was virtually free of campaign talk. Leslie still had her schemes – finding Ann a boyfriend, giving Ben a scavenger hunt – but were much more endearing in their obsessive attention to detail, because it was about making them feel happy. (And possibly to make them appreciate having Leslie in their lives more, but that’s usually goal #2 or #3 when she does things like this.) 

Cory: You make some really interesting points about the series’ shift amid the campaign story. As a whole, I think that arc has been more challenging than say something like the Harvest Festival because it puts Leslie into positions and roles that she isn’t used to. Planning the Harvest Festival is the perfect arena for Ms. Knope. There, her obsessiveness becomes dedication (again, as you mention, for a larger cause) and she can motivate her team, local business owners and basically the whole town on sheer force of personality alone. But the underlying point of all that hard work for the Harvest Festival is that Leslie is good at this. She knows how to plan events. She knows how to present ideas to those business owners. She can cash in favors with the police department because she’s so damn likable. When Leslie is in her element, she’s unbelievably charming, but also intelligent and effective. She’s great at her job. 

But Leslie isn’t a great politician, at least in the traditional, admittedly-flawed contemporary idea of what a “politician” is. Ideology aside, she’s not the prototypical candidate (especially in an insane town like Pawnee). She’s seemingly not self-interested, she’s seemingly idealistic in a good way, etc. However, no matter if Leslie would make a great city councilwoman (and there’s no doubt that she would and I’m guessing the series will ultimately argue that her difference is what will make her great, just as does in her current position), she’s not experienced or really fit to run a campaign. I think the season has done a very nice job of showing us this, as most of the campaign-related stories have been full of temporary failure and schadenfreude. This is clearly part of crafting this underdog narrative built around Leslie. Yet, it does present its challenges in the interim. We’ve grown accustom to seeing Leslie succeed because of her stubbornness and her idealism, but perhaps those things don’t mix well when she’s already out of her element in the first place. 

I think there is a lot of value in showing Leslie struggle with this campaign and perhaps struggle with some truths about her personality tics that could hold her back. But, with that comes a slight re-calibration in the character that could be problematic. You’re right, when she’s more overtly self-interested, she’s less like the Leslie we’ve come to love in seasons two and three and more like the short-sighted Leslie we disliked in season one. You mentioned “lingering concerns” over the campaign arc. Are there other things with this story that you think negatively impact Leslie? 

Les: To touch on some of your points above, I do agree that as a whole the show has done a good job of showing how this challenges some of Leslie’s worldviews and idealized versions of running a campaign, and I’m sure we’ll see more of that as it gets more into the swing of things and we get to see her debate Bobby Newport. (Bobby Newport. Bobby… Newport.) And I do agree that it’s not a bad thing to try to break Leslie out of her comfort zone, my issue is more that when they do they make me wish at least one person would shake her for a few minutes until she starts being reasonable. I’d rather see a frazzled, distracted to incoherent Leslie than a borderline selfish one, because a) incoherent Leslie is the most hilarious Leslie, and b) we know Leslie’s a fundamentally good person. When it moves away from that, it raises the specter of that painful first season, and I want to shake my head and go “No. That’s not our Leslie Knope.” (Hmm… maybe my concern over the show this season is more possessive than anything else.)

In terms of other parts of the story impacting Leslie, I think the main one is tied to something ThinkProgress‘s Alyssa Rosenberg wrote earlier this year when she asked the question “Is Leslie Knope Corrupt?” There were a few small issues early on related to Leslie having an assistant on both office and campaign work, but it’s really come into the forefront now when you see the entire department is willing to volunteer every free moment they have to assist on her campaign. Again, Leslie is awesome enough that I completely buy they’d all be willing to help, and they’ve inserted details that they can’t talk about campaign work in the office, but for an entire government agency to volunteer for this and no one to raise an eyebrow seems a little outside of even the heightened reality that is Pawnee. It’s certainly great for comedy when we see how disastrous their first efforts are, but you have to ask how long they can keep this going or when the lines are going to get crossed. 

Again, it hasn’t yet bothered me seriously, but I can easily see them get to a point where it would. Does it bother you?

Cory: I see your point, I guess I just think it’s really compelling (not to mention, funny) to see Leslie struggle. She cannot be the best all the time and putting her into circumstances where she implicitly has to face that causes the slightly unlikable Leslie to come out. Having Ben around to be the voice of reason supports that, because there’s someone around to guide her away from the selfish qualities. But I agree, “Bowling for Votes” stumbled a bit because Leslie was so stubborn and Ben eventually gave in instead of holding his ground like he should have. I think the series wanted to play the punch for laughs and as a slightly romantic moment, but you’re right, that at least moderately undercuts both characters. 

As for Leslie and corruption, I think the series is in an interesting place. While I don’t necessarily think Leslie is corrupt (as both you and Alyssa point out, there are little notes here and there that have allowed the series “outs” if you will), I think Parks has shifted away from Parks Department-related stories in such a way that suggests Leslie isn’t paying attention to her current job. Clearly, the campaign is the dominant story arc of the season and therefore deserves a substantial amount of time in most episodes. However, it is curious that there have been few stories this season about Leslie doing something primarily because it’s her job. “Smallest Park” comes to mind, but even then, that was a story more about her relationship with Ben. So with the campaign story and the similar attention devoted to their courtship, the Parks Department appears to be far from Leslie’s mind. In that regard, I guess you could say she is being a bit selfish, but I don’t know if we can blame her for what the series chooses to show or not show us, story-wise. 

On that note, how do you feel about Leslie and Ben? I return now to the American Prospect piece. Has Leslie lost her spark and feminine power because of her relationship with Ben?

Les: I said at the start of our chat I had a lot of problems with the American Prospect piece (not least of which its statement that Community is going to die on the bench, but we talked about that at length already), and the biggest is that I consider its thesis fundamentally flawed. Saying Leslie’s lost her feminist spark and power this season? She wrote a book about her town’s history, spearheaded an all-female scouting group and became the head of a citizen action committee. Leslie Knope gets shit done.

Regarding her relationship, Amanda’s statement that Parks and Recreation is sticking to “sexist romantic comedy tropes” sets my teeth on edge the most, because this show has so much heart and affection for its characters I can never assign it that category. And more to the point, I don’t think it applies here. Leslie’s circumstances weren’t a woman having to choose between being a housewife or a spinster, it was a case where she knew that this specific relationship was going against her beloved rules and political ambitions. Not only that, she knew this when she was first going into the relationship.

I certainly indicated that I’ve had problems with some of Leslie’s choices this season, but I don’t for a second call it a “downward spiral of political incompetence” as Amanda wrote. As we’ve both discussed already, this is something that’s always been part of Leslie, and her darker competitive tunnel-vision side tends to come out more in the pressures of campaigning and relationships. I don’t see Ben’s decisions as campaign manager making him her “white knight” or “natural caretaker,” he’s just doing the same thing Ann and Ron have done at various points of the series by giving her a much-needed anchor. He didn’t save her by ending the relationship or quitting his job, he did that because he didn’t want her to make that choice – I think it was as much about protecting himself as it was about protecting her. Which, if I’m not mistaken, is something that happens a lot with real, adult relationships.

I think a large part of this is that I never had the problem several critics did in how the writers kept Ben and Leslie apart, because I believed Chris’s rationale (and by extension Mike Schur’s) that this is a real rule that exists in government for very valid reasons, and both Leslie and Ben cared enough about their commitment to public service that they’d have to deal with it. As far as contrived reasons to keep couples apart, I had more problem with Ann kissing Andy at the end of season two.

Cory: I think we’re on the same wave-length here. Leslie and Ben’s relationship is obviously a more traditional “will they or won’t they” type that the series avoided with April and Andy and I think that relationship construction comes with its own baggage that can’t always been grafted onto a series’ typical rhythms. I do think there is some validity to the frustrations over Ben being the one to initially break it off and to take the bullet once Chris found out. Perhaps that does suggest that Leslie’s a typical girl, being saved by a typical guy. I get that, and you could make a compelling argument by noting that making Ben the “White Knight” romantic hero does limit Leslie’s self-reliance and strength. 

However, I can’t help but return to some of the things I’ve said previously. Just like the campaign, this long-term, lovey-dovey-type or relationship is a brand-new experience for Leslie. She’s not been too successful in the dating game over the years and so it’s hard to fault her for getting swept up in this moderately epic romance with Ben. I think the series has done a solid enough job of suggesting that both she and Ben are competent enough people that any sort of irrational behavior they do in the name of love only proves how much they care about one another, not how incompetent they are becoming. Perhaps all the issues we’ve discussed related to Leslie are purposeful and part of a larger story about how she reacts to lots of new life experiences all at once. 

One more thing: It’s interesting to me that both your issues and Amanda’s issues with Leslie stem from this glorious view of Leslie Knope. I’m not saying that Leslie doesn’t deserve it. She is, without a doubt, one of the best characters on television and the series has done a tremendous job of making her skilled and likable. But is it possible that we’ve displaced too much expectations onto her? She’s a burgeoning feminist icon and she’s beloved by millions (OK, like 4 million). I’d guess that a lot of people had really high hopes for this campaign story and perhaps thought it would continue proving how novel of a character Leslie can be at times. And while I think Parks eventually gets there, I’m much more interested in a story that features more bumps in the road than just straight-up Leslie Knope victories. Not only does the former approach lead to the cultivation of this underdog status, but it (again) forces Leslie to face some of her biggest issues. Many people thought Parks was a series about an intelligent woman having it all and they’re right, but there have to be challenges on the path to glory. 

Les: I didn’t even realize that when I first picked the article apart, but now that you say it it makes perfect sense. I completely agree that we’ve put her on the pedestal – partially because Amy Poehler’s so terrific in the role, partly because Parks and Rec‘s low-rated status inspires an obsessive devotion, and partly because Leslie is one of the most fundamentally decent people on television today. In this era of cynical characters on our sitcoms and disillusionment with the political process, to see a devoted public servant who not only believes that government should help people but practices what she preaches, it’s something unique and almost inspiring. And when that’s jeopardized, we get agitated – Meredith Blake asked in her A.V. Club review of “The Treaty” if success could spoil Leslie, and I think that’s a more legitimate concern than her suddenly becoming a charmless anti-feminist.

I’m in agreement with you though that the show is much better when it challenges characters – Schur’s made the point on at least one occasion that if people like Leslie or Tom keep dreaming big but don’t act on it, it starts to make the show sadder. This show should absolutely be about her growth and development as a person, and as much of a whipped cream-powered perpetual motion machine as she is, even she can’t do it all right the first time. And would we honestly expect her to, even in the heightened reality that is Pawnee? This show needs its dramatic stakes as much as it does the punchlines.

And if one thing does comfort me going forward into the season, I have faith that the writers will find some better ways to harness that as opposed to playing with “dark side” Leslie. Going back to our discussion of juggling the Parks department with running a campaign, Schur’s given an interview where he said as the episodes progress, it’ll start to show that Leslie’s doing her job far past the point where she should have resigned to focus on campaigning, and eventually it wears even her past the breaking point. I have faith that journey will produce some better results, if only because Poehler plays exhaustion to the point of mania better than anyone else on TV.

And on the topic of bumps in the road, there’s one more question that’s been discussed quite a bit on Twitter as we analyze the campaign story arc. We all assume the season finale is going to close with Election Day: do you want Leslie to win? Should she win? And what do you think it means for the character and the story, either way it turns out?

Cory: Parks and Recreation is such a positive series that I struggle to picture a world where Leslie doesn’t win that City Council seat. And in a lot of ways, that’s probably the right move, story-wise. As you mention, Leslie’s big dreams need to materialize in some way and while I think most viewers would likely be fine with 100 more episodes of Leslie doing fun Parks Department-related things, this is a series (and a showrunner) with real ambition. Putting Leslie in a City Council seat should open up the writers to explore Pawnee, its government and its various other institutions in all sorts of new ways. I’m already picturing a bottle episode where Leslie basically forces all the City Council members to sit in a room for 24 hours to figure out how to fix some community-related problem. I know that Schur loves The Wire and I think he wants to explore some of those government-related stories on a slightly larger scale. And watching Leslie’s optimistic attitude clash with a governing body full of about as much ambition as Ron would be tremendous.  In theory, winning not only changes the series’ status quo, but it also teaches Leslie something about herself, how she treats people and what she has to do be successful moving forward. 

However, I have to admit that I’d also really, really love to see how the series would deal with Leslie losing. Not only would it be a bit of a shock amid the series’ disposition, but it would reflect a Wire-esque view of the failure of society’s institutions and force Leslie to do some real soul searching. In that case, she’s acted on her dreams, she’s put herself out there and now she’s failed. What does that mean? Is she OK with being #2 for a department that’s literally the lowest on the local government food chain? Is that enough? Or does she try again? As I’m typing this, I’m growing ever connected to this second option, but I have no doubt the series could make the first work just fine. What about you, is Leslie a winner?

Les: I still haven’t chosen my answer, to tell you the truth. On one hand, I agree with you that the show’s positivity and Leslie’s general awesomeness add up to a win, plus I’m pretty sure Paul Rudd’s not ready to stop doing movies and move to Pawnee. I think it would make for a terrific season if Leslie got elected and started trying to check off her ridiculously long list of issues, almost turning it into a local government procedural – off the top of my head I can see her recruiting Andy to apprehend Gabe the toucan for the Pawnee Zoo, going to war with Ron over the abolishment of underground shooting ranges and spearheading the city-wide effort to relocate all of Pawnee’s raccoons to Eagleton. On the other hand, a season premiere where Leslie’s completely shattered by her loss and becomes even more apathetic than Ron and April about her job would be quite hilarious (I could see her reducing Chris to tears, or becoming friends with Orrin) and her trying to put herself back together and realize how much she loves running a parks department could also drive the season. 

And the fact that I can’t decide which of the two would be better and can sell both easily gets to why despite some little concerns about Leslie, I really find it hard to worry about the show itself as a whole. Parks and Recreation has had so many wins in its lifetime that it’s earned a lot of my good will, and my concerns about some episodes have been offset by how many unequivocally solid ones it’s had. The show’s already proven it can have characters follow their dreams and fail without being ruined – Entertainment 720 being the obvious example – and I don’t think a Knope 2012 win or loss would seal the show’s fate in either direction. I’d obviously feel good about a win, but that’s because of affection for the character more than wanting to steer the story.

To go back to where we started this discussion: we have ten episodes left in the season, and I’m sure that after at least one I’ll still be saying that she can be insufferable. I’m sure she’ll have a plot is such that I’d rather they shift focus to Ron or April, because (as we’ve said) she’s such an extreme character and one who’s being put in unfamiliar situations. But at the end of the day, I think it’ll be okay, because for all her flaws? She’s still Leslie Effing Knope. 

It is difficult to think or talk about Smash without considering the context of its much-awaited arrival to television. Despite what still-new NBC honcho Robert Greenblatt says about the series’ ultimate impact on the fate of the Peacock network, Smash is a supremely important property. In fact, I would say that this is the most important series premiere of the season (sorry, X Factor) and probably one of the more important premieres in recent memory. NBC is desperate for any kind of substantial success and since critics got ahold of Smash’s pilot back in the spring, there’s been an unbelievable amount of talk about how the series could alter the trajectory of a network that’s in a truly terrible state (perhaps the worst ever for a broadcast network, right?).

And even though NBC’s continued failure gives me a whole lot of fodder for sarcastic tweets and long pieces here on TVS, I want NBC to succeed. And even though I’m smart enough to know that good ratings for one series cannot single-handedly reanimate a basically-dead network, I want Smash to succeed. Ultimately, I think the series will succeed from a ratings stand-point, at least in the first season. But after watching the pilot episode twice now, I’m still not entirely convinced Smash is going to be as creatively successful.

Don’t get me wrong: This is the kind of pilot NBC needs to be airing. Move the Glee comparisons aside for a minute because there’s not quite like Smash on broadcast television right now. This is so obviously an adult program, for adult audiences. I don’t mean that in a pay cable context where “adult” means all sorts of boobs and sexposition. Instead, Smash feels like the kind of property you would expect NBC to steward onto the airwaves, the kind of property NBC likes to talk about when they’re going on and on about their history and the prestige of the 10 p.m. drama slot and the kind of property that 30 Rock makes fun of them for not having over the last decade.*

*As I’ve said before, NBC had two great dramas they didn’t quite know what to do with in Friday Night Lights and Southland, but the point remains the same.

The phrase that keeps coming to mind when I think about the Smash pilot is well-produced. Steven Spielberg apparently had some real interest and thus impact on the development of the property, but even if he didn’t do squat, Smash still exudes professionalism. Michael Mayer’s direction is rock-solid and all the performances seem, to a person with no real interest in theater, quite good. The cast is filled with recognizable performers from television, film, theater and music and they’re all generally doing fine work in the pilot.

My only real issue with the pilot is the writing. Theresa Rebeck has had a great deal of success in her career and she is clearly a great choice to be the lead writer for a series like this. Most of the pilot affirms Rebeck’s abilities. The story is clear, concise and always propulsive. Every single one of the characters is a basic-level archetype with little meat, but A.) This is a pilot and B.) The story works well when reinforcing the traditional beats of those archetypes anyway. By the end of the pilot, Rebeck’s script has done its job: We’ve been introduced to the characters, gotten enough indication of what their basic motivations are and the structure of the story is in place. Too many pilots today fail to accomplish even these goals and the script is well-supported by solid direction, performances and music.

However, when Rebeck’s script moves away from the character “types” and tries to flesh out the personal lives of the characters, Smash stalls out. Debra Messing’s Julia is trying to adopt a kid but she doesn’t seem remotely interested in it – or her teenage son – and Brian d’Arcy James is stuck in the thankless role of the nagging husband. Moreover, the tension between Julia and her partner Tom’s assist Ellis is really pretty dumb. The Ellis character is at first too dumb and then later perhaps just purposefully calculating and although I understand the desire in adding as much drama to the production as possible, the character (and the performance) feels like an unnecessary addition to a story that already has all sorts of in-fighting and competition. The preview clips at the end of the free version of the pilot suggests that Ellis isn’t going anywhere, nor is the baby storyline and well, that’s just unfortunate.

This is where Smash has a challenging road ahead. Pilots work just fine with archetypal characters, especially when their portrayed by great actors like Messing, Anjelica Huston and Jack Davenport or supported with well-picked music like Katharine McPhee and Megan Hilty are (though Hilty’s good on her own, to be fair). But to succeed creatively in the long-term, the series needs to move beyond typical behind the scenes drama and avoid poorly-written stories with characters that aren’t exactly necessary. From the pilot, the audience isn’t given the same kind of choice that the producers of the Marilyn production are. We’re basically told that McPhee’s Karen is a diamond in the rough and that this is going to be her journey to the top. That’s fine, I’ll watch that story, but Smash seems so dedicated to telling that obvious story about the green, Midwestern ingénue “making it big” amid sleazy directors, snotty writers and disapproving parents. Television gives you the opportunity to step outside those obvious stories or those typical character constructions and with this cast, it seems misguided to cling to the obvious or the typical.

Of course, there are moments in the pilot where I think Smash and Theresa Rebeck are capable of more compelling storytelling, most notably the scenes where the two competing women are on-screen with some sort of parallel in mind. I know people really love the last performance number and for good reason, but I think my favorite scene was the quick beat with Karen and Ivy discussing the call-back with their families. Those moments go a long way in getting the audience invested in characters and it is intriguing that the series is avoiding making Ivy a straight-up villain (at least so far). Honestly, Ivy seems more interesting, which is byproduct of both the writing and disparity between the two actress’ performances.

Ultimately, Smash isn’t the best pilot of the new season and I don’t think it has a substantial upside for out and out greatness.* However, it is a very good, solid pilot and even if the character issues don’t get worked out for a while, I can’t imagine the series falling that far either. Smash is a populist, mainstream program in a good way. NBC needs more of these.

*Oddly, I think this series will be more consistent than Glee, but lack the kind of epic highs Ryan Murphy’s scatterbrained series can reach. That is ultimately probably better for an older audience and I’m pretty sure as long as Smash never does a Rocky Horror Tribute or has Ivy send Karen to a crack house to avoid an audition, it will be OK.

I’ve said this a few times this season, but House has few good ideas left. Don’t get me wrong, I still like the series quite a bit, and I think this season has been mostly solid because the writers finally realized that the few remaining strengths of House are twofold: Hugh Laurie and moderately amusing workplace stories. That’s pretty much it. As a longtime die-hard fan of the series, that’s enough for me. Your mileage may vary and I’ve seen a number of folks online discuss their disappointment of the series’ presumed lack of “arc” this season. I can understand that frustration, but I also believe that House is better off without trying to shoe-horn in a substantial, long story at this point.

With all those things in mind, you can imagine that I was very skeptical coming into “Nobody’s Fault.” House has always had an overreliance on big gimmick episodes, not only in that the series has used them too often, but also because the heightened drama almost always feels forced and manufactured for little reason. This is gotten worse as the series has gotten older, wherein I basically dread every sweeps period because I know House is coming at me with a bad stunt. House screwing around with remains earlier this season immediately comes to mind.

Oddly though, “Nobody’s Fault” only moderately misleads the audience and constructs false drama, which I guess we could call an improvement. The episode starts by leading us to believe A HORRIBLE EVENT HAPPENED and to make matters worse employs a Usual Suspects-Rashomon mash-up framework that suggests House could be fired and likely then sent back to prison. There’s even a dramatic title card, which is House semiology for sweeps stunt.

And, of course, these gimmick narrative devices don’t inject much life into what I think the episode wants to believe is a major mystery. There’s an indication that something horrible happened and Jeffrey Wright’s Dr. Coefield is there to see if House is directly responsible or at worst, caused this horrible event through laziness, hostility, pure evil or a combination of all three.

But while Wright is a fine performer and he and Hugh Laurie have a number of solid scenes together, the series has been down this road time and time again. Outside force or quasi-authority figure comes in, questions House’s practices and suggests that, hey, maybe he has issues. Plus, Coefield’s interviews with Taub, Park and Adams only points out how lifeless and flat they are as characters. They’re doormats. They have no real gall of their own. Their dissent with House is a false reality and even when Coefield pokes and prods, they best they can muster up is shrugging animosity.

Mid-way through the episode, however, “Nobody’s Fault” gives those Taub, Park and Adams a bit of an out by showing us why they are so detached: The patient, in the midst of a psychotic break, stabbed Chase in the heart, causing him to nearly die, only to survive with temporarily paralysis. The shock is real, but it doesn’t negate my problems with the three other team members. And unfortunately, the episode limits the lasting impact of Chase’s injuries in so many ways. Not only did it use gimmicky conceits as a way to create a minor misdirect away from an event the audience might actually care about (in fact, I think the stabbing would have had much greater impact had it just come out of nowhere in the middle of a typical House episode), but then Chase goes from basically dead to barely alive and paralyzed to promising rehab in the span of 15 minutes.

I’m not saying that House should have spent the rest of the season on his injuries, but it’s sort of dizzying when Coefield is telling House (and us) he should more because he’s known Chase for so long just as the character whose recovery we’re supposed to care about happens over an act-and-a-half. There’s no distance between the initial shock and the “miraculous” recovery, which only serves to reinforce that House writers love to simply do crazy things because they’re crazy (and it is sweeps).

Somehow things then get worse. After all this mess and after all his threats, Coefield folds in the end, finding that no one is at fault for Chase’s injuries. This decision is so dumb that House himself snaps and tries to bully Coefield into standing up for himself and all the talking he did in the first 40 minutes of the episode. When the lead character is overtly pointing out stupid and pointless the exercise you built your episode around is, there’s likely a problem. Again, Coefield, the interviews, most all of it lacks much purpose.

Nevertheless, amid the dumb, gimmicky-nature of the proceedings, the character work here intrigues me. Although the series goes to the well too often (with Foreman especially), I’ve always been interested in how House portrays his impact on his team. Clearly, he’s a terror to work for, his decision-making is suspect and by the end of it all, you quit (Cameron, Foreman, like three times), kill yourself (Kutner), kill someone else (Chase), become completely miserable (Taub) or get famous and flee the sinking ship (Thirteen). House is, without a doubt, toxic and there is often a sense that characters stick around PPT because it’s a television program and well, they are characters on that TV program so they have to be here.

And yet, when the series actually makes an effort to discuss what working for House does to people and how he responds to seeing the changes in his team, good things can happen. Although the series likes to paint the parallels with House and Foreman with big brushes, Chase has always been the most loyal and the most willing to shrug off any of the insanity House has brought into his life. Foreman, perhaps because he’s like House, resists and rebels, Cameron and Thirteen put up false fronts and the rest were door-mats, but Chase has this odd acceptance with everything that’s happened to him over the last eight years. I don’t think Chase particularly likes House, but he’s gone from being desperate for positive reinforcement to amiable calm (you know, despite the fact he killed a guy).

Because of this, House and Chase have an interesting relationship. House knows he can screw with Chase because Chase will make an effort to screw with House right back. He probably admire Chase as a doctor, but House knows he is competent and he likes having him around. That’s all unspoken, though. Therefore, when Chase gets stabbed and everyone’s looking to pass the buck onto House, mostly without saying so (except for Adams, who apparently blames herself because she sucks), Chase defends House and defends House’s workplace culture of insanity, fear and distrust.

Weirdly then, House messes it all up when he goes to apologize to Chase at the end of the episode. Their unspoken bond, one that you can’t really call friendship but is certainly more than workplace connection, becomes spoken and I’m not sure Chase knows how to deal with it. He’s been trained to appreciate House’s methods and to see beyond the madness no matter what. But when House apologizes, it serves as an admission of failure and I think Chase realized that maybe he shouldn’t just accept everything House-related. Being amiable and calm doesn’t work once you’ve been stabbed in the heart. I wish the series would have gone down this route more when Chase MURDERED A GUY, but I’m very intrigued to see how the writers (mis)handle this story moving forward. Jesse Spencer and Chase deserve more time in the supporting character limelight and I think House would be well-served by having its lead character to face the influence he’s had on his long-time employees.

But who knows, by next week, Chase could be walking again (maybe with a cane, or something) and nothing here will have mattered. But that’s House.

In the first new episode of the year, I’m joined by Wes Ambrecht for an extended conversation about all things Chuck, from the final season and the finale to what went wrong along the way. Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, if that’s your kind of thing.

Boy, did I pick a great episode to check in with The Vampire Diaries. After what I thought was a fairly weak midseason finale by typical TVD standards, the series bounced around a little bit in its first three episodes of 2012. That’s not to say I didn’t like them or that they didn’t include a slew of effective moments, especially for Stefan, but they also suggested that the series wasn’t entirely sure what to do.

Initially, Stefan’s plan to take revenge on Klaus sounded like a tremendous idea and there were instances, especially in “Our Town” when Stefan viciously tormented Elena, that temporarily confirmed the story’s upside. But Stefan’s proactive maneuvering left Klaus in this odd spot where he kept talking about doing threating things, but not actually doing a whole lot of anything. I know some fans don’t like Klaus at all, and while I’m not one of those people, I did grow a bit weary of his lack of action. Mix in the mysterious all-powerful unopened casket or its relationship to Bonnie’s boring mother and for the first time in, well, ever, it felt like the series was aimless.

Thankfully though, “Bringing Out The Dead” washed away many of my concerns with recent events and pushed the story forward in typically-wild fashion. In one fell swoop, this episode opened that damn casket, solved its Klaus problem and re-formatted the season’s landscape yet again. And somehow, it also found time to work in some intriguing mystery and a number of powerful emotional moments not really associated with Klaus, the Salvatores or a casket.

Of course, the stuff with Klaus, the Salvatores and that damn casket was pretty awesome. The return of Elijah couldn’t come any sooner for many of us and despite my general appreciation of Klaus, there’s just no question that Elijah is a cooler, arguably more engaging presence (I think partially because the series didn’t try so hard to make him unbelievably damaged). His return throws a wrench into the seemingly-endless circling Klaus and Stefan have been doing and the episode did a really nice job of keeping Elijah’s true allegiances up in the air until the last second.

Bringing the four men together at the dinner table provided a whole lot of great material for everyone, but I especially liked how Turi Meyer and Al Septien’s script worked to draw allusions between the pairs. Klaus and Stefan are both frustrated, emotional wrecks really, while Damon and Elijah buoy their brothers with a somewhat calming influence (relatively speaking). The story about Klaus and Elijah falling for a former Petrova doppelganger was a nice touch. That kind of storytelling can get cumbersome when done too much (see: Supernatural’s fifth season where they REPEATEDLY told us that Lucifer and Michael were just like Sam and Dean), but it works in small doses.

Moreover, bringing the men together caused Klaus to actually be proactive in a substantial way for the first time in about three episodes. Grabbing Stefan and threatening to kill him unless Damon does what he says is a smart move, and honestly one that logically, Klaus should have known to do first. He knows just about as well as anyone that brotherly bonds are the most important things in the world.

Speaking of brotherly bonds, the Originals are back together! I think it was pretty clear very quickly that Klaus’ mother was what was in the casket, but “Dead” built to the reveal quite well, particularly by allowing Elijah to turn on Klaus, revive all his brothers and sisters and then quickly become shell-shocked once their mother returned with hopes for future togetherness. Based on this series’ track record I have to think that the mother isn’t 100 percent honest in her assertions, but even if she is, bringing the whole family together opens up the story to all sorts of new avenues. What, other than a family reunion, would she want? And how does this impact Elena? These are better questions than “What’s in the casket?” and “Why is Klaus focused more on interior decorating than evil villainy?” so it feels like the series is back on the absolute best track again.

I’ve said this before, but one of the strengths of the series that I think gets overlooked amid all the WTFs and exclamation points (oh don’t get me wrong, I’m guilty there), is how well The Vampire Diaries knows how to drop in fairly powerful emotional moments right between said WTFs. “Bringing Out The Dead” gives us two of those in the Elena and Caroline stories.

In recent episodes, the series has been really interested in exploring the lack of normalcy for the characters who used to be pretty normal, starting with the faux-funerals/birthdays a few weeks ago. Tonight, those issues arise again when Caroline’s father is stabbed soon after digesting vampire blood and is thus of course on the path to transition. Unsurprisingly, he refuses to consume blood and ultimately, Caroline is forced to deal with the reality that her father is going to die, and soon. Although I wish the series would have done more with Jack Coleman and his character (who I thought was quite interesting), I loved how this episode handled his death. His ideological differences with his daughter didn’t stop him from loving her or hoping she lives a full life.

Lesser series would have certainly made Bill a villain from the get-go, but TVD smartly used him to force Caroline to grow up, if even a little bit. Her stubbornness has gotten her into some trouble since being turned and I think it was important for her to feel a bit powerless, as it helped her recognized that there is still value in humanity and that even though she isn’t normal, she should still be able to connect to her father in his time of dying without any sort of outrageous supernatural movement. The final scene between the two of them was very well performed by Coleman and Candice Accola, which again sort of makes me wish he had more to do on the series before he died, but it makes sense for Caroline’s journey.

As for Elena, well, things just keep getting worse. This episode helped crystallize some of the things I have been thinking about in regard to her journey this season. Last season, I think, was very much about Elena grabbing hold of her own destiny, having real agency in a seriously admirable way and eventually, being willing to sacrifice herself time and time again. She gained a lot of strength because of it. But this season, it seems like the story is about breaking Elena down, particularly on an emotional level. She has consistently lost people she trusts and loves, whether through death (Jenna, the tail end of last season, but the reverberations are still being felt), brother-saving deals (Stefan) or her own protective nature (Jeremy).

Last year, partially because she was so in love and partially because she knew people were in danger, Elena embraced the world around her. But now, she has lost so many people and continues to be in these awful circumstances that it sure feels like the breaking point is coming. Sure, she has Damon, but he alone cannot replace* Jenna, Stefan, Jeremy or even her parents (remember, it’s still only been like a two years since their death). Characters on series like this often go through hell and it all bounces off of them, but I think TVD is legitimately interested in watching Elena react to being put the ringer. Her toughness can only go so far, I think.

*I’m guessing most of you Damon-Elena shippers out there would suggest otherwise. That’s fine. I wrote that just for you.

And I say all of this because tonight’s story pushed her further into uncomfortable territory. She comes home to discover that Alaric’s been fatally wounded by the mysterious stabber who took down Bill (more on that momentarily) and really, the house is just a horror movie set. No power. Weird noises. Blood. It’s bad. And to top it all off, she’s forced to subsequently stab Alaric in the heart since her supernatural-ness as the doppleganger will stop any possible death from a non-supernatural entity. Oh, and her best friend’s dad just died. IT IS NOT A GOOD DAY, PART 982.

What makes this particularly interesting is that Matt is there with her and she asks him to stay. We see that she calls Damon and he doesn’t answer, but this isn’t the first big moment that Elena and Matt have shared lately. While I’m not necessarily saying that I’m looking for a Matt-Elena romantic reconciliation or that the series even going to go that route, I do find it curious that their interactions are becoming more prevalent. Perhaps, by the end of the season, Elena realizes she needs a break from all this, Stefan and Damon included? Something to think about.

Finally, I am very intrigued by this mystery person with the stabby tendencies. Dr. Fell was obviously a misdirect from the beginning and although the fingerprint nonsense immediately makes me think Katherine is involved (because you know, shits and giggles), I am more interested in this story because it is somewhat different than the series’ modus operandi. Sure, people get stabbed all the time on this series. Yet, we often, if not always, get to see who does the stabbing. While The Vampire Diaries uses mystery when it introduces various McGuffins such as the casket, we are typically keyed in the various assaults, batteries and attempted murders. Therefore, I am basically solely excited for this story because it is something different, and that’s a good thing. It also has me thinking that our mystery assailant could be a ghost. That has to come back, right?

Anyway, really great stuff from TVD this week. After a slight lull (and again, we’re talking like two B-level episodes), the series has been reenergized with a new, promising direction and the character work continues to be very strong.

Test Pilot #36: Profit

Debut date: April 8, 1996

Series legacy: Known for its dark, complicated story and even darker lead character; thought to be ahead of its time

Welcome back to Test Pilot guys and gals! With that extra-special Joss Whedon Theme Week behind us, it’s time to fall back into the typical, but still lovely rhythms of the feature. Today, we continue our fun exploration of one television’s most discussed subjects: One-season wonders.

Most series crash and burn before a prospective second season, but there are some that stick in our mind many years after cancellation. There is a large fascination with television series that only manage to produce a single season (often at a short order at that) before they are chopped down by “the man.” We are compelled by the possibilities and the what could have been for programs that projected all sorts of promise and upside but were never actually able to cash in on either. This theme hopes to explore some of the most celebrated one-season wonders and consider what, exactly, made audiences latch on to them so spectacularly.

Today’s file is a curious one. FOX’s Profit debuted all the way back in 1996 and caused all sorts of controversy. Many viewers, particularly in the Bible Belt, reportedly called their local affiliates to complain about the amoral lead character, calling him “Satan in a Suit.” A few of these affiliates then threatened to pull the series. Even the stuffy business community was upset that the series portrayed them in such a negative light.*Throw in low ratings and an inability to keep much of the audience from its lead-in Melrose Place (because those two series go together beautifully), and Profit was canceled after just a handful of airings. Nine episodes were produced.

*How hilarious is that? 16 years later, Profit’s portrayal of business and boardroom deals is both realistic and probably still tame. We were so naïve in the 1990s.

Thanks to a DVD release in the middle of the last decade (and likely star Adrian Pasdar’s big turn on Heroes), Profit became one of those series that consistently pops up on any “One-season wonder” or “Cancelled too soon” lists that folks like to do from time to time. It is a series that is not as universally beloved or admired like our last subjects, Freaks and Geeks or Undeclared, but Profit certainly gives the audience a lot to think about – and thus, a lot to talk about.

Joining me today is Jamie Wotton. Never shying away from a form of entertainment, Jamie is open to watching almost everything and has been known to frequently discuss series from Mad Men to iCarly, all while keeping himself firmly in the realm of Joss Whedon and his colleagues. He also appreciates the art of comedy, as well being loosely connected apart to the anime fandom. You can follow Jamie on Twitter. Jamie, take it away:

From David Greenwalt (of Buffy and Angel) and John McNamara (of Television™), comes Profit, a weird slick and slimy television series that aired on FOX in the year of 1996. Starring Adrian Pasdar as Jim Profit, the two-hour pilot set in the world of multinational corporate businesses is almost Revenge if it was set in high-end corporations instead of the Hamptons. Indeed, the writing and almost Shakespearean trappings seem to be flooded throughout. It’s dark and corrupt and even to bookend the pilot, Profit breaks the forth wall and speaks right to us. It is phenomenal, it is crazy and I really, really don’t understand it.

Throughout the pilot, we’re introduced to a large sprawling cast who is shown along with snide remarks from the lead character, Jim Profit. Functionally, this is not a whole lot different to watching the first episode of Game of Thrones just with Littlefinger commenting upon the characters psychosis whenever one stepped into shot. Confusing, right? However, with Game of Thrones, you can be almost certain that everyone is going to play a permanent part in the series narrative; it’s hard to miss it’s based on a famous book series and of course, it comes from HBO. Going in, you know to expect long-form storytelling and character arcs. It would be an awkward way to frame everyone up – (sidebar: it’s like when that jerky friend of yours introduces you to 50 people at a party. Formalities be damned, it’s fucking horrible) – but at least you know you’re going to see these people again. One of the issues I had with Profit is that some of these characters felt temporary. It’s hard enough to get one to align with a protagonist in one episode, but to understand what makes the ensemble as well as the guest stars tick is a near-impossibility.

I also find it interesting that this comes from the little network that cooked up a storm with the juicy and filmic supernatural series The X-Files and threw up the likes of Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis two seasons later in That ‘70’s Show. I shouldn’t be surprised; to this day, risk-taking is built into FOX’s DNA, but it’s rare for such an almost formless miss to go to air. Perhaps it aired because it was too expensive – it did screen in the Spring after all – but from it to go from script to pilot to series is almost extraordinary. Lone Star, a similarly cancelled series from FOX last year made a similar ambiguous deal with the audience as Profit did – it asks them to follow the MORALLY GREY CABLE DRAMA PROTAGONIST and perhaps representative of the time allowed to build-audiences in today’s world, Lone Star was taken off the air. But that series aimed to be something different in the CSI landscape, it comes after the stories of Tony Soprano and Vic Mackey.

But Profit didn’t.

It’s certainly telling a different type of narrative and not drawn on being like anything else on the medium, but I can’t work out who the audience was meant to be. It’s not the default young-skewing

FOX series, it’s too bizarre for CBS’ over-49’s and the largest demo is consumed by those watching NBC sitcoms. It’s absolutely my own neurosis, but this pilot played like Profit was a series for no one, arguably by no one just left me so cold.

With a lot of one-season wonders, you can argue and twist that marketing went wrong or there’s at least a glimmer of a TV series there. Firefly, Wonderfalls – these are fully-formed [network] television series. They didn’t connect or one reason or another, but they have a pitch or a structure to them an ideology that people would recognize. As obvious from the former’s pilot, there is the central crew who hang out and then they get gigs to take them from one part of the ‘verse to another all for some credits. It’s the series. There are threads to do with the Alliance and nods toward Shepherd Book’s past, but the story on an episode-to-episode was created by external pressures that pushed on the crew. Now, it’s weird – there are horses, spaceships, swearing in Mandarin and other such things, but the stories were simple and understandable. You can build a long-running series around it. Profit, however, seems to differ in this regard. There are incredibly surreal moments (such as the aforementioned Malcolm In The Middle-like episode bookends) and the pilot mostly consists of setting up a world with a bunch of players instead of setting up a series. It doesn’t do anything deserving of its lengthy 90 minute (!!!) pilot running time.

I’ve tried to avoid the “Ahead Of Its Time” argument because although it plays with the darker themes and characters of FX and HBO brand of series I do not really think that it’s necessarily true if we are to believe that TV is an audio/visual medium. In 1996, The-X-Files had been on for a few years and even today, the series actually still holds up aesthetically, and Profit appears looking and sounding like it’s straight out of the 1980s. The pilot lacks the style and flare of the new generation of network television. I think the series could theoretically be updated and be more relevant in the time of Occupy, but I wouldn’t want it. I think the weird alternate universe 1996 is what makes the series special. I need the clangy score; the hilarious philosophical quotes that sound lifted straight from the wordsmiths over at One Tree Hill; and not to mention the bizarre camera glances from Adrian Pasdar. Knowing Adrian Pasdar, and I like to think I know Adrian Pasdar – he wouldn’t have it any other way. And neither would I.

–JW

And now, my thoughts on Profit:

I’m still young, but I’d like to think that I’ve seen a lot of television in my short time on this rock. In all my television viewing, Profit might be one of the two or three weirdest scripted programs that I have ever seen. There’s absolutely no way that this pilot would make it to air on FOX in 2012, which makes it even more insane to think that the network somehow let five hours slip onto the airwaves nearly two decades ago.* This two-hour pilot episode features a half-dozen elements that almost automatically make it difficult to imagine on FOX in 1996 or anytime, really: Profit is a supremely evil, manipulative son of a bitch that lacks any sympathetic tendencies; All the other characters seem similarly awful and miserable; The script, by David Greenwalt and John McNamara, throws the audience in the deep-end and never provides much of a life preserver; Profit has a sexual relationship with his step-mother;** The story has a methodical, but still oddly rapid pace that is sometimes difficult to keep up with; And oh yeah, he randomly talks directly to the camera at times, in that creepy Adrian Pasdar voice that can haunt your dreams.

*It’s probably easy to make some comparisons to Lone Star, but that series’ protagonist is dramatically more sympathetic and, of course, inherently good (or at least wants to be). Jim Profit has no illusions about his evil behavior and what he will or won’t do to climb that corporate ladder.

**Research tells me that the writers originally wanted the character to be his real birth-mother, which is even more demented. This story is fantastically twisted.

Those are just the surface elements that keep Profit from being an easy viewing experience. Dig deeper and we find allusions to costume dramas and a purposeful deconstruction of the sort of 1980s and early 1990s Wall Street types that love to shout about how good greed can be. Profit is surreal, it is uncomfortable to watch at times and so of course it is also so fully compelling as well. Jamie’s reference to ABC’s Revenge is spot-on, but again, what sets this old FOX series apart is how unapologetic it is in regards to its lead character’s morality.* We know that Emily/Amanda is eventually going to rethink her full-court press of Revenge (in some ways, she’s had to course-correct already). But even after two hours, it doesn’t appear that Jim Profit is capable of making the emotional connections that Emily/Amanda does, and he’s certainly not “good, but flawed” like her. Those riled up people in the Midwest weren’t too far off when they called Jim Profit Satan in a Suit.

*I made this comment on Twitter last night, but the two series also differ in that Jim Profit carries out his plots against an entire executive board in one episode, whereas Emily/Amanda is taking a much more methodical, slower approach to her revenging. The consequences of Jim’s actions in the pilot aren’t given enough time to develop, or to have a true lasting impact quite like Emily/Amanda’s. In that regard, Profit plays like a slightly-edited-down film, which is a fine way to approach a pilot, but also leaves me curious as to how the rest of the episodes develop.

Another popular culture touchstone I immediately thought of while watching this pilot was American Psycho and I’m surprised that Profit didn’t’ reach the same kind of cult adoration that the Christian Bale-starring film has. Both texts (and Bret Easton Ellis’ novel, of course) are very interested in poking holes in the constructed identity of the power suit-wearing corporate climber, the kind of people we sort of looked up to at a certain point and time. American Psycho is even more surrealist and winking than Profit, but the series’ more pointed approach to its lead character’s make-up is initially more engaging. Bale’s Patrick Bateman is more aware of the vapid nature of his existence and takes to murdering as a way to get a true rush, whereas Jim Profit is both aware and ready to embrace the corporate culture. He doesn’t want to escape, in fact, he wants to hide within it and get away from what appears to be an extremely damaged childhood.

Part of these differences come from the deeper complexity that comes with constructing a television character versus one for a film or novel, but I also think Profit ultimately has more to say about late 20^th century corporate culture anyway. While Profit is clearly the worst offender in this universe, this pilot makes great effort to portray the rest of G&G’s top executives as poor representatives of the human race as well. They are shifty, job-obsessed blank spots in power suits. No personality. No control. And really, not much morality either. Profit might be the manifestation of pure evil, but he’s also a purer reflection of what’s really inside the people he’s trying to take down on his way to the top. All these spineless executives are capable of the things that Profit does in this pilot – blackmail, adultery, extortion, bribery, etc. – but he’s smart enough and ambitious enough to actually pull the trigger. He has no pretentious about who he is and what he wants. They’re just pretending.

On that note, I don’t know if it was purposeful or not, but Profit’s casting choices help evoke its thematic interests quite well. Adrian Pasdar is engaging performer, but he also benefits greatly from Profit’s detached, sometimes seemingly awkward, but calculating image. While Pasdar brings some depth to the role, he also looks tremendous in a suit and therefore pulls off the character’s inherent lack of depth beautifully. And of course, his voice is perfect for the pilot’s uncomfortable use of voiceover work. But around Pasdar, Profit is filled with a bunch of white, milquetoast performers who bring very little energy or spark to the proceedings. I recognized no one else on this cast. But like I said, I’d be willing to bet that Greenwalt, McNamara and executive producer Stephen J. Cannell guided the casting in that way for a reason. The actors fit their characters very well then, as they serve to point out how electric and compelling Pasdar/Profit is.  

Profit’s strength lies in its ability to weave in a number of disparate themes with relative ease. The corporate culture commentary is obvious, but there are some interesting things going on with “rags to riches” and American Dream narratives as well. Detaching his rise from true context, Profit is the kind of American we like to celebrate: He overcame a troubled childhood (in the Midwest, of course) to become a powerful man in the business world. But by the end of the pilot, we know that Profit has overcome these odds and reached these heights through evil means, from a sexually manipulative relationship with his step mother to attempted murder (he tried to burn his father alive as a young man) to all the sketchy business-related things we see him do. This is a guy who was raised in a cardboard box and is now a VP corporate titan, he just happened to get there through all the wrong ways.

I’d also suggest there’s some sort of commentary about television and the media bouncing around in Profit’s DNA as well. His aforementioned youth, spent in that cardboard box raised on television, caused Profit to grow up and despise the medium. And yet, we have to imagine that he learned many things (including “bad” things) from the ole’ idiot box. This suggests that Profit both loves and resents the television for turning him into what he is. Ultimately then, Profit turns our typically-held beliefs about the American Dream or corporate hierarchies on their constructed heads, but reinforces our fears about the media. That’s an odd combination.

That odd combination of thematic interests pairs well with a dark, demented lead character in theory, but I think the execution is a bit overwhelming in the Profit pilot episode. Most of the discourse about Profit focuses on how innovative or before its time the series was and while I don’t disagree with those assertions in most regards, I also think the series might get a little too much credit. Don’t get me wrong: Profit was ahead of its time and it did some things that audiences didn’t expect in 1996. Nevertheless, after watching this pilot, I get the indication that Profit, well, tried too hard. The thematic exploration is so dark and so dense and Jim Profit is so inherently awful, it is truly difficult to imagine anyone, outside of die-hard television fans, wanting to watch this series.

Sure, the series is something of a precursor to The Sopranos, The Shield and all the great television with the antihero protagonist that came after, but it also struggles in fundamental ways where those series succeeded. Tony Soprano is a pretty terrible person, but his flaws are visible and in most regards, relatable. The audience might not admire or strive to be Tony, but they can at least understand his issues and complexities. Profit doesn’t give you that chance. It asks you to follow someone who has complexity, but those additional layers apparently lead to more evil. Jim Profit might be more interesting than Tony Soprano at first, but he’s also sort of impenetrable. You don’t really care about him, one way or another.

Post-Profit antihero-led programs knew that you needed an element of sympathy and/or empathy at play. That’s why most of the great series led by antiheroes have families. Tony has a family. Vic Mackey has a family. Walter White has a family. By the end of the pilot, we’ve learned that Jim Profit tried to kill his father and then finished the job and he used to bang his step-mother. Those aren’t the kinds of familial bonds that create real, palpable tension and stakes. Profit hopes you’ll care more about watching its lead character take down relatively similar people, which isn’t untrue, but not enough to keep the story — or the lead character — engaging in the long run. 

Ultimately then, Profit exists more as a curious experiment for amorality and the antihero construction on television. It tried to do too much, too quickly and although the pilot compelled me, it didn’t exactly pull me in like so many of the series it supposedly impacted did. I’m not surprised it got canceled, at all.

–CB

Conclusions on legacy: Perhaps moderately overrated in terms of its lasting impact, but still a very curious experiment nonetheless 

The accused: 30 Rock, “The One With The Cast of Night Court” (Season 3, Episode 3)

The crime:  Embodying the big dangers with high-profile guest casting

Television’s failures are supposed to be obvious. From the overhyped non-starters that flop from the very beginning (hello, FlashForward, Lone Star) to the much-discussed clumsy conclusions of series we were convinced had it all planned out (nice to see you again, Battlestar Galactica), the medium’s big busts are right there in front of us. Whether because of low Nielsen ratings, terrible critical and fan response or something else entirely, the reaction to one episode often defines a series’ long-term legacy. But while we are often left wondering what it all means for the medium and for the industry when a series like Lone Star stumbles out of the gate or a series like Battlestar Galactica presents a controversial ending, those discourses tend to focus on disastrous beginnings and ill-conceived endings. But what about those mishaps that are not so obvious, the catastrophes that happen somewhere in the middle? How much impact, both positive and negative, can one bad episode have on an entire series? How do long-running series continue onward in the aftermath of an episodic failure? Is it possible that individual, episodic failures of television’s most respected series tell us more than the failings of a much-hyped about pilot or series finale? And how do we really define “failure” anyway?

These are just a few of the questions that I hope to answer with TV Surveillance’s new bi-weekly feature, #TVFail. In each entry, I will be taking a look at an individual episode of television that is considered a disappointment in some way. Maybe it was panned by critics and audiences, maybe it was lowly rated or maybe it was initially neither but has retroactively lost its more positive reputation. No matter the reason, this is a place where I will talk about the quiet failures of some of television’s best series. Here, I will talk about how and why these individual episodes came to represent “failure” and also discuss whether or not those definitions still apply today. The hope is that this feature will weave textual analysis and contextual and intertextual discourse together to create a compelling space for the discussion of televisual failure.

Hello, all! Welcome back to #TVFail. I have another hopefully-fun point of discussion for you folks today. From a few random conversations on Twitter, there might be a little resistance to my designation of this episode of 30 Rock as a failure, so I hope there is some discussion to come. Feel free to fire away in the comments.

Stunt casting is a fundamental part of the television industry. Stunt casting is a gimmick, a tactic that producers, studios and networks hope will help draw you into a series you’ve never watched before or back into something that you stopped caring about a few seasons ago. Along with the old controversial hot-button story tactic, stunt casting is right there on the front page of the network audience-baiting playbook. Of course, stunt casting is not a new or novel process and it certainly isn’t necessarily bad. If Paul Rudd guesting on a few episodes of Parks and Recreation pulls in a few more eyes (which apparently, it kind of did) and the series does something fun with him, I’m all for it.

But that last point I made, that’s what is most important in regard to stunt casting. Paul Rudd’s guest turn on Parks and Recreation works because the he’s a solid fit for the character, he’s a game performer and yet, there’s no real strain there. If Michael Schur and Greg Daniels couldn’t have gotten Rudd (say, the schedules didn’t work out) and they gave the job to Will Ferrell, well, that would have been terrible. And honestly, you’re now picturing Will Ferrell in that role and beating your head against the wall because you know that NBC probably could have – and would have – pushed that for that.

My problem isn’t with stunt casting as practice, but I do have an issue with contemporary network television, particularly in comedy, having an overreliance on the process. It’s a crutch. And when there doesn’t seem to be much of a diegetic reason for the character the famous guest is playing to exist, then my patience doesn’t hold up too long. I’m fully aware of the realities of the contemporary television business. I understand that certain programs could use a jolt of A- or high B-list energy to bring in some new viewers. But when the guest spot seems more manufactured for business reasons and it appears like the writing staff didn’t have much of an idea what to do with that person, my mind no longer cares about the realities of the business. I’m just mad that the episode I am watching sucks. So when NBC asked Will Ferrell to come on The Office last season, everyone quickly realized, after about six minutes of screen-time, that the network hoped Ferrell’s star power would keep viewers from running away once Steve Carell. Deangelo Vickers was legitimately one of the worst characters on all of television last year. His diegetic existence was not justified.

What is really curious to me is the proliferation of high-profile guest stars on comedies in particular. As I said, stunt casting isn’t new (The Love Boat practically existed to serve big guest star ends), but as with so many things, it sure feels like we can trace back our contemporary glut of major sitcom guest stars to NBC. Friends embedded famous guest stars into its narrative from very early on and by the end of the run, it was easier to talk about the big film players who hadn’t been on Friends than it was to discuss those that had. Will & Grace took a very similar approach during its time on the airwaves as well.

Oddly, neither of those series especially needed the slew of high-profile guest stars they used, considering both were substantial hits for basically the entirety of their respective runs. However, the process of using famous guest became so ingrained into the fabrics of these series that it sort of carried over to the entire NBC comedy brand, where I would argue that no network has used the guest stars as much over the last decade or so. CBS doesn’t need major guest stars (though they don’t completely shy away from them, obviously) and ABC is just now starting to keep quality comedies on the air (and Modern Family has used a handful of them already as well).

NBC is the spot for big name performers to guest on sitcoms. Unfortunately, whereas stunt casting worked as like the icing on the cake for the success of Friends and Will & Grace, NBC continues to think that this particular approach to casting is the direct path to success. They tried to prop up Scrubs with big guests. Fans of The Office are probably lucky Steve Carell became a star between seasons one and two or it would have been similarly full of major players before recently. I have to imagine that Jack Black and Owen Wilson were very warmly received, if not suggested for that season one episode of Community.

And in my opinion, nowhere has stunt casting been more obnoxious than on 30 Rock. Don’t get me wrong, the series’ premise immediately opens it up to a cavalcade of guest stars (who could even play themselves by the way), and there have been a great of guests that have worked quite well within the zany world of TGS and the barely-fictional representation of Rock Center. But the series’ third season became this weird perfect storm for major guest stars and I don’t think that it is any surprise that season three was the series’ creative low point.

NBC got a little lucky in 2008. The network planned a few Saturday Night Live Thursday specials to keep tabs on the heated presidential election and thankfully(?), Sarah Palin became the Republican nominee for Vice President. You know the rest: Tina Fey appeared on SNL and delivered a tremendous impression of Palin, and cue popular culture zeitgeist explosion. Tina Fey and Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin was everywhere and all of it served as accidental backdoor promotion for the slightly-delayed upcoming third season of the two-time Emmy winner for Outstanding Comedy Series, 30 Rock.

So Tina Fey was hotter than ever and 30 Rock was coming off an unbelievable but strike-shortened second season. The low-rated series was primed to gain some new viewers. However, the series already had many third season episodes in the can before all the Fey/Palin hoopla and those early episodes suggested that NBC had very little faith in its then-best comedy. The first four episodes of 30 Rock season three all had substantial guest stars: Megan Mullally*, Oprah, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Martin. We’ll never know if Tina Fey specifically wanted all these individuals, if NBC strongly suggested them or some combination of both, but we can see that somewhere along the line, it was decided big-named guest stars could get people to watch 30 Rock.

*In 2012, having Megan Mullally guest star on your sitcom isn’t a big move. In fact, if she doesn’t guest on your sitcom, you’re doing it wrong. But in 2008, she was still just a few years removed from Will & Grace and it was therefore a bit more impactful.

In the short-term, you could say that the decision paid off. The ratings for the season premiere were dramatically higher than those for any episode in season two. Across the board, 30 Rock’s third season is the highest-rated in the series’ history. You could give most of the credit to Tina Fey’s higher profile, to Sarah Palin, to the Emmy wins or to the guest stars, but the point is that the series reached its popular culture apex (quantitatively, anyway) in the fall of 2008.

Unfortunately, that apex also happened to coincide with the series’ creative nadir. “The One With The Cast of Night Court” is a great (read: miserable) representative of what happens when stunt guest casting goes awry. Will Ferrell’s time on The Office is probably still worse (if only because it lasted so much longer), but Jennifer Aniston’s appearance as Claire Harper is the first thing that pops into my head when I think of bad, shoehorned-in famous guest stars. The episode features the perfect combination of 30 Rock problems: Miscast guest stars and a focus on Jack’s love life.

I don’t want to turn this into a referendum on Aniston’s acting abilities or her star image because I think Aniston can be very effective in the right role and generally, I like her quite a bit. I totally understand why she’s America’s sweetheart. But Claire Harper is not the kind of role for her. This was clearly an attempt to step outside the Rachel Green rom-com box and I can appreciate that. But again, Claire Harper is not a good role for her.

One of the primary problems with the character and her placement within this episode is how she relates to Jack and Liz. Sitting aside the stale nature of the “old friend” conceit, there’s a weird energy to Aniston’s performance, which, I would argue, stems from her straining attempts to move away from Rachel Green, that doesn’t fit right with either Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon or Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy. 30 Rock is a zany, barely-real comedy most of the time, but there’s an underlying intelligence and warmth to Liz and Jack’s patter. Part of Claire’s intrigue is that she purposefully disrupts Jack’s control and walks over Liz, but that over-the-top energy simply doesn’t play well, even for half of a 21-minut episode.

Ultimately, Aniston’s presence on this episode of 30 Rock is just a mess. It’s hard not to feel like that Jeff Zucker came to Tina Fey, said “You’ve got Aniston” and the writing staff went with the easiest characterization. Then, compounded with Aniston’s tepid performance and well, sigh. Of course, she was nominated for an Emmy for this! Never change, Academy.

And as I suggested earlier, I think 30 Rock gets into trouble when it focuses so tightly on the love lives of either of its lead characters. Seasons three and four did this a whole bunch – many of which were portrayed by similarly high-profile performers – and again, it’s therefore probably no surprise that those seasons struggled to find footing with the critics who loved it in the first two seasons.

Aniston’s bad spot on 30 Rock highlights the tight-rope comedies need to walk with their guest stars. I guess 30 Rock deserves some props for not simply letting famous people come on and play themselves or character they’re very comfortable with, but when the guests miss, it’s kind of miserable. Aniston isn’t alone. Salma Hayek and Julianne Moore had their struggles at times as well as Jack love interests and I’m still not really sure how I feel about that one creepy time James Franco was on the series.

What’s especially odd is that within the exact same episode, 30 Rock gets something so weird so right. The Night Court reunion isn’t full of high-profile guests, but those actors (in those roles) evoke a lot of meaning for a whole lot of people. Also, like Aniston, the cast of Night Court has a direct connection to NBC and their history, something that 30 Rock uses as a device very often. I’m not sure if the Night Court plotline worked much better than Aniston’s guest spot simply because the guest was asked to basically act like themselves/their characters or because their diminished profile makes it a little harder to read so much into their performance choices. Perhaps the lack of a clear answer* proves how random guest casting, especially when big names are involved, can be.

*The one probable clear answer: Aniston was just not good.

Armed with that knowledge, it’s much easier to watch Touch. It’s also easier to chuckle at Touch and its pretentions, its false grandeur and its dense simplicity masquerading as great depth. If you’ve seen Kring’s pilot for Heroes, you probably quickly started having PSTD flashbacks during Touch’s preview showing last night. Hackneyed voiceovers, a worldwide focus, coincidence posing as fate and the sense that evolution is changing the world right underneath our noses, it’s all here. Even the score follows that simultaneously stirring and annoying (because it’s in every scene) pattern that eventually caused Heroes fans to drink themselves into thinking everything would be fine.

There’s no question that if this pilot were produced and aired in a vacuum, it would be a lot easier to appreciate. I totally understand why Kiefer Sutherland chose this script for his quick return to television. Martin Bohm isn’t Jack Bauer, at least at the beginning here. They’re both broken men, but have reacted to their struggles in completely different ways. Whereas Jack’s damaged past and consistent pain allowed him to turn into an efficient killing machine of vaguely-Middle Eastern and Russian terrorists, Martin is just struggling. His job sucks. His autistic son has never talked to him. His wife is dead. He has no money. In some ways, Martin is a more admirable guy than Jack because he’s barely keeping his family together despite awful circumstances.

Nevertheless, Kiefer Sutherland is really, really good here. I’ve seen every episode of 24, many of them multiple times, but the last season (and really the last few) sucked the life out the character and his performance a bit, so I forgot just how big of a television performer he is. Kring’s script calls for him to eventually start running around and yelling, but it’s in the final few minutes where Kiefer shines. He helps make Kring’s manipulative “conclusion” go down a lot smoother than it has any business going. Whether you ever watch an episode of Touch again or at all, just remember this when Kiefer gets nominated for an Emmy for his work here (and someone like Damian Lewis of Homeland gets shoved out).

Moreover, there are beats and moments in this pilot that work quite well. Again, Kring isn’t dangerous just because he sucks, he’s dangerous because he knows how to make the best kind of sucky television out there. The global, multi-thread story recalls Heroes but also recent films like Babel,* and even though Kring telegraphs much of what’s to come in the episode’s final act, it still kind of works anyway. The young Middle Eastern man’s story was probably the most compelling and even though it was absolutely the most manipulative, I felt a small tug on my heart strings when the guy looking for his lost phone finally revealed why and then just happened to be in the right place at the right time so that he could see the missing pictures of his daughter on giant screens in a massive metropolitan city. Sorry, I had to type that in italics so you could recognize the contrived nature of it all.

*I cannot wait until Kring comes out and says that he’s never seen Babel and he’s insulted that you do not trust his ability to come up with novel ideas.

But nonetheless, in a single 50-minute chunk, the ridiculous, coincidence/fate storytelling device works fine. The scene where Sutherland’s Martin listens to a message from Titus Welliver’s character, a man he keeps running into somehow, and learns that this man happened to be the one who tried to save his dead wife on 9/11*, is pretty great. It’s stupid, entirely manufactured and passed off as supremely powerful, but it’s still kind of great. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why Tim Kring is so dangerous.**

*Honestly, it should be illegal for Tim Kring to evoke 9/11 in anything. I’m not sure, but I think the phrase “the worst of both worlds” was created just for this combination. IT IS FATE.

**It’s important to point out that Kring’s suggestion that Jake’s autism actually gives him a quasi-super power and makes him extra-super-duper special is sufficiently insulting to anyone with a pulse. Not to mention just stupid as a plot-point. His obsession with evolution scares me a little bit.

Despite Touch’s dumb successes (and Sutherland’s legitimately good performance), we’ve been down this road before. And I’m guessing not too many people want to be tricked by the guy who put his lead characters on Heroes through the same stories for three straight seasons for deciding that his big idea to solve the story was TRAVELING CIRCUS. Even more so than the opening salvo of Heroes, Touch doesn’t feel like it can succeed moving forward. Kring’s reliance on repetition completely aside, this isn’t a story that can work in the long haul. I mean, I liked Early Edition just fine when I was eight years old (Kyle Chandler! That cat! Fisher Stevens!) and tolerated Mercury Rising. I’m not sure I, or anyone, needs 60 episodes of Kiefer solving crimes, pretending not to evoke Jack Bauer characteristics and discovering that we’re all, actually connected. But I can’t wait for that traveling circus.

Over the holidays, I spent a substantial amount of time watching television with my parents (as you do). My parents don’t have the most refined television tastes (and they’ll be the first to admit it), but I was surprised to see that some of the obnoxious reruns of CSI: Miami they used to watch all the time had been replaced by the likes of Pawn Stars, Storage Wars and American Pickers. I never thought they’d get away from David Caruso’s melting face, and I certainly didn’t expect them to shack up with basic cable quasi-documentary reality programming in the great Caruso’s absence.

But as I watched my parents watch these kinds of programs, I began to realize that they saw something in the likes of Storage Wars and American Pickers that I had sort of thought about before, but not really considered in a larger context: These are series that celebrate “normal” people working. Sure, the portrayal of labor in Pawn Stars or Storage Wars isn’t holistically realistic; it’s obviously edited, manipulated and crafted to fit within the constraints of a typical 22-minute block of programming. Nevertheless, for a great deal of television viewers in this country, those people like my parents who might be a little older and who don’t know what The A.V. Club is or who the hell Alan Sepinwall is, these series and so many more like them represent the power of individual labor and the success that comes from it. This interests me a great deal.

Of course, my parents are not alone in their love for these series. Last week, Pawn Stars (2, 3), American Pickers (7), Storage Wars (8, 11) and Gold Rush (10) all were among the top 12 most-watched series on basic cable. Half of the top 10 series last week were what I call “labor reality programs.”

And even though they might not have been in the top 25 most-watched series on basic cable, there are a boatload of other labor reality programs that keep networks afloat. Here are the ones I could come up with just through cursory research: American Restoration, Hardcore Pawn, Auction Kings, Storage Hunters, Auction Hunters, Oddities, Mounted in Alaska, Ice Pilots, Ax Men, Big Shrimpin’, Ice Road Truckers, IRT: Deadliest Roads, American Loggers, Saw Dogs, Deadliest Catch, Dirty Jobs, Storm Chasers, Swamp Loggers, Sons of Guns, Treasure Quest, Verminators, South Beach Tow, Operation Repo, Black Gold, Bear Swamp Recovery, Lizard Lick Towing, Shipping Wars, Manhunters: Fugitive Task Force, Dog The Bounty Hunter.

There are probably literally hundreds of other series I’m not thinking of and that doesn’t even include things like Cake Boss, NY Ink or any other barely-real program on TLC and similar cable networks. The point I’m trying to make that I think you obviously see is that this labor-centric format has been especially lucrative for television networks. Some of these series are more “real” than others (many, like Hardcore Pawn, are quite ridiculous) and the barometer for success is very small on basic cable, but the fact that all the series I listed are still airing or are scheduled to air new episodes tells us that viewers care about labor reality programs.

As a culture, I think we’ve always been interested in sneaking a peak at worlds we would never experience in our own lives. That leads us to space, alternate realities and all sorts of places that perhaps only the imagination can concoct. That sort of escapism cannot be underestimated and it is often celebrated by the media. At the same time though, we are similarly excited to celebrate the everyday and the typical and I would argue, we are especially excited to celebrate the “normal” people who make this world tick (and who we still might not ever be able to meet, for dozens of reasons).

In a lot of ways, I think this is why so many of our television series are built around normal jobs – police, lawyers, doctors, office workers, etc. The labor-centric narrative provides a solid, stable framework to create each episode and the first three allow writers to PUT LIVES IN JEOPARDY, but there’s also something to be said for our desire to latch on to people doing a job. Fictional cops and doctors aren’t often that relatable to our local beat cop or family physician, but the codes are there, the familiarity is there.

Reality television producers figured out that they could offer audiences something even better: “Real” people doing even more “real” jobs. Some of the jobs might be especially dangerous (Deadliest Catch comes to mind here) and therefore not anymore relatable than Doctor House or Horatio Cane.* And some of the labor reality programs might be so heavily edited and stuffed full of shockingly unreal footage that it’s hard to say the individuals starring in them are still laborers (in the traditional sense) and not simply performers.  But still, the allure of seeing “real” people doing “real” jobs, presumably because they literally need to – as in, it is how they make a living – is quite strong in our culture.

*I guess one could certainly argue that the difficulty of the job has less impact on the “relatability” of the people doing said job. When people from The Deadliest Catch have died, the outpour of support and emotion has been substantial, suggesting that people really care and relate to those guys just as much, if not more, as they would anyone else.

What’s interesting to me about this boom in labor reality programs is, well, the timing. Some of the series I listed have been around for a while and going back even further, we can come up with examples like Cops that highlight our desire to watch “real” people make a difference in the world through their profession. Yet, most of the labor reality programs I did provide came on the air within the last few years and generally speaking, there’s been an increase in the amount of programs coming to airwaves that follow the labor reality program format. In short, there’s a trend here.

We could definitely identify a few basic industrial factors for this boom. Basic cable networks are a part of a highly competitive market and one that’s predicated on copying the success of your competitors. Plus, making a labor reality program cannot be too expensive. “Inexpensive” plus “solid chance to succeed” are two phrases all networks all looking for in 2012. And I am sure these are absolutely true for the folks running A&E, History, Discovery and all those networks bunched right together on everyone’s cable packages.

However, the current cultural and socioeconomic circumstances make the success of these series especially interesting. If we have always enjoyed taking a peak into the lives of normal citizens doing their part to keep our nation running, our recent obsession with labor reality programs takes our interest a few steps further. I would argue that our desire to see more labor-based reality programming is directly tied to our fears about the state of the economy, our jobs and the future. More than ever, the “real” people doing “real” things are worth celebrating. Not only are they doing interesting things to keep the world a-spinnin’, but they literally still have a job.

In 2012, there’s no guarantee that anyone can get a job. President Obama just gave his State of the Union address and talked about job creation and that’s all wonderful in theory, but I and millions of other people in this country are terrified that there aren’t actually jobs out there. We want to be laborers, but cannot. But then, television is full of laborers and not just fictional ones who work in ridiculously heightened environments. In that sense, watching television programs about people doing labor reminds us that our country still even has labor and people still have the capability to work.

We like to think about television and all media as an escape, a way to get away from our problems. There’s certainly lots of truth to that, so when people write stories about 3D Blockbusters saving us from the dregs of our broken political system and fractured economy, it makes sense. However, in this instance, I think television viewership is telling us something else entirely. We might be “escaping” into jobs that we could never personally have, but we’re still latching on to people and ideals that we believe are supposed to power our society. Watching something like Deadliest Catch reinforces our cultural beliefs about labor, about masculinity and even about America as a whole. It tells us that despite the current slump, there are remnants of the kind of society and kind of people we once had and will likely need again. Real people, doing real jobs.*

*There’s definitely something to be said for the demographics of what’s popular on basic cable. Youths are latching on to Jersey Shore and the generally older audiences are powering the success of Pawn Stars and American Pickers. You could probably say that they’re holding on to the greatness of a country that we will never be again, but I think A.) We should always strive to be the best, whatever that means and B.) The series are smart to evoke ideals like history and masculinity; they play well with the target audience. 

I’m short on time again today, but I wanted to put down a few short thoughts on last night’s Justified.

If you were to say that Justified had one weakness in its first two seasons (primarily in its first, though), it would be how the series handled the supporting characters who work with Raylan in the Marshalls office. Art, Tim and Rachel are all portrayed by fine actors and when given solid material, they’ve been able to make the characters seem fairly formed. After next to nothing in the first season, Graham Yost clearly made it a directive to establish these characters and the office a bit more in the early goings of season two. But after a while, it seemed like Yost and the writing staff stopped caring about the Marshalls office and moved on to the season’s big villains. Art had more to do than Tim and Rachel, but his role was certainly diminished as the focus turned to Harlan and the Bennett clan.

It’s sort of odd that Justified has been able to integrate all sorts of great villains, both big and small, into the narrative, but struggled to make characters who were part of the story from the beginning that engaging or deep. Yet now, here we are at the beginning of season three, and the writers are trying to make it work again. “Cut Ties” is an episode that doesn’t really rely on Raylan (more on this in a second), and instead focuses more tightly on Art. And although Art is already the most developed of the Marshall characters, episodes like this, especially at the beginning of the season when the long arc is clearly on the slow-cooker, are an easy, smart way for Justified to deepen its already-fantastic world.

“Cut Ties” focuses on Art using a fairly easy device in that an old work friend of his gets murdered by a dirty WitSec candidate, but simple is good in this case. Nick Searcy brings a lot of grizzled charm to the role anyway and giving him the lead position on the week’s case is an effective way to show just a little more about Art as a person. He’s not a lame, incompetent boss character like a lesser series would use to play foil to Raylan. Instead, we know that Art is actually fantastic at his job (and it’s usually Raylan being the incompetent one) and the way he quickly outsmarts and then intimidates the devious Poe was very well done and well-played by Searcy.

The series tried a very similar approach with Tim and Rachel last season and was less successful, but perhaps Yost and company have figured out that the best way to let these characters develop is to separate them from Raylan a little bit. In those episodes last year, Raylan was right there with Tim and Rachel and I’m guessing the audience was too fixated on what he’d do, making the supporting players still pale in the comparison. That’s just a thought, and perhaps we’ll see that from Justified in the coming weeks.

One of the really interesting things about this season and this episode is how much focus there is on characters who aren’t Raylan. He’s clearly still the main character and he has all sorts of complicated problems going on in his personal life,* but the series is now full of so many compelling secondary characters and continues to bring in even more of them, that Raylan no longer needs to dominate the action. Art had his fun little plot and this episode also spent a good deal of time with Boyd in prison and introducing Carla Gugino’s barely-veiled Karen Sisco and Mykelti Williamson’s Limehouse. Boyd plotting in prison and Limehouse’s intro were much better than Karen’s place within the episode, but the series’ commitment to establishing dozens of characters in this world is great in the short-term and particularly useful for the series’ long-term health. After two episodes, I still miss Mags and Margo Martindale quite a bit, but I appreciate how hard the series is working to make me quickly care about the slew of other dangers out there for Raylan. And of course, building up all these other villains only makes it more satisfying when Raylan takes them down at the end of the season.

*I have to say that the scene with Raylan unloading all his Winona-related problems onto to Boyd was absolutely tremendous. I could watch an entire series that only centered on the two of them sitting in a room, talking to one another. If Yost needs to save some money on the budget, he should ABSOLUTELY consider a bottle episode that starts there. It would be the best thing ever.

Ultimately, whether if it is an episode built around Art, Tim or Rachel or the introduction of new villains, Justified continues to do solid work in making sure this is not a series built around one compelling lead character and a whole lot of less important or interesting supporting players. Too many contemporary series fall victim to this, but Justified’s ability to rise above it goes a long way in making the series one of the best there is.

You may or may not know this, but I am in the midst of completing my MA thesis on USA Network and the “Characters Welcome” brand campaign (among other things). I say this to point out that I have spent a good deal of time with USA Network’s slate of programming over the past year or so. I have watched at least a half-dozen episodes of every series USA Network has aired in the “Characters Welcome” era (which began in 2005) and while I’ve come to a number of hopefully intelligent and useful deductions in the thesis project itself, I wanted to discuss something a bit more broad and related to the typical work I do here on TVS, something that came to mind as I was editing a chapter this past weekend.

My thought is this: White Collar is far and away the best scripted program USA Network has aired in the “Characters Welcome” era (and likely ever, I don’t have much of a connection to Le Femme Nikita or Silk Stockings, but your mileage on Pacific Blue may very). I like a number of the network’s sunny, escapist, but not frivolous fare (Burn Notice and Psych in particular), yet there are a number of reasons that help make White Collar the best of them all. Some of those quality traits happened on purpose and at least one might have been luck. However, the point still remains.

I would argue (and do in my thesis, in case you care *) that in all USA Network programming, you can find three things: An emphasis  on the lead Character(s) – marked with the capital-C as a short-hand way to define USA Network’s unique, skilled individuals – a breezy, escapist atmosphere and a reliance on the kind of never-ending quest narrative arcs that I have written about here on the web site before. There are other important elements of the USA Network brand and programming formula, but those are the three most important, I would argue.

*You don’t.

Generally speaking, USA Network’s series use these elements together in mostly the same ways. Psych might be more overtly comedic than Royal Pains and Burn Notice might be more interested in using the ongoing quest arc as a device than either of those former series, but the similarities are still readily present across USA Network’s stable of scripted content. I’m not here to declare this formulaic pattern as a failure or a success (though there is no way to declare anything but a success from a development and ratings perspective), or to claim that White Collar succeeds above everything else on USA Network because it ignores this formula. The same patterns are visible within White Collar just the same. But what makes it succeed above everything else on USA Network are the subtle, but important wrinkles Jeff Eastin and his writing staff add to the formula.

Although White Collar places much of the focus on its lead Characters, attempts to celebrate fun, style and general coolness and the search for answers to whatever that (half) season’s big question is, the series works on another level because it takes those three typical USA Network elements and complicates them much further than the rest of the network’s lot.

For a smooth-talking criminal mastermind, Neal Caffrey is a legitimately complex individual. Neal, like all USA Network Characters, wants to do the right thing, help those in need and solve the big mysteries that haunt him (like who killed Kate or why she was killed, etc.), but unlike most other USA Network Characters, Neal also has depth past those three initial traits. Burn Notice’s Michael is the only other Character that comes close to Neal on the compelling scale, and Michael is a fairly straight-forward guy: He wants to find out who/how/why he was burned and he wants to save people.

Neal is a surprisingly complex and curious person whose journey between both sides of the law continually alters his perspective on everything from the case of the week to what kind of personal ideologies he wants to follow. His desire to do the right thing is always in conflict with his similar desire to show off just how smart and cunning he can be. You get the sense that each decision to go one way or the other actually matters for Neal, and for those around him. It rarely feels like his actions are manipulated by the writers to create larger tensions and in the one case that it was, when it appeared he broke Peter’s trust and stole the treasure, the writers quickly made great strides in exploring his inner conflict, as if they were paying penance for such a dumb cliffhanger by giving the audience quality character shading.

Keeping with the Characters for a moment, White Collar does a very solid job of developing those around Neal more than the typical USA Network offering. Peter deserves more than “supporting” character billing, but he, Elizabeth and Mozzie are all more fleshed out than one might expect from a basic cable procedural. More importantly, I feel like we learn more about White Collar’s characters through their actions than some of the forced plotting that other USA Network series try. For example, Burn Notice doesn’t necessary “develop” Sam Axe unless there’s a case built around one of his old buddies and those situations, while often entertaining, almost require a slew of needless exposition about Sam’s time with them in Columbia or whatever.

And with more developed, complex Characters, White Collar is able to surpass the usual escapist, lightweight rhythms of the USA Network brand by pushing the narrative forward and making sure that those forward developments actually impact Neal, Peter and sometimes other individuals as well. Whereas so many of USA Network’s series drag out big narrative questions across entire series runs (hello, Monk) and only stop to provide temporary answers that create false stakes (hola, Burn Notice and Suits), White Collar’s narrative has moved at a sufficient pace. Season one was a bit weighed down by all the Kate drama and I thought the last-second swerve suggesting Neal gamed Peter over the treasure at the end of season two created all sorts of issues, but at least the story moved forward in a purposeful manner. When the series began, I assumed the whole story would be about Kate. Thankfully, that did not happen.

Again though, while I might have some problems with what or how the series built to specific twists or cliffhangers, White Collar knows how to make me understand why those twists or cliffhangers were needed on a Character level. Kate’s death forced Neal to re-evaluate a path he had already begun to re-evaluate before she went boom and ending up with the treasure caused all sorts of internal strife as to what kind of person Neal actually wanted to be (I’m thinking of the great, albeit on-the-nose line from Peter: “You can either be a con or a man, you can’t be both.”). And once Neal finally decided to tell Peter about the treasure once Elizabeth was captured, Peter’s enraged reaction was legitimately powerful. Tim DeKay did a tremendous job with those scenes, but past events and the nature of that relationship meant Peter’s anger came from this complicated place of hurt, confusion and admiration. By the end of the episode, everything didn’t go back to normal just because Elizabeth was saved, either. Neal’s choices have an impact; they alter his future and his relationships in the present.

Overall, White Collar‘s focus on Character development and relationships has a strong influence on the entire series. There’s a sense of heart and emotion to the proceedings that isn’t really present across any other USA Network program or on few other procedurals on television. We can tell that the people actually care about one another and when the plot dictates that they do stupid or awful things to one another, the narrative doesn’t let it go. The story moves forward, but the relationships have to struggle to do so in the same fashion.

I would never suggest that White Collar presents us the kind of character depth that we see in television’s great dramas. However, I would argue that the series is much better at developing its leads and using narrative progression to reflect the importance of Character relationships than anyone gives it credit for. Perhaps the series lucked into some of this thanks to the fantastic casting of Matthew Bomer and Tim DeKay, who are really quite wonderful as individual performers* and as a pair, but the writing is still proficient and strong in areas that most series of its ilk really are not. Characters aren’t just welcome on White Collar, they actually matter too.

*DeKay and Bomer are probably the two best individual actors on USA Network, right? Mary McCormack is strong and Patrick J. Adams is a SAG nominee after all, but I don’t really see anyone else on the network who turns in as strong as work on a consistent basis as these two.

Test Pilot #34 and #35: Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared

Debut date: September 25, 1999 and September 25, 2011

Series legacy(ies): Two of the most beloved and respected short series of all-time

Welcome back to Test Pilot guys and gals! With that extra-special Joss Whedon Theme Week behind us, it’s time to fall back into the typical, but still lovely rhythms of the feature. Today, we kick off a new theme that will carry us into mid-March: One-season wonders.

Most series crash and burn before a prospective second season, but there are some that stick in our mind many years after cancellation. There is a large fascination with television series that only manage to produce a single season (often at a short order at that) before they are chopped down by “the man.” We are compelled by the possibilities and the what could have been for programs that projected all sorts of promise and upside but were never actually able to cash in on either. This theme hopes to explore some of the most celebrated one-season wonders and consider what, exactly, made audiences latch on to them so spectacularly.

We kick off the one-season wonder theme with a double-shot of realistic youth angst in Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. NBC and FOX both took these Judd Apatow productions out for a spin and unsurprisingly, mistreated both with odd scheduling and out-of-order episodes. Using our best friend hindsight, you have to imagine that more than a decade later, both networks are kicking themselves for ditching series that starred the likes of James Franco, Jason Segel, Seth Rogen, Charlie Hunnam, Busy Phillips, Linda Cardenllini and Monica Keena. Okay, maybe not that last one. But she was the “star” of Freddy Versus Jason! Thus, we convene to discuss Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared and try to make as few jokes at the expense of misguided network executives.

Joining me today is Josh Spiegel. Josh is a textbook example of a pop-culture obsessive. He’s been a film buff since he was a kid watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and ever since he watched The West Wing and appreciated what TV could do, he’s been just as avid a fan of small-screen fare. After growing up in Western New York, he moved to Arizona where he studied creative writing and film for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Now, he lives in the West Valley of Phoenix with his wife and five cats. (Two more and he can be just like the cat lady on The Simpsons.) In between his day job, teaching creative writing online, and devouring as many TV series and movies as possible, Josh also hosts Mousterpiece Cinema, a podcast where Josh delivers in-depth reviews of Disney movies once a week. You can follow him on Twitter and listen to Mousterpiece Cinema via iTunes or at the series’ host website, Sound on Sight.

The thought that Judd Apatow, in just a few days, could be a Best Picture Oscar nominee for the hit comedy Bridesmaids may seem ridiculous to many people, Mr. Apatow among them. Whatever your opinion of Bridesmaids or its Oscar chances, it’s heartening to think that after so many failed projects, so many works that got ignored by the majority of American audiences, Judd Apatow has been the most powerful force in mainstream comedy for the last 6 or 7 years and may get an Oscar nod to add to such legitimacy. He’s been an influential figure for years, but his personal stamp has been clearest in the projects where he’s most involved. Funny People, for example, is a movie that divided audiences thanks in part to its splintered story, but in paying clear homage to the filmography of James L. Brooks, Apatow furthered his vision of mixing highbrow domestic drama with lowbrow stoner comedy.

Of course, some people have known what kind of auteur Judd Apatow is for years. He started out writing for the single-season, funny-but-scattered Fox sketch show The Ben Stiller Show. He’d go on to write for The Larry Sanders Show in the mid-1990s, but the first time Apatow got a chance to take the helm on a TV series was as executive producer of NBC’s 1999 one-season wonder, Freaks and Geeks. After its untimely end, Apatow jumped back to Fox, for another one-season wonder, Undeclared. Combined, the series had 35 episodes; these programs are the textbook definition of “brilliant, but cancelled.” Enough fans were passionate about both that the series got jam-packed DVD releases from Shout! Factory, but still, people are “discovering” Freaks and Geeks or Undeclared. (Clarification: I am not one of these people. I was an ardent teenage fan of both series and was heartbroken when each got axed.)

Twelve years and a decade, respectively, after Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared finished their truncated seasons, it’s easy to watch their pilot episodes and marvel at how damn young all of its actors, these future stars, look. Why, on Freaks and Geeks, it’s Oscar host and nominee James Franco as king of the William McKinley High School freaks! And there are his buddies, a charmingly gawky Jason Segel and dry-as-a-bone Seth Rogen! On Undeclared, there’s the fresh-faced Charlie Hunnam from Sons of Anarchy, watching lead actor Jay Baruchel try to get a frizzy-haired Jenna Fischer to come to their floor party!

It’s easy to play this “Where Are They Now?” game, because one thing Judd Apatow has always been very good at is casting the right people for his projects. If any of the actors on Freaks and Geeks had shown up on other TV series or in movies, I wouldn’t have known as I sat down to watch it on September 25, 1999. Not only does each young actor on the series fit with his or her character, but there are never any false notes. The series’ casting director, Allison Jones, had then (and still has) a great eye for placing the best possible actor in the best possible role.

Jones, of course, was given a lot of help in the pilot episode’s script, written by the series’ creator, Paul Feig. Feig is known now for his directing gigs on series such as The Office, Arrested Development, and even Mad Men; of course, his most recent achievement is as director of that potential Oscar nominee Bridesmaids. I mentioned this on Twitter as I watched the Freaks and Geeks pilot, but as happy as I am to see him showered with plaudits for his behind-the camera work, I want to see a Paul Feig-written movie or TV series, and soon. Though the Emmys didn’t acknowledge most of its achievements, they did rightly nominate Feig’s script for the Freaks and Geeks pilot. There are many reasons why the series is held in such high regard by so many people; the writing is, I’d argue, its strongest attribute.

The economy of the writing in this episode is what’s most impressive. Feig is introducing a big new world to the audience, and though many of the characters inhabiting that world fit into basic clichés—the title of the series makes this extremely clear—he gives dimension to most of them in a 45-minute pilot without feeling rushed, heavy-handed, or forced. Not everyone gets their due—a few characters, such as the girls in tow with freak Kim Kelly as she bullies young geek Sam Weir, are very much on-the-sidelines—but considering how most pilot episodes are either devoid of any character development and plot or filled with smoke and mirrors to obscure a lack of a good story, the Freaks and Geeks pilot can proudly stand alongside other great modern network pilots that dispense important information smoothly and effectively, like Lost or Arrested Development.

The two leads of the series, each representing a half of the title, are siblings Lindsay and Sam Weir, portrayed by Linda Cardellini and John Francis Daley. In the cold open, which is this close to being a long, unbroken take, we watch as the younger sibling, Sam, is pushed around by a more intimidating classmate until Lindsay, who’s first seen literally on the fringes watching both the freaks and geeks, comes to his unwanted rescue. Lindsay’s journey through the pilot takes her from the bleachers to a classmate’s drum-laden garage to the school dance. Sam’s takes him from the hellish high-school locales that make some kids quiver with fear—the gym and cafeteria—to that same dance. I hadn’t watched the Freaks and Geeks pilot in a few years, so I’d forgotten that the closing dance scene, set to Styx’s “Come Sail Away,” is uplifting and sweet. All I remembered, quite clearly, is the scene that may have turned off some new viewers: Lindsay trying to defend a mentally challenged classmate named Eli, which leads to Eli breaking his arm after falling off the school bleachers.

I don’t believe we hear Eli’s bones crack as he awkwardly slams onto the ground after running away, but we don’t need to. Some half-hour comedies, such as Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Office, have excelled at creating scenes that are intentionally excruciating to watch, but I’m not sure that anything Larry David, Michael Scott, or David Brent ever did on those programs tops this scene’s sheer agony. Of course, the major difference is that if you’re just cringing watching this scene, not laughing afterward. Lindsay, played masterfully by Cardellini, never seems comfortable in her own skin; by this point in the episode, she’s asked Eli to the dance for mostly selfish reasons. She wants her well-meaning, know-nothing parents to leave her alone; she wants the freaks to accept her even though Kim Kelly makes an incisive comment about her rebelling against her parents; she wants to prove her worth as a person to someone; and she wants nothing to do with old friends like Millie, a goody-two-shoes who wants Lindsay to return to the mathlete fold.

The problem is that Lindsay has no idea how to get what she wants, and when she acts, she only makes things worse. Eli breaks his arm because he doesn’t believe he’s “retarded.” (I should note here that Eli is played by Ben Foster. I’d never seen him act before, so it either speaks to my gullibility as a viewer or his talent that I assumed he was mentally handicapped when I first saw this episode in 1999.) Lindsay only says he is “retarded” to try and explain why the two boys sitting next to him on the bleachers, as they mock him for not knowing whether or not Jimmy Carter’s a good president, are jerks. She has good intentions, but realizes just a moment too soon that she’s out of her depth.

Regarding the acting on display here, I recently read a comment where Apatow said Linda Cardellini is the best actress he’s ever worked with, and a pivotal scene between Lindsay and Sam makes that all too clear. Sam wants to know why Lindsay has been acting so strange after shunning her brainy roots, and she reveals that she was profoundly affected by their grandmother’s dying  words: that she couldn’t see Heaven or any bright light as death enveloped her. Sam also wants Lindsay to encourage him about an impending fight; after all this, her response, “Yeah. He’s a goner,” is heartbreaking in its delivery. Cardellini is the standout of the episode, but there’s a reason why most of these actors are still working: they’re all ridiculously talented performers, each with depth that would be revealed throughout the series’ sole season.

Sam’s trials and tribulations are a bit more commonplace than his sister’s, falling under most high-school-movie/TV tropes. He’s got a bad crush on one of the prettiest girls in the school, Cindy Sanders, and that bully from the opening of the episode is hounding him at every opportunity. Sam is also extremely awkward, as are his best friends, Neal Schweiber and Bill Haverchuck; as an example, one setpiece in the episode has them unable to fend off all of the jocks in a particularly vicious game of dodgeball.

The key difference is that Sam, Neal, and Bill seem a lot more comfortable as geeks than Lindsay feels as a freak, or freak-geek hybrid. Before Sam is pushed around in that opening scene, he and his buddies are gleefully reenacting scenes from Caddyshack. Later on, at dinner with his parents, Sam eagerly tells his polite-if-baffled dad that Monty Python and the Holy Grail would be showing soon at the local theater. (Sam deserves a medal for having such good taste in comedy.) And sure, Sam has a thing for a girl who’s in a different social circle and would end up being a bad fit for him, but you get the sense that he likes who he is, even if everyone else has a problem with it.

The issue of embracing identity is shared in both Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, but there’s something much more universal and moving about the conflicts in the former program. Undeclared has Judd Apatow’s touch in a more clearly evident fashion, as he’s the sole credited writer on the pilot of this single-camera comedy. I may not have wondered how similar or different the characters on this series were to those on Freaks and Geeks when I sat down to watch this pilot on September 25, 2001. (It’s coincidental that this series began airing literally 2 years after Freaks and Geeks, but weird all the same.) I did, however, draw those comparisons frequently while watching the pilot episode this time.

I couldn’t help but compare Steven Karp and Lizzie Exley, as they have sex on their first night in a dorm room at the University of Northeastern California, to Sam and Lindsay Weir. The comparison of Steven to Sam is, I think, something that can’t be helped. As played by Jay Baruchel, Steven seems like Sam, if he was a college freshman in 2001. The episode opens on Steven trying to psych himself up by assuming that a new haircut and clothes can turn him into a cooler person, someone with whom everyone at UNEC will want to hang out. It’s no surprise that, even after a crazy first day that includes sex and a party, he’s still the same dorky guy, just with a loud shirt and Matthew Perry-esque mane.

The Lizzie/Lindsay comparison may be weaker, but some elements are hard to ignore. Lizzie is more upbeat and chipper; in her first scene with Steven, her bouncy personality is more physically intimidating him than her looks. But she has a clingy, older boyfriend played by Segel; we see his face in photos, but only hear him over the phone, as he jumps from mopiness to jealousy. In some way, I imagined this as an alternate-universe version of the relationship between Lindsay and Nick on Freaks and Geeks. Lindsay might not have taken Nick being clingy, but I wasn’t able to stop myself making that connection. Hindsight also helps here; knowing that Segel’s fractured off-screen relationship with Cardellini would fuel him to write Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and hearing him as this loser of a guy desperate to keep a girl who wants to be more independent and cool, it’s hard not to wonder how much of that real coupling inspired this fictional one. Lizzie is less unsure of who she wants to be than Lindsay is, but her goofy charms match that of Cardellini in that dance with Eli.

Judd Apatow all but invites these comparisons when he brings over cast members from Freaks and Geeks to Undeclared. And not just folks like Seth Rogen and Jason Segel; Lizzy Caplan, now known for her work on the excellent Party Down, shows up in both pilots and has, maybe, two lines combined! The cross-pollination was partly because Apatow knew he had acting talent to spare, but when you put Rogen in a new chubby-comic-relief role, I can’t help but think of Ken eating lunch in the smoking area on Freaks and Geeks, dryly asking Lindsay, “I don’t know. What ARE you going to do?”

Undeclared is a more low-key and less emotionally satisfying series than Freaks and Geeks, if we’re looking specifically at the pilot. With only 22 minutes, Apatow barely tries to bring drama into the situation. The closest he gets is with Steven’s tearful reaction to the news that his parents will be getting a divorce; this reaction partially leads to his hookup with Lizzie, but its triumphant aftermath is comically short-lived. I don’t mean to say that because Undeclared is strictly a comedy, it’s less successful than Freaks and Geeks. The strongest element of Freaks and Geeks, from its pilot all the way to its bittersweet finale, is that each character is given more humanity than you would expect. Undeclared has a similar love for the characters populating its world, but in the pilot, the majority of the supporting characters get little shading.

Freaks and Geeks, however, is bursting at the seams with humanity. Though we might not get a clear vision of it from the pilot, even the first hour’s antagonists, Alan and Kim, would be shown as real people in future episodes, not caricatures. What that pilot gives us are three-dimensional characters, especially in Lindsay. She redeems herself for what happens to Eli at the dance, as they goofily gyrate to the fast-paced part of the Styx song, but in that moment on the bleachers, we’re not watching a type, we’re watching a full-blooded character. Each character in the universe Paul Feig and Judd Apatow created would become just as fully realized, and most are halfway there by the end of the first hour. Undeclared has more modest goals, and while its pilot is enjoyable to watch, I longed for it to be more ambitious. But when you’re working on a follow-up to one of the classic modern network programs, it’s awfully easy to miss the mark just a bit.

–JS

And now my thoughts on both Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared:

Josh did a fantastic job of exploring some similarities between Geeks and Undeclared in his portion of the piece, but one of the things he didn’t really touch on in detail that rings so true with both of these pilots and their series’ ultimate failure is how realistic they are. I’ve talked a lot about the varying degrees of “real”-ness on television in this space before, so I hope you don’t mind that I bring it up here. What makes both of these pilots so successful is that the entry points are so natural, so relatable and easily understandable. Everyone watching Geeks can connect to Sam’s desire to be cool and Lindsay’s massive identity crisis. Everyone watching Undeclared can latch right on to Steven’s similarly debilitating desire to be cool or Lizzie’s wish for more agency over her life. You might not have been a “freak” or a “geek,” but the universality of the themes in Freaks and Geeks finds its way into your insecurities, whatever they were, and takes you right back to the hallways of your dreadful, poorly-lit high school.* And though you likely didn’t learn of your parents’ divorce or have a quasi-break up with your long-distance partner on your first night at college (though that latter even is certainly plausible), you still immediately comprehend the mix of excitement and fear that powers that initial university experience.

*Seriously, schools on television are always dramatically brighter than just about any other school I’ve attended or been in. Those florescent lights will send you spiraling quickly.  

Additionally, both of these pilots focus on the fairly straightforward minutia of the high school and college experiences and make certain to avoid making events like a big dance or the first party feel like melodramatic episodes with typical pop music playing in the background – even though the characters themselves might but that kind of inordinate amount of importance on them. Series about young people tend to allow the characters’ hyperbolic traits and emotions carry away the atmosphere and the vibe of the story itself. This leads to the typical brand of soapy, heightened storytelling that you can find almost any night on The CW. Please not that I’m not making a value judgment about any ridiculously melodramatic teen drama on The CW; I watch most of them. For all its faults, when Glee gets those types of moments right, it’s probably one of the most powerful series on the air.

But again, what allows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared to stick out and persevere in our hearts over an extended period of time, is that the characters’ emotions don’t have much obvious sway on the tempo and vibe of the story as a whole. Sam really wants a dance with Cindy Sanders. It’s the most important thing of all-time to him, he really believes that. But Sam also lives in the real world, where few things come with their pop ballad backing track. And of course, this is what makes the final sequence so tremendous. Sam gets his dance and he think it’s going to be that television-approved slow dance, but Styx has other plans.

Lindsay’s identity crisis is much more complicated due to the death of her grandmother and the inherent depth and complexity Cardenllini brings to the role. Nevertheless, her actions and thoughts are both familiar to us at home and are diegetically influenced by media representation.  She starts wearing the military jacket, bumming cigarettes and hanging out with the “freaks” because she’s lost and questioning every decision she’s made to that point. We’ve seen this before and will see it again, but Lindsay doesn’t spiral in the melodramatic kind of way that evokes icky special episode feelings. Plus, it often feels like she’s dressing and acting this new way because she assumes that’s what people in her situation do. I wouldn’t say her identity is a complete façade, but it is a construction that gets poked at throughout the series’ sole season. And she’s surrounded by “freak” stereotypes – the bad boy, the burn out, the music burn out, the crazy bitch – that all sort of using those constructions in a similar fashion. They’re all posturing. Most teen dramas give us a bad boy and keep putting him in situations where he reinforces that identity template. Freaks and Geeks almost immediately starts chipping away at Daniel’s layered bravado.

Paul Feig and Judd Apatow use that moment as a way to poke fun at typical generic conventions and to get a laugh, but it’s also very reflective of the approach Freaks and Geeks has to its storytelling. Freaks and Geeks doesn’t tell wholly original stories. Most of them are about love, sex, identity, loss, maturation, along with the super-important stuff like fake I.D.’s and alcohol. Yet, it’s the care and the grounded honesty that the pilot and the series tackle these issues that was, and is still so refreshing.

And while Undeclared is on the surface a more traditional comedic series, Apatow and his staff, particularly the also-now-very-famous Nicholas Stoller, it engages with emblematic rhythms of college life through a slightly slanted, but still recognizable prism. High school might be objectively tougher to deal with on a day-to-day basis because of all the weird biological things going on and the oppressive social dynamics, but college is arguably more challenging because the identity struggles are likely to have a greater impact on the rest of our life. It sucks to not really know who you are and where you fit in during high school. However, during college, the pressure to “figure it all out” quickly starts to beat down on you and those legitimately real terrors come into direct tension with the overwhelming sense of freedom and escapism.

What I like about Undeclared is that it taps into that weird dynamic almost immediately. Steven is fully aware of what college means for the identity-construction process. He wants to be someone new – he’s over the bad haircuts and The X-Files posters. He, like all of us, wants to go to college and experience all the lovely benefits it has: The opposite sex, the drugs, the alcohol, the social scene and most importantly in his case, the opportunity to start over. He thinks college means freedom, a separation from his old life. But by the time his dad awkwardly arrives at the first floor party and informs him of the forthcoming divorce, Steven’s spirit is immediately broken and learns the harsh reality about the freedom and the clean break college can give us: It’s not real, and we don’t really want it.

The news of his parents’ divorce immediately sucks Steven out of the “Woo! Freedom!” stage and right back into the old life he tried to leave in the trash alongside his X-Files poster. Yet, just because we move away doesn’t mean our old life or certainly our family, goes away – especially when you purposefully try to break free from them. Thus, when Lizzie stumbles into Steven’s room while she’s looking for Rachel, she finds Steven in tears, murmuring about the greatness of freedom and agency, it’s not just a funny cover for his real feelings. Steven is simultaneously excited that he is in this new place where he can avoid his parents’ crumbling marriage and crestfallen that the world he once knew – the one he wanted nothing to do with 24 hours earlier – is completely destroyed. His security blanket is gone, and he’s obviously upset about what that means for his parents, but mostly he’s fighting fear and thrill at the same time.

I’d argue that Lizzie’s going through very similar emotions as well, she just happens to get there in a different way and obviously deals with them in a more, well, bodily fashion. Unlike Steven, Lizzie isn’t completely ready break free of her past life. Her relationship with Eric is so clearly a security blanket for all sorts of insecurities. At the same time though, she’s very excited to experience everything related to college that doesn’t involve sex with other guys. She’s psyched for Rachel to move in, she’s already planning out their friendship and she generally seems like a crazy person (this, along with Monica Keena’s previous work on stuff like Dawson’s Creek, led me to believe Rachel was the main female character and Lizzie was her oddball roommate), but you could probably argue that she’s throwing all her energy into those things to avoid dealing with the Eric-shaped elephant in the room. By the time they have a fight and she stumbles into Steven’s room, finding him so wholly emotionally and physically available, embracing the freedom, she can’t help herself.

Scenes like these are what keep these two series in the minds of viewers so many years later. Both Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared affirm expectations but subvert them through a different way of approaching those expectations. Sometimes your dream slow dance turns into an awkward “fast dance,” and sometimes people who barely know one another have sex (especially in the college setting). That’s real life. We can all relate, in some shape or form, to Steven, Sam, Lizzie, Lindsay, Daniel, Neal, Bill, Nick, Rachel or Ken. But if I could return to the consideration of “real” for a moment, I’m wondering if these two series’ grounded approach to relatable stories is the primary reason they were canceled. I think if you were to ask most fans of either series why Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared were canned, you’d hear something about the network’s handling of them first and then about the “realness” second. And while I don’t disagree with either of those points, this idea of a television series being “too real” is infinitely compelling to me.

If, in theory, the themes of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared are universal or nearly universal, what does the 1999/2001 audience’s resistance towards the two series say about our general response to those universalities? Maybe one could argue that high school is such a miserable experience for most of us that we would simply rather avoid the setting all together, but it’s not like all programs about high school kids have failed. As ridiculous as this seems, is it possible that the series’ desire to express those universal themes through “non-traditional” television character types was a reason behind the lack of audience interest? Both casts had very attractive people in them, but were the Weirs too “legitimately middle class” and not “TV middle class” enough?

I would imagine that the answer to all of these questions is “yes, with some qualifications” and that each of them had some part to play in the failure of both Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. But what is immensely fascinating to me is that three of the most discussed and beloved one-season wonders are Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared and My So-Called Life, programs that were and still are known for their grounded, realistic portrayals of youth life at their respective times. Our longstanding love affair with all three is almost entirely powered by the series’ said portrayals of the aforementioned universal themes. These series are adored precisely for the reason they were canceled in the first place, which is both unsurprising and fully curious.

–CB

Conclusion on legacy(ies): Worthy if any and all praise

I’m a bit short on time today, but I wanted to jot down a few thoughts on the very-good season premiere of Justified.

When series take the kind of leap in quality that Justified did in its second season (although I maintain that somehow, we’ve retroactively decided the first season isn’t that great and that’s just not the case), critics and diehard audiences are at least a little nervous for the follow-up. This feels particularly true for Justified considering so much of S2’s quality and praise for it was tied, directly or indirectly, to Margo Martindale’s powerhouse performance as Mags Bennett. But with Martindale/Mags out of the picture for season three, one might wonder how Justified could ever fill that void and if the series can ever reach that quality apex again.

Last night’s season premiere, “The Gunfighter,” is a great first step in answer both questions with “yes, probably.” Graham Yost and his team smartly use Martindale/Mags’ departure from the world as a catalyst for all sorts of compelling story angles. She’s gone and now there’s a bit of a power vacuum in Harlan, one that Boyd is eager to fill, but one that also probably won’t come too easily. And while the residents of Harlan County fight for the throne, it appears Raylan’s going to have even more problems locally in Lexington this season with the Dixie Mafia, and a smooth-talking, murderous carpetbagger played by Neal McDonough in particular.

Therefore, instead of one singular character influencing all the action like Mags did, Yost is approaching this season with a larger quantity of crooks, carpetbaggers and straight-up bad dudes for Raylan have to try to really hard not to shoot. While there is some danger in going with a slew of new villains in hopes that the audience will somewhat forget the excellence of your former antagonist, Justified is uniquely structured to take in all these villains with relative ease. Harlan is always going to be a hotbed for organized crime and Mags’ death should push other criminals to make a play even more. A lot of desperate bad guys trying to grab that top spot, with Boyd directly in the middle of it? That sounds tremendous. The series is so much about Raylan’s struggles with his past and how it influences his present and forcing him to deal with even more idiots he went to school or played baseball with is a great idea in my book. And the Dixie Mafia has weaved in and out of the story thus far in the series’ run, so its importance in this first episode and McDonough’s presence feels like an expansion of already established plots instead of a shoved-in addition.

In short, I don’t think there’s much to worry about. Mags might be gone, but her presence is still being felt. And now Raylan has to move on and keep all these hungry criminals at bay when he’s arguably at his weakest point.

One of the other great things about season two was how intensely it deconstructed Raylan’s contemporary outlaw persona (and really that character construction all together) and forced Raylan into one situation after another where he wasn’t necessarily the smartest or most powerful person in the room. His feelings for Winona got him in all sorts of hot water when she took money from the bank. He cared deeply about Loretta and that almost got him killed a half-dozen times. “Complicated” doesn’t even begin to describe his relationship with Boyd, or his father or even Mags and Dickie. Art was ready to fire his ass. He never lost sight of right and wrong, but by the end of season two, when Raylan claimed he wanted to move away with Winona, I actually believed it. Coming home and dealing with all these people from his past that he tried to forget, it has gotten under his skin and sometimes, he doesn’t really know which way is up.

Thankfully, season three appears to be just as concerned with Raylan’s damaged masculinity. He’s still recovering from a gunshot, he can’t even shoot straight and his deduction skills aren’t quite on track yet either. Which, of course, makes him an even bigger pain in the ass for someone like Art. An injury isn’t going to stop Raylan from trying to do his job, but in “The Gunfighter,” he does it very poorly and accidentally puts Winona in jeopardy (shocker there). Of course, he ends up making it right by winning the round of gamesmanship with the villain-of-the-week Fletcher Nix (Dexter’s Desmond Harrington, doing one of the oddest accents I’ve ever heard).

One thing that I noticed in comparison this premiere to last season’s opener is the difference in setting. Last season, we began outside, in the cruddy world of Harlan, with a man coming after a little girl. Much of that episode featured sequences with Raylan outside, searching for Loretta and trying to find James Earl Dean. And of course, outside in the cruddy world of Harlan is where much of the season’s great action took place and although Raylan had his identity issues throughout, there was always a sense that he knew these people (even if he didn’t literally know them) and he knew this world. A comfort existed, and though that comfort might have caused more problems than he expected, it was still there nonetheless.

“The Gunfighter” doesn’t spend a whole lot of time outside, in the creepy, cruddy world of Harlan. Instead, the action happens comfortably inside business offices. Raylan doesn’t do business offices. This suggests to me that season three is going to throw Raylan into a world that we’ve never seen him in before. The comfortability and familiarity of Harlan might hamper his judgment on occasion, but this Dixie Mafia problem will force him to use different skills and perhaps rely on others (maybe Tim and Rebecca! Yeah, probably not) a bit more. Maybe he will realize that the comfortability of Harlan and his relationships with all those criminals has lulled him into a false sense of security, maybe not.

Watching Raylan deal with a higher class of criminal while simultaneously trying to control Boyd and all the madness in Harlan? I think Justified’s going to be just fine in season three, folks.

I received the book Prime Time, Prime Movers for Christmas and have been plowing through it over the last week or so. As these things go, reading a book about the big individual creative forces in television history has me thinking about contemporary writer/producers. Therefore, today, I debut a new occasional feature where I will discuss the work of one or more major television voice. I think this could be a really fun addition to the web site and I really, really enjoyed thinking about and writing this piece. I hope you feel as strongly. 

Clearly, that headline is meant to be provocative and it there’s a good chance it doesn’t even make sense, but hear me out. Sometime near the finale of American Horror Story, I was kicking around ideas about the similarities between Ryan Murphy and Matthew Weiner and the season one finale of AHS only confirmed my prospective thesis further.* Let me state this up-front, as to avoid any undue confusion or criticism: Ryan Murphy is not as good of a television storyteller as Matthew Weiner. It’s not even close. Murphy has his moments as a writer and as a director, some of which I’m going to discuss in fairly heavy detail throughout this piece, but he cannot really compete with Weiner. Say what you will about Matthew Weiner as a person, but as a storyteller, he’s one of the best that the medium has to offer. On a similar note, I’m also not saying that Glee or American Horror Story are as good as or the same as Mad Men. That’s literally insane.

*I am, of course, aware that television writing isn’t done by one person. The auteur theory is difficult to apply in a television setting and pointing out a singular voice is similarly challenging. Both Murphy and Weiner have staffs that work with them to craft ideas, arcs, etc. and therefore it’s faulty to assume the two men came up with every idea I’ll be discussing. But as the powerful executive producers and clear voices of their series, I do find it okay to give Murphy and Weiner a certain modicum of respect and power.

Nevertheless, this piece will focus on the ways in which Murphy and Weiner approach episodic and full-season storytelling, how they construct arcs, imbed themes and so on. There, I argue, is where the similarities between the two very different writers lie. It is my assertion that these two powerful men approach individual episodes and full-seasons in a very similar fashion and that they appear to have similar hopes for how individual episodes relate to one another and work to complete an entire season. Although Murphy and Weiner execute their stories in dissimilar fashion (and quality, obviously), both writers deal in big themes and like to create a sense of “completion” by the time a season of their respective series comes to an end.

I want to start with Matthew Weiner, as to set a template of sorts. If you look at individual episodes of Mad Men, the use of heavy serialized storytelling isn’t really there. Of course, Mad Men isn’t an old-school procedural where the characters forget about this week’s problems next week. Plot developments can carry over and entire season can be dominated by one larger arc. For example, season four’s primary plot is about the infancy of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. However, Mad Men also isn’t heavily serialized in the contemporary television sort of way. It’s not Lost, where every episode is intensely connected to all those before and after it. Weeks pass between individual episodes, full seasons scan entire years. Character arcs matter on an episode to episode basis, but certain characters also move in and out of the picture.

More importantly is the way Weiner uses individual episodes in relationship to full seasons. Single episodes have a beginning, middle and end. Again, plot might directly carry over, but it might not. But Weiner is adept at conveying to the audience big concepts or themes that are fairly easily identified within most episodes in a specific season. Meaning, in season four the audience knew that the year’s big story was about Don’s descent and possible road to recovery. It was about stripping away certain parts of his identity and trying to move forward with what remained. Thus, though one episode in season four was about Don’s depression around the holidays and another just a few weeks later focused on a meeting with Honda and Roger’s inherent racist tendencies, we knew that the overall story was still about Don’s identity issues and struggles with substance abuse and mindless sex. We could then view each episode through that prism, should we choose to.

And by the end of the season in “Tomorrowland,” there was a sense of culmination. We checked in on Don and the rest of the Mad Men characters 12 different times throughout the year and we watched Mr. Draper sink to some really awful lows and slowly pull himself out of the drunken, sex-filled stooper, only to make an oddly rash and arguably awful decision to marry young Megan. Yet, no matter how we personally felt about Don’s decisions, we still could grasp Matthew Weiner’s intent for the season and point out how the season came together as a whole. In that regard, individual episodes might not directly relate to one another, but Weiner purposefully works them together so that they feel like separate, but connected chapters in a novel.
Lots of showrunners and executive producers talk about their stories in literary terms, but Weiner is one of the people who actually back up that brand of commentary. Series like Boardwalk Empire or Treme attempt something similar, but I would posit that the former is more reliant on overt serialization in plot while the latter isn’t reliant enough on serialization, leading to a fairly standalone feeling (despite the appearance of an exploration of larger themes). However, each season of Mad Men really does feel like its own novel.

Ultimately, Matthew Weiner constructs each season of Mad Men with certain themes and destinations in mind. By the end of the season, those themes have covered and those destinations have been met. The series offers a sense of completion at the end of each season.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized (or convinced myself, perhaps) that Ryan Murphy approaches storytelling on Glee and American Horror Story the same way. Or at least attempts approach storytelling on those series in the same way. The problem, of course, is that Ryan Murphy isn’t as talented as Matthew Weiner and isn’t as interested in making sure everything fits together. His attention to detail pales in comparison to the meticulous way Weiner controls everything on Mad Men. Because of Murphy’s obvious weakness, his true intention in regards to the purpose of individual episodes and longer arcs I obfuscated by horribly inconsistent plotting, embarrassing character work and a whole lot of flashy filler (whether song remixes or poached horror sequences). Murphy quickly loses interest, control or both of his stories and his characters, but in many ways, you can see the bare bones of intent in all three seasons of Glee and in the first season of American Horror Story.

Despite all his flaws as a storyteller, the one thing Ryan Murphy knows how to do well is create powerful individual moments. And he’s smartly figured out how to use his biggest strength to both convey a sense of culmination/completion of a journey and to cover up all the prior mistakes he made in plotting or character as “just part of the journey” (more on this later). The primary way that Murphy accomplishes these goals is through the competition episodes, particularly the competition scenes and the musical performances that close out the episode.

The elements I want to point out on stronger in the last two seasons of the series, but let’s start with the series’ initial 13 episodes that culminated with New Directions’ first Sectional competition anyway. At that point, Murphy, Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk were apparently more interested in using the competitions as a quality framework for episodic and half-season arc storytelling. Meaning, Glee was initially more overtly serialized than it has become in seasons two and three. Most episodes in the first 13 had beginnings, middles and ends, but plot tended to carry over a bit more and time was compressed more than it typically is on Mad Men.

At the same time, however, the road to Sectionals provided the series both overarching plots and themes that carried the series directly to specific moments in that 13^th episode, “Sectionals.” Those initial 13 episodes were clearly following an underdog story template, but I would also argue that they were thematically focused on interrogating masculinity through both Finn and Will. Therefore, even though Glee came out of the gate with the awful dual pregnancy-related stories (among all sorts of other dumb side explorations), “Sectionals” is thematically about Finn and Will embracing their identities as men. For the former that means sacking up and being the leader he needs to be and for the latter, it means letting go of professional dreams while embracing the possibility of personal freedom.

By the end of “Sectionals,” Murphy wants the audience to feel like they’ve been on a legitimate journey with the New Directions and Will. Not only has the primary plot arc “concluded,” in that they’ve won Sectionals, but the big themes have reached a sense of temporary resolution. And again, on Glee, Murphy (and his team) his musical performances to harp on these themes so strongly there is no way the audience can miss them. New Directions’ performance of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and its connection to the earlier scene where Will gives Finn a pep-talk are so noticeably supposed to evoke Finn’s struggles with his identity.

And at the very close of the episode, the group’s performance of “My Life Would Suck Without You” clearly celebrates both Will’s masterful teaching job (and thus his willingness to put his dreams aside for the benefit of others) and the possibility that he’s found true love with Emma. This again evokes the character’s struggle with his masculinity and you could even argue that the group passing him a cowboy hat, a sign denoting masculinity, only further hammers that point home.

Thus, by the end of “Sectionals,” it doesn’t matter to Ryan Murphy that things might have been kind of sloppy and characters acted like idiots. It was all part of the journey to moderate maturation, to success in the competition and most importantly I would argue, to the triumph of masculinity and heteronormativity. Again, I think that the first 13 episodes of Glee had more structure than everything that has followed and therefore this introductory arc doesn’t entirely create 1-to-1 comparisons between Murphy and Weiner. However, the highlighting of moments, ones that celebrate a culmination of a journey, in “Sectionals” keep these initial episodes in line with my argument nonetheless.

Yet, where the comparison starts to come together more, perhaps indirectly, is in the second half of Glee’s first season and onward. After the success (narratively-speaking) of the first 13 episodes, Murphy and company kept the competition as an ominous end result, but failed to rely on the structure that it could give individual episodes. This, in my opinion, is the series’ most disappointing flaw, but that’s neither here nor there. What is important, however, is looking at how changes in individual episodes in the second half of Glee S1 altered the way Murphy approached the finale to that story (and the whole season) in “Journey to Regionals.” And after eight barely-connected episodes that generally failed to focus on making Regionals seem important or challenging whatsoever, how did Ryan Murphy shift the feeling and storytelling of the finale? Not at all, of course!

“Journey to Regionals” is more or less the same episode as “Sectionals” in a structural and thematic sense. Underdog New Directions? Check. Meditation on masculinity (this time Will and arguably, Puck)? Of course. Competition performance that emphasizes the path the New Directions kids have taken? Absolutely. Final scene performance that celebrates said journey, general growth and a celebration of Will Schuester and his relationship with the kids? Duh bro.

When “Journey to Regionals” aired, I and a number of other critics pointed out that it felt like the conclusion to better, phantom season that we didn’t actually get to see. A season where the members of New Directions worked really hard to overcome various odds in hopes of just making a solid showing at Regionals. A season where Will Schuester doesn’t rapidly morph into one of the worst human beings on the planet. But Ryan Murphy doesn’t actually care or even think it was a phantom season at all. For Murphy, Will having an epiphany in his car about the group performing a cheesy, moving Journey medley (get it, Journey?) is the perfect call back to a few different scenes in the pilot, just as the dual odes Will and the students trade with one another are the perfect call backs to “Sectionals.” Those scenes attempt to bring a sense of completion and of coming full circle. This is where we’ve been and this is where we’re going. That’s Storytelling 101 and smart for Murphy to do, in theory. But in execution? Not earned at all. And of course, that’s the primary difference between his version of this kind of storytelling and the way in which Weiner executes his version of it.

Glee exploited the competition episodes even more in season two. The first half of the second season is a substantial mess and Murphy and his team barely bothered to spend much time talking about Sectionals at all. It appeared to be not important whatsoever. The characters, including the fearless leader Will, were too busy breaking one another’s hearts, arguing over petty things,  transferring schools, starting Britney Spears’ sex riots or costing the school thousands of dollars in a misguided attempt to put on Rocky Horror Picture Show so they could sleep with the guidance counselor (Will Schuester, everyone!).

No matter though, because “Special Education” just followed the “Sectionals” template almost to a T and pretended that the episode was the culmination of a tough-fought battle (you know, while simultaneously poking fun at the whole system by featuring a glee club full of old people). Will randomly decides that undervalued members of the club are going to get their time to shine, so Santana gets her solo, Mike and Brittany get a major dance number and Trouty Mouth and Quinn take Finn and Rachel’s duet. The performances of “Valarie” and “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” are presented as a celebration of the underappreciated, as if we spent the last seven episodes watching them struggle to find their spot in the glee club. And obviously, the episode is capped off by two other underused singers, Tina and Mercedes, leading ND in a belting of “The Dog Days Are Over,” a symbolic call that all the tension and challenges are now behind them.

In the vacuum, these moments are fine. In fact, Naya Rivera’s performance of “Valarie” is one of the series’ best all-time musical bits and “Dog Days” is pretty good as well. But in the context of the narrative and with considerations for Murphy’s intent? Laughable. While many of these characters were given a solid amount of time on-screen in the early episodes, very little of that time had anything to do with their undervalued musical abilities. Quinn, Sam, Brittany, Mike and Tina were all involved in various romantic entanglements, but that’s not a good enough justification for why Will randomly decides to let them shine at Sectionals.

In fact, the general handling of Sectionals in seasons two and three, from the excessive jokes about the judges and the other teams to the on-a-whim strategy of New Directions, completely devalues all the emotion, tension and pay-offs that the first season’s survey of that event provided. Murphy and his team retroactively construct a third of a season’s worth of drama and development in hopes of adding some gravitas to the proceedings, but it’s so transparent and wrong. At this point, Glee appears to do the competition episodes because that’s just a thing that they do.

I won’t beat the Glee drum too much longer, but I want to quickly point out that season two’s “Original Song” and “New York” and this season’s “Hold On To Sixteen” basically follow the same template and also more or less fail to justify the use of that template. “Original Song” is the celebration of Rachel’s tough path as a first-time songwriter; “New York” is yet another “phantom finale” that takes all the non-diegetic creative mistakes and writers them off as diegetic reasoning for why the group wasn’t ready to succeed.

This season’s “Hold On To Sixteen” is probably the most egregious of them all. It screams its thematic interests so loud they’re the title of the episode while somehow pretending to solve the initially-solid chasm between the underappreciated performers in the Troubletones and the remaining members of New Directions. We cannot forget the reappearance of more retroactive character development for characters like Quinn, where the writers again pretended that their awful mistakes were all purposeful additions to reach a specific destination, or the quick real introduction of any tension between Finn and Blaine, only to have it go through the entire conflict-resolution process in roughly seven or eight minutes of screen-time and honestly no more than a couple of hours in the character’s time. Throw in a final, celebratory performance of “We Are Young,” and the Glee staff couldn’t be pushing the intended themes in your face more.

What really brought this all together for me was the season finale of American Horror Story. After a sloppy, insane and barely coherent string of episodes that appeared to be building to something even more sloppy and insane, “Afterbirth” burned through any big plot movement in the first few acts and then settled in to an oddly-paced, weird epilogue-like story. In that portion of the episode, characters basically barked the season’s themes at one another (the Tate/Ben conversation most notably) and disregarded much of the insanity and problems between them because, well, now they’re ghosts and everything is fine. Little of the previous 11 episodes had to make sense or be paid off in a substantial way, but Murphy and company wanted you to embrace the emotion of the resolution. Logic doesn’t matter.

Somewhat insanely, this approach to storytelling, one that disregards the value of individual episode coherency and ultimately forefronts supposed thematic destinations, actually works better for American Horror Story than it does Glee. This is partially because of the typical suspension of disbelief that comes with watching something like AHS, but I also think that Murphy and his team did a better job actually constructing a path to that finale than he does on Glee. “Afterbirth” itself is still completely terrible, don’t get me wrong. However, I’m willing to buy the Harmon’s placated calm in the afterlife much more than I am whatever the hell happened to Quinn this season on Glee.

The primary variance in the two approaches (other than quality, of course) is subtlety. Matthew Weiner might give Sepinwall and fellow critics some hints about what the themes for an upcoming episode or season are, but he doesn’t particularly make it that easy for the audience to identify, interpret and examine those themes. Mad Men is a thematically rich story that requires the audience to do a little work, which is what can make watching it such a satisfying experience.

Ryan Murphy doesn’t deal in subtlety.  In fact, he deals in the exact opposite, he is the anti-subtlety.  As I’ve chronicled and anyone who has watched Glee or American Horror Story can attest, Murphy uses everything, from musical interludes to horror imagery to on-the-nose dialogue and even episode titles, to get his point across. I would argue that this obviousness is one of the reasons Murphy’s flawed journey-based storytelling is so easy to criticize. It is one thing to retroactively create character development or to pretend something is more meaningful than it is or to use a cheap song to embody themes, it is another thing to do all those things and rub the audience’s nose in the fact that you’re doing those things. I don’t think being slightly more subtle with theme would make everyone forgive Ryan Murphy, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt matters.  

Ultimately, there are major differences between Ryan Murphy’s style and Matthew Weiner’s style, particularly in just in pure quality. And there’s also no question that there are other major television auteurs (ugh, that word – quick, I need a replacement) who approach storytelling in a similar fashion. It’s not like these two guys are so unique and special. I do, however, like the juxtaposition of Ryan Murphy and Matthew Weiner and the consideration that they’re actually trying to do a lot of the same things with their respective series. The quality is widely different and many of the similarities aren’t entirely visible because Murphy gussies his projects up with additional elements (Music! Horror! Nonsensical plotting!). Yet, the similarities in intent are quite interesting to me and perhaps shine a dim light on how widely dissimilar series are closer together than we might think. 

Edit: A few folks reminded me that Abrams’ name is also on Person of Interest, which I totally forgot about. My points apply there as well, I think.

J.J. Abrams has learned to put his name above television projects that fit a very specific kind of mold. He understands that his name, the mention of Lost and even the Bad Robot logo evoke certain ideas in the minds of the audience: Suspense, mystery, mythology, etc.  However, Abrams also knows that the realities of contemporary broadcast television* mean that anything he “works on” must balance those audience expectations with elements that can appeal to a larger, broader audience as well.

*I would actually love for Abrams to get a few of the Bad Robot heavy hitters together and do a series for cable. That would be interesting.

I would argue that Abrams has always done this – if you go back to the opening episodes of Lost or Alias, the plots are very straightforward despite the possibility for later complexity – but he’s likely being especially careful these days because when audiences think of or see Lost anywhere near the new series, they automatically think of the later, more obviously complicated and serialized season. Abrams cannot escape this and I think he knows it, and I also think that’s why the last three pilots he’s been directly involved in, Fringe, Undercovers and now Alcatraz, don’t entirely work. Undercovers is a bit of an aberration, but last night’s two-hour premiere of Alcatraz felt more or less exactly like the first two episodes of Fringe. Though not the most damning assessment in the world, Alcatraz’s similarities to Fringe give us an easy roadmap for how the series could and perhaps should progress moving forward.

Abrams tried his spin on a “procedural” first with Fringe, and we all can remember those early season one episodes that felt completely standardized and generic. Fringe was a typical contemporary “investigators” series, it just happened that the things Olivia and company were investigating were left of center. That was boring for most diehard television watchers (again, recall the expectations I mentioned earlier) and apparently for the creative team as well, but the ratings were actually pretty solid. Fringe ratings in season one nearly quadruple with the series does now.

Now, with Alcatraz Abrams latched on to a project that pushes the procedural elements to the forefront even more. The pilot script, by Steven Lilien & Bryan Wynbrandt and Elizabeth Sarnoff, has a few compelling details in setting up the premise, but the meat of the pilot and the second episode “Ernest Cobb” doesn’t differ from really any of the big procedurals that you would find on CBS or even on FOX with something like Bones. The missing, now returning inmates gives Alcatraz an obvious, easy story engine that by all indications, can remove any “supernatural” or “science fiction” elements if necessary, as to not totally alienate viewers who typically prefer NCIS or something similar. Alcatraz so clearly wants to be a populist bad-guy-catching series, which I think makes it a bit more accessible and mainstream than Fringe could have ever been (and the name recognition doesn’t hurt at all).

Unfortunately, while Alcatraz might have an easier time wiggling into the hearts of mainstream audiences, the first two episodes aren’t particularly engaging and it really does play like watered-down Fringe at times. I know people are going to compare Sarah Jones’ basic performance to the kind of work Anna Torv did in the first season of Fringe, but I think there’s a fundamental difference between the two characters that should shift our perspective on that matter. Torv’s Olivia was, from the beginning, supposed to be stand-offish and cold. Jones’ Rebecca has moments where she’s more obviously energetic and I also didn’t get the indication that she’s particularly haunted or damaged like Olivia appeared to be at the start. Sure, Rebecca’s partner died, but how clichéd is that? In that respect, I think Jones’ bland performance is more of a detriment to her series than Torv’s ever was to Fringe.

This is particularly true because Alcatraz’s supporting cast isn’t as strong either. I love Jorge Garcia as much as the next guy and his Diego is pretty fun. However, I’ve never really cared for Sam Neill and he’s in full growl mode here and Parminder Nagra is as blank as they come.

Perhaps most importantly though, Alcatraz is just kind of boring. The hook of the premise is enough for me to keep watching, but the way that the pilot and episode two dressed it up and tried to pretend it was even more mysterious than anyone who saw one single promo already knew it was bothered me. The final act of the pilot more or less powered the marketing campaign, so there were no surprises, which isn’t terribly problematic, but not great when combined with the big chunk of typical procedural fare and somewhat lackluster cast. I like that the series is committed to telling stories about the criminals’ time on the island, I think that’s a fun way to explore the “mythology” so that Sam Neill doesn’t have to explain it all. However, both flashback stories here were a bit on the boring side and the actors they cast to play the criminals were really tepid.

But of course, I’m going to keep watching Alcatraz. These first two episodes are in the C-range, but it’s possible that the producers had to work out some kinks and are still moving around in the dark trying to find the series.* There are compelling elements at play here, they just don’t fit together especially well in the first two hours. I might guess that the series won’t be in a hurry to get to a place that the fans want it to, as FOX has learned its lesson with Fringe, but it’s possible that Alcatraz could work.

*Of course, there have been all sorts of behind-the-scenes moves with this production that suggest it is a bit troubled. The two dudes who share script credit on the pilot with Sarnoff don’t have anything to do with the series itself and although she was supposed to be the showrunner, Sarnoff “stepped down” sometime in the fall. They also reshot certain elements of the pilot as well. I’m not saying this is a disaster, but. 

Note: This post is a longer (but barely) and hopefully more coherent version of my tweet explosion from Friday night.

With the annual winter Television Critics Association Press Tour coming to an end and many of the season’s mid-season premieres here or right around the corner, I wanted to take a little time and talk about everyone’s favorite broadcast television network, NBC. It is, of course, very easy to poke fun at NBC in 2012 (just as it was in 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, eh, you get the picture) and when newish head honcho Robert Greenblatt bluntly notes that the network “had a really bad fall” to a room full of people who get paid to make fun of them, it gets even easier. But what I want to do today is discuss why I think NBC is such a mess and more importantly, why I don’t think safe haven is going to come any time soon.

Obviously, there is no question that NBC is the nadir of broadcast television because people like Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman ran the network into the ground with their emphasis on “super-sizing” programs and their hilariously in-the-open strategy to milk as much money from the dwindling broadcast model through cheap programming, “formats,” ancillary products and more.* And as I’ll touch on a bit momentarily, there’s also this overriding sense that NBC is so damaged that no matter what kind of programming it airs, the audiences won’t show up. In short, for all intents and purposes, NBC is screwed.

*Let me be clear that I don’t fault Zucker or Silverman for trying something new and trying to tinker with a system that’s pretty screwed up. The problem is their ideas for “something new” were laughably awful and they happened to stay in a position where they could continue to come up with those ideas for way too long.  

However, what is so curious to me, and something that I haven’t seen bandied about as much when discussing NBC’s clear failure as a network (perhaps we’re too busy making jokes about Ben Silverman or My Dad is Better Than Your Dad, which, to be fair, is fine by me), is the fundamental flaw in NBC’s development strategy. More than any other broadcast network, NBC is ignorantly dedicated to two primary development tactics: Tap into popular trends and reformat big, obvious “concepts.” NBC loves to chase the zeitgeist and they sure as heck love to remake, reboot, spin-off, reformat and adapt content, stories and characters that audiences have seen before.

Look at NBC’s current schedule: Parenthood (film and TV series “remake”), The Office (adaptation), Prime Suspect (adaptation), Grimm (zeitgeist chase), Are You There, Chelsea? (book adaptation), The Firm (continuation of book/film), Law & Order: SVU (franchise), America’s Got Talent (format adaptation), The Voice (format adaptation, arguably a zeitgeist chase), Fear Factor (format adaptation, resurrected from the dead) and Parks and Recreation (originally meant to be an Office spin-off until Greg Daniels and Michael Schur refused) are all either trend-chasing or a big concept. That’s almost the entire schedule! Only Chuck and Harry’s Law are the only dramas that were totally “original.”

And of course, we can go back over the last few years and find a shocking amount of these kinds of projects that NBC put on the airwaves: Bionic Woman (reboot), Knight Rider (spin-off/reboot), American Gladiators (reboot, format), The Apprentice: Martha Stewart (franchise spin-off), The Real Wedding Crashers (zeitgeist chase), The Baby Borrowers (format adaptation), The Chopping Block (format adaptation), Celebrity Circus (format adaptation), Hit Me Baby, One More Time (format adaptation), Who Wants to Marry My Dad? (zeitgeist chase), Law & Order: LA (franchise spin-off), Lipstick Jungle (book adaptation), Friday Night Lights (book and film “remake”), The Playboy Club (brand recognition, zeitgeist chase), Surface (zeitgeist chase), Merlin (foreign import), Heroes (zeitgeist chase), The Listener (foreign import), Teachers (adaptation), Outsourced (film “remake”), Kath & Kim (adaptation), Free Agents (adaptation), Quarterlife (zeitgeist chase, web series re-format).

This doesn’t include all the failed projects that NBC’s tried to get off the ground that fall under one or more of the categories from above, such as The IT Crowd, I’m With Stupid, Wonder Woman, Heroes: Origins, Serial Frank, Top Gear, Jason and The Agronaunts*, The Partridge Family, Have I Got News For You, Dorothy Gale, The Rockford Files, The Dirty Girls Social Club and Emerald City.

*This was supposed to be shot entirely on greenscreen. LOL.

As I hope you can see, NBC’s made some really odd choices over the last five years. Even some of its biggest successes like The Office, The Voice and America’s Got Talent weren’t originally their idea and the two best drama series the network has aired in that time, Parenthood and Friday Night Lights, were also both based on other material.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re having terror flashbacks to the Zucker/Silverman era and muttering to yourself about Greenblatt righting the NBC ship. He’s from cable! He knows how to pick out great projects that should appeal to an audience! In theory, I completely agree with you and I think Greenblatt was a solid hire for NBC. But, let’s take a look at a few of the pilots and scripts NBC has greenlighted during this development season, Greenblatt’s first (and most important): A Munsters reimagining, a “small screen take” on Hannibal Lecter (both of those are from Bryan Fuller), a Wiseguy remake, a “modern day” Frankenstein story, a television adaptation of Romancing The Stone, an adaptation of the book Republic of Pirates, an adaptation of Friday Night Dinner, a slew of westerns and another take on Dracula. Obviously, there are a slew of other, “original” ideas in the pipeline as well, but at this point, Greenblatt’s development strategy doesn’t appear to differ that much from the terribly misguided approach that Zucker and Silverman used to run the network into the ground.

Big concepts and ideas like this sound great in the developmental stage, but what NBC apparently fails to recognize is those kind of programs don’t work on broadcast television in 2012. Contemporary remakes of classic television series are almost always failures, and the same can be said for the kind of hackneyed spin-offs and film extensions NBC likes to traffic in. Adaptations can work and NBC’s had some success there, but their willingness to grab the rights to the latest book or British comedy hit on a whim is problematic as well. And don’t even get me started on Dracula and Hannibal. I mean are you freaking kidding me?

NBC has and apparently continues to work from this flawed logic that one big hit concept series will save a network. Many articles and Tweets have been written comparing current-day NBC and early-aughts ABC and there’s a sense that if NBC can find a Lost and/or a Desperate Housewives like ABC did in 2004, things can all turn around. Unfortunately, that line of thinking is both outdated and severely limited. I’ve said time and time again that Lost is a once in a lifetime kind of series that can never really be replicated, both in quality and circumstances. All the broadcast networks have been trying to make another Lost anyway, and we all know how that has turned out.

Furthermore, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not 2004 anymore. We’re eight years later here folks and landscape of network television is dramatically different. Not only are ratings much lower now than they were in 2004, leading to an unwillingness to spend an extravagant amount of money on a pilot or series without any knowledge of its possible success or failure,* but the kind of programming that becomes a success on the broadcast networks is much different. Three things work on broadcast television in 2012: easily consumable procedurals, broad comedies and reality competition franchises. CBS dominates the ratings because they are flush with all three (more on them in moment), FOX hangs with the Eyeball because of American Idol and solid performers like House and Bones and ABC’s weathered the post-Lost storm almost entirely because of Modern Family and Dancing With The Stars (which nicely protects just-fine procedurals like Castle). When FOX or ABC tries a big concept program, it usually fails (see: Terra Nova, V, FlashForward, etc.) and they sink right back to what works.

*Ask Sony how they’re feeling about sinking upwards of $10 million on that Pan Am pilot, for example.

If you look at NBC’s schedule, they have two procedurals that work for them just fine in Harry’s Law and Law & Order: SVU, but the latter is super-old and there’s a false assumption that the former’s audience is even older and therefore not worthy. When NBC does a procedural these days, it’s something like Prime Suspect that was both terribly mismarketed and powered by ignorant assumption that American viewers would have brand loyalty to the franchise. Even something like Grimm has an additional layer of “stuff” that probably turns off mainstream (read: somewhat older people in the Midwest) viewers. I’m not saying either one of those series is bad, in fact I like them both fine. But they require a secondary level of investment that the people who typically watch Criminal Minds aren’t going to care about. As a number of people pointed out on Twitter, NBC has tried to do some straightforward procedurals in recent years: Mercy, Trauma, Chase and Outlaw come to mind. Frankly, I’d bet NBC would love to have the first three. They were fine. If they would have been marketed better, it could have worked. Again, the decrepit quality of the network has a whole does have an impact, but there are other factors at play as well. The point is, NBC shouldn’t stop trying series like that.

And of course, we all know how narrow the audience is for NBC’s comedy block. 30 Rock, arguably the most prestigious comedy NBC’s had this decade, debuted last week to its lowest rating of all-time. It’s old. The Office is old. Community and Parks and Recreation are never going to catch on, unfortunately. My buddy Myles McNutt had a nice look at the problems with how NBC markets its comedies that you should definitely check out.

But the point is that NBC has very few solid, stable, straightforward, formulaic programs that the contemporary television viewer wants to see. This is going to sound insane to anyone who likes to believe TV By The Number’s incorrect and bully-like comments about the series, but Harry’s Law is exactly the kind of program NBC needs to have on its schedule. On the comedy front, both Whitney and Are You There, Chelsea? are fairly tepid, but the multi-camera approach is probably the smart approach to take. I’m not saying that I personally like these kinds of programs more than something like Community, but the reality of the situation basically dictates that a certain kind of series works on broadcast and other kinds do not. NBC needs basic tenants of television storytelling on its airwaves and ones that aren’t draped in a certain sense of elitism.

And it’s that elitism that is probably holding NBC back. More than any other network on television, NBC is obsessed with its image and its own history. The Thursday comedy block cannot be tinkered with and the 10 p.m. timeslot is all about the major, quality drama. THIS IS NBC, YOU LOVE THE CHIMES. Unfortunately for NBC, their obsession with history and image screws them with almost all audiences. The older audiences, the ones that could actually buoy the network, might remember the glory days of NBC and scoff at crap like The Firm. You know, because they’re not idiots. And the younger audiences, the ones that NBC so desperately wants and sometimes panders to too much, are both unaware of the network’s history and uninterested in watching television in the traditional manners. In that regard, NBC is out on an island, detached from most viewer groups.

Moreover, NBC’s brand image and connection to its past are in direct tension with the things they actually put on their schedule. Meaning, NBC loves to tout the 10 p.m. timeslot and talk about the connection it has to greats like E.R. or Homicide, but in 2012, they fill that timeslot with The Firm, Prime Suspect, Parenthood and a bunch of reality garbage. Parenthood is the only one that belongs in any sort of conversation with “NBC greats,” and it’s not even a “10 p.m.” series. If you’re NBC, you can’t talk incessantly about the history, the importance and the grandeur of a timeslot and then put The Firm there.* You just can’t. It immediately devalues the timeslot and makes you look even more like idiots for not recognizing the misguided pomposity of your claims.

*This, of course, is why it’s hilarious that NBC decided to just get rid of Southland, the only series they’ve developed in a half-decade that could actually bring value to that 10 p.m. slot.

All networks have trouble working their way through tough times, particularly in a PR and brand image respect because it’s difficult for audiences to care or believe any promo you have. There’s no trust there. But for NBC, those issues are present tenfold due to both their desire to evoke traditional NBC vibes and the now long-running failure to do so.

In that regard, there is this overarching sense that NBC is screwed. When I went on the Twitter rant that spurred on this piece, many people replied to me saying that NBC needs to “go niche” or “embrace the smaller audiences,” and I really couldn’t disagree more. NBC is a broadcast television network. The economics of the broadcast model require NBC to have the largest ratings in the overall and important demographics so that they can keep affiliates happy. The whole directive behind broadcast television is broad content, stuff that appeals to the greatest number. Despite the jokes made at last night’s Golden Globes, NBC is not a “nonprofit organization.” They need to act like one. The model might be flawed and it would sure as hell be nice to be a cable network, flush with all that additional capital, but that’s just not the reality of the situation. And tell Les Moonves that the model is flawed. He seems to be doing okay over that at CBS.

For NBC to “go niche” and try to appeal to a very targeted demographic is not going to work, particularly because chances are that demographic won’t watch television how NBC needs them to anyway. Ultimately, the defeatist attitude is worthless, though. Greenblatt can say they had a bad fall and point out how NBC is the major network most harmed by digital streaming, downloads, etc., but he also has to do something about it. Get a new target audience. Stop talking about your failures. Don’t order a pilot about Dracula. There are things that can be done to at least make an attempt to stop the bleeding. I hope Smash is that first salvo, but it’s going to take a hell of a lot more to keep NBC afloat in the next couple of years.

If Smash is a hit and The Voice keeps chugging along, NBC is in okay shape going into next fall. But then they need to bring in some broader-appealing comedies and standard procedurals that they can start mixing in with the last remnants of what should be the old NBC (The Office, SVU, etc.). I’d honestly love for them to go completely scorched earth and just cancel almost everything, as to sort of reset the audience expectations, but I cannot imagine that happening. Therefore, my hope is that they try something completely different on Thursdays. The comedy block has no more value, as both CBS Mondays and ABC Wednesdays are arguably better at this point, and is losing more and more ground in the ratings. Standing still and being complacent goes back to the defeatist attitude I mentioned earlier. CBS made a big move when it switched Big Bang Theory to Thursdays. FOX changed it up when it moved Idol to Wednesday/Thursday. And ABC took a chance with four new comedies on Wednesday. The last three years, all of NBC’s major competitors have made game-altering moves while they’ve held on to a false sense of history as they continued to lose ground.

Now is the time to start making better decisions. Otherwise, NBC will never recover.*

*Updated addition: As I had forgotten to mention and Chris Castro pointed out on Twitter, NBC also sucks at marketing anything. People not watching and not trusting you plus a porous marketing team doesn’t equal much success. That’s an issue that I can’t really try to solve here, but it’s still important to note. Maybe cop and legal procedurals are easier to market than series about a guy who wakes up and realizes he’s part of the Grimm bloodline? 

I spent a good deal of time at the end of 2011 being frustrated and disappointed with Fringe. I wrote a review or two and did two podcasts about the first part of the series’ fourth season and if you recall those products, you’ll remember that I felt like Fringe’s approach to this second pair of universes was too slow, too obvious and frankly, not that interesting. The series created two new worlds and wanted to spend a lot of time showing us the “differences” between these two and “our two,” but the changes the writers made were so small that they felt pointless. New Olivia has a deeper relationship with Nina and New Walter can barely go outside. You’ve completely erased the characters I’ve grown to love for three years so you can tell stories with that one beat? OK, sure.

Moreover, the weirdest part of it all was that some episodes and certain “changes” in the characters we used to know played entirely lifeless. The first few episodes spent a lot of time telling us – and definitely not showing us – how these worlds and people were different, and then the plot just sort of moved on. There’s been little explanation about exactly what, in a macro sense, is that dissimilar about the two new universes. Is Peter’s lack of existence the sole reason everything is different? Did all other events happen in the exact same way? Apparently, those questions don’t matter, because golly there’s a case of the week to solve!

The changes made weren’t impactful enough to justify doing them in the first place and the way the series sort of nonchalantly moved on without exploring the dissimilarities in detail (particularly compared to season three), made very little sense. Combined, those two elements left me very cold on Fringe in the fall.

However, I enjoyed the last few episodes of the fall run, despite having major problems, and knew that the true “fall finale” was shoved until now because of wonky scheduling matters. Thus, my excitement for last night’s “Back to Where You’ve Never Been” was at a legitimately high level. And although I wouldn’t say the episode subsided my fears about the overall seemingly aimless direction of the season, I will say that “Back to Where You’ve Never Been” is a small step towards something better.

One of the biggest disappointments of the season for me has been the lack of time spent in the “alternate” universe. Outside of some short time in the premiere and one other episode, most of the action has been centered in “our” universe and that’s stripped us from being able to get to know the altered versions of Walter, Olivia, Broyles and Lincoln. The great thing about season three of Fringe is that it was dedicated to telling stories about all the characters so that we would get a great sense of who they were and ultimately recognize that context was key. Fauxlivia and Walternate just tried to do the best that they could with the circumstances they were given, and while that might have led the latter to becoming supremely antagonistic towards “our side,” there were damn good reasons for it. No one, really, was a villain last season. Everyone had their reasons for doing things that we could totally understand.

“Back” finally starts that process in this new pair of universes. Peter’s decision to stop screwing around in a world full of people he does not care about* and who cannot help him forces the action into the alternate universe, but it also forces New Olivia and New Lincoln to actually be active participants in a story instead of oddly flaccid, boring versions of the characters we love. The moment where New Olivia fixes New Lincoln’s hair to make sure he blends in as the other Lincoln is probably my favorite moment of the season for both characters. Those are the kinds of touches this season has lacked in spades.

*Peter was very adamant about his lack of desire to be involved with the issues and relationships of these foreign versions of the people he loves/hates. While that’s clearly part of a larger story to have him grow closer to them in some way(s), Peter’s coldness towards everyone reminded me of the determined shapeshifter-killing Peter from last season. That determination has led Peter to darkness before and I’m curious to see if it does again, or if those scenes were only there to set up future pay-offs.

It appears as though the writers wanted to hold off on meeting New Walternate so that they could build tension about him being the super-bad man behind the new shapeshifters and while I respect that decision in the abstract, I never particularly bought that this version of Walternate was behind anything and last night’s episode proved me correct. The first scene between Peter and Walternate still was still tension-filled, but it was still a misdirect I think most of us probably saw coming. I do, however, quite like this version of Walternate. In Peter’s pair of universes, the Walters continue to do everything they can to gain get their son back. In this pair, the two men reacted differently to Peter’s death. New Walter lost control of his mind and is now terrified to help Peter, but New Walternate appears to be a controlled and fairly honorable man. He wants to help, obviously for selfish reasons, but also because I think he cares in a way New Walter just cannot because of how haunted he is.

Scenes like the final one with Peter and New Walternate or the one earlier in the episode when New Lincoln convinces New Fauxlivia that he knows she’s a good person are Fringe’s strength. For all its appearances of complex mythology, the series worked so well for three seasons because it privileged the characters and their emotions above all else. That kind of emotional potency has been missing from season four. The story here was still fairly plot-heavy and there’s still no real indication of where this is all headed, but forcing characters to interact with one another can only be a good thing for a story that had become stilted.

Other thoughts:

• David Robert Jones! I’m weary of what his return actually means for the convoluted nature of this plot, but if you’re going to do a new pair of universes gimmick, you might as well embrace it by bringing back one of your best characters.
• The final scene with September and New Olivia was surprising, but also seems dumb. Last season it was all about Peter and prophecies (which I know weren’t really true, but still) and now OLIVIA MUST DIE. That sort of manufactured tension bothers me, and with the series struggling anyway, it really bothers me.
• Peter is dreaming of home. I’m growing weary that we won’t get back there for a very long time, and perhaps never, since the series is likely to get canceled this spring.

The accused: Arrested Development, “For British Eyes Only” (Season 3, Episode 2)

The crime: Losing control of the series’ successful and innovative frameworks

Television’s failures are supposed to be obvious. From the overhyped non-starters that flop from the very beginning (hello, FlashForward, Lone Star) to the much-discussed clumsy conclusions of series we were convinced had it all planned out (nice to see you again, Battlestar Galactica), the medium’s big busts are right there in front of us. Whether because of low Nielsen ratings, terrible critical and fan response or something else entirely, the reaction to one episode often defines a series’ long-term legacy. But while we are often left wondering what it all means for the medium and for the industry when a series like Lone Star stumbles out of the gate or a series like Battlestar Galactica presents a controversial ending, those discourses tend to focus on disastrous beginnings and ill-conceived endings. But what about those mishaps that are not so obvious, the catastrophes that happen somewhere in the middle? How much impact, both positive and negative, can one bad episode have on an entire series? How do long-running series continue onward in the aftermath of an episodic failure? Is it possible that individual, episodic failures of television’s most respected series tell us more than the failings of a much-hyped about pilot or series finale? And how do we really define “failure” anyway?

These are just a few of the questions that I hope to answer with TV Surveillance’s new bi-weekly feature, #TVFail. In each entry, I will be taking a look at an individual episode of television that is considered a disappointment in some way. Maybe it was panned by critics and audiences, maybe it was lowly rated or maybe it was initially neither but has retroactively lost its more positive reputation. No matter the reason, this is a place where I will talk about the quiet failures of some of television’s best series. Here, I will talk about how and why these individual episodes came to represent “failure” and also discuss whether or not those definitions still apply today. The hope is that this feature will weave textual analysis and contextual and intertextual discourse together to create a compelling space for the discussion of televisual failure.

Welcome back to #TVFail, y’all. It’s a new year, but of course there is still all sorts of disappointing, failed television to discuss in 2012. If you missed it sometime at the tail-end of 2011, I have planned out the #TVFail entries through late May and I think there are some really compelling and complicated cases to dig into. Today’s post is one of those, and perhaps, it might even be little controversial as well.

Hindsight does weird things to us. On one hand, the passage of time brings us the needed detachment necessary to evaluate texts in new lights and determine what has changed, or what has not, about said text. It can be really easy to poke holes in something we loved a few years later, passing off those initial feelings as naivety, confusion or both. On the other hand, the passage of time, especially in popular culture, also evokes this grand sense of nostalgia where we begin to believe certain things were “better” in some nebulous past time period. I would argue that the speed and frameworks of contemporary popular culture magnify these feelings even further, so all the people who missed a great, but canceled television series can catch up on Netflix and retroactively commiserate with those who were there, man.

In my personal perspective, I think Arrested Development is one such series that’s been a victim of hindsight in both manners. We sometimes tend forget all the novel and innovative things Arrested Development in the middle of the last decade while we’re busy deconstructing new Community episodes or frothing at the mouth over Parks and Recreation or whatever else. In that respect, I wonder what it would be like to experience Arrested Development in the contemporary television criticism and consumption worlds.

Nevertheless, somehow, we simultaneously also tend to gloss over Arrested Development’s faults while we are complaining about it being canceled too soon, posting misguided comments about how much FOX sucks or if recent events are any indication, celebrating the possibility of a film continuation.* I am not here today to talk about how much Arrested Development, as a whole, sucks. I’m not an idiot. However, I do think that the general assumption about the series’ out-and-out genius and success is faulty. Thus, I want to go back to that third season to a story thread that I don’t think worked, really at all, and try to consider not only went wrong, but also what we might be in store for once the Netflix season and the film actually exist.

*It’s hard not to put an asterisk next to this film news. I’m very cynical about these things, if you might remember. 

I think it is fair to say that we assume and basically expect that television series are going to have off episodes. We want everything to be good and we might be inordinately harsh when something doesn’t meet our standards, but most television viewers are smart enough to realize that making television isn’t an easy gig. The breakneck pace of the production schedule is a bear for everyone involved, particularly on a broadcast network, 20-plus-episode-per-season schedule, and at a certain point, almost every series delivers an episode below its typical quality, whatever that may be. These assumptions are even truer for comedies, where the pressure to be funny every single second creates a tightrope that can’t always be walked on, and the general subjectivity of humor is bound to turn certain viewers off at times. This is a long-winded way of saying that television series have bumps along the way, and we know that.

For most comedies, the occasional middling or even dud effort isn’t much of a problem. Parks and Recreation has been on one heck of a consistent run since the middle of season two, but there were a few slight misfires among the bunch. Community’s so different each week that its never-ending balance between genius and disaster is always in play. Even certain episodes or segments of Louie season two fell flat. Heck, a comedy like 30 Rock can have a full season-and-a-half of pretty mediocre episodes – sup, season three and part of season four? – and then turn it around again without much major concern.

But what makes random comedy failure so easy for us to swallow – aside from the subjectivity – is that most sitcoms train us to wash our hands of whatever happened one week and get ready for something new the following week. Clearly, character arcs and plot points carry over from week to week, but outside of Parks’ Harvest Festival mini-arc, those comedies above typically rely on some sort of standalone framework within their episodic structures. The jokes, for the most part, don’t carry over, and those jokes that do aren’t necessarily overtly repeated but instead are part of a larger character beat or theme (the Parks Department’s treatment of Jerry comes to mind).

What then makes Arrested Development so singular (and impressive, of course) is that it is powered by a successive building of characters and plot-points, but jokes, gags, cutaway bits and more. The serialization is all-encompassing and more important in the story of the Bluths than it is for contemporary great sitcoms. The writers’ ability to construct situations where repetition doesn’t just make sense, it is almost necessary, is one of the things that make Arrested Development so darn impressive. Community is a structurally impressive and novel sitcom, and the way Dan Harmon deconstructs and reconstructs the form constantly compels me, but to be fair, Community doesn’t exist without Arrested Development. And the ability of AD’s staff, led by Mitch Hurwitz and Jim Vallely, to construct their narrative with such purpose is truly dizzying, even watching it today.

In that sense, then, I would posit that Arrested Development is one of the only sitcoms that require the viewer to see every episode to truly get the full experience. The comparisons to Lost are too easy, especially since they debuted at the same time, but they’re also not entirely far off. Arrested Development’s brand of serialization rewards extended and long-term engagement, not just on a character level or a plot level, but on every level. Season one of the series is probably my favorite, but the second works so masterfully because of the consistent pay-offs to gags and beats alike.

But if Lost – and really, most of the hackneyed series that followed it – has taught us anything, it is that serialization can be a fickle bitch. When things are going well, and gradually building, that thrill of dramatically linked episodes is a television viewing experience like no other. But when things go wrong, they can go very wrong and there’s oftentimes little escaping for an extended period of time. This is likely even more troubling for a comedy. Lost could at least slam on the breaks in the middle of a bad storyline (say, like in the first half of season three) and tell a standalone story that had some satisfying moments amid all the obvious problems (“Not in Portland” comes to mind). A comedy, though? If a thread or a running joke doesn’t work, it’s not only harmful on a storytelling level, it can be flat-out painful to watch due to it not being funny. If the glorious construction has any base weaknesses, the whole thing can come crashing down.* The impact is instantly toxic and noticeable. This, I want to suggest, happened in Arrested Development’s third season.

*Playing it safe obviously has its rewards. Something like Parks isn’t as innately constructed as Arrested Development or Community, but it’s also much more consistent. There’s definitely a corollary, I think.

“For British Eyes Only” begins what I think is the only really failed story in Arrested Development’s history. Because the episodes are linked together so tightly, it was difficult to pick out which one bothered me the most, so I went with the beginning, the source of the problems. The season’s journey down to Wee Britain and the introduction of Charlize Theron’s Rita brings an interesting new energy to the series, but one that ultimately fails to be well-integrated into the “typical” rhythms of the Arrested Development world. For all the wacky things the series did in its run, this plotline is the only one that feels gimmicky in some way. It might not have been intended to be, but plays that way.

Critics often talk about the slick tightrope Community has to walk in order to stay on-track and not go up its own ass and that sort of observation fits well for season three of Arrested Development. I wouldn’t say the series became too self-referential or –reflexive, because they managed to make that kind of content work throughout. However, the first chunk of season three and the Wee Britain story had issues because they simply weren’t funny and more importantly, they lacked any real connection or build to previous events – though the series tried its hardest to make that so.

As I touched on before, what made the series so strong at various points is that it used repetition so intelligently, where beats and jokes were hammered home constantly for great effect. But the Wee Britain angle started fairly slow in “For British Eyes Only” and then quickly kept repeating the same jokes, ones that weren’t particularly funny in the first place and didn’t have enough time to develop, so the repetition came off as a bit lazy. I’m not sure if the constraints of the shortened season hampered the story or if the creative team just wanted to try something entirely new, but no matter what the reason, issues exist.  

One of the primary reasons the Wee Britain storyline stumbles is that it makes Michael look more like an idiot than usual. There is no question that the series had no problem putting their straight-man into situations where he looked like a fool, made bad choices and displayed traits that proved he was a rightful member of the dysfunctional Bluth family, but generally, there was a sense that the insanity around him caused him to make those weird/bad decisions. Here, though, Michael’s a dolt from the outset and things only get worse as the truth behind Rita’s identity is revealed and yet Michael almost marries the woman. I guess you could argue that Michael is so confused over everything with his family that he cannot pay enough attention to Rita and her fairly-obvious condition, but that’s still not particularly flattering for a relatively admirable guy. Theron is funny in a number of scenes throughout the arc, but that’s not enough to carry it out of mediocrity.

Throughout the first two seasons and then later in the third, Development succeeds because of the tight focus on the Bluth family. Supporting characters weave in and out of the story, but they are almost all included for a specific purpose (either on a plot or joke level). The Wee Britain angle is more detached from the family and the family stories than usual, another substantial issue. There is likely some value in exploring how George Bluth’s insane deals extend past the Middle East, and this arc covered that somewhat, but was generally more interested in making a fool out of Michael as he tried to find love and make a lot of obvious British culture jokes over and over. The ridiculous connections to Iraq, Sadaam Hussein and the War on Terror worked because they were both hilarious and very, very relevant at the time. Gags about British currency and Monty Python? Neither. The series always walked this line between super-intelligent comedy, particularly in the structure, and low-ball obvious comedy and unfortunately, the Wee Britain story is almost entirely based in the latter.

And this is where Arrested Development’s approach to storytelling, with the noticeable serialization and repetition in jokes, comes back to haunt the series. The Wee Britain story arc begins in the second episode of the season and carries on for four more episodes. Those five episodes aren’t flat-out ruined, but they are weighed down significantly, and in a final season of only 13 episodes, it’s disappointing that the series spends almost 40 percent of its episodes on a middling arc. The jokes are stale after the first episode and Michael looks like a massive idiot after the second, but the series keeps hitting the same marks. Obviously, all series have problematic arcs that take a while to maneuver out of, but Arrested Development’s storytelling style makes that slow maneuvering more painful than most.

Of course, the series regains some traction immediately after Rita and the Wee Britain story concluded. The second half of season three refocuses a little bit more on the family, the company and Michael as the mostly rationale man stuck at the center of it all and not surprisingly, it’s much better overall. I would guess that the cancelation news spurred Hurwitz and company to reign it back in a little more and the season’s final two or three episodes are really tremendous. I blame that finale for the constant rumor mongering related to the possible film*, but as a conceit within the episode, it works quite well.  

*I don’t want to keep beating this drum, but if we look at this third season and then all the things the creative team has done since Arrested Development concluded initially, why should we be that excited about a new season or a film? I don’t want to be completely cynical here, but re-watching this season reminded me that some of the luster had worn off, and Hurwitz has done a few miserable projects since. Noticeable declined quality plus extended absence doesn’t really equal instant success.

I guess I applaud the series’ creative team for trying something new in season three, but Arrested Development went a little far off the Bluth reservation. The failure of the Wee Britain arc and the series’ rebound in the second half only further pointed out how strong AD could be with a tight focus on the family. And again, the innovative approach to traditional sitcom storytelling, with the reflexivity, the repetition and the serialization, eventually became something of a problem once the series got stuck in a middling story. 

Yesterday during the ABC Wednesday comedy showrunners panel at the Television Critics Association gathering, Modern Family honcho Steve Levitan made a comment about how he would like to see the “far right” to not like his series’ two gay characters, Mitchell and Cameron. The implication from Levitan’s statement being that everyone has to love Mitchell and Cameron and if far right nuts got past the whole gay thing, they’d love them to. I subsequently tweeted that it’s going to be pretty hard for the right to like Mitchell and Cameron when they don’t even like each other.

One of the biggest problems I have with Modern Family is that the characters bicker and argue (and get into car accidents) so often throughout much of an individual episode’s running time that it is difficult to buy the final, already pandering and cheesy voiceovers or hug-centric resolutions.* I understand that family members drive each other nuts and that leads to verbal barbs and yelling, but the consistent nature at which Family engages in that storytelling is both embarrassing from a story perspective and legitimately awful in a larger sense.

* I’ve talked about this subject before, but Levitan’s comment spurred me on to think about it constantly last night.

As I have said before, I never expected Modern Family to depict a gritty, realistic portrayal of family life in contemporary society, but at least the first season had episodes that took that charge seriously somewhat. The series has been overrun by the other of the initial premise, that being the traditional wacky family sitcom shtick. Family just happens to be gussied up with the multi-camera mockumentary style, but it could fit in with all sorts of broad comedy blocks of yesteryear.  

The impact of the transition from smart comedy that mixes the old with the new to this simplistic, loud and bicker-y formula has been particularly damaging to Mitchell and Cameron. These days, the two rarely have a story that doesn’t eventually lead to the other screaming like a shrill or pouting like a baby. Their lack of physical affection towards one another is troubling enough, but these days, it is hard to really see why Mitchell and Cameron even enjoy one another’s company.

The strenuous ways that the series’ writers get the two of them into spats on a consistent basis has turned two compelling and contemporary characters into basic, stereotypical one-note argue machines. The series’ failed writing applies to all the adult pairings, but I would argue that Modern Family’s typical rhythms are most harmful for Mitchell and Cameron. Phil and Claire’s issues are almost always based on the former’s lack of self-awareness, a trope that requires less outward bickering and more of Claire looking exasperated. Meanwhile, the tension between Jay and Gloria is still mostly powered by “He’s old! And she’s young, and foreign!” gags, but again, there’s an inherent lack of overt pettiness between them. Jay’s old, Gloria can be crazy. Clearly, the series’ typical structure is already stale and staid and it is severely disappointing that these actors are wasted in such a basic manner just as Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson are.

However, the tension-template for Mitchell and Cameron is the one most reliant on yelling and childish emotional reactions to said yelling. And again, because it happens on such a consistent basis, it makes it hard for me to care about each week’s reconciliation or the relationship as a whole. Right now, Mitchell and Cameron are considering adopting a second child. To me, that sounds like the worst idea ever. I want to call CPS and the adoption agencies and warn them.

Of course, Modern Family isn’t the only big comedy on the air right now that embraces the bickering and the borderline hatred. In fact, four of the five most popular comedies on the air right now – Family, The Big Bang Theory, Two and Half Men, 2 Broke Girls – are all based around people saying awful things to one another in hopes of getting the audience to laugh. Sometimes, like in Modern Family’s case, the series then tries to tell us that it’s just all part of the familial or group bond, which is obviously patronizing and false. But even a series like Big Bang, which doesn’t take that kind of middling approach most weeks, still rings false to me because the characters are so awful to one another I don’t even understand why they’d continue to live in the same spaces, eat together at  lunch or do anything together.

And this is nothing new for mainstream broadcast network television comedy. Many of the medium’s most popular sitcoms of all-time were centered on this “people being awful to one another” premise. Obvious candidates like All in the Family and Everybody Loves Raymond come to mind first, but Ricky treated Lucy like crap on I Love Lucy, the crew on Seinfeld hated everyone and everything, all anyone did on Will & Grace was bicker, etc. There are probably a dozen other examples I’m not thinking of right now.

However, on the flip side two of the biggest comedies of all time are Friends, where the togetherness is backed up IN THE NAME OF THE SERIES, and Cheers, where the theme song is all about togetherness and friendship. Obviously, both of these comedies featured hundreds of moments where characters verbally attacked one another and argued, but what made them so beloved and so great is that for the most part, the attacks and arguments didn’t betray relationships just to get a laugh. Friends might have struggled with this in its later years, but they kept it under control generally.

In contemporary television though, the sitcoms that follow the Friends and Cheers patterns aren’t breaking through and becoming audience favorites. Will & Grace and Everybody Loves Raymond might have filled the airwaves with hate, but at least Friends was there to sort of negate it a bit. Now though? Not so much. How I Met Your Mother is the fifth biggest comedy on television and while it does have a whole lot of heart, in its older age, the series is no longer capable or seemingly interested in keeping the group relationships together. Parks and Recreation and Happy Endings are the most deserving candidates of that kind of mainstream recognition and celebration, but the former is stuck on NBC and the latter is more or less a timeslot hit. These two series, along with things like Up All Night, Cougar Town and Raising Hope, keep the annoying bickering to a certain minimum level and basically none of them are hits. Today, more than ever, we like comedies where people scream and yell.

The point is that we as a culture love to embrace comedies where everyone says they love each other but spends 20 minutes each week proving why that kind of “love” is awful, skewed or both. I understand the overreliance by writers to use jokes that rely on personal barbs, but I’m curious as to why we love characters who hate each other. Does it make us feel better about our lives? Does the last-act reconciliation each week make us believe that love and friendship conquers all, no matter how often we yell and scream at each other? Are we, at the core, just miserable people who like to see others miserable? I don’t really have an answer for this. I know I personally prefer comedies that actually make an effort to show me how and why the characters get along. 

Test Pilot #33: Dollhouse

Debut date: February 13, 2009

Series legacy: Bursting with potential, much of it untapped

Welcome to 2012, friends, readers and fellow humans. Test Pilot grew into a popular (relatively speaking, of course) and personal favorite feature in 2011 and I think we have a bunch of really intriguing stuff coming up that will allow Test Pilot to trend upward into the new calendar year as well. For example, to kick things off this year, we’re doing something special: A Test Pilot theme week. Instead of tackling a new pilot within a certain theme every other week, my guests and I will be discussing them over the next four days. This is obviously a different approach and maybe it won’t work, but if it does, look for more theme weeks in the future.

This week, four guest co-writers and I will discuss the work of one Joss Whedon. You folks might not have heard of him, I know. But he’s the voice behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse. Although Whedon has not won nearly as many Emmys as the Davids (Chase, Simon, Milch) or someone like Matthew Weiner, he is one of the most respected and admired creative forces in television (and well, now film apparently). His work on the first two series spurred on an entire field of academic study, the third has one of, if not, the most tragic network mismanagement stories and the fourth might be looked at completely different in five or 10 years.

Throughout the week, I will be joined by veteran viewers of all four series and we will talk about how each of these pilots reflect larger Whedon-y (Whedonian?) traits, why they are heavily beloved and what kind of idiot I could be for not watching them sooner. If you missed the posts on Buffy, Angel or Firefly earlier in the week, please check them out.

Today, we wrap up our look through the Whedon oeuvre with his most recent foray into television, Dollhouse. Like Firefly, Whedon’s second project with FOX featured a number of changes mid-production, various minor controversies, a terrible time slot and shockingly, a second season. Along the way, Dollhouse suggested greatness and a slew of intriguing ideas, but never quite there. What can the pilot tell us about the series’ successes and failures?

Joining me today is John Aspler. John is a neuroscience/music undergraduate student hailing from Montreal, Canada. He writes because Lost and Buffy inspired him to take television far more seriously than anyone else he knows in real life. Writing about television, as well as cultural criticism, are his favorite things ever in the world. This fact constantly causes him to question his chosen fields of study as he considers dropping everything in favor of a life of journalistic blogging. He writes semi-occasionally for SpoilerTV, has his own TV blog with a terrible layout, a rant blog shared with angry friends, and can be found on twitter @LostCadence. John, take it away:

Dollhouse opens on security camera footage of two women sitting silently on opposite sides of a round table. The first line, uttered with the intense seriousness of an incredibly arch older British woman, had the unfortunate effect of causing me to giggle uncontrollably. “Nothing is what it appears to be,” she says, with the weight of an overtly stated metaphor clinging to her every syllable. I couldn’t help but think about some of the things my Grade 7 English teacher had taught me, foremost amongst them being to never explore “things aren’t what they seem to be” as a literary theme. The idea is so broad that any story can be made to fit that mold.

In the case of Dollhouse, it really does happen to be one of the central ideas holding the story together, but to start the first scene by waving a giant explicit metaphor at the audience seems a little tacky. This could have been set up in a much more nuanced fashion. Joss Whedon is one of my favorite television authors, but this first line kind of threw me for a loop.

Then again, Whedon rarely shies away from using big in-your-face metaphors. In fact, it’s one of his trademark storytelling techniques. Season six of Buffy very clearly explored drug use and addiction through witchcraft, season two had Buffy’s apparently wonderful boyfriend become a soulless dick the morning after, and Whedon has himself stated that Buffy is a coming of age story in which high school is literally hell. These are the things that I loved about Buffy. Why should Dollhouse’s metaphors bother me so much? I guess it all comes down to execution. Metaphors are a fantastic way to tell a story, but Dollhouse basically spoon-fed that particular idea to its audience. Furthermore, the line served as an indicator of the general quality of the pilot. It’s almost as if Whedon was inserting metacommentary in order to tell the fans ‘look, this is a good series even if it does not yet appear as such. Please be patient.’

All of that to say, I came into Dollhouse with incredibly high Joss Whedon-related expectations; however, I immediately found myself worried about how said expectations might be crushed. While I would greatly enjoy being able to judge Dollhouse based on its merits outside of the context of the Whedonverse, I’m not sure that I’m capable of such a feat. This makes figuring out how I feel about the Dollhouse pilot a very difficult task. I don’t think I’m ever going to know if it disappointed me because it was weak, or if it was mediocre and lacking in elements that the words “Joss Whedon” had lead me to expect. These missing elements included strong/compelling female characters and a sense of development.

I should probably take a moment to explain that, despite my above negativity, I absolutely adore Dollhouse as a completed entity. More than any other Whedon series, Dollhouse relied heavily on its high concept. Said concept acted as a crutch during season one, but wound up heightening the drama throughout season two. It asked big questions that demanded morally complex answers and didn’t shy away from confronting them. The moment that Dollhouse really began to give me what I had initially wanted was in the episode “Epitaph One”. Post-Apocalyptic future in which technology to alter the human mind has run amok? Yes please!

Furthermore, season two remains one of my favourite seasons of a Whedon series to date. Unfortunately, the problems present in the pilot didn’t really start working themselves out until most of the way through the first season. Fortunately, the promise of its high concept convincingly resolved itself over the course of the series’ second season.

Whedon is well known for crafting gripping stories about strong female protagonists. Right from the pilot, Buffy had Buffy, Angel had Cordelia, and, although Firefly was essentially a Nathan Fillion-led ensemble, it had Zoe, Inara, and Kaylee.

Dollhouse was supposed to highlight Eliza Dushku’s Echo. Or rather, Dollhouse was supposed to tell the story of Caroline, a woman who had gotten in over her head with strength to buck the system despite being a retrograde amnesic with minimal sense of self. Somehow, being the best able to have your mind wiped and reprogrammed in order to complete a wide variety of tasks was supposed to imply strength of character.

As the concept was structured, Dollhouse felt like it should have been the tale of Paul Ballard: FBI agent extraordinaire. Caroline could have been a victim who would LATER become a protagonist as Ballard uncovered her past and took down the Dollhouse. There’s nothing wrong with having a strong male protagonist and, had Whedon been primarily trying to tell Ballard’s story, my point might be moot. Unfortunately for Whedon, Eliza Dushku had been heavily pushed as the kickass star of Dollhouse in promotional material, in the opening credits, in interviews with Whedon himself, and in the structuring of the weekly stories. Furthermore, Tamoh Penikett only appeared briefly and never with any of the other series regulars (not unlike when he was a guest star on Battlestar Galactica throughout its first season).

I have no problem with Joss Whedon trying to tell the story of a woman devoid of character slowly creating one for herself from nothing. Given the disturbing nature of the dollhouse and the ultimate direction in which the series was taken, I suspect that this might have been one of Whedon’s goals. The problem is a combination of my expectations (my own problem), how the series was marketed (further skewing my aforementioned expectations), and the pilot’s structure (an actual series problem). Marketing problems were likely more a function of how FOX handled Dollhouse, which would make the following criticism a little harsh; however, the series itself tried to make Echo, as she appeared in the pilot, seem stronger than she should have, conflicting with any purposeful opposite intent on Whedon’s part.

As such, the majority of each episode devoted its time to Echo, who was thrown into weekly situations requiring her new programming to save the day. In the pilot, we were supposed to be rooting for Echo as she saved a child from a group of kidnappers; however, we wound up rooting for her persona of the week (Eleanor Penn) to save the weekly guest stars instead. Topher (the dollhouse’s nerdy tech guy) specifically said “what happened at the dock happened to Eleanor Penn, or the people we made her out of.” As in, not Echo. That isn’t to say that Topher was 100% correct, but we wouldn’t be made aware of this until well after the pilot. How could a character with no personality, or rather, a personality that changed between episodes, be an interesting one? How could this character be the compelling leader of an ensemble drama? As early as the pilot, the series felt more like an elaborate live-action creation of a CV for Dushku to show the world her range as an actor – a range I was not entirely convinced existed based on the pilot – rather than a coherent story about a woman with no identity.

Still, at the beginning and end of many episodes, we were given glimpses into why Echo was supposedly the protagonist. Unlike many of the other dolls, she appeared semi-aware. Furthermore, Echo learned and grew despite consistently having her memory wiped. From nothing came something. Sadly, season one’s overly episodic structure denied us much of this development. Even sadder is the fact that this was completely absent from the pilot. Echo was blissfully unaware of her episode-long struggle. It’s hard to sit through dramatic situation after dramatic situation when there’s nothing emotional at stake for the central character. Echo didn’t even take home a clichéd life lesson from her ordeal because SHE COULD NOT REMEMBER SAID ORDEAL!

At a major turning point in the pilot, Boyd (Echo’s handler) disputed wiping Echo of Ms. Penn’s persona for fear of her losing the tools necessary to save the day. He was trying to argue that Echo herself was important, while essentially claiming that the only reason Echo would be of use was because of other people’s experiences and some lucky programming on Topher’s part. In fact, Echo being allowed to continue her mission was more a function of Boyd’s argument with Dewitt (the head of the dollhouse) than it was a reflection of Echo doing anything particularly amazing.

Honestly, I could not have cared less about Ms. Penn’s adventures as a hostage negotiator. That probably says more about my personal preference for serialization than it does about the quality of the situation of the week; however, had this story been used to tell us something about the characters – generally the primary goal of series relying heavily on procedural-like storytelling – then I might have had more positive things to say about the pilot. While it did help introduce us to Boyd, Topher, Dewitt, and Echo’s hostage negotiator persona, it told me nothing about Echo (or Caroline) herself.

That isn’t to say that none of the other characters appeared interesting. The best character development came in the form of the aforementioned potential protagonist: Paul Ballard. His introduction is one of the pilot’s strongest moments. It’s a great character beat in which we learn about his determination to root out and destroy the dollhouses through the juxtaposition of a scene in which he panders to his superiors and another scene in which he never gives up and winds up kicking the crap out of an opponent while boxing. As the season wore on, his disconnection from the rest of the cast became frustrating because he was so compelling and yet so uninvolved; however, the season one finale sorted that out by having him become Echo’s handler.

Truthfully, I’m not certain what Whedon could have done differently. In order to lead us to the promised-land that was season two, he needed to sustain a slow-burning mythology-based development. If Echo became self-aware too early, the series would have to move into territory it wasn’t yet ready to explore. If Ballard discovered the dollhouse too early, then he would be forced to fail regularly or else to save Caroline far too soon. When Echo ultimately learned to harness all of her different personalities, it helped that we had witnessed her execute so many different missions. It made the payoff feel warranted, even if the setup had been somewhat excruciating. Echo’s slow development into a person also made her anger at the possibility of being “killed” when Caroline was to be given her body back much more powerful. All of these amazing elements were only possible because of the manner in which season one was set up.

What did I think of the Dollhouse pilot? There were elements that hinted at the quality to come. The series’ big questions were compelling, Ballard was especially good in his very few scenes, the hook involving videos of Caroline being watched by a naked man surrounded by men he had killed was intriguing, and the dollhouse mythology left me wanting more information. However, the rest of the pilot was an accidental mess. Trying to push the conflict as something that the protagonist had no actual hand in was always going to be problematic. The pilot tried to shrug the concern off as if Whedon knew that it existed but was trying to deny the matter. The issue seems to be the contradictions inherent in Whedon’s goals. On the one hand, the pilot made for an interesting look at a decent ensemble cast, while on the other, it tried too hard to ensure that Echo was considered the main protagonist. Season two ultimately brought us a strong female lead – the character that Whedon was likely interested in showing us in the first place – that could not have existed without her confusing development throughout season one. Sadly, it took way too long for Whedon to make that point clear. “Nothing is what it [appeared] to be.”

–JA

Now, my not-so-newbie thoughts on Dollhouse:

I closed my thoughts on Buffy the Vampire Slayer by noting that Joss Whedon was a writer/director who knew how to play within the constraints of the broadcast network and studio system. Obviously, the WB and UPN aren’t NBC or CBS, but doing projects like Buffy and Angel a decade-and-a-half ago was still relatively risky.

And yet, as time has passed and the broadcast networks have seen their ratings decline as cable networks take a larger chunk of audience attention and all networks except CBS have begun catering to some kind of niche, Whedon’s failed more than he’s succeeded. This is a time when a series like Fringe (one that debuted right alongside Dollhouse in the 2008-09 season) stays on the air for four-plus years. This is the era of the cult television series. And yet, here we have Whedon’s final television project that didn’t really connect with viewers and only got a second season out of the kindness of FOX’s heart, really.

One could probably argue that Firefly failed because it was too novel, too “different” for broadcast television, especially in 2002. Whedon expected too much from his audience (which is a conversation or another day, I guess). But what’s really interesting to me is that it’s almost as if Whedon tried too hard to play with the system with Dollhouse, at least with the pilot and the first season. It’s not like he was unaware of the television landscape, his past history with FOX or the general expectations that come with a series that has his name at the top.

Therefore, instead of moving forward with the much more complicated, “here’s the deep end, now swim” approach the initial pilot episode “Echo” took, Whedon decided to shoot an entirely different pilot episode in “Ghost” and well, the results are middling at best. John talked a lot about how the struggles of the pilot (and much of the first season) end up laying the groundwork for what eventually became a very strong second season and while I don’t disagree with that sentiment completely, it does seem as if Whedon ran away from the intriguing themes and concepts behind Dollhouse as quickly as he could in season one.

I will be the first person to support the initial use of procedural, case-like stories. I understand the logic of starting off with close-ended, only-partially complicated episodes. This is especially true for a series like Dollhouse, where the concept was certainly going to be somewhat difficult for general audiences to consume. My problem with Dollhouse’s pilot and most of the episodes that use the “appointment of the week” structure isn’t that they simply use that structure, it’s that the execution of the structure is rarely that interesting and early on, only served as a way to show the gimmicky parts of the series’ concept (and as John mentioned, to show off Dushku’s sometimes-strained acting abilities).

Whereas a series like Fringe eventually figured out that it could use the episodic stories to impact the lead characters in moving ways, Dollhouse never got there. Most of them followed a simple structure – Echo gets in trouble! Sometimes Victor or Sierra gets in trouble! – and while they occasionally moved the plot forward, nothing that crucial happened on a character level. Most of those beats and reveals were saved for the big mythology episodes. The separation between the two kinds of episodes didn’t really matter once the second season got going – though season two’s standalone episodes are pretty miserable as well – but the first season is often such a mess that it’s hard to believe anyone but diehard Whedon fans and intense television watchers stuck around (and that’s probably completely true).

Hindsight is our favorite science, but re-watching “Ghost” now, it sure feels as if Whedon hoped the concept itself would be enough to keep people coming back, without actually fully getting into many particulars about what that concept was. Again, I understand the rationale for this decision and I would never advocate for a pilot to spell everything out and then leave no real mystery left moving forward, but there’s just a weird flow and lack of depth to Dollhouse’s initial episode that I wouldn’t really expect from Whedon (even based on my small knowledge in that regard). The series obviously took a very dark and compellingly deranged turn in season two and I think I would have preferred that there were just a smidgen more of that ominous feeling early on in season one. Because there’s no question that Dollhouse features one hell of a premise, one that raises all sorts of ethical, moral and fundamental questions about society. And yet, “Ghost” is just too nonchalant about all of that, despite Boyd’s protests.

The lack of engagement with the series’ big themes is probably the biggest disappointment of the Dollhouse pilot for me. Although I’ve been annoyed with my peers’ incessant needling that I HAVE TO WATCH everything that Whedon’s done, I’ve never really doubted the man’s ability to craft supremely complex and interesting television. I think the second season of Dollhouse features one of the strongest runs of high-concept, pulse-pounding mythology-based storytelling in recent years and the success of those episodes relies just as much on their willingness to address the creepy nature of the series’ whole premise as it does the slew of out-of-nowhere twists. And what we learn in “Ghost” or many of the first season episodes doesn’t necessarily lay the groundwork for those reveals and pay-offs as much as it delays getting to them.

Moreover, “Ghost” and much of the first season suffer because Dollhouse lacks the fascinating group dynamics that power Buffy and Firefly, even in the pilot stage. Much like the first episode of Angel, “Ghost” relies too much on its central character and even more egregiously than Angel, Dollhouse’s central character is a bit of a bore (although more purposefully so, of course). Dushku gets better as Dollhouse progresses, but the whole “different people” gimmick isn’t really her strong-suit. Harry Lennix and Olivia Williams are fine as Boyd and DeWitt, but Fran Kranz didn’t figure out how to make Topher less obnoxious until much later and “Ghost” doesn’t feature enough of Enver Gjokaj and Dichen Lachman. And because of the series’ premise, these characters don’t really interact with one another in powerful ways at this stage. There’s no sense of togetherness or rapport and although that’s entirely part of Dollhouse’s larger sense of alienation and manipulation, it does remove what is clearly one of Whedon’s writing strengths. Again, once these folks do come together in later episodes, the series improves. Waiting to get there, though, is a bit of a pill.

Ultimately, Dollhouse is a weird entity. On paper, it is powered by Whedon’s most novel and compelling premise and in many instances, the real execution of that premise results in tremendous episodes and interest in some very heavy, but important themes about control, technology, manipulation, etc. In that regard, the series features the strongest Whedon output I’ve personally ever experienced. Nevertheless, because Whedon and his team attempted to satiate general audiences too much in the early going (perhaps because of what happened with Firefly?) and never quite figured out how to bring the two different kinds of episodes together that well, Dollhouse remains a supremely flawed whole. I hope that its failure* doesn’t keep Whedon from trying television again, because he’s clearly one of the best storytellers we have. Maybe just stay away from broadcast networks, Joss.

*Failure is relative. Two seasons isn’t the kind of run we just ignore.

As we come to the end of our Joss Whedon theme week, I would like to add two points. The first is that I need to thank Greg, Chris, Rowan and John for taking part in this little experiment. It has been really fun and I think each of them brought something slightly different to the table, creating a great experience overall. Secondly, I’m ready to watch some more Whedon-penned television. You win, Whedon faithful.

–CB

Conclusions on legacy: “Bursting with potential, much of it untapped” sounds perfect

Test Pilot #32: Firefly

Debut date: September 20, 2002

Series legacy: The defining cult series in contemporary television

Welcome to 2012, friends, readers and fellow humans. Test Pilot grew into a popular (relatively speaking, of course) and personal favorite feature in 2011 and I think we have a bunch of really intriguing stuff coming up that will allow Test Pilot to trend upward into the new calendar year as well. For example, to kick things off this year, we’re doing something special: A Test Pilot theme week. Instead of tackling a new pilot within a certain theme every other week, my guests and I will be discussing them over the next four days. This is obviously a different approach and maybe it won’t work, but if it does, look for more theme weeks in the future.

This week, four guest co-writers and I will discuss the work of one Joss Whedon. You folks might not have heard of him, I know. But he’s the voice behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse. Although Whedon has not won nearly as many Emmys as the Davids (Chase, Simon, Milch) or someone like Matthew Weiner, he is one of the most respected and admired creative forces in television (and well, now film apparently). His work on the first two series spurred on an entire field of academic study, the third has one of, if not, the most tragic network mismanagement stories and the fourth might be looked at completely different in five or 10 years.

Throughout the week, I will be joined by veteran viewers of all four series and we will talk about how each of these pilots reflect larger Whedon-y (Whedonian?) traits, why they are heavily beloved and what kind of idiot I could be for not watching them sooner. If you missed Tuesday’s coverage of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or yesterday’s discussion of Angel, please check them out.

Today, we are here to discuss Joss Whedon’s shortest and yet perhaps most-celebrated television product, Firefly. By now, you folks know the story: FOX consistently screwed with Whedon’s work during Firefly, deciding to delay the airing of the official pilot episode, “Serenity,” and ultimately canceling the series after 14 episodes. Nearly a decade later, Firefly remains one of the most-discussed one-season wonders and so-called cult favorites.

Joining me to discuss Firefly today is Rowan Kaiser. Rowan is a freelance writer living in the Bay Area. His work has appears regularly at the A.V. Club, has also appeared at Gamasutra, 1UP.com, The Escapist and Kotaku. To find all Rowan’s work, check out his blog Renaissance Gamer and follow him on Twitter.

And to mix it up a bit, Rowan pitched me on doing these piece in a more of a crosstalk/conversational style. The two of us exchanged emails about Firefly over the last handful of days, discussing why this pilot might just be the best thing Whedon has ever done and why I’m ready to watch the rest of my DVDs.

Rowan: There is a scene early in “Serenity” that I think acts as a microcosm for what I like about the pilot as a whole. Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic, is sitting in front the ship, looking for passengers. She’s holding colorful umbrella and twirling it, which takes up most of the screen, as she talks to Shepard Book, a potential customer. This camera focuses on this simple bit of beauty for a bit longer than expected. Its takes its time introducing us to Kaylee, who is the bright color of the show in a metaphorical sense, but it’s also just a nice, slow shot. It’s not the only lingering moment in the episode, though, Inara, the ship’s Companion (a legal, socially accepted prostitute), takes a slow, sensual (but not all that sexy, oddly) bath.

To me, Cory, as the Whedon “expert” of the two of us, this indicates Whedon’s confidence in his ability to use the televised form, far more than the other pilots. In those first episodes, Buffy is cute but awkward, Angel spends too long trying to dig itself out of Buffy‘s shadow (and generally failing), and Dollhouse kind of a chaotic mess. Firefly, on the other hand, started up with Whedon at the height of his powers, with both Buffy and Angel finding their groove. And Buffy especially was driven by Whedon’s experimentation. Episodes like “Hush” (the silent episode) and “Once More With Feeling” (the musical episode) indicated a willingness to play with the formal constraints of television.

So in “Serenity” we see a television show that’s willing to sit back and take a deep breath. It does what pilots do – introduce the world, the characters, and the conflicts – but it does so in a way that works with the narrative, instead of barraging the viewer with new information. Of course, it’s aided by the fact that it’s a double-length episode. So, naturally, FOX apparently hated this episode and didn’t air it first, choosing the inferior “The Train Job” as the introduction. And here I am, having seen all of Whedon’s TV shows, happily declaring that “Serenity” is a masterful pilot, probably my favorite thing Joss Whedon has ever done. So, Cory, are you with me or with Fox? There is no middle ground!

Cory: The absolute best thing Whedon has ever done? Does that count Alien Resurrection? More seriously though, Rowan, I am absolutely with you. The Firefly pilot episode is far and away the strongest of opening offering of all the Whedon series. Watching all four pilots within a short period of time makes the differences between them easier to point out — your points about Buffy, Angel and Dollhouse are all fair — but even separated from that vacuum, Firefly stands alone.

As you touched on, the strongest element of this episode is that the world, the characters, the history, all of it, feels fully-formed. It starts with that extended prologue in “the war,” but we’re never given many contextual clues as far as what that war is actually about or who in particular is fighting. This lack of exposition or dreaded pilot-y over-explanation continues throughout. Nearly everyone we meet in the pilot appears to have an intense personal history with someone else we meet.

The initial crew members have a strong rapport that’s both brotherly and complicated. Mal and Inara’s issues are barely below the surface. Simon and River, though new additions to this rag-tag bunch of space cowboys, are constructed with similar initial depth. I could go on here, but the point is that the characters are well-formed and are so without much bland LET ME TELL YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE HOW WE KNOW EACH OTHER dialogue that plagues so many pilots. We’re dropped into this world with little clues as to what’s really going on, and there’s all sorts of intriguing stuff below the surface, but Whedon’s script still manages to tell a wonderful, thrilling and sprawling single story at the same time. Only truly great pilots manage that kind of perfect balance between compelling set-up and sense of initial resolution.

This, without question, is a great pilot. As I’ve watched all four of these pilots this week, I’ve noticed that Whedon prefers to eschew the traditional “origin” story boiler-plate pilot storytelling. The Buffy and Dollhouse pilots have their issues and certainly aren’t as strong as this one, but they still nicely avoid too much obvious and cumbersome exposition about their admittedly high concept premises. Oddly, Angel, the one pilot with a character and story the audience would have been most familiar with anyway, features the most annoying use of exposition. How do you feel about Whedon’s approach to pilot storytelling in that regard and do you think his unwillingness to completely SPELL IT OUT for audiences (and network/studio executives) is part of the reason something like Firefly failed?

Rowan: Well, I might say “The Body”, Buffy’s most intense episode, could be better, but it isn’t standalone like this one. As for Fox and its treatment of the show, well, there are two basic theories as to why Firefly was cancelled: either it was treated so poorly by Fox, especially in having this episode left unaired for months; or that Firefly was just too niche to succeed. I really can’t say which it might be, because when I look at a show like this, or Terriers (which shares Whedon alum Tim Minear as an Executive Producer and writer) and I see exactly what I want in a television series. It’s fun, smart, and tense, with stand-alone episodes as well as a compelling overarching narrative. So naturally both were ratings disasters. I will say that Fox was certainly wrong in not airing this episode for so long, especially as the two episodes that replaced it – “The Train Job” and “Bushwhacked” – are probably the weakest of the entire run.

You mentioned both the war and characters, and I’d like to get into those a bit more, because those are the two things that I think make the show so gorram fascinating. Let’s talk about the war first, since it’s a little bit less obvious. Mal and Zoe having been on the losing end of that war builds an aura of tragedy that Firefly’s entire aesthetic supports, especially the background music as well as the theme song. They are, to take the idea of the space western, the remnants of a Lost Cause that was actually worth fighting for, unlike the real-world Civil War. The setting is clever in that it can milk that tragic aspect without the whole slavery thing that makes real-world westerns with ex-Confederate heroes so frustrating.

I love this for two reasons. First of all, it lets our heroes be underdogs. This is the fourth time I’ve watched the pilot, and only now do I really see how thick that underdog aspect is being laid on. But that’s because the underdog aspect is just so damn cool. Ending on “We’re still flying.” “That’s not much.” “It’s enough.”? How can you not pull for these guys? Second, it makes them the resistance, fighting a war that’s already been lost. And I’m a huge fan of resistance stories, from Lust, Caution and Army Of Shadows to Final Fantasy VI. So how do you feel about the Firefly aesthetic and tone, Cory? And are you with me in thinking that maybe it’s more comparable to Terriers than the other Whedon shows? Should we be doing Tim Minear week instead, perhaps?

Cory: If we did a Tim Minear week, I know two things: 1.) We’d need more days to discuss all his failed projects and 2.) People would be stunned and saddened with how many solid, but failed series that guy worked on. I guess at the pilot stage, the comparison to Terriers is more applicable than something like Buffy. However, I do think that all four Whedon pilots have this underlying combination of the underdog spirit and a smidgen of sadness. Buffy doesn’t have much trouble in her first throwdown in Sunnydale, but the whole “bringing the team together” portions of the pilot include their fair share of melancholy bits. Angel is super-depressed and therefore a off his game in “City of Angels,” a fact the pilot probably hammers home too much. The Dollhouse pilot is a god-damn mess, but dude, those people are sad (and personality-less, but hey).

Anyway, the aesthetic and tone create an interesting dynamic for me. The space western backdrop and the generally appealing visual pallet bring a whole lot to the table. I watched the pilot on Blu-ray and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t remastered in any way; the thing was gorgeous. I hate to be one of those people who blindly piles on networks for making mistakes, but it’s amusing that FOX and 20th Century clearly pumped a substantial amount of money into the pilot and then shelved it for what you and most everyone else call lesser episodes. The long and wide shots in space don’t look cheap at all and the set design is fantastic. The contrast between the dirt and the grime and the glories of space exploration really work for me. I’m sure Whedon proved himself as a visual storyteller with some Buffy episode I haven’t seen, but there’s an obvious contrast between his direction on the Angel pilot and what he does here. This again goes back to your insistence that with Firefly, Whedon is at full-capacity, not only as a writer, but as a director as well.

But as obviously wonderful as the aesthetics are, I think it’s the tone that really helps “Serenity” succeed, or at least, it’s the element that works the best for me. The tragic, rag-tag underdog feelings are all there, but I also appreciate that these characters are noticeably flawed, which allows for the right mix of Whedon wit and a more grim outlook. Mal, from all accounts in this episode, is a pretty screwed up dude. He clearly fits that outlaw hero mold, but it goes deeper than that. He’s a darker, tenser and initially deeper version of Han Solo (yes, I’m aware I’m the 10,241,291th person to make this comparison): He’s been through some stuff and while he can certainly crack wise to cut the tension, he also has no problem forcing the issue, threatening someone’s life or shooting a horse just to knock over an opponent in a gun-fight. He’s haunted by some of the things he’s seen and done, but he’s also sort of secretly proud of what doing and seeing those things turned him into.

My favorite moment of the whole pilot is when Mal bulls Simon over and informs him that Kaylee didn’t make it, leading to the great quick cut from Simon’s exasperated reaction to learning Mal lied to him to the crew laughing hysterically. Sure, it’s a moment dedicated to cheap laughter. But it’s also a useful character moment that tells us what kind of demented sense of humor Mal (and the other crew goofballs) have.

Thus, as the centerpiece character to the story, Mal’s complex identity serves as a great representative of the pilot’s general tone: Witty and willing to jump into action when needed, but much more interesting under the surface. Let me ask you this: If this is Whedon’s most singular, individual achievement, how does the rest of Firefly stack up to “Serenity?” What changes, what doesn’t and what, perhaps, should have? Is the pilot the best the series has to offer?

Rowan: I do think that the pilot is the best that Firefly has to offer, but not by much. There’s a two-episode whammy in the middle of the season, “Ariel” and “War Stories”, that might beat the pilot for sheer entertainment value. But as I’ve mentioned, the languid pace and feeling that “Serenity” is just letting the story and characters breathe. It’s quite the opposite of the end of the series, the still-quite-good Serenity film, which has an almost identical story in some ways, but crams too much into a similar run-time. And yes, Whedon’s directorial playfulness is a big part of the story of Buffy - in the seasons of that show leading up towards Firefly, there’s a string of Whedon penned/directed episodes that exhibit increasing formal daring: “Hush”, “Restless”, “The Body”, “The Gift”, “Once More With Feeling”.

But yes, despite all that, what really makes Firefly amazing, and what I think makes it The Great Cult Show of our age, is its memorable ensemble of characters. And while we could spend another three or four rounds of this talking about each of them just in the pilot, I think it’s best to focus on Captain Malcolm Reynolds, who is just a stunning achievement of writing and acting. Certainly, he’s of a type – in addition to Han Solo, he can easily fit in with, say, Raylan Givens – but it’s a type which is given that nice little Whedony twist.

Joss Whedon is often called a feminist writer, which is occasionally somewhat problematic, but it’s easy enough to defend that I’m not going to take that away. But instead I think it’s better to say he’s interested in examining gender, and he often does a better job with masculinity than the does with femininity, as Mal demonstrates. You mentioned the practical joke scene, which is iconic and defining, but there are ten other iconic moments. “Didn’t she shoot you?” “Everyone’s makin’ a fuss.” Or the “Guh?” when he first sees River in the container. And you know what? Those are going to keep coming. Mal always stays interesting.
A huge amount of credit has to be given to Nathan Fillion as well. It would be easy for Mal to turn into an over-the-top cartoon, just as it would be easy for him to be a gritty anti-hero. But Fillion captures a perfect combination of confidence and insecurity, or of humor and determination, or of masculine power and anxiety. He makes Mal’s gut reactions to be a jerk seem just as plausible as his quips or his changes of heart.

And that Mal is wrong so often is another interesting thing about Firefly. We’re so used to our male anti-heroes since The Sopranos, but Reynolds is really the first major break with the typical science fiction Wise Patriarch. Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Picard would never have even considered tossing Simon out of the airlock, and as always-right as Babylon 5′s Sheridan generally was, he was never so badass as to walk into the loading bay and shoot a villain in the head without breaking stride. Firefly doesn’t get all the credit for subverting the Captain-as-Patriarch, as Battlestar Galactica came out at almost the same time, but it’s certainly part of what makes the series feel so fresh.

So let’s get towards wrapping this up. Apart from Mal, what characters made an impact on you? And how quickly are you going it to tear into the rest of those DVDs and join The Cult Of Whedon you’ve tried so hard to make fun of? Firefly was my gateway too, after all.

Cory: Fillion is tremendous. I like him on Castle quite a bit, but watching this pilot fills in the context of why people love that guy so much. You’re right, Mal could have easily been a basic Han Solo riff with a whole lot of bravado and not enough depth or complexity for quality television, but Whedon and Fillion worked together to keep that from happening. As far as the rest of the characters, it’s sort of interesting that many actors are playing “types” I’d expect from them: Adam Baldwin’s Cobb is the stiff, muscleman, Alan Tudyk’s Wash is a bit of a goofball, Summer Glau’s River is odd and awkward, etc. Clearly, my familiarity with these performers comes from roles they’d play after Firefly, but now it makes totally sense why some of these actors have been “stuck” in those spots for a decade. Nevertheless, this hindsight-fueled perspective on various performances or characters didn’t negatively impact my viewing of the pilot at all. The full group dynamic and the sense of history between many of these characters are very appealing.

However, I will single out Sean Maher’s work as Simon. He’s not necessarily a “favorite,” in the pilot, but he does some layered work and handles the exposition about River and his relationship with her masterfully. The initial crew members — both the characters and the actors — have this comfort and rhythm with one another and I like how Maher (and to a lesser extent, Glau) bring a completely different, more subdued but still emotionally complex energy to the proceedings. Similar things can be said about Monica Baccarin’s Inara as well. I read that Rebecca Gayheart was originally cast in the role and I can only imagine what kind of a disaster that was. Baccarin is such a unique talent and her chemistry with Fillion is palpable from the get-go. Whedon and his casting director did a splendid job with everyone, really. Who do you love? Is there anyone who you feel doesn’t fit in well?

Another thing I wanted to ask you before we finish: What, in your mind, are the primary reasons Firefly failed? The issues with FOX are well-documented and it’s really easy to say “most TV watchers are dumb,” but let’s dig into this further. What could Whedon and his team have done differently? And finally, how do you think the legacy of the series would have changed had it continued? Does the early cancellation make fans think back more fondly than they should at all?

And oh yeah, I’m definitely looking forward to watching more. Then I can’t wait to yell at people in random humanities courses who haven’t seen it!

Rowan: It’s interesting that you pick those two. Generally speaking, I think Simon is the character that fans dislike the most, as he is something of a wet blanket in terms of being protective of his sister, and he’s not witty like Mal or Wash. I also tend to single Baccarin out as the weak link of the cast, but that’s not obvious in the pilot. I do think that in later episodes, her stilted, Companion poise seems just a little bit too forced, and it’s a lot more fun and believable when she lets her emotions out.

After Mal, it’s pretty much impossible for me not to say that Kaylee is a favorite. I will freely grant that she lacks depth. I will also admit that she’s of a cheerful, quirky type that Whedon seems to enjoy adding to all his shows, like Willow early in Buffy and Fred on Angel. And maybe it’s even cynical that the character who brings such joy to the show right away is the one who is immediately placed into mortal danger. But I’ll be damned if Jewel Staite doesn’t work perfectly at making Kaylee seem human instead of a manic pixie dream girl. She’s aided by the writing in two respects: first, Kaylee is really good at her job, and her job isn’t a feminine one. Second, she’s neither infantilized nor over-sexualized. Her budding relationship with Simon is a solid part of the pilot, and one which carries over to the series and the film.

As for why Firefly failed, well, I really have no idea. I almost have to say that it was luck, but it wasn’t just bad luck. There was also good luck – Joss Whedon coming up with this great of a premise, Nathan Fillion and the rest of the cast being available, whatever exec at Fox decided that a space western about crooks was something to air – but then there was the well-documented bad luck of studio meddling with episode order. For sanity’s sake, I almost have to remove myself emotionally from such things, because as many have noted, it’s really a miracle that anything great gets made through the bizarre production system. It’s also worth noting that I came to it on DVD, five years removed from cancellation, so I knew not to get too attached. But I did get attached. And now I’m part of the cult. Though I like to think I’m sane and don’t believe it’s possible to bring back. I’m just holding out for Firefly: The Next Generation in another decade.

Cory: Goodness, even when I try to be a Whedon Kool-Aid drinker, I fail miserably. I CANNOT WIN. Of course I would like the characters that real fans hate. Nevertheless, I can see the wet blanket comments, as his earnestness and protective instincts probably do grate over time. I liked him here, though.

On the failure point, do you think there’s any way that Firefly, in its exact same form, could make it onto the airwaves and succeed today? Clearly ratings expectations have changed and in some respects, it does feel like networks and studios are more willing to give showrunners and creative minds some leeway to make the series they want to make. The short answer, in my book, would be yes. Series with weirder premises have made it on television and the two big factors of the contemporary industry (lower ratings and the rise of cable, both which create more niche audience groups) suggest that Firefly could fit right at home on FOX Fridays or maybe even FX or Syfy. It seems like Whedon is snake-bitten when it comes to these matters though, if his dealings with FOX during Dollhouse are any indication. Ultimately, Whedon was ahead of his time with Firefly. Right?

Rowan: Well, yes and no. In terms of its niche fan appeal and its low ratings, Firefly might do better today. On the other hand, if you take a look at the television market today, there’s a distinct lack of science fiction. Voyager, Enterprise, Farscape, Andromeda, Babylon 5, Stargate: Whatever, Deep Space 9, Battlestar Galactica were all shows that aired within a few years of Firefly. Now we’re hitting a year past the last few episodes of Caprica, with nothing in sight. I do think that Whedon has realized that perhaps he should stick with cable if he does do television again, but who knows if we’ll see that again? 

Cory: That makes sense. I’d like to thank you for joining me. I always do my conclusions on the legacy of the series, and this time, there’s no question that the legacy of Firefly is warranted. This is a fantastic pilot.

Test Pilot #31: Angel

Debut date: October 5, 1999

Series legacy: A mostly worthy spin-off of one of television’s most well-regarded series

Welcome to 2012, friends, readers and fellow humans. Test Pilot grew into a popular (relatively speaking, of course) and personal favorite feature in 2011 and I think we have a bunch of really intriguing stuff coming up that will allow Test Pilot to trend upward into the new calendar year as well. For example, to kick things off this year, we’re doing something special: A Test Pilot theme week. Instead of tackling a new pilot within a certain theme every other week, my guests and I will be discussing them over the next four days. This is obviously a different approach and maybe it won’t work, but if it does, look for more theme weeks in the future.

This week, four guest co-writers and I will discuss the work of one Joss Whedon. You folks might not have heard of him, I know. But he’s the voice behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse. Although Whedon has not won nearly as many Emmys as the Davids (Chase, Simon, Milch) or someone like Matthew Weiner, he is one of the most respected and admired creative forces in television (and well, now film apparently). His work on the first two series spurred on an entire field of academic study, the third has one of, if not, the most tragic network mismanagement stories and the fourth might be looked at completely different in five or 10 years.

Throughout the week, I will be joined by veteran viewers of all four series and we will talk about how each of these pilots reflect larger Whedon-y (Whedonian?) traits, why they are heavily beloved and what kind of idiot I could be for not watching them sooner. If you missed yesterday’s discussion of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Greg Boyd, please check that out.

Moving in chronological order, today we’re here to discuss Angel. The Buffy spin-off stumbled a bit out of the gate (as I think you’ll see based on our comments below), but eventually grew into a worthy entry into the Buffyverse (I do know a few folks who prefer Angel over Buffy, for what it’s worth.)

Joining me to discuss Angel’s pilot is Chris Castro. Chris is an avid TV and film devourer. Elmore Leonard is his favorite author and he prefers character-driven, serialized television over case-of-the-week procedurals. He grew up in Fresno, California where he studied Journalism until joining the US Army in 2006. He served as a communications engineer in Afghanistan and, after serving 4 years in the army returned home, and is currently residing in Visalia, CA. He plans on furthering his college education in the fall and is currently awaiting the return of Downton Abbey and Mad Men and hope he’ll be able to figure out what Bane is saying in The Dark Knight Rises. You can follow Chris on Twitter. Chris, take it away:

When I rewatched “City of…” (the pilot episode of Angel), what surprised me the most(aside from a cameo from a pre-Lost Josh Holloway as the series’ first vampire in disguise[The Vampire Sawyer! Quick, someone get TNT on the line!]) was how quickly the series opened with action. Granted, it’s not that surprising a new series would begin with some action to get the audience interested. But, in the case of Angel, what’s most surprising about the scene is how convincing and interesting the action is:

Angel confronts a group of vampires about to attack a young woman. He beats them up, slams one on the hood of a car, and dispatches two with a nifty device that extends wooden stakes from his wrists. (He’s like Batman meets Spider-Man!) Then he walks into the alley while hero music plays and the series transitions to the opening credit sequence, which also features classical music, but set to a propulsive beat. It all reminded me that when this pilot first aired, I was truly taken aback by how much the series made me think of Batman: The Animated Series and that Joss Whedon might have actually made a great action series.

Joss Whedon is not big on action. That is to say, he’s not comfortable writing action scenes. He’s brought it up himself time and time again in interviews, DVD commentaries, and convention panels that his writing of action scenes usually amounts to “they fight.”

A casual observer may find this surprising, especially after looking at a summary of his work: Firefly is about space smugglers dodging both the law and the criminals hunting them down; Angel is about a crime-fighting vampire; Dollhouse is about people who can be reprogrammed to anything from assassins to hostage negotiators, but sometimes malfunction and become serial killers; Whedon wrote a 25-issue run of the Astonishing X-Men comic book and he directed and co-wrote the screenplay of what will certainly be one of the biggest blockbuster action movies of this year, The Avengers; and Buffy the Vampire Slayer has freaking “vampire slayer” right in its title! So, I’m sure one of the main selling points behind the creation of a Buffy spinoff was ACTION!

But Whedon is more at home with his character’s speech driving the action. His dialogue is more memorable than arguably any scene of action from his many works. The number of quotes his fans have committed to memory outpaces the number of action scenes Whedon has written by a huge margin. Whedon is a fan of words. Those are his character’s weapons and they duel constantly and entertainingly.

Whedon’s preference of dialogue over action is part of what make him such a successful creator of television. Action scenes are generally expensive to produce. Aside from the time it takes to get a normal scene of acting filmed, add to that whatever special effects(makeup or practical), action-choreography, stunt work, and additional camera work involved in making action scene. Then you have to edit all of that together in a way that doesn’t look hokey, unrealistic, or laughably cheap. Every action scene requires a multitude of departments working together to make one scene work. Non-action scenes generally require a few actors reading some lines and a stationary camera. Whedon’s scripts perfectly suited for the low budget world of network television(or, in the case of The WB, which aired both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, an even lower budget world. More of a moon, actually. The Pluto network. [Actually, maybe that should be UPN, which also aired Buffy. They had Homeboys In Space, after all.])

So, in the fall of 1999, while The WB was salivating over the idea of vampire fighting crime in Los Angeles, I was more than a little skeptical. And not just because I was more of a fan of Whedon’s dialogue than I was of his action.

When “Angel” was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he was not my favorite character. On paper, he sounds very interesting: a vampire with a soul, cursed to remember all the horrible things he’s done and continue to live out his days either wallowing in his guilt or using his considerable strength and abilities to make the world a better place. Unfortunately, there were only a few flashes of daring-do during Angel’s tenure on Buffy. Sure, he was good in a fight, with all the extra strength and preternatural senses that come with being a vampire, but this was Buffy’s story and Angel was only her paramour.

Most of the time, Angel was mopey and prone to shoe-gazing. When he wasn’t brooding over all his guilt of being a mass-murdering psychopath, he was torturing himself, and Buffy over his attraction to comely slayer. I don’t know if I can really blame David Boreanaz for the way Angel was portrayed on Buffy because once Angel lost his soul and reverted to his evil “Angelus” self(an arc from Buffy’s second season), he was suddenly charismatic and a joy to watch. Unfortunately, the normal, soul-having Angel was no rock-and-roll fun.

So, when it was announced that Angel would be getting his own series, it made sense, but it didn’t sound entirely enticing. But, at the time I thought Angel might be an entirely different character(in a good way) once he was no longer tied to Buffy.

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

The very first scene in “City Of” has Angel spilling his guts about this blonde girl he broke up with. It’s played for humor and features Angel pretending to be drunk. And even though that Batman-esque action scene almost immediately follows, this scene is the one that most highlighted the problem Whedon and his cohorts had to deal with over most of the first season of Angel: who was Angel and how could they make a series that held the audience of Buffy while distinguishing itself, and its main character, as being worthy of having its own following?

Angel spent most of the first season of his series trying to get over Buffy, much as Whedon and showrunner David Greenwalt tried to figure out how to separate Angel’s universe, and tone, from that Buffy’s. The characteristics the series would focus on in the first season were evident in “City Of” The series wanted to be similar to Buffy, structure-wise, but it wanted to appear more adult. In other words, more damsels in distress who wore low-cut dresses, short skirts, drank alcohol(!), possibly took drugs and were involved in abusive relationships. Also, the series wanted to be a stealth sex crimes series (before Law & Order: SVU had even premiered!). They just supplanted rape with vampirism, but that’s being going on in the vampire genre ever since Bram Stoker introduced Dracula. Angel even had a gimmick that lent the series a crime procedural structure.

Angel wants to save people (mostly from vampires). This is known because the “half-demon” character Doyle tells Angel, and the audience, his complete backstory (with helpful flashbacks!). Angel sits there, blank-faced, humoring his new, excitable Jiminy Cricket (who somehow appeared in the middle of basement apartment below an office that Angel…rents?). Doyle’s been sent to Angel by “the Powers That Be”(i.e. – network suits?) because he gets “visions” of people in peril and Angel’s the only one that can save them. Sometimes.

The “vision” gimmick was a great, if obvious, way to distinguish Angel from Buffy. On Buffy, the characters were always reacting to something that had already happened (a student’s death, reports of animal attacks, etc.). On Angel, the characters were clued in on events that have yet to happen by “the powers that be.” The “PTB,” as Cordelia (another Buffy alum) called them, because notoriously unreliable and vague with the information they gave to Angel’s crew. Angel was to be the PTB’s champion, and to do so, like a soldier, he was not to question his orders.

What was interesting about “City Of” is that as soon as it introduces the concept of a character seeing the near future of a victim and therefore being in a position to save them from danger, it immediately has Angel failing to do so. Which brings us to a major theme of Angel: people trying to do the right thing with the information they’re given.

The visions usually just flashes, snippets of what might happen and that’s all our heroes are given to act on. It usually leads to failure as often as it does victory. Then there’s characters doing what they think is right, even if it is a horrible thing to do. In the pilot, Angel secludes himself from people because he thinks it’s safer for them if he, a creature that craves human blood, stays away from them. But, as Doyle points out, cutting himself off from others, and those he’s trying to save, is not the way to go about things, and certainly isn’t the healthiest path to forgetting that those he saves could as easily become his dinner. This is another running theme of the series: how Angel relates to all the people around him.

Whedon series usually work best when they’re inhabited by a large cast of characters, and Angel is no exception. In fact, a weakness of both the pilot and the first season is the lack of strong, interesting characters for Angel to interact with.

Angel’s a bore, I’ll just say it. Over the course of the series, Boreanaz grew as an actor and Angel grew as a character. But in that early season, there just wasn’t anything to care about with him(other than the fact that he was Buffy’s boyfriend.). So, the more characters Angel interacted with, the more interesting he became. Cordelia became the character Angel interacted with the most and grew to care about, and even love throughout the course of the series. Much like Angel, Cordelia was barely a sketch of a character when she was on Buffy. Yes, she was always there with a great cutting remark, but that was where her character began and ended. So, near the end of Buffy’s 3^rd season, they alluded to a Say Anything…-like scenario where her family lost all their money because her dad was brought up on tax evasion charges and cut to Cordelia being a starving artist in LA.

In the “City Of” though, Angel barely interacts with Cordy. He only has a few scenes with Doyle, as well. So, unfortunately, the bulk of the dialogue is between characters we’ll never see again as well as a few scenes between Angel and his damsel-of-the-week.

I understand that this was done to show how awkward Angel is around people. And that, yes, some background is needed on the baddies to know what they’re up to. But, those scenes are badly written and, luckily, a product of the series Whedon and Greenwalt were trying to force Angel to be and not the series it would eventually become.

Angel spent much of the first season in an identity crisis. It wanted to stay true to main characters, but it wanted to become its own different series that was darker and more adult. The more risks the series took in the form of character-building and motivation, the stronger it became. Whedon always does his best work bringing pathos out of characters you wouldn’t expect it from. Doyle, who was the source of most the humorous lines in the first few episodes of the series, eventually had some stirring and emotional moments before his character was killed off(a gutsy move, that, to kill off a main character so early into the series, but that laid a precedent that became a hallmark of Whedon’s work: no character is safe, no matter how funny or beloved they are). His replacement, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, also began as a comic relief character, just as he was on Buffy. But circumstances and some hard decisions changed the character and Wesley’s transformation from a pretentious, awkward clown into a darker, fully-formed and emotionally complex antihero remains one of finest achievements in the Whedonverse.

When Angel concentrated on tried-and-true Whedon characterizations, it succeeded. When it introduced characters that seemed alien, cold and humorless, it failed. In the pilot, the character of Lindsay is the only prevalent representative of the evil law firm Wolfram & Hart, the conglomerate that catered to many influential evil forces that eventually became Angel’s main source of misery throughout the series’ run. Lindsay eventually became an interesting character, but that wasn’t until the 2^nd season. In “City Of” he comes off as cold and distant. In other words, just like a lawyer. Luckily, another more sarcastic and playful lawyer character was introduced in the first season and her name was Lilah Morgan.

Lilah relished being a cutthroat, conniving lawyer with more than questionable morals. She’s basically a progression of Cordelia’s character if Cordy never changed, went to law school and succeeded. But Lilah was a strong character and probably the most realistic character within the Whedon universe up to that point. It was good to see a strong female character again on a Whedon series, but Lilah actually didn’t turn up until the 16^th episode of the first season. Unfortunately, that meant the only recurring original female character the audience was given up that point was Kate the cop.

While Lilah may have been the most successful original female character introduced into the world of ­Angel, Kate was not. Introduced the second episode of Angel, Kate was a police officer who became Angel’s “friend on the force.” Kate was an obvious addition meant to strengthen the detective series vibe of the first season. She eventually disappeared and no one really cared. Kate was arguably the most hated character in the Whedonverse and no small part of it had to do with Elisabeth Rohm’s performance. Playing the character completely straight as a no-nonsense, by the book, disbelieving cop, she was even duller than Angel. She truly did not fit into world as the series changed from a supernatural detective story into a more serialized, comic-book-like affair. I doubt Rohm should be allowed to take all the heat for her character’s terribleness, however; Kate probably would’ve been just as horrible a character no matter who played the role. Kate belonged on a completely different series. Appropriately enough, Rohm’s talents and acting style served her perfectly when she was added to the main cast of Law & Order.

The first season of Angel, the main cast consisted of three actors. (Once the character of Doyle was killed off, Wesley took his place in the opening credits.) Much like Buffy, as the cast grew on Angel so did the quality of writing. If anything, I’d say Angel was more successful in staying true to its character than Buffy was in its last two seasons. I think that has to do with Angel being less campy than Buffy, as well as the fact that the series became more serialized than Buffy ever did. With so much time given to a single storyline over the course of a season, Angel was able to develop its characters consistently and treated them seriously. That may have been the smartest “adult” aspect to remain in the series.

Eventually the creators realized the more they fought the specter of Buffy, the more fans they would lose. So, instead of ignoring where it came from, they ditched the procedural, detective trappings of the first few episodes and it embraced the Buffy’s mythology and characters, but started attacking that material from a darker place. Hence, the bringing in of Wesley and the regular appearances of other Buffy characters like Spike and Faith.

When these characters appeared on Angel in the first season, not only were they the strongest episodes of the series so far, they were the darker halves of crossover episodes with Buffy. The change in tone was a little jarring but definitely pointed to Angel’s strengths if it wanted to continue down a dark path.

Throughout the course of the series, Angel explored what it meant to be human, what it meant to be good, and that no matter how hard people tried, some things were completely out of their control. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t stop fighting to change them or change themselves for the better. While those themes were present in the pilot, the way the series tackled those themes changed drastically as more characters came into the picture and the writing became more confident. I don’t like this pilot. It’s a poor representation of just how good this series would become (“In The Dark,” the 3^rd episode in the series, plays much better in my opinion). Even though the series begins with action right off the bat, it was hard to care about the action until Angel strengthened its characters and writing. Once it did that, it became one the most exciting and daring series in the Whedon arsenal.

-CC

And now, my newbie thoughts on Angel’s pilot episode:

Let me tell you something: Spin-offs are tough. Groundbreaking, I know. But seriously, trying to take a beloved character from one project and shift them to a brand-new one has to be extremely difficult for writers and producers. If you can remember back a few years ago, NBC tried its damnedest to get an Office spin-off out of Michael Schur and Greg Daniels before the two great writers just gave up and created Parks and Recreation (and thank goodness for that). Private Practice still exists (I guess?) and people seem to like it (I guess?), but I remember the extended Grey’s Anatomy episode that set Addison’s departure being pretty awful.* And I don’t even think that many people cared about that character to begin with (she was, after all, Meredith’s romantic enemy).

*Backdoor pilot spin-offs sort of don’t count. Sure, NCIS LA is a mega-hit, but it’s not like those characters were really part of the first series’ world, or more importantly, in the fans’ hearts, beforehand. Although most backdoor pilots also suck as well.

The point is that spin-offs are always going to have an uphill battle. Audiences are predispositioned to compare the new series to the old one (which usually means bad things for the newer offering), hope for some of their favorite characters from the other series to pop up in a new context and generally speaking, the expectations can be too high, too quickly. Unfortunately, these high expectations usually coincide with the awkward opening stages of a spin-off, where writers scramble to find a new angle or purpose for the character for which they have built a second series.

I have to imagine that Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt recognized all these challenges when they decided to move David Boreanaz’s Angel to Los Angeles so he could have pulpy detective adventures. And while I’m very certain that Whedon, Greenwalt and the rest of the Angel team eventually figured out what that angle or purpose was, “City Of” does suffer from major spin-off-itis. Even for someone who hasn’t seen most of the character’s appearances on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I quickly grew tired of Angel’s insistence in constantly telling me about its lead character’s life story and all his pain.

Chris touched on it just a bit, but I can only imagine how off-putting that had to be for the big fans who tuned into the pilot’s initial airing. Clearly, all spin-offs want (or at least the studios and networks want) to explain enough history up-front so any new viewers not familiar with the previous series’ context know what’s going on. But “City Of” features too many scenes with Doyle basically explaining Angel’s entire life TO ANGEL. “Hey, I’mma let you finish with that brooding stuff but let me tell you about your own life, you know the one you and you alone have experienced since your birth.” Like I said, I understand the purpose of scenes like these, but I wish that Whedon and Greenwalt’s script would have figured out a better way to manage them.

Additionally, spin-offs often want to take a slightly different tonal approach to the transported character(s) and Angel is certainly no exception in that regard. Whereas Buffy’s pilot expertly mixed some teen angst, fun, humorous dialogue and darker horror elements, Angel’s first effort is an extremely drab, seedy affair. My cursory research tells me that the tonal differences between the two series were a primary directive of Whedon and Greenwalt. Again, this is a smart approach to take, particularly with a character who is so obviously brooding, morose and miserable and a location that lends itself to some dysfunctional stories.

However, in the pilot stage at least, the glumness has a weird impact on story. Buffy’s pilot is a bit of a mess, but it is so because Whedon was trying to mix and mash different genres, styles and tones. Maybe it didn’t quite work in “Welcome to Hellmouth” or “The Harvest,” but he quickly figured it out. With Angel though, the tone and styles are on the surface and relatively straightforward. This is a grim detective story (about redemption, of course) with some noir and pulp ingredients mixed in for good measure. This fits the lead character perfectly and results in a more coherent and fully-formed tone and style, but it also makes Angel less compelling. And I know this is supposed to be a dark series, but the humor isn’t as prevalent as it should be, which only adds more stuffiness to a story that doesn’t need it.

Simply put, this pilot feels less experimental and more typical. Chris made the apt Law & Order: SVU comparison above and that’s probably not what Whedon and Greenwalt were going for. The bleak tone and style create their own problems, but there are more issues here that help make Angel bland standard fare in pilot form.

What makes the Buffy and Firefly pilots so entertaining is their ability to pull together a group of compelling characters quite quickly. Not everyone in those two pilots is fully-formed, but in the pilot stage, they’re very well-constructed and thought-out. “City Of” struggles in this regard. Because the pilot is so tied to explaining to possible new viewers who Angel is and why he is now in Los Angeles, very little time is spent on making the other characters interesting at all. Doyle is an exposition machine, Tina’s the standard procedural victim-of-the-week, same for Russell as the villain and Cordeila works almost entirely because of Charisma Carpenter’s charm. Buffy successfully introduces more than a half-dozen absorbing people, Firefly more than 10. Angel has less cast members to deal with and still spends too much time on the guy the audience already knows.

Thematically-speaking, this pilot is somehow both richer and less successful than Buffy’s initial episode. “City Of” focuses more on the obvious themes the series wants to explore (most notably, of course, redemption) and yet, the aforementioned tendency to over-explain rears its head once again. The Buffy pilot only briefly engages in any “high school is hell” or overly feminist/progressive themes, but also strays away from beating the audience over the head with them as well. Although I am not entirely familiar with what was happening in Buffy at the time that Angel debuted, it feels like “City Of” tries too hard to match the thematic depth that its sister series has in its fourth season. Redemption is certainly an engaging concept, but it’s also not inherently novel; and when packaged in the obvious manner we see here, the impact is nullified further.

Additionally, I was really surprised at how “City Of” treats women. I might not be a Whedon mega-fan, but I’ve read my fair share of articles discussing his progressive handling of Buffy (and others) as strong feminine figures. And yet, here we have the Angel pilot focusing almost entirely on a very masculine vampire man saving (or at least attempting to save) pretty, fairly unaware women from other male characters. There is something to be said about the construction of masculinity in regard to Angel’s relationship with women and his failure to save Tina here, but she’s still dead. And Cordelia almost ends up dead. And I know that one could argue that the helpless female victim is a standard part of the noir and pulp detective stories, but aren’t we supposed to expect Whedon to subvert generic stereotypes and clichés, particularly when they are regressive?

I’m not saying that everything Whedon does has to feature supremely progressive treatment of women and innovative perspectives on gender relations as a whole. Nevertheless, I still found the lack of strong female characters – or even ones with real agency – disappointing and a smidgen shocking, based on reputation alone.

When taken all together, the straightforward style, the bland characters, the incessant exposition and the odd treatment of women make for a usual pilot. Angel isn’t as schizophrenic as Buffy is in the pilot stage, but it also isn’t as energetic – and that’s not just because of the purposeful differences in tone. “City Of” feels like the pilot episode to a dozen other detective series, or various contemporary “cop dramas with a twist.”* It lacks Whedon’s typical flare, in both dialogue and plotting.** Angel is the most easily accessible and consumable of Whedon’s four pilots, but it’s also the worst. Yesterday, I mentioned that Whedon works great within the studio/network system and perhaps he took that too far here. “City Of” needs more risks, needs some more novel tidbits, it just needs something.

*It also feels network noted to death, but maybe that’s just my impression.

**Although, I will say that his directorial style is more refined here. The style might be drab, but Whedon does a nice job of making drab look pretty good.

–CB

Conclusions on legacy: Angel ended up being quite great, but it sure started out in a rough spot

Test Pilot #30: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Debut date: March 10, 1997

Series legacy: One of the most respected and beloved series of all-time; the beginning of a great career for Joss Whedon

Welcome to 2012, friends, readers and fellow humans. Test Pilot grew into a popular (relatively speaking, of course) and personal favorite feature in 2011 and I think we have a bunch of really intriguing stuff coming up that will allow Test Pilot to trend upward into the new calendar year as well. For example, to kick things off this year, we’re doing something special: A Test Pilot theme week. Instead of tackling a new pilot within a certain theme every other week, my guests and I will be discussing them over the next four days. This is obviously a different approach and maybe it won’t work, but if it does, look for more theme weeks in the future.

For this week’s theme, I wanted to accomplish two primary goals, both of which I won’t say we officially moved away from with recent TP entries, but they were likely lacking somewhat. I wanted to bring back the veteran/newbie viewer framework – this one has definitely been missing from many recent posts – and I also wanted to chat about pilots that were more obviously linked together in some way. These are simple goals, but important ones nonetheless.

Therefore, this week, four guest co-writers and I will discuss the work of one Joss Whedon. You folks might not have heard of him, I know. But he’s the voice behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse. Although Whedon has not won nearly as many Emmys as the Davids (Chase, Simon, Milch) or someone like Matthew Weiner, he is one of the most respected and admired creative forces in television (and well, now film apparently). His work on the first two series spurred on an entire field of academic study, the third has one of, if not, the most tragic network mismanagement stories and the fourth might be looked at completely different in five or 10 years.

I have a weird relationship with Whedon and his television productions. And by that I mean I haven’t really seen a whole lot of them. Buffy started when I was nine years old and both Angel and Firefly came on at a time when I wasn’t totally interested in television. As a humanities student and makeshift television critic, I’ve been surrounded by people telling that I need to watch these series for the last six or seven years. I didn’t necessarily disagree with my peers’ assertions, but I will admit the loud and sometimes forceful nature of their assertions turned me off, ever so slightly.

And it’s not like I haven’t seen these four series at all. I’ve seen at least 10 Buffy episodes (including the first three episodes when I tried to start watching a few years back, “Hush” and “The Body”), a half-dozen Angel episodes and all of Dollhouse (yay for contemporary products!). I even wrote a term paper on Angel in a middle-level English course in college.* The only one of Whedon’s series I wasn’t that familiar with before this project was Firefly, but I have seen the pilot a few times.

*My choices were between Angel, Buffy or Veronica Mars. I don’t know why I chose Angel, but I do know the paper was about masculinity and it was well-received.  

Throughout the week, I will be joined by veteran viewers of all four series and we will talk about how each of these pilots reflect larger Whedon-y (Whedonian?) traits, why they are heavily beloved and what kind of idiot I could be for not watching them sooner.

Today, we talk Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  After 20^th Century Fox’s film studio mishandled and mangled Whedon’s script for the film version of the story about the pretty blonde high school girl tasked to protect the world of vampires, he decided to take Buffy to the small screen and the still-developing WB Network. Buffy debuted in 1997 and started something of a revolution. Piggybacking on the fervent X-Files fans, a groundswell of support for the series and its creator was cultivated online (although it’s as if the series lacked “non-internet” fans). Almost 15 years later, Buffy remains ever-present in our collective consciousness.

Joining me to discuss Buffy today is Greg Boyd. Greg plans on beginning his undergraduate education in film and/or media studies next fall, and aspires to write about TV or film (maybe both) professionally someday. Currently, he’s an amateur critic at Screen Ramblings, where he covers a mix of shows and movies. He dislikes procedurals, love low-rated comedies, and is still waiting to see those unaired Lone Star episodes. In other words, he’s pretty much your typical serious TV lover. You can follow him on Twitter. Greg, take it away:

There may not be a classic series whose pilot less resembles what the series was all about than Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And by saying that, I don’t mean that the pilot isn’t any good. On the contrary, the one-two combination of “Welcome to the Hellmouth” and “The Harvest” is a deeply entertaining, smart, and even somewhat scary episode of television. It serves as a pretty terrific introduction to this series’ universe and characters, and I loved it even more the second time around. There are also themes and ideas to be found here that the series would explore throughout its run. But at the same time, when you compare the pilot to the series’ later years there aren’t a whole lot of similarities to be found.

And perhaps that’s fitting. Buffy is (arguably more than any other series) defined by the evolution of its characters. They essentially transform into different people over the course of seven seasons, often in extremely dramatic ways. So in a way it makes sense that the series itself went through its own (equally dramatic) evolution over the first couple of seasons. Then of course there’s the more obvious and perhaps more sensible explanation, which is that this was Joss Whedon’s first series and he needed some time to figure out exactly what he wanted it to do and be.

Now I’m not suggesting that Whedon (who wrote both parts of the episode) didn’t have a single clue what he was doing at the start. If that was the case, this pilot wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is. One of the things he had an immediate grasp on was the series’ dialogue, which remains the absolute best on any series I’ve seen, aside from maybe Deadwood. “Welcome to the Hellmouth” in particular is filled with the witty one-liners, sharp quips, and hilarious exchanges that are one of the main reasons so many people love Buffy. The scenes here between Buffy and Giles are particularly terrific in that regard, most notably a sequence where they discuss the roles of Watchers vs. Slayers that is just an absolute joy to listen to.

He also displays a gift for crafting lovable characters right off the bat, although that has as much to do with the actors as it does with the writing. As played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy is a superb central heroine who’s easy to root for, and while Giles and Xander aren’t all that well-defined initially they’re also nearly impossible to dislike thanks to the talents of Anthony Stewart Head and Nicholas Brendon. And then there’s Alyson Hannigan’s Willow, easily my favorite Buffy character as well as the one who goes through perhaps the most dramatic arc when all is said and done. For me it was quite jarring to be reminded of just how different she is in this pilot compared to who she became later on, but she’s never more endearing than she is here.

What happens to Jesse is also pretty noteworthy, and it’s one of the few glimpses we get of Whedon’s grander plans for the series. He introduces Jesse as a fairly major character, establishing him in just a few short scenes as a somewhat awkward but good-natured guy (much like Xander) and letting us get to know and like him. After he gets taken by the Master’s underlings, we think we know how this will end. Buffy has to save the day, right? Nope. She does, of course, but not until after Jesse gets turned into a vampire and dusted. This isn’t quite the equivalent of the shocking and heartbreaking deaths that occur later on in Buffy and in some of Whedon’s other works, but the fact that he was willing to do something like this in a pilot is still kind of amazing.

However, it also leads me into the main point of this piece stated above. As we’ve seen, the pilot does offer some small hints at the direction the series would go starting in the middle of season two. But on the whole it doesn’t really have a lot of ambition. Jesse’s death is important and will have subtle effects on Xander that play an important role in later episodes. What it lacks is any sort of immediate emotional impact here and now. Things go back to normal pretty quickly. And while “Welcome to the Hellmouth” and “The Harvest” have a few jolts (indeed, I’d say they’re both far scarier in the conventional sense than the majority of Buffy episodes are), they’re the kind that you shake off almost immediately. Nothing really stays with you.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Whedon made the conscious choice to keep the episode light-hearted, and it works. But the things that make Buffy a series worth remembering are barely present here, apart from the aforementioned dialogue and characters. There aren’t any rich themes to speak of. Instead, we get a far too obvious and only mildly clever metaphor delivered by Buffy’s mom about how teenage life always seems like a life or death situation: an unfortunate trend that will continue through much of the first season (such as the “invisible girl” who actually becomes invisible in “Out of Mind, Out of Sight”). The many different tones the series would later balance with ease are also mostly nonexistent, as it instead sticks to the effective but not particularly inventive mix of horror and comedy that a title like Buffy the Vampire Slayer would suggest (complete with predictably cheesy monsters). And it succeeds because of how fresh and fun it is.

That freshness goes away pretty quickly after the pilot. Unfortunately, Whedon and company take quite a while to figure that out. The majority of the ten season one outings that follow this solid start are rather terrible: repeating the few things that didn’t work about it (the cheesiness, inane metaphors, lack of emotion, etc.) and offering diminishing returns on the intelligence and charm front. And frankly, this is the kind of series* this two-parter is hinting at, far more so than the profound, emotionally resonant, and often very dark program Buffy wound up becoming. Indeed, if you just have the pilot to go on it’s hard to imagine this series ever delivering an episode of television as brutally powerful as “The Body” or as stunningly ambitious as “Once More, with Feeling”. It just doesn’t seem capable of that kind of depth.

But I hope I’ve also made it clear that the excellence of the pilot isn’t an anomaly. Buffy took a long time to get going, but if nothing else this episode proves that Joss Whedon knows how to tell a story, be it on a small scale or a large one. Only the former is truly on display here, but the complex character arcs, enthralling ongoing storylines, and penchant for risk taking that Whedonverse TV is justly known for arrive soon enough. And when they do, the result is some of the most awesome television ever created. It’s not The Wire, and in my opinion it’s not even Whedon’s best series (the incredibly underrated Dollhouse is my pick for that). But this series at its best is as good as anything that has ever aired, even if that fact is a bit hard to pick up on from just watching the pilot.

It’s a superb hour and a half of television nonetheless. I think so, anyway.

* I don’t mean to suggest that season one is a complete loss. It has a handful of good episodes, and “Angel” and “Prophecy Girl” (while far from perfect) are must-sees for first time viewers. But like many others, I recommend they skip some of the early episodes (particularly “Teacher’s Pet” and “I Robot, You Jane”, both of which are among the worst hours Buffy ever did) and read recaps if they’re worried about missing something important, lest they get turned off to the series before it becomes great. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

–GB

And now my newbie thoughts on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer two-part pilot episode:

If there’s one word that keeps coming to mind when I think about these Buffy efforts it has to be cheesy. Most of that stems from the dated – or as Buffy so wittingly says in reference to a fellow club-goer’s outfit, carbon-dated – outfits, musical cues, hairstyles and other aesthetic markers. But I’m not going to spend much time cutting the series down for that, because, well, it was 1997. The late 1990s were a weird time and television series about teens show their age about as much as any other kind of program on the air. These things happen and they happen quite often with this kind of story.

However, I was a smidgen surprised at how cheesy other elements of the pilot were, most notably the way Whedon’s script awkwardly tried to avoid the origin story while still providing too much exposition and the similarly poor lack of subtext in many scenes (most notably, as Greg mentioned, in the conversations between Buffy and her mother). Because I’ve heard so much about Buffy and the “high school is hell” metaphor storytelling, I almost expected Xander to just sarcastically say “Man, high school is hell” somewhere near the end of “The Harvest.” I would guess that if you went back and time and told a lot of viewers that the guy who wrote these scripts would later be one of the most beloved creative minds in Hollywood, they would laugh. Or stake you.

There’s no question that tying typical high school series rhythms and themes to supernatural mythology is a really fun and inventive idea and even in these opening episodes, you can see the purpose behind that kind of storytelling. Structurally, there isn’t much different here than any story you’ve seen about a young person coming to a new school: Buffy’s an outsider. She meets people at the top of the social food-chain and she meets people at the bottom of it. Tension sprouts up because she’s attractive enough to be the former, but would probably prefer to hang out with the latter. Then we’ve given some final act drama where she affirms bonds with the “losers” and eschews the popular folk. Something like The OC started with a fairly similar story, in the most basic sense.

That kind of approach is fine and more or less works okay in this two-parter. BUT, again, I think where the opening salvo of Buffy goes wrong is the little moments that try to hammer home the already-apparent themes and points too strongly. Again, this is an issue that many pilots have; writers (read: the studio and the network mostly) want to make sure the audience knows what’s going on at all times, especially if the story involves any “high concept” threads.

Of course, hindsight is the most fickle of observational sciences we have. It’s easy – and entirely unfair, mind you – for me or anyone else to watch the first two episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and say that the series is overrated or that Whedon himself is perhaps not worth the hype. So, you know, I won’t be doing that.

Instead, I think we can look at these first two episodes as the origin story of Joss Whedon’s masterful television career. Here, like any origin story, there are moments of triumph and a fair share of missteps. Amid all the on-the-nose attempts at exploring themes and sometimes lackluster visual pallet, there is an inherent perspective and voice within “Welcome to Hellmouth” and “The Harvest.”

The characters are almost instantly relatable and most importantly, likable. Xander and Willow are adorable, Giles is the perfect combination of stuffiness and self-awareness and even Cordelia has a certain air about her that suggests much deeper complexity than simple bimbo popular girl archetype nonsense. At the center, Buffy is already complicated and compelling. Her reluctance to embrace her Slayer roots never comes off as annoying and the character displays different sides of her identity/personality throughout this opening salvo. Part of the character’s success certainly comes from Sarah Michelle Gellar’s fun performance,* but Whedon brought the character to life as well.

Everyone feels mostly real, they aren’t just ciphers for occasionally witty dialogue. This means we care about them quite quickly, despite the plot-heavy machinations of this pilot. And as Greg pointed out, this care for characters extends all the way down to Jesse, which is something 9.5/10 pilot scripts would never care or even attempt to do. Therefore, although this is a story with all these supernatural elements and typical high school drama, Buffy and Whedon ground it in individuals and their issues. From everything Whedon-related I’ve watched, this is one of his best skills as a writer (and likely why his characters remain so popular in the eyes of fans so many years later).

On a related note, in our short introduction to Sunnydale, the place feels like a relatively well-formed place. Whedon’s aforementioned work bringing smaller characters to life in quick fashion helps the school bits from being clichéd – the principal is especially fun and eccentric – and Giles’ exposition about the location’s history is some of the better exposition in the 90 minutes.

Ultimately, though the Buffy pilot has to serve a number of masters, Whedon pulls it off. Character development and plot are well-balanced and even if the thematic touchpoints are delivered in somewhat hackneyed fashion, at least they are present. This is more than we can say for many pilots.

Greg talked about how Whedon and the writers needed a whole season to really figure out what kind of story they were telling and while that might be entirely true and the second season might see a substantial increase in quality, I still get the impression that Whedon had sufficient control of what he wanted to do with theme and plot. The big problem was likely in figuring out how he would do those things. (Again, all superheroes have a primary goal as soon as they start out; it doesn’t mean they can accomplish it yet.) Many series don’t look their ultimate or “great” selves in pilots or even initial seasons. Early on, you’re trying to attract the largest, broadest audience possible and then hoping they’ll stick around when you drop more complicated stories on them later. Again, I haven’t seen much of Buffy outside of the big tentpole standalones, but it sure feels like Whedon took that kind of approach with his story here.

Plus, I’d guess that the WB wanted a certain amount of teen angst at the beginning and despite Whedon’s avoidance of a true origin story, there were plot elements to explain through exposition. So sure, these first two episodes don’t include some of the meatier, complex material that later seasons do, but they lay some very quality groundwork for what’s to come. Even if, as Greg suggested, much of the first season is drab, exploring the basic framework of “high school is hell” clearly established enough sufficient storytelling and character work to charm executives and audiences into coming back for a second season.

As we move along the week and take a look at Whedon’s subsequent work, I’m guessing my guests and I will discuss his growing confidence and assertiveness as a writer, director and storyteller and for good reason. However, while the Buffy pilot sees Whedon working in the constraints of typical network and studio notes and constraints, he does so very well. Obviously, there is tons of value in being such a unique and powerful storytelling force that mainstream audiences can’t comprehend your vision and your series fails, only to be celebrated in the aftermath for years to come. Whedon is and has been that person. But as Buffy (and I’m strongly betting, The Avengers film coming this year) suggests, Whedon is also the kind of creative storyteller who knows how to work within the industrial structures and provide a compelling, smart, moving and enjoyable product.* And I’d argue that being able to do both is what makes Whedon so great.**

*There might be a discussion to be had about the correlation between pilot simplicity and long-term longevity with Whedon’s series. This one is the “simplest,” and it’s also the series that lasted the longest. Coincidence?

**Relatedly, I’m wondering if you big Whedon fans think he should dial “it” (whatever that is) back so that a pilot could be a bit more “mainstream” (lots of air-quotes here, folks) and therefore easily consumable? I guess one could argue that he tried to do that with the second Dollhouse pilot, but FOX had already lost confidence in the series at that point, which is of course very unfortunate.

–CB

Conclusions on legacy: Not as great or really reflective of what’s to come, but still valuable

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

Just in case all the other lists and quasi-lists I’ve done over the last few weeks were not enough, I wanted to finish 2011 with some quick thoughts on all the series that I’ve watched a substantial amount of that didn’t make the top 30 of the year. You folks know that I watch a lot of television, some of it very good and some of it very bad. But most television I watch (and most television that’s on the airwaves today) is just sort of…fine. And that’s okay. Today, I’m going to give some brief love to those just-fine series and point out a few episodes these respective series aired that were pretty good. There is no real rhyme, reason or ranking behind the order these series are listed below, I wrote whatever came to mind first. All right, no more blabbering. Here are some nice words about series that didn’t make my top 30 of the 2011.

Smallville: I’ve already expressed my minor disappointment with the middling final season, but there were a slew of really great moments in Smallville season 10. The writers smartly used long-departed characters  to inform the final few steps of Clark’s journey. And that finale was pretty awesome. Best episodes: “Finale,” “Booster”

Alphas: Syfy’s freshman superhero series did the smart thing in starting off as a more logical, down-to-earth procedural. This allowed the characters (and actors) to grow together over the course of the season, instead of keeping the focus on larger, vague mythology concerns. Then when those mythology things actually came up, it felt more organic to the story and more important for the characters. Best episodes: “Blind Spot,” “Catch and Release”

New Girl: FOX’s new comedy hit still has issues with its lead character, but New Girl’s cast has fantastic chemistry and every performer brings a different comedic energy to the proceedings. Even when the episodes aren’t really “good,” I still laugh a lot at New Girl. Best episodes: “Wedding,” “Naked”

2 Broke Girls: The biggest new comedy of the season is slowly figuring out how to not be the most offensive series this side of H8R. Kat Dennings is definitely a television star and Beth Behrs is growing into her own as well. 2 Broke Girls is still very, very broad and sitcommy, but it mostly works anyway. Best episodes: “And the Pretty Problem,” “And the Reality Check”

Falling Skies: TNT’s big foray into science fiction programming could be a lot better than it actually is. Falling Skies had a great pilot and definitely trailed off after that. However, it does feature a good performance from Moon Bloodgood and a somewhat intriguing larger story. I’ll be back for season two. Best episodes: “Live and Learn,” “What Hides Beneath”

How to Make it in America: I am legitimately disappointed that HBO canceled this one. I understand why people hated it, but in season two, How to Make it introduced some somewhat substantial stakes for Ben and Cam. It felt more like a real story in season two and not just a weekly postcard from the streets of New York. Best episodes: “Mofongo,” “What’s in a Name?”

White Collar: It had its problems in the first half of season three, but White Collar remains one of the most enjoyable, fun viewing experiences on television. And I think the major hiccups were solved by the mid-season finale anyway. Best episodes: “Countdown,” “Scott Free”

Up All Night: By the end of 2011, Up All Night figured out how to balance its two different story worlds and keep Maya Rudolph’s Ava from completely overwhelming the primary baby-related stories. Up All Night’s middlebrow domestic humor is congenial and Christina Applegate and Will Arnett are wonderful together. Best episodes: “Birth,” “Parents”

Hart of Dixie: This is the kind of series I wish the CW would do more of. Sure, Hart of Dixie exists in a heightened version of reality and loves playing clichés about the south a bit too much. But it embraces those ridiculous features and smartly emphasizes simple elements like the love triangle/quadrangle/rhombus to create a really charming package. Best episodes: “The Crush and the Crossbow,” “In Havoc and in Heat”

Suburgatory: It feels like Suburgatory is missing that extra something that could made it a great comedy, but the writers are working hard to find it. Plus, the central relationship between Tessa and George started off well in the pilot and has only gotten more interesting since, odd subversive readings by people on the internet aside. Jane Levy is awesome. Best episodes: “Halloween,” “Thanksgiving”

Nikita: It still surprises me how unsuccessful Nikita is because it’s a fine, well-constructed, quality television program. Season two took a little while to discover how the new equilibrium established at the end of season one would actually work on episodic level, but the series still knows how to create a fun twist or two on a weekly basis. Best episodes: “Fair Trade,” “Betrayals”

Modern Family: You know that I’m frustrated with Modern Family’s inability to, well, try. That does suck. Nevertheless, the ABC comedy is still worth watching on a weekly basis, if only for the cast alone. You never know when the series is actually going to pull out another great episode. Best episodes: “Two Monkeys and a Panda,” “Someone to Watch Over Lily”

The Office: I understand why NBC has to keep The Office on the air. Just as I understand why I keep watching The Office even though it is a shell of its former self with absolutely no real point to exist in 2011: I love a few of these characters (Jim, Pam, Dwight, Andy) and like the rest of them. And there’s no doubt that the last few episodes of Michael’s reign as manager were very good. Best episodes: “Goodbye Michael,” “Garage Sale”

House: Like The Office, House is nowhere near its apex of quality, complexity or depth. But even more than The Office, House remains an inherently watchable series, mostly because of Hugh Laurie’s game performance, and also because the writers seem to know what the series is at this point. They’ve embraced the low stakes and comfortable rhythms. Best episodes: “Bombshells,” “The Dig”

The Walking Dead: I end 2011 with much more hope for The Walking Dead than I began the year with, so I guess that’s an improvement? The AMC hit series has no idea how to develop characters or parcel out its story and yet, it’s still good for a handful of really tremendous single moments (like that mid-season finale). Best episodes: “Pretty Much Dead Already,” “Save The Last One”

Suits: A fun workplace dramedy masquerading as a legal procedural, Suits seems a smidgen more interested in its characters and their problems than most USA Network megahits. We’ll see what kind of changes happen with the new showrunner in season two, but I’m hoping the light, humorous, not-so-secretly nerdy energy sticks around. Best episodes: “Play the Man,” “The Shelf Life”

Glee: I’ve said enough about Glee in 2011. There’s more bad than good at this point. But the really great episodes? Those were really great. Best episodes: “Silly Love Songs,” “Asian F”

Burn Notice: The changes weren’t dramatic, but it really did feel like things were somewhat different on Burn Notice in season five. Michael was pulled in more challenging directions this season and the finale’s pay-off actually felt quite earned. Best episodes: “Dead to Rights,” “Bloodlines”

Psych: Although the series is relied too much on gimmick episodes this fall, Psych also fully embraced its goofiest side for the better. At this point, the audience is the audience; the series is smart to drop any pretensions of real drama and just let the actors riff off one another. Dule Hill has been fantastic. Best episodes: “Shawn, Interrupted,” “Last Night Gus”

Warehouse 13: W13 had a supremely disappointing and disjointed third season after what was a very strong second year. However, the series still has one of the better, unnoticed casts around and has the great ability to make the dumbest plots seem important and relevant to the characters stuck in the middle of them.

Chuck: Season five has been a substantial improvement over season four. I still don’t know why I should really care about anything that’s happening on screen, but Fedak, Schwartz and the production team are working a little hard to at least make me feel like I should. And obviously, the cast is still really fun to spend time with. Best episodes: “Chuck Versus the Last Details,” “Chuck Versus the Santa Suit”

Pan Am: Great pilot! I can’t really say anything else because this is a positive space. Best episodes: “Pilot,” N/A

Once Upon a Time: I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but Once is a freshman series that is quickly growing on me, almost in spite of itself. The episode structure, with the flashbacks and the centric episodes, is a smart approach. And the cast is good. These things help me forget how cheesy and stupid the series can be. Best episodes: “Snow Falls,” “That Still Small Voice”

Grimm: One of the biggest surprises of the year, I guess. I expected Grimm to be TERRIBLE and it’s just only mediocre. There’s a solid series in there, and if the writers can figure out a way to ditch some of the cumbersome police elements, Grimm could actually work quite well. Best episodes: “Danse Macabre,” “Lonelyharts”

American Horror Story: Like all Ryan Murphy projects, AHS had some legitimately stirring and powerful moments/episodes and a slew of unbelievably terrible ones. It just comes with the territory. Best episodes: “Smoldering Children,” “Halloween Part 2”

Perfect Couples: NBC should have given Perfect Couples more time to grow. I’m not saying that it would have turned out to be as good as Happy Endings, but there was a real chance for that to happen. By the end, this series was consistently funny. Best episodes: “Perfect Crime,” “Perfect Job”

Mr. Sunshine: Okay, fair the best thing about Mr. Sunshine was its theme song/title card combination. Yet, I think there was a weird little comedy in there somewhere. Maybe. Probably not. I just like Matthew Perry. Best episodes: “Hostile Workplace,” “Celebrity Tennis”

The Secret Circle: Witches still don’t make for the center of a great series and it’s hard to not compare this one with The Vampire Diaries. Nevertheless, The Secret Circle is a fine series that’s growing at a solid rate. The last two episodes have been the most engaging, which is a good sign. Best episodes: “Balcoin,” “Beneath”

Prime Suspect: I’m not one of those people who assume that pilots are the be-all, end-all for television series. Prime Suspect alters that perspective a bit. That pilot was so miserable that it scared the audience away from a rock-solid character-based cop drama. Maybe the hat too. Best episodes: “Regrets, I’ve Had a Few,” “Wednesday’s Child”

Being Human: Syfy’s “North American” adaptation of Being Human struggled at times in season one and was almost always saved by two strong performances by Sam Witwer and Sam Huntington. But seriously, both of those guys were way better than the series probably deserved. Best episodes: “There Goes the Neighborhood,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Me Killing You”

Traffic Light: FOX’s entry in the Great Friends Rip-Off of 2011 wasn’t as bad as Better With You or Mad Love, but also wasn’t as outwardly funny as Happy Endings or Perfect Couples. The cast worked together well and I laughed every week. It just…existed. Best episodes: “Best Man,” “No Good Dead”

Breaking In: I have no idea why FOX wants to bring this series back from the dead. But Bret Harrison is a great talent and Christian Slater finally found a small-screen role where his weird energy fits perfectly. Best episodes: “21.0 Jump Street,” “Take the Movie and Run”

Gossip Girl: The Dan-Blair stories are very good. So of course, Gossip Girl likes to pretend the audience cares about 13 other things. Best episodes: “Petty in Pink,” “Empire of the Son”

And that’s it for me in 2011. Thanks for reading!

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

Here we are, at the end of the list-making fun/insanity. The last few weeks have been really, really fun for me (despite said insanity, which I of course brought upon myself more than anything) and I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for reading, RT’ing, tweeting and whatever else you did during this end-of-the-year period and throughout 2011. I keep this web site alive for me, but I sure appreciate the support and interaction from all of you as well.

Anyway, it is time to discuss the best series of the year. It feels weird doing a list like this without Lost or Mad Men, but 2011 was a year full of series moving into the upper-echelon of television quality. Certain new series quickly made it to that position and a few returning series improved enough to do so as well. Unlike my episodes list, I was pretty much able to keep this list under control. I’ll be discussing the top 30 series of the year across the next two days and then posting straggling thoughts about a boatload of other series that didn’t make the list. As always, I must remind you that this list reflects my own tastes and viewing habits. Thus, you won’t see the likes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Treme, Shameless or Children’s Hospital on here because I just couldn’t get to them this year.

Today, we conclude this list with the top 15 television series of the year. If you missed the first half of the list yesterday, check that out.

15. Archer: Sometimes, I’m an idiot. Not watching more than 20 minutes of Archer before November of this year? Definitely one of those times. Watching every episode in a short amount of time allowed me to see an obvious uptick in quality between seasons one and two. In season two, Archer stopped fully relying on its “spy parody/riff” fundamentals and branched out with stories feature surprisingly effective character beats. But don’t get me wrong, the spy riffing stuff is still really great as well. The absurd, filthy humor never dives into cheap immaturity either, which is something I greatly appreciate.

Best episodes: “Heart of Archness,” “Stage Two,” “The Double Deuce”

14. Cougar Town: Thanks to ABC’s glut of new programming and general lack of confidence in the series’ ability to hold an audience, it feels like we haven’t seen Cougar Town in ages, and well, we really haven’t. This is disappointing on countless levels, but perhaps no more so because the series had a wonderful close to its second season. The season was so well constructed that the last half-dozen episodes brought a deeper sense of character complexity and emotion. The tension between Jules and Travis simmered all season and then built to a handful of truly moving moments that took their relationship from “fairly creepy HAHA territory” to something more engaging and relatable.  Can we have Cougar Town back now, ABC?

Best episodes: “Lonesome Sundown,” “Free Fallin’,” “Walls”

13. Parenthood: The series is always good, but NBC’s Parenthood works best at the ends of seasons, where the bunch of vaguely-connected stories with the countless Braverman clan suddenly smash together and have reverberations throughout the family. The string of episodes that aired this past spring are the most reflective of this kind of storytelling, wherein Crosby’s insecurities with Jasmine caused him to do some very stupid things that coalesced at the exact wrong time for not only him, but also Adam’s family as well. It’s not that Parenthood typically has no stakes, but the series does an excellent job of sort of lulling the audience into this false sense of rhythm and security where it seems like everything is going to be mostly OK and then, you know, it’s not (at least for a while) and those moments are always the most stirring and get the most out of the great cast.

Best episodes: “Do Not Sleep With Your Autistic Nephew’s Therapist,” “Amazing Andy and His Wonderful World of Bugs,” “Nora”

12. Happy Endings: I wrote this earlier in the fall, but Happy Endings feels like the first real follow-up to Friends we’ve had. It took a little while for the writers and actors to figure out what kind of comedic voice the series was going to have, but once they did, Endings never looked back. This is a group of people who talk like my friends (albeit just a little bit faster) and in a lot of cases, act like them as well. Adam Pally and Daman Wayans Jr. are the stand-out performers here, but everyone on the cast has grown into their roles quite well and the overall group chemistry is superb.

Best episodes: “Spooky Endings,” “The Code War,” “Secrets and Limos”

11. Boardwalk Empire: There are still some obvious problems with Boardwalk Empire. It tends to lose sight of its too-large cast, leading to a weird, sometimes even jarring flow between episodes. And occasionally, it feels like the series is presenting all the signifiers of a great television series without actually providing much of the heft or depth it needs to back up all the lavish appearance. However, the journey that Jimmy Darmody took in season two was one of the most satisfying character arcs on all of television this year. Moreover, those last handful of episodes, most of which focused on Jimmy, were just fantastic. Boardwalk took arguably the biggest risk of the year and while it is unclear if it will work out well in 2012, we have to take note of Terrence Winter’s stones now.

Best episodes: “To The Lost,” “Under God’s Power, She Flourishes,” “Gimcrack and Bunkum”

10. Game of Thrones: At this point, I’ve talked so much about Game of Thrones and my winding relationship with it, I don’t want to belabor the point again. Therefore, I will just say that Thrones is a splendid example of first season world-building and a similarly fine exemplar of making the fantasy genre easily consumable and understandable for those who might not be predisposed to love it. There are few series I am looking forward to more in 2012 than this one.

Best episodes: “Baelor,” “The Pointy End,” “A Golden Crown”

9. The Good Wife: The third season has had its fair share of issues, but The Good Wife remains one of the most ambitious and well-produced series on television. It is reflective of the great things a broadcast network series can still do in an era of cable dominance. Michelle and Robert King know how to build long story arcs that have fantastic resolutions (see the last handful of episodes of season two) and yet, they also have no trouble crafting entertaining close-ended procedural stories that keep the legal proceedings fresh (ripping oddly humorous things from the real headlines certainly helps in that regard). Though the series’ world keeps expanding and more compelling people keep coming into the picture, The Good Wife knows how to stay with Alicia (and Cary, Will and Kalinda, to a lesser extent).

Best episodes: “Ham Sandwich,” “Closing Arguments,” “What Went Wrong”

8. The Vampire Diaries: Six months ago, I assume TVD’s placement on this would result in some legitimate scoffing from my fellow Twitter critic folk, but now it seems like everyone and their mother is doing the smart thing and catching up on one of the best series on television. I’ve discussed it constantly, but The Vampire Diaries’ ability to develop at least two WTF twists an episode and more importantly, make those twists matter and seem logical (well, logical in the series’ world) is unparalleled. Cliffhangers are purposeful on this series. Moreover, I think the third season has been slightly more interested in characters and their psychology, and although I would never say that Vampire Diaries does those things better than everyone else as well, the character work is still very good. The series has a large sense of history and never lets characters forget the horrible things that have happened to them; that kind of culmination-style storytelling works well.

Best episodes: “The Sun Also Rises,” “The Birthday,” “The Dinner Party”

7. Homeland: 2011 had a number of great new series, but Showtime’s Homeland was most certainly the best of them all. The series smartly subverted our expectations on a consistent basis and never once allowed big plot machinations overtake the quieter, more complicated character stories. This is a story about big, buzzy topics like terrorism, domestic security, religion and politics and featured a few shootings and explosions, but the most powerful moments and episodes where powered by intense conversations and human interactions. Above all else, Homeland is a story about the real impact contemporary war times have on individuals, whether those people are stuck in the middle or somewhere on the periphery.

Best episodes: “The Weekend,” “Marine One,” “The Vest”

6. Friday Night Lights: When Lost ended, I assumed the hole it left in my heart wouldn’t be filled. But as 2011 progressed, I found myself surprisingly OK with its conclusion and its departure from my life. Friday Night Lights has been over (the first time) for something like 10 months. I’m still not over it. I watched the final season four times this year (DirecTV by myself, NBC with my parents, DVD with the girlfriend and another for good measure) and just thinking about those final episodes swells my heart on cue. For as great as something like Lost is, there’s just no way to totally quantify how deeply connected we can feel to certain characters, worlds and stories and that’s where Friday Night Lights is for me. More to the point, the final season of FNL nicely and unsurprisingly balanced new character stories and familiar character stories and managed to bring everyone who mattered to a fine concluding point. The Lions’ journey to state was the most fulfilling in the series’ run and by the end of it, Vince, Luke and Tinker felt just as fully-formed and important to me as Matt, Riggins and Street. And finally, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton. I don’t need to say anything else. You know.

Best episodes: “Always,” “Don’t Go,” “Texas Whatever”

5. Louie: I said this on the best series of the year podcast last week, but I think the mass and somewhat hyperbolic reactions to the second season of Louie got to me by the end of it. If I had to read another over-the-top tweet featuring the word auteur, I might have decided to start listening to Dane Cook again. But my own hang-ups aside, there is absolutely no question that Louie’s second season was a creative feat of a singular voice with full control of the kind of stories he wanted to tell (so, you know, an auteur; I’m a fraud). Freed from the general pressure that comes with a first season, it seems like Louis C.K. let his storytelling mind loose and the series was the better for it. Louie wasn’t obviously LOL funny too many times this season, but the series is much more than that now. C.K. is a tremendous storyteller, no matter what kind of emotions or reactions he’s trying to lock into with his work.

Best episodes: “Duckling,” “Come On God,” “Oh Louie/Tickets”

4. Justified: I’m rewatching the first season of Justified right now as my girlfriend catches up and I’ve realized that even though I really loved it the first time around, season one basically pales in comparison to the fantastic second season. Justified season two did everything you want a second season of a great drama to do: It expanded the world while simultaneously making it feel like that new corner of the world had been there the entire time; It introduced a slew of new characters that fit seamlessly into said world; and perhaps most importantly and simply, it figured out what kind of series it wanted to be and used the new sections of the world and character additions to further evoke important themes. Justified has a great sense of place and in season two, it deepened that sense while further hammering home how toxic said place can be to Raylan and those around him. The phrase “You can never go home again” exists for a reason.

Best episodes: “Brother’s Keeper,” “Bloody Harlan,” “The Spoil”

3. Community: I’ll bring up a fantastic run for a certain other NBC comedy momentarily, but that string of greatness doesn’t take away from the slew of awesome episodes Community turned in during the second half of its second season this spring. For a while there, it seemed like the series was trying excessively difficult and insane things on a weekly basis and making it look pretty damn easy. Season three is a bit of a different animal because Dan Harmon and the writing staff are so clearly playing the long-game, making it challenging to make much of a judgment on the impact of certain threads or beats. However, it’s not like there have been any middling episodes this fall either. Even when Community stumbles just a bit, it’s almost entirely because the series is trying something few other television series would never even dream of attempting. The risks don’t always pay off completely, but I cannot fault the ambition, the innovation and the undervalued heart of Community.

Best episodes: “Remedial Chaos Theory,” “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking,” “The Paradigms of Human Memory”

2. Parks and Recreation: The eternal battle between Parks and Recreation and Community wages on, I guess. Community topped Parks on my end-of-year list in 2010 and they tied for my favorite series of the 2010-2011 season, so I guess it’s only fair that Parks and Recreation gets a little solo time in the spotlight. And to be fair, the series completely earned it in 2011. All 16 season three episodes were fantastic and there’s probably only one or two season four episodes that aired this fall that I didn’t full-on love. 24/26 legitimately great episodes for one calendar year is one heck of a run. The additions of Adam Scott and Rob Lowe brought even more heart and pathos to a comedy that already had a lot of it. Parks and Recreation is a very funny series first and foremost, but what made its 2011 so lovely is the emotional depth it explored. From obviously romantic relationships like April and Andy and Leslie and Ben to friendships like Ron and Leslie to the smallest random scenes at the office, the care and kindness permeating throughout Pawnee is really something to marvel at.

Best episodes: “Fancy Party,” “Flu Season,” “Smallest Park”

1. Breaking Bad: Vince Gilligan’s masterful drama series has now reached a point where throughout the year, I started to convince myself that there were other contenders for the “best series of the year” crown. At some point during 2011, I thought maybe any of the other series in the top five had a chance. Then Breaking Bad aired its fourth season and I remembered, “Oh yeah, holy hell this is an unbelievably great series.” Season three of Bad is probably my favorite season of a contemporary drama, but 2011’s season four might be even better. It was certainly more challenging, a bit more introspective and character-focused and full of resolutions that were worth the hilarious amount of waiting Gilligan and company made us do throughout the season. Giancarlo Esposito helped guide Gus Fring to the pantheon of great television antagonists and Bryan Cranston somehow made Walter White even more villainous while also regaining a modicum of sympathy. What a series.

Best episodes: “Face Off,” “Hermanos,” “Crawl Space”

Well? Thoughts?

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

Here we are, at the end of the list-making fun/insanity. The last few weeks have been really, really fun for me (despite said insanity, which I of course brought upon myself more than anything) and I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for reading, RT’ing, tweeting and whatever else you did during this end-of-the-year period and throughout 2011. I keep this web site alive for me, but I sure appreciate the support and interaction from all of you as well.

Anyway, it is time to discuss the best series of the year. It feels weird doing a list like this without Lost or Mad Men, but 2011 was a year full of series moving into the upper-echelon of television quality. Certain new series quickly made it to that position and a few returning series improved enough to do so as well. Unlike my episodes list, I was pretty much able to keep this list under control. I’ll be discussing the top 30 series of the year across the next two days and then posting straggling thoughts about a boatload of other series that didn’t make the list. As always, I must remind you that this list reflects my own tastes and viewing habits. Thus, you won’t see the likes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Treme, Shameless or Children’s Hospital on here because I just couldn’t get to them this year.

Today, we begin with numbers 30-16 of my top 30 scripted television series of the 2011. Let’s do this.

30. Supernatural: The post-Eric Kripke years of Supernatural have been less consistent and sometimes fully disappointing, but I thought the second half of season six had more standout episodes (even if the whole narrative didn’t quite work) than the first half and I found the fall run to be much more like the series I fell in love with. Although two of the most beloved non-Winchester characters, Castiel and Bobby, said “goodbye” in 2011, both did so in stirring, interesting fashion. Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki continue to turn in underrated, layered work and when the writing staff backs them up, Supernatural can deliver great episodes that stand up against what the best of the medium has to offer.

Best episodes: “The French Mistake,” “Death’s Door,” “The Man Who Would Be King”

29. Wilfred: Although Wilfred features a substantial “high-concept” as they like to say in the entertainment industry, the FX series offers a little something for everyone. If you want your comedies with a dose of mythology, Wilfred’s there for you. If you’re interested in humorous portrayals of psychological issues, Wilfred’s there for you. If you just like FX’s typical brand of immature humor, Wilfred’s there for you. And hey, if you really need a Fiona Gublemann fix, Wilfred’s there for you. More seriously, Wilfred is one of those series that seems primed for a big second season. The first season stayed within a comfortable rhythm that probably helped it appeal to those disparate audiences, but I expect some bigger, deeper things from the series in 2012. And if Wilfred doesn’t get there, I guess I’ll survive on more obviously funny jokes about dogs humping things.

Best episodes: “Doubt,” “Compassion,” “Identity”

28. 30 Rock: Like a certain CBS comedy you’ll see in a moment, 30 Rock isn’t quite as consistently great as it used to be, but going from the absolute best comedy on the air to a top-lining member of the second tier isn’t really much to be sad about. Season five is my favorite 30 Rock season since season two and I would argue it’s also the best. It relied less on mediocre stunt casting of high profile-names and focused much more on Liz and Jack’s relationship, the series’ obvious strong-point. 30 Rock also doesn’t get enough credit for being pretty weird, and many of the Tracy, Jenna and various writer stories were as odd and reality-cracking as the series has been.

Best episodes: “Double-Edged Sword,” “Queen of Jordan,” “Plan B”

27. Revenge: This year’s slate of broadcast dramas isn’t that strong, but if you told me in July or August that in December, my favorite one would be ABC’s Revenge, I would have plotted your murder meticulously over a decade. More seriously though, Revenge works so well because Mike Kelley and his team know exactly – or at least strongly appear to know – what they’re doing. They know what kind of tone and atmosphere the series should have on a weekly basis, they know how plot out sufficiently long arcs and thus far, it seems like they know where they’re going in the long-term and how to provide fun reveals and twists along the way. Just this fall alone, Revenge transitioned from its “Revenge of the Week” plot to a clearer serialization pattern and there weren’t too many bumps along the way. And the cast, led by Emily Van Camp in a role I wasn’t quite sure she could pull off, is doing a really nice job of gelling together and finding the balance between the camp and the serious. Revenge is just a fun, well-made series.

Best episodes: “Guilt,” “Trust,” “Suspicion”

26. The Hour: We’ve long debated the merits of the U.S. model versus the U.K. model in terms of number of episodes per season (and number of seasons) and while I don’t think there is a concrete right or wrong answer to those debates, The Hour is a nice example of the benefits of the U.K. approach. Six episodes is a fine number to tell the story that The Hour appeared to be interesting in telling. That allowed for a mostly tighter focus on the three lead characters and their various drives succeed in their respective ways. More episodes would have probably meant more Brightstone conspiracy beats, which is a thread that worked for the most part, but I’m less sure of with a larger focus. A second season is coming and perhaps that will disrupt some of the things I’ve said. However, this first six-hour story covered compelling ground and mashed together all sorts of genres and styles very, very well.

Best episodes: “Episode Three,” “Episode Four,” “Episode Six”

25. How I Met Your Mother: I get it. You don’t like How I Met Your Mother anymore. There are newer and better comedies on the air and HIMYM has unfortunately mishandled anything related to its lead character and supposed “mythology.” Nevertheless, I think the series has had a really strong 2011 because of all the great stories related to all the characters not named Ted Mosby. Stories about Marshall’s struggle to let go of his father, Barney’s struggle to embrace his and the complicated Barney-Robin relationship have all buoyed Mother with heartfelt stories that have featured loads of great all-time series moments. HIMYM might not be as consistently capital-G Great as it used to be, but it can still deliver.

Best episodes: “Last Words,” “Tick, Tick, Tick,” “The Ducky Tie”

24. The Chicago Code: Sigh. The Chicago Code is the only series in this portion of the list that we won’t see new episodes from in 2012 and that is just sad. Shawn Ryan’s crack at a broadcast network version of his gritty police drama had a few issues along the way that made you wish it was just on FX or a similar network to begin with, but Code worked through the challenges and began to form a compelling, seedy world that had loads of potential for impressive cross-section-style storytelling about police work, politics, economics and more. As it stands, The Chicago Code ended up being a workmanlike, but quality 13-episode story that was resolved well. Delroy Lindo got a lot of the publicity for his work (and rightfully so), but Jennifer Beals, Jason Clarke and Matt Lauria were all great at the top of that cast.

Best episodes: “Mike Royko’s Revenge,” “Bathhouse & Hinky Dink,” “Wild Onions”

23. Sons of Anarchy: Yeah, the finale might have been one of the bigger narrative cop-outs in recent memory. And yeah, I definitely have lowered expectations about where the rest of the series goes because of it. But in the back of my mind, I more or less assumed Sons of Anarchy would avoid putting its foot on the gas completely this season (I wrote about this constantly in my reviews) and yet, I still enjoyed this run immensely. On a character level, I found much of the developments this year to be better than anything Sons has ever done. Season two had some powerful stuff in it, especially for Gemma, but season four brought us loads of intriguing complexities for Jax and Tara, both of which were topped off by fantastic performances from both Charlie Hunnam and Maggie Siff. Just as the great season three finale didn’t make the previous 12 episodes less of a disappointment, I can’t bring this whole season down just because the finale ended poorly and with approximately 1,218 minutes of musical montages.

Best episodes: “Hands,” “Fruit for the Crows,” “Family Recipe”

22. Raising Hope: Along with The Middle, a series I don’t watch often but enjoy when I do, Raising Hope is helping bring diverse class representations to the typically ultimate-middle class-ness of television. Hope had a rock-solid year, with a fine end to its first season and an even better start to its second. The Chance family continues to be treated with the right amount of respect, despite their obvious faults, flaws and economic circumstances. As I’ve said before, the best part about this FOX comedy is that the audience is never asked to laugh at the characters’ class or intelligence levels, we are almost always asked to laugh with them. This could be one of the more hateful comedies on television, but Greg Garcia, his writing team and the strong cast keep that from happening on a weekly basis. Finally, the series has nicely expanded the world around the Chance family, giving the handful of secondary and tertiary characters more shading and making them even funnier. The term underrated has no real meaning anymore, but Raising Hope should certainly be more popular and respected than it is.

Top episodes: “The Men of New Natesville,” “Henderson, Nevada-Adjacent, Baby!,” “Don’t Vote For This Episode”

21. Enlightened: One of the biggest surprises of the year for me. What a singular, challenging and oftentimes moving series. Laura Dern is expectedly fantastic, Luke Wilson is unexpectedly great and Mike White’s voice shines through nicely. Enlightened took some time to warm up to, but after a few episodes, I realized that the series was taking me on journey. I’m still not exactly sure where that journey leads and I suspect that a few stops along the way won’t be that satisfying, but the ultimate impact will still be substantial.

Top episodes: “Consider Helen,” “The Weekend,” “Lonely Ghosts”  

20. Doctor Who: As I said in the best episodes list, I respond to Doctor Who a lot differently than most of the super-fans I’ve talked to (which might be a by-product of the fact I just caught up with the series this spring before season six began). I admire the gusto and risk-taking of Steven Moffat’s wide-ranging, complex mythology with the Doctor, River, etc., but I also think the episodes that dealt with those elements tended to be overly-complicated and borderline convoluted just because. On the flip side, I thought many of season six’s standalone episodes were very engaging, affective and important for the long-term development of the Eleventh Doctor and his relationship with companions. No matter which “version” of the series I prefer, I will say that I had a heck of time with my first year with the Doctor.

Best episodes: “The Doctor’s Wife,” “The God Complex,” “The Impossible Astronaut”

19. Misfits: Sure, the first two seasons originally aired before 2011 outside the United States. But thanks to the great deal Hulu cut this summer, I (and so many others, based on Twitter chatter) fell hard for Misfits first and second seasons this year. The British series remixes the superhero genre by keeping its focus directly on the characters and how new powers impact their already-screwed up lives. Misfits doesn’t shy away from showing us honest portrayals of what delinquent teenagers would absolutely do if they were randomly given insane abilities. These characters aren’t really heroes, which makes the moments where they actually do heroic things that more arresting. And the world has expanded at a methodical, smart rate.

Best episodes: “Season Two, Episode Four,” “Season Two, Episode Five,” “Season Two, Episode Six”

18. Southland: I know that police procedurals turn off a lot of critics, but I’m consistently shocked at how little attention is paid to TNT’s Southland. After being bounced from NBC and then dealing with an odd short order in its first run on TNT, the series was finally able to produce a full 10-episode season in 2011. With more episodes, Southland found a great balance between obvious procedural “police beat” stories and longer-form character arcs that paid off with great intensity and energy that isn’t seen on any broadcast drama about police. Southland fields the most underrated cast on television and Shawn Hatosy, Regina King and Michael Cudlitz and Ben McKenzie were all awesome in season three. It’s hyperbolic to call Southland a contemporary heir apparent to Hill Street Blues, but the two series are definitely cut from the same cloth.

Best episodes: “Code 4,” “Graduation,” “The Winds”

17. Awkward. : Under the middling guidance of Dawn Ostroff, The CW decided they didn’t want to do comedies, you know, because teen girls don’t like to laugh. Awkward. is the kind of comedy that proves The CW is probably better off with Ostroff not in charge anymore. The MTV high school comedy masterfully mixes immature and gross-out humor with a real sense of heart. The love triangle is an old device, but when done well, like it is on Awkward., it is hard to deny the narrative and emotional impact. The best stories about teenagers are simultaneously of their time and timeless and I think after one season, Awkward. is on the way to being in the discussion of said best stories.

Best episodes: “Fateful,” “Queen Bee-Atches,” “I Am Jenna Hamilton”

16. Fringe: I think you folks know that I’m disenfranchised with whatever the hell it is Fringe is trying to do in its fourth season. However, the series’ stumbles this fall do not negate a pretty strong end to a wonderful third season (borderline awful finale aside) and they certainly do not negate the very impressive work that all three lead cast members have done this year. John Noble is always tremendous and 2011 was no different. I talked about the ease at which Anna Torv handles all 17 roles she’s been asked to play a few days ago. And though he gets the least flashy material, Josh Jackson and Peter really hold Fringe together (which is partially why this season has been a bit flat). Plus, even when the series struggles like it has this fall, Fringe still knows how to construct powerful individual episodes that balance larger mythology and standalone stories better than anyone.

Best episodes: “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide,” “The Firefly,” “And Those We’ve Left Behind”

There you have it folks. Thoughts? And check back in tomorrow for 15-1!

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

You folks know how much I love making lists. Sometimes, that love gets out of control. This is one of those times. I had initially thought of doing another top 50 episodes of the year list. Then I pushed that number to 75 episodes. By the time I put the finishing touches on it Wednesday night, the total crept up to 100. Thankfully (I guess?), I stopped there.

With all that being said, I will, over the next two days, present to you the top 100 episodes of television from 2011. There are of course caveats and points of positionality I must inform you of before we actually get to the listing part of the proceedings. First of all, as always, this is a list that reflects my personal tastes and interests just as much as it reflects my “critical faculties” or whatever you want to call it. This means that certain series won’t appear on the list, either because I flat-out don’t like them or I just couldn’t get to them in 2011. Included in this small group are the likes of Downton Abbey, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Shameless, Treme, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Children’s Hospital.

Second of all, I decided to limit the number of episodes each series could have on the list to five. This presents the list from being dominated by all 13 episodes of Breaking Bad, Louie and Justified’s respective seasons or just as many episodes from broadcast series like Community or Parks and Recreation. This leads to a more diverse list, particularly in the bottom half, where I have inserted single episodes of series nowhere near the quality of the year’s greats. Those episodes aren’t objectively better than a sixth or seventh episode of series that dominate the list, but I think it’s still important to give them their due nonetheless.

You might scoff at an episode of Nikita being higher than episode of Breaking Bad, and I of course agree with that surprised sentiment. Thus, ultimately, this list ends up being less a completely scientific rendering and ranking of individual episodes and more a reflection and cross-section of the many great things that we saw in 2011. The numerical rankings matter, especially in regard to which group of ten individual efforts fall in (i.e. episodes 31-40 were purposefully chosen to be above 41-ownward, even if the distinctions between 31 and 32 or 34 and 35 are less important), but not dramatically so.

One final note: Because of the sheer amount of episodes on this list and the amount of content I’ve written over the last week, I’m eschewing providing blurbs about every episode. I really hope that doesn’t upset you. Precautionary apologies.

Yesterday, I gave you the first half of my list of the top 100 episodes of 2011. Today, part two. Here are the top 50 episodes of the year.

50. American Horror Story, “Smoldering Children”: Unsurprisingly, the strongest parts of the wacky and oftentimes very bad American Horror Story were the teenagers. When he wants to, Ryan Murphy can write or guide very great stories about confused, emotionally damaged youngsters and “Smoldering Children” was no different. Uncomfortable Tumblrs aside, Even Peters and Taissa Farmiga were pretty great together all season.

49. Revenge, “Guilt”

48. Raising Hope, “Men of New Natesville”

47. Doctor Who, “The God Complex”: My opinion of this season of Doctor Who varies greatly from the norm, I think. It seems most folks really loved the big mythology episodes, but I found many of those to be convoluted and over-complicated for complication’s sake. Instead, I adored many of season six’s standalone episodes. This late-season effort featured a mostly-straightforward monster story, but did some really interesting character things with the Doctor.

46. Supernatural, “Death’s Door”

45. The Hour, “Hour 3”

44. The Good Wife, “Closing Arguments”

43. Happy Endings, “The Code War”

42. Smallville, “Finale”: Sure, it didn’t feature many great full-blown Superman shots. And sure, it rushed through the Darksied confrontation hilariously fast. But if you watched Smallville for 10 years and followed the journey of this Clark Kent and this Lois Lane, I can’t imagine you weren’t moved by the finesse and respect paid to their relationship and the solid conclusion to both of their personal arcs. 10 years is a very long time, but “Finale” made it all pretty much worth the wait.  

41. Breaking Bad, “Crawl Space”: Most innovative final sequence and shot on television this year, right?

40. The Vampire Diaries, “The Birthday”

39. The Chicago Code, “Mike Royko’s Revenge”: The Chicago Code is one of those series that I feel like I lot of people are forgetting about when it comes to these end-of-the-year lists. I guess that is fitting, considering a lot of people ignored it during its rock-solid 13-episode run in the early part of the year. This episode, which ended up being the series finale, brought the season’s biggest stories to a very satisfying conclusion, albeit a slightly one.   

38. Misfits, “Season Two, Episode Six”

37. The Walking Dead, “Pretty Much Dead Already”: I liked this half-season of The Walking Dead more than most and the mid-season finale concluded with a masterful final 8-10 minutes. It probably took too long to get there, but Rick gunning down zombie Sophia was a legitimately powerful and game-altering moment.

36. Louie, “Come On, God”

35. 30 Rock, “Double-Edged Sword”: Amid all the internet chatter for Community and Parks and the respect paid to The Office with Steve Carell saying goodbye, we sort of forgot that 30 Rock turned in a great fifth season. At this point, the series can be hit or miss, but this one featured one of the most gut-busting hilarious sequences of the year with Liz and Carol having it out on a grounded plane. How Matt Damon didn’t win the Emmy is really beyond me.  

34. Awkward., “Fateful”

33. Friday Night Lights, “Don’t Go”

32. Homeland, “Marine One”: If you’re disappointed by this finale, I can’t help you. Tremendous finale on a character level and a very great resolution to one of the better freshman seasons in recent memory.   

31. New Girl, “Wedding”

30. How I Met Your Mother, “Last Words”: Jason Segel’s performance in this episode was multi-layered, equal parts heartbreaking and darkly funny. The group’s family dynamics are on full-display here, as Marshall’s pain reverberates down to them. How I Met Your Mother isn’t quite what it used to be, but it can still turn in an episode that reminds you of why you loved it in the first place.  

29. Community, “The Paradigms of Human Memory”

28. Parenthood, “Do Not Sleep With Your Autistic Nephew’s Therapist”

27. Cougar Down, “Lonesome Sundown”

26. Glee, “Silly Love Songs”

25. Enlightened, “Consider Helen”: The grocery store conversation between Diane Ladd and Barbara Barrie. That is all.  

24. Justified, “Bloody Harlan”

23. Boardwalk Empire, “Under God’s Power, She Flourishes”: Boardwalk’s second season saw a solid increase in quality for most of the season, but the drama jumped even higher with a fantastic three-episode run to end the season. The flashbacks to Jimmy’s time at Princeton, the initial stages of his relationship with Angela and those creepy moments with his mother filled in the blanks with great depth and steely intensity.

22. The Good Wife, “Ham Sandwich”

21. Parks and Recreation, “Smallest Park”: Parks has been less overtly funny and more earnestly sweet this fall and though I see where people prefer the former, I’m just fine with the latter. It’s hard not to be a Leslie-Ben shipper, just as it’s hard to not get choked up by their stirring and funny reconciliation.  

20. Fringe, “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide”: This is one of the only series on the air ballsy enough to take a 25-minute detour into exotic animation and one of the only series that can make that turn relevant and powerful on a character level.  

19. Sons of Anarchy, “Hands”

18. Community, “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking”: People had their various issues with Pierce’s descent into full-blown villainy in season two of Community, but never was that story more interesting than in this mockumentary-style effort. Chevy Chase turned a somewhat oddly-muted performance and Pierce’s energy nicely contrasted with the uncomfortable, manic work that the rest of the cast/characters delivered.

17. Archer, “The Heart of Archness”: I cheated. This is three episodes. Sue me.

16. Boardwalk Empire, “To The Lost”

15. The Vampire Diaries, “The Sun Also Rises”

14. Louie, “Duckling”

13. Happy Endings, “Spooky Endings”: Great sitcoms tend to find a holiday that they can really latch onto, one that matches their sensibilities. Friends has Thanksgiving. The Office has Christmas. Another standout episode like this and Happy Endings might just have dibs on Halloween.

12. Breaking Bad, “Hermanos”: No series treats its audience with more respect than Breaking Bad. Instead of talking down or explaining everything, Vince Gilligan and his team trust the fans to watch, understand and enjoy extended flashback sequences full of unrecognizable characters who don’t even speak English.   

11. Parks and Recreation, “Flu Season”

10. Doctor Who, “The Doctor’s Wife”

9. Game of Thrones, “Baelor”

8. Supernatural, “The French Mistake”: Be as meta as you want Community. I’m not sure you can top this complex and hilarious ode to Supernatural fans and its place within the television industry.

7. Justified, “Brother’s Keeper”: Justified season two is a shining example of how important seasonal plotting is to a story. Many great of the year’s stories convalesce and temporarily resolve here, but the events of this episode’s final minutes also serve as the catalyst for the season’s stretch-run. Fantastic writing.   

6. Breaking Bad, “Face Off”

5. The Office, “Farewell, Michael”: Steve Carell and the series’ writing staff smartly underplayed Michael Scott’s departure, choosing to keep things as simple and moving as possible. If you’re an Office fan, I dare you to watch the last 10 minutes of this episode and not cry.

4. Parks and Recreation, “Fancy Party”

3. Homeland, “The Weekend”

2. Community, “Remedial Chaos Theory”: ROXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXANNNE.

1. Friday Night Lights, “Always”: It was my number one episode of the 2010-2011 season and although there were tons of great episodes that aired between May and December, I can’t bring myself to move them past the Friday Night Lights finale. The conclusion is easily expected, but these 60-plus minutes are thrilling, emotionally-wrenching, celebratory and pitch-perfect on a character level. The series didn’t have the massive mythology to handle, but Jason Katims and his team still nailed that landing. Texas forever.

There you have it folks, the top 50 episodes of the year. What do you think?

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

You folks know how much I love making lists. Sometimes, that love gets out of control. This is one of those times. I had initially thought of doing another top 50 episodes of the year list. Then I pushed that number to 75 episodes. By the time I put the finishing touches on it Wednesday night, the total crept up to 100. Thankfully (I guess?), I stopped there.

With all that being said, I will, over the next two days, present to you the top 100 episodes of television from 2011. There are of course caveats and points of positionality I must inform you of before we actually get to the listing part of the proceedings. First of all, as always, this is a list that reflects my personal tastes and interests just as much as it reflects my “critical faculties” or whatever you want to call it. This means that certain series won’t appear on the list, either because I flat-out don’t like them or I just couldn’t get to them in 2011. Included in this small group are the likes of Downton Abbey, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Shameless, Treme, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Children’s Hospital.

Second of all, I decided to limit the number of episodes each series could have on the list to five. This presents the list from being dominated by all 13 episodes of Breaking Bad, Louie and Justified’s respective seasons or just as many episodes from broadcast series like Community or Parks and Recreation. This leads to a more diverse list, particularly in the bottom half, where I have inserted single episodes of series nowhere near the quality of the year’s greats. Those episodes aren’t objectively better than a sixth or seventh episode of series that dominate the list, but I think it’s still important to give them their due nonetheless.

You might scoff at an episode of Nikita being higher than episode of Breaking Bad, and I of course agree with that surprised sentiment. Thus, ultimately, this list ends up being less a completely scientific rendering and ranking of individual episodes and more a reflection and cross-section of the many great things that we saw in 2011. The numerical rankings matter, especially in regard to which group of ten individual efforts fall in (i.e. episodes 31-40 were purposefully chosen to be above 41-ownward, even if the distinctions between 31 and 32 or 34 and 35 are less important), but not dramatically so.

One final note: Because of the sheer amount of episodes on this list and the amount of content I’ve written over the last week, I’m eschewing providing blurbs about every episode. I really hope that doesn’t upset you. Precautionary apologies.

All right, I think that’s enough set-up. Let’s just get to it. I present to you the episodes 100-51 of the best episodes of the year.

100. True Blood, “I Wish I Was The Moon”: True Blood was truly bad this season. This was the only episode I remember liking. At all.

99. Once Upon a Time, “Snow Falls”

98. Perfect Couples, “Perfect Crime”: By the time Perfect Couples was unceremoniously canceled so that NBC could inflict The Paul Reiser onto audiences, it had become a very enjoyable, funny series.  

97. Prime Suspect, “Regrets, I’ve Had a Few”

96. Chuck, “Chuck Versus the Last Details”

95. The League, “The Lockout”

94. Burn Notice, “Dead to Rights”: Burn Notice had a quiet resurgence this year, with Michael having to balance his newfound CIA work with his personal life and his “whatever villain X played by recognizable actor Y” jobs creating an additional layer of tension the series desperately needed. I usually complain about USA mid-season finales, but this one was a fun embodiment of the Burn Notice formula: action-packed, thrilling, propulsive and just a bit moving.

93. Revenge, “Trust”

92. Suits, “Play the Man”: It’s very telling that the best episode of Suits, a presumed legal drama about lawyers, is all about a mock trial.

91. Doctor Who, “The Impossible Astronaut“ 

90. Hart of Dixie, “The Crush and the Crossbow”

89. White Collar, “Countdown”: White Collar struggled a little bit re-defining its lead character’s motivations this summer, but the summer finale did a lovely job of exploring Neal Caffrey’s internal struggle between criminal and hero.

88. Luther, “Season Two, Episode Two” 

87. Happy Endings, “Secrets and Limos”

86. Raising Hope, “Henderson, Nevada-Adjacent, Baby!”   

85. 30 Rock, “Queen of Jordan”

84. The Good Wife, “What Went Wrong”: A great case, a few great character moments and a nice, albeit curious, twist help make this a strong close-out effort for The Good Wife in 2011.

83. Awkward., “Queen Bee-Atches”

82. Enlightened, “The Weekend”: Enlightened is such a divisive series that even among its supporters, no one can decide what is really going on what is good. I’ve seen a lot of people talk about this as one of their least favorites, but I love it. Chances are this includes Luke Wilson’s best performance in a good half-decade.

81. House, “Bombshells”

80. Nikita, “Fair Trade”

79. Alphas, “Blind Spot”

78. Louie, “Eddie”

77. Up All Night, “Birth”: A turning point for the fall’s most comfortably innocuous (in a good way) sitcom.

76. Fringe, “And Those We’ve Left Behind”: It saddens me how disappointed I am in Fringe’s fourth season, but this episode reminds me that this team still knows how to craft emotionally complicated and heartfelt stories about random strangers that have surprising thematic connections to the lead characters.

75. Game of Thrones, “A Golden Crown” : I started to feel more comfortable with Game of Thrones an episode before this one, but that crowning scene pretty much guaranteed that I was going to stick with the HBO fantasy drama for the long haul.

74. Suburgatory, “Halloween”

73. Supernatural, “The Man Who Would Be King”: Supernatural had all kinds of random and not-so-random issues in its transitionary sixth season, but this episode almost made up for all of them. The series had been hinting at Castiel’s turn to the less-than-good side and I loved how Ben Edlund’s writing and direction forced the character to more or less confess all his sins directly into the camera. They knew we’d be upset and while some fans still haven’t gotten over what the writers did to Castiel, at least we will always have this episode and this great performance from Misha Collins.

72. Wilfred, “Doubt”

71. Parenthood, “Amazing Andy and His Wonderful World of Bugs”

70. Southland, “Code 4”

69. How I Met Your Mother, “Tick, Tick, Tick”

68. Homeland, “The Vest”: A great platform for Claire Dane’s crazy eyes. Also her powerhouse performance. But seriously, “The Vest” is the best kind of penultimate episode. It serves as the culmination of many of the season’s stories (Carrie’s psychological issues and their impact on her job) and lets the dread permeate deeply into the narrative, leaving the audience wondering clinging to the hope things don’t get worse.  

67. Misfits, “Season Two, Episode 4”

66. Breaking Bad, “End Times” 

65. Modern Family, “Two Monkeys and a Panda”: I can count the number of Modern Family episodes in seasons two and three that evoke the first season’s pitch-perfect mix of middlebrow humor and emotion on one hand. This is the first one that comes to mind. Great work from Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson here.

64. The Vampire Diaries, “The Dinner Party”

63. Friday Night Lights, “Texas Whatever”

62. Justified, “The Spoil”

61. The Office, “Garage Sale”

60. Pan Am, “Pilot”: One of my favorite pilots of the season. Too bad Pan Am was dull and rudderless by episode three or four.  

59. Sons of Anarchy, “Fruit For The Crows”

58. Glee, “Asian F”: No, it wasn’t the best episode of the series, as some loudmouth journalists were saying pre-airing. However, “Asian F” is evocative, moving and expressive in the way Glee was when it was at its best – which is perhaps the best that we can hope for at this point. Harry Shum Jr. was fantastic.

57. Community, “Critical Film Studies”

56. Fringe, “The Firefly”

55. Louie, “Oh Louie/Tickets”: Although judging Louie on episodic basic is sometimes difficult because he works outside of traditional constraints, there’s no question that the reality-blurring segment following his reluctant desire to get in touch with Dane Cook is one of the best things to happen on television this year.  

54. Game of Thrones, “The Pointy End”

53. Archer, “Stage Two”

52. Parks and Recreation, “Citizen Knope”

51. Cougar Town, “Free Fallin’”: Cougar Town’s quite a funny and lightweight comedy, but my favorite episodes are those that make a concerted effort to deliver emotional depth like Bill Lawrence’s previous baby Scrubs did. “Free Fallin’” does that by playing up the simmering tensions between Jules and Travis and the latter’s overbearing approach to parenting. Also, there’s Penny Can. PENNY CAN!   

50-1 tomorrow! Your thoughts on the bottom half?

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

2011 featured a slew of great individual performances. Today, I’m going to discuss 20 performances that I really, really loved this year. I have chosen 10 performances in comedy and 10 in drama. To avoid any dominance by one series or another, I decided to keep it to one great performance-per series. Of course, just because I picked one person from Community, that doesn’t mean I didn’t love everyone else in the cast as well. I am going to split these 20 performances into two posts today. I tackled comedy earlier and now it’s the drama-side’s turn.  Just like on with the comedy list, I started with a master list that was much longer and in a few cases, I had even more trouble deciding which cast member from your favorite great drama series I would choose for this list. But here we are. Again, no order.

Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad: You might imagine that it was very difficult to pick just one actor from Breaking Bad’s fourth season to make this list. Bryan Cranston always does all-time work and Walt’s frustrated, but purposeful descent into pure villainy went off without a hitch. Giancarlo Esposito brought humanity, complexity and emotion to one of television’s greatest antagonists. And the rest of the cast was similarly tremendous this year. Yet, I can’t not put Aaron Paul on this list. It’s become old-hat at this point, but his work as Jesse Pinkman continues to be my favorite performance on all of television. Season four required Paul to take Jesse to his darkest place ever and then slowly find some life and light in the aftermath of shooting Gale and the actor was obvious up to the challenge. Jesse’s become the sympathetic and emotional lead of the Breaking Bad story and considering where the character came from, you can’t help but laud Paul’s work.

Claire Danes, Homeland: Claire Danes’ crazy eyes are probably right up there with the Situation’s abs as the most impressive (and consistently seen) body parts of the year. More seriously though, Danes’ work as Carrie Mathison has her primed to win a boat-load of award hardware come next year and my goodness is it all earned. Danes’ performance always teetered the line between full-blown insanity and mangled control and she only dipped one way or another at a few perfect moments throughout the season. Carrie is far from perfect. She’s a mess, she’s overly paranoid and she fell in love with the one person she couldn’t have. And yet, she’s also an extremely smart, powerful woman. The Homeland writing staff did good work, but this feels like the role Claire Danes has been waiting for since the late-90s.

Margo Martindale, Justified: If it weren’t for Claire Danes’ layered, manic work on Homeland, I’d have no problem calling Margo Martindale’s powerful turn as Mags Bennett my favorite female performance of the year. It really doesn’t matter though, Martindale was similarly fantastic throughout Justified’s glorious second season. Any time that Mags was on screen, Martindale had full command of the screen, just as her character had full command of all the other people in the quaint, dangerous section of Kentucky. Even when Mags was at her most overtly villainous, Margo Martindale found the humanity and matriarchal tendencies within the character that made it impossible to really think of Mags as a villain at all. I know that it makes for a great ending to the season and a nice thematic bow for the narrative, but I do wish that Mags was around to cause more trouble for her family and for one Raylan Givens. Martindale couldn’t have deserved that Emmy win any more.

Charlie Hunnam, Sons of Anarchy: Mediocre finale and ultimately disappointing season four aside, Sons of Anarchy had a strong, powerful run of episodes going this fall. The series always has 14 motorcycle gang-related stories going on and a weird relationship with its own history, but Sons works best when its actors are just allowed to sit down in a room and talk to one another. Critics have been praising Katey Sagal’s work for years now, but this season, her on-screen son Charlie Hunnam became the series’ strongest performer. Charlie Hunnam’s grown dramatically as an actor in four seasons on the series and it feels like this year was when it all fell into place. His portrayal of Jax Teller was more complicated than ever and perhaps most importantly, a lot more subtle than simply loud and overtly expressive. He won’t ever crack the Emmy ceiling and there are probably tons of great reasons for that, but Hunnam was great this season.

Connie Britton, American Horror…just kidding, Friday Night Lights: Choosing between Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler is basically like choosing between which one of your own parents who like better, but I decided to give Connie the nod because Kyle Chandler won the Emmy anyway (you know, because the honors are completely equal folks). Britton got a teeny bit lost in the story shuffle in the first half of Friday Night Lights’ fifth season and that was mostly a byproduct of the important focus on football and the kids. In the second half though? Dang. The mounting tensions between the Taylors as the story came to an end were, unsurprisingly, real, raw and utterly relatable. I never expected a divorce or even a separation, but Britton helped take me up to a point where I was almost convinced otherwise. She never allowed Tami to become a shrill, a nag or annoying whatsoever. She was an honest, intelligent and strong woman who knew what was right and fair for her family and for herself. Beautiful work.

Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones: You folks know that I had no prior knowledge of Game of Thrones or its characters coming into my viewing of the first season this spring. Thus, I didn’t know that people often pictured and vouched for Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister. Now, though, I know why. Though I had my issues connecting to many of the series’ characters in the early part of the season, Tyrion was the one I felt for. Dinklage’s performance is simultaneously funny and affecting, making his character the perfect sympathetic entry point into a world of political maneuverings and deadly backhanded dealings. Like Margo Martindale, Dinklage’s Emmy win this past fall was totally warranted.

Anna Torv, Fringe: I’ve had my problems with Fringe in its fourth season that began this fall, but I cannot take away from the great work Anna Torv did this year. Although the beginning of season three that aired in 2009 featured most of her obviously great performances (forget all the different identities, see her emotionally-wrenching work in “Marionette”), Torv still did lovely work embodying Fringe’s 193 versions of Olivia. Torv can – and has – done it all over the last few years. Her chemistry with Joshua Jackson is sufficiently electric and moving, helping create one of the best romantic duos on television. She handles mythology-based exposition with no issue. And for a few episodes, she helped make one of the oddest plots in science fiction somehow work because she could do a solid Leonard Nimoy impression.

Michael Pitt, Boardwalk Empire: You’re still upset. I’m still upset. RIP Jimmy Darmody. Michael Pitt’s damaged, stoic and detached gangster fully grabbed hold of Boardwalk Empire’s “best character” title in 2011, which of course, makes it all the more sad that Jimmy met his demise at the end of the second season. As the story progressed this year and we learned more and more about Jimmy’s past, Pitt moved outside of his steely disposition and showed substantial range. He was mostly asked to be ponderous and introspective, but Pitt helped make Jimmy one of the deepest characters on television with great command of his eyes and his body movements. He will be missed in 2012, that’s for sure.

Laura Dern, Enlightened: Listen, I know. HBO wants you to think that Enlightened is a comedy. It’s 30 minutes! It’s wonky! No. I don’t care how many Golden Globe or Emmy nomination the series gets in the Comedy section, Enlightened is NOT a comedy. As I said yesterday, I’m not really sure what the hell Enlightened is, but I know it’s infinitely compelling and curious. No matter what the series is, the stature of Laura Dern’s performance is completely visible. Amy is a difficult character to get a handle on: She’s oftentimes very grating and unsympathetic and she makes really odd decisions without much outward context. Nevertheless, Dern has been able to keep adapting to whatever she and Mike White come with in the script stage and the unpredictability (but not insanity) of the Amy character is just so…engaging. This feels like a role tailor-made to Dern’s different skills and mannerisms.

Josh Charles, The Good Wife: Julianna Marguilies is fantastic and Alan Cumming gets great material as Eli Gold, but Josh Charles did some really strong work as Will Gardner in 2011. The series made a point to dive deeper into Will’s past and although I think they could have done an even better job with those stories, Charles brought some intriguing tidbits about his character to light without losing the strong-willed complexity we already saw in him. Will Gardner isn’t an especially good person, but he’s also not scenery-chewing evil either, which makes the character difficult to pin down for the audience. I’m certain than in lesser hands, Will wouldn’t work, or at least wouldn’t be as deceptively admirable.

There you have it. Your top dramatic performances?

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

2011 featured a slew of great individual performances. Today, I’m going to discuss 20 performances that I really, really loved this year. I have chosen 10 performances in comedy and 10 in drama. To avoid any dominance by one series or another, I decided to keep it to one great performance-per series. Of course, just because I picked one person from Community, that doesn’t mean I didn’t love everyone else in the cast as well. I am going to split these 20 performances into two posts today and so let us begin with the comedy side. The burgeoning life in television comedy gave us dozens of consistently LOL-worthy characters, but also some very complicated and deep ones as well. You won’t be surprised to know that my initial list had over 20 actors and it wasn’t easy to cut things down. But I did it. Just for you. Here we go. These aren’t in any particular order.

Steve Carell, The Office: Steve Carell’s goodbye run on The Office was as enjoyable as I expected it to be. The series’ writing might have slipped a few levels, but Carell brought his perfect mix of inappropriate behavior and pathos to Michael Scott’s farewell tour. The final few episodes asked Carell to do more of the latter than the former, ultimately leading to work that wasn’t as outwardly “funny” as some of the actor/character’s greatest moments and yet, it didn’t really matter. Carell is one of the most appealing television stars of the last 25 years and I already miss him quite a bit.

Gillian Jacobs, Community: Picking just one cast member from Community’s study group was the toughest choice I made in regards to this list. Donald Glover had a boatload of YouTube-worthy moments, Jim Rash got a lot of great material in the fall run and Danny Pudi is a consistently engaging, compelling presence. But Gillian Jacobs has been fantastic in 2011, especially in the third season that began this fall. Jacobs is game to do absolutely anything, from shockingly uncomfortable dances to donning nasty-looking spandex leotards. Britta’s wannabe-do-gooder shtick could have gotten tired and staid, but Jacobs (and the writing staff, of course) find new wrinkles and progressions that continuously add complexity to the character.

Ashley Rickards, Awkward.: MTV’s Awkward. took everyone by surprise this summer/fall and I think the series works so well because of Ashley Rickards’ stabilizing, but complicated performance at the center. The series’ writing is quite strong, there’s no question about that. However, Awkward. probably doesn’t work without Rickards. She handles the embarrassing comedic bits and the hormone-racing love triangle stuff with the same kind of vigor, making her Jenna Hamilton a fully-formed and relatable character.

Ty Burrell, Modern Family: The series he stars on has only gotten worse in 2011, Ty Burrell remains one of the strongest comedic performers on television. As Phil Dunphy, Burrell is often asked to act like a complete idiot who lacks self-awareness, and he almost always overcomes the mediocrity on the page by bringing a youthful, warm disposition to the character. He’s very adept at physical comedy as well, which helps makes the unfortunate amount of pratfalls he’s asked to do work much better.

Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation: I’ve said this multiple times before, but before Parks and Recreation, I didn’t particularly care for Amy Poehler. I think she wasn’t well-served by many of the recurring characters on Saturday Night Live and the first season of the series didn’t really convince me to change my mind. Of course, that’s all changed now. Leslie Knope is such a lovely, inspiring, intelligent and funny character that my “meh” opinion on Poehler has transitioned into full-blown crush mode. In an era of populist sitcom characters who are either hateful, stupid or some mediocre combination of both, Leslie Knope is a much-needed outlier. Poehler brings the perfect kind of kinetic, but controlled energy that helps make Leslie one of the most admirable human beings on television. If you don’t love Leslie Knope, you might not be alive.

Adam Pally, Happy Endings: Max Blum is one of television’s great new characters of the year and much of the credit for that revelation goes to Adam Pally. Much has been made about Max as a new representation of contemporary gay men (and rightfully so, of course) and I love how Pally and the series’ writers allow the character to be defined by more than his sexuality or his non-typical representation of it. As Max, Pally delivers one-liners with the best of them and commits to some of the most ridiculously funny bits seen on television in 2011. From the Nerf Gun sniper action to his inability to make a quality steak sandwich, Pally makes Max the most lovable slacker since Friends’ Joey.

Garrett Dillahunt, Raising Hope: FOX’s Raising Hope gradually improved in 2011 and that gave other members of the ensemble more material and more of an opportunity to grow comfortable in their roles. Nevertheless, the series’ best performer of 2010 remained so this year. Garrett Dillahunt plays Burt Chance with a great combination of ignorance and heart, helping him move into the pantheon of great television dads (and grandpas). Like Ty Burrell, Dillahunt helps a character who could be someone we laugh at stay someone we can keep laughing with.

Max Greenfield, New Girl: Schmidt is a really weird character (like all the people on New Girl, really) and we need more weird characters on broadcast television. He has this super-annoying machismo façade that definitely covers up for some really messed up psychological issues. His widely-swinging self-esteem leads Max Greenfield to turn in one manic performance after another and almost all of them have been great. Greenfield uses his voice to create distinctly odd line deliveries. He’s just a force that is always up to stuff and keeps New Girl immensely watchable even in the middling episodes.

Busy Phillips, Cougar Town: Unfortunately, Cougar Town has been away for a while now so it’s easy to forget just how damn funny it was in season two. The series has a very strong ensemble that has a very comfortable chemistry with one another, but it’s hard to not hone in on Busy Phillips’ goofball Laurie. The character displayed some needed depth in season two, but not so much that it took away from her proclivity to be a bit dense. From her surprising “success” at trivia to her charming use of Twitter, Busy Phillips’ Laurie’s enthusiasm for fun is really infectious.

Louis C.K., Louie: I strongly considered putting C.K. on the drama side, but then realized his wonderful work on Louie doesn’t really fit in any better there and it’s probably for the best to not confuse/inflame anyone with semantics. As I’ve said a handful of times this year, C.K.’s biggest strength is that he’s a tremendous storyteller. Those stories might lead him to deliver a hilarious, embarrassing performance in one Louie segment and a stirring, uncomfortable performance in the next one. There’s really no telling what will come next, with both Louie the series and Louie the performer. He’s not necessarily a traditionally talented performer like everyone else on this list, but he knows his strengths and highlights them often on Louie.

Your favorite comedic performances of the year?

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

As promised, Andy Daglas and Les Chappell are back on the podcast for another extended conversation about television in 2011. This time, we tackle the best series of the year. Thankfully, Les also does a dozen more fantastic impressions and we absolutely do not talk about him living in his mom’s basement for a few minutes. It started to almost-storm mid-way through, so there might be a few instances of wonky audio, but I think everything still works. Enjoy! As always, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. I’d really appreciate it if you did.

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

I have spent the last few days discussing the worst television 2011 had to offer and honestly, it is bringing me down. Time to cleanse our collective pallets. There were a slew of awful newbies in 2011, but it is not like this year failed to provide great new series as well. 2010 was a big year for great new television, but I think we might end up remembering 2011 as a little bit stronger from top to bottom. 2011 brought us a couple of great new cable dramas and a few very funny broadcast comedies and a slew of surprisingly lovely series that fall somewhere along the spectrum. I actually had trouble narrowing this group down to just 10 and so you’ll see a handful of very-worthy honorable mentions at the tail-end as well. The best new series of the year, here we go.

Homeland (Showtime): I waited to do much of my “best” content because I wanted to see how Homeland would stick the landing at the end of its freshman season and that will probably end up benefiting the series greatly. I know there are some frustrated folks out there and I already see some of the problems that could arise in season two, but good lord, Homeland had one heck of a 12-episode run this fall. The series’ writing staff masterfully took a story that could have – and almost always is – been plot-driven and made the characters, their screwed up, complicated emotions and their relationships paramount. Homeland is a story about the post-9/11 America, terrorism and all these other buzzworthy things, but it’s really just a story about a few dramatically fractured individuals trying to connect to something and make a larger impact in the world based on those connections. And of course, Claire Danes, Damian Lewis and Mandy Patankin turned in three of the best performances of the year.

Game of Thrones (HBO): You are likely aware that I had my issues with Game of Thrones during its first season, but I have come to recognize that those issues are mostly mine alone and not necessarily indicative of the series’ overall quality. I didn’t feel too emotionally invested in much of the series’ action or the characters taking those actions when watching the first time. Subsequent viewings of the season’s second half (the obvious strong portion) brought me closer to some of the characters, though. And more importantly, even with my lack of investment, I could always see value in the series’ impressive world-building and ability to translate the fantasy genre to the television medium. This is a simplistic criticism, but Game of Thrones is just a cool series. I like cool things.

Happy Endings (ABC): The narrative about Happy Endings has been gone over ad-nauseum this fall (last of the Friends clones, basically left for dead by ABC, supportive audience, etc.), but I think the series’ success in season two is indicative of what can happen with comedies when given the chance to grow and discover the proper rhythms and tones. Although this sitcom doesn’t have the same kind of thematic or character-based aims as some of the comedies we hold up on the highest pedestals, it makes up for it with unbelievably fast dialogue and a fully-committed cast. We all want to hang out with Penny, Max and the rest of the gang, which is one of the highest compliments who can pay a comedy like this.

The Chicago Code (FOX): I guess it is a really great year for new quality television if The Chicago Code is the only series on this list that got cancelled, right? Shawn Ryan’s broadcast network take on the police drama stumbled here and there with its overarching narrative, but featured a slew of rock-solid performances (led by the great work of Delroy Lindo) and a smart, complex look at police work, politics and the interrelations between the two. And although I am still sad that the series didn’t make it to a second season, I appreciate that Ryan and his writing staff had the foresight to wrap up the initial story in a satisfying and compelling fashion.

Awkward. (MTV): Probably the biggest surprise of 2011 for me. MTV isn’t really known for its quality scripted programming, but Awkward. consistently delivered on its nice mix of humor and heart and ended up being one of the new series I just straight-up loved this year. The series is youthful and heavy on contemporary popular culture references and yet, features a fresh take on a timeless story engine. All the series’ elements work together masterfully.

The Hour (BBC): I found myself falling in love with a number of British series this year and The Hour is one of my favorites. Period piece plus spy threads plus journalism is an equation that feels tailor-made for my kind of nerdom and although I had high expectations for the series because of that, The Hour didn’t really disappoint. The six-hour effort might have been too focused on the love triangle at times, but it made up for those repetitive points with nice pacing, great performances, a wonderful look and a fun amount of intrigue. Romola Garai is a star.

Revenge (ABC): I’m tempted to simply write “REEEEEEEVVVEEENNNNNNNGGGGGE!” here and move on. I’m very willing to admit my personal weaknesses for soapy dramas and therefore feel I was predispostioned to love Revenge. Nevertheless, the ABC series is the real deal. It obviously knows what genre sandbox it is playing within, but also isn’t afraid to meditate just enough on theme and character to give the overall package an additional layer of complexity. Revenge could have been a lot lazier and much dumber. Thankfully, Mike Kelley and his crew realized that there are ways to tell soapy, melodramatic stories like this and still keep the story’s head above the water of messy insanity. Lots of great and different performances on this one as well.

Enlightened (HBO): This is one of the weirdest series on television. I didn’t care for the pilot at all, let a bunch of the subsequent episodes pile up and then plowed through them a few weeks ago with great enthusiasm. I am not entirely sure what Enlightened is supposed to be, but I know that many weeks, it made me feel some oddly complicated and powerful emotions. Mike White’s voice always intrigues me and he’s found a lovely partner in Laura Dern, who is turning in a great performance. Enlightened isn’t easy to watch, but it feels like time-well spent once it is over.

New Girl (FOX): I fully expected to dislike New Girl. The premise seemed thin and the marketing quickly turned my affection for Zooey D. into annoyance. However, what I didn’t see coming was the strength of New Girl’s male cast members, who are all tremendously funny. It is disappointing that the series lost Damon Wayans Jr. (but not, since Happy Endings still exists!), but the post-pilot episodes have grown into a manic, borderline absurd energy and rhythm that is powered by Max Greenfield, Jake Johnson and Lamorne Morris. Johnson is sometimes stuck doing the romantic comedy thing and yet he still finds little moments to introduce some edge and attitude to his Nick. Max Greenfield, though, is a revelation. That dude knows exactly how to take bits to a higher level without overdoing it too much. If you don’t mind me going all bad movie critic on you, come for Zooey’s adorkableness and stay for the great men!

Wilfred (FX): At times it seems as if Wilfred’s writing staff isn’t exactly sure what they want the hilarious man in the dog suit or their series to actually mean. Thankfully though, those conflicting instances are backed up by lots of funny, immature gags about feces, sexual positions and drug use and really appealing chemistry between Elijah Wood and Jason Gann. And when Wilfred does appear to know what it wants to be about, the series is even better. Of course, I think the confusion is almost all purposeful and am convinced that this staff has an interesting story to tell about our various psychoses, screwy mythology notwithstanding. Although it is a much more obviously consumable product, Wilfred is sort of like Enlightened in that you’re not really sure what the heck is going on and sometimes it is a bit difficult to enjoy, but that difficulty is paid off by the end of season one.

Honorable mention: Alphas, Hart of Dixie and Suburgatory

There they are. Your favorites of the year?

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

Every year, the television networks unleash a slew of bad television programs onto us. We know it is coming. We hope the stuff they produce and air won’t be awful, but are entirely aware of the fact that most of it will be. It sort of feels like this season’s crop of bad new television is worse than normal, but that’s like saying the most recent time you feel down the stairs is the worst. The strain on my eyes and the ringing in my ears is just still raw. Again, it is important to remind you that these are just the worst programs on the major networks. I am absolutely certain there is something on a cable channel I have never heard of that is worse than at least a few of these. But, there’s only so much time in the day for bad television and when you have all the resources that the major networks do, those failures are more egregious and important to note. So without further ado (or rambling), here are the worst new series of the year.

H8R (The CW): I know that I usually keep my scripted and unscripted analysis separate, but there is no way that I could leave H8R out of this discussion. You know, because it’s one of the worst television programs to ever make it to the airwaves. H8R isn’t just awful, it’s outwardly and overtly offensive. Much like Glee and its creator Ryan Murphy, H8R suggests that criticism automatically equals bullying and just like that aforementioned series and its creator, H8R assumes that the best way to fight bullying is to bully the bullies. Maybe there is an interesting miniseries to be found with celebrities coming face-to-face with people who despise them, but H8R is absolutely not it. Mario Lopez and his team glamorized some of our culture’s worst kind of celebrities and forced mostly logical, if not somewhat excessive, internet folk to apologize for said logical criticism. I’m sorry, but if you go on reality television, you open yourself up to criticism. Freedom of speech still exists (I think, right?) and H8R would basically prefer it didn’t – or at least would prefer that only celebrities get that right.

I Hate My Teenage Daughter (FOX): Completely unfunny, lacking in perspective and voice and more or less an embarrassment for everyone involved. This is one of those comedies that gives the multi-camera format a bad name. Sometimes, I still cannot believe I Hate My Teenage Daughter actually made it to air, then I remember FOX aired a full season of Brothers. FOX should probably re-think their multi-camera sitcom output.

Whitney (NBC): Whitney Cummings should be happy that Teenage Daughter exists, as it incidentally makes her tepid NBC sitcom look dramatically better by comparison. Much has been made about Cummings’ breakout fall and I’m all for her being successful and more women-led comedies in general, but goodnight is Whitney painful to watch sometimes. Like Teenage Daughter, this one feels out-of-date and simplistic in the worst of ways. The supporting cast is full of the most miserable people of 2011 and despite Cummings’ perceived skills, Whitney has no individual voice. I don’t think it has a chance to improve.

The Playboy Club (NBC): When you follow television as closely as I do, you reach a point where you know exactly what to expect with a pilot episode. You’ve heard all the critic discussion, you’ve seen the tweets and reviews and it’s just all right there in front of you. Occasionally, you’ll be pleasantly surprised that a pilot/series isn’t as bad as everyone made it out to be. Unfortunately for NBC and the producers of The Playboy Club, this wasn’t one of those occasions. Playboy Club tried way too hard to be a prestige drama that it forgot to give any of its 10 initial storylines sufficient substance.

The Paul Reiser Show (NBC): Man, it’s been a bad year for NBC, hasn’t it? Okay, to be fair, that sentence could have come from any story like this from the last half-decade, but anytime you trot out the murder’s row of Whitney, Playboy Club and The Paul Reiser Show, you’re doing something absolutely as wrong as humanly possible. Paul Reiser sucks. He’s not an engaging performer, he’s neurotic tics are annoying and it’s not 1995 so I’m very unclear why NBC thought this would ever be a good idea. Reiser’s Curb Your Enthusiasm rip-off made me appreciate how skilled Larry David is and I don’t even really like Curb that much. When people talk about the quality differences between multi- and single-camera comedies, I will always point to this one as argument for why the format doesn’t matter.

Man Up! (ABC): Speaking of tepid single-camera comedies! Hey-o! Get it?! Sorry, I can’t not finish all my sentences with exclamation points when discussing Man Up! I never want to talk about the man-cession ever again, but I would, however, prefer to write a dissertation about the man-cession than watch another 22 minutes of Man Up! Is there a point where we stop giving Dan Fogler the ball? He’s had a lot of opportunities to run with it and, well, it’s just not happening. Josh Gad is the new Jack Black, Tyler Labine is the poor man’s Jack Black and Dan Fogler is the crazy, drunk, unappealing and obnoxious homeless man’s Jack Black.

Terra Nova (FOX): There were most definitely more objectively “bad” new series to come at us during 2011, but Terra Nova deserves to make this list for being a colossal disappointment and frankly, for being a waste of money. After all the delays, the script re-writes and the producer turnover, Terra Nova ended up being exactly what you would expect from a series guided by Brannon Braga: uninspired, dull and formless. I’ve seen the first three episodes and much of last night’s two-hour finale and followed the rest through paratextual means, and that still feels like too much. Terra Nova failed to embrace the ridiculousness of its premise or dive into larger, probably annoying mythology. Instead, it tried so hard to be an all-quadrant tentpole family drama that it alienated the audience that could have made it a hit in the first place.

Charlie’s Angels (ABC) and How to Be a Gentleman (CBS): I won’t too much time on either of these busts, as to re-create the amount of time we all spent watching them while they were on the air (although I actually took time to procure them this week to make sure I could discuss their “quality” with clear eyes). BOOM. But seriously, both Charlie’s Angels and How to Be a Gentleman were very, very bad. The former had no reason to exist beyond middling name recognition and the latter felt like it was literally sent here on a timedesk from 1989.

Extra-special “worst”: The Killing (AMC): I cannot put The Killing in the same category as the rest of these goofballs because it had a handful of really affecting moments, a couple great performances and a boatload of atmosphere that I still find very appealing. But the first season’s poorly constructed and misguided narrative ended up being damaging enough to warrant mention. We’ve all talked about the finale, but The Killing got it wrong way before that when it decided to eschew using its running time on character depth and instead turned into a single episode of Law & Order stretched across 13 hours. Ugh.

Well there you have it. Your worst newbies of the year?

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

We’re back with a second best/worst of podcast! In this extended pod, my buddies Andy Daglas and Les Chappell join me for a completely loving discussion of the worst television of 2011. As you know, you can subscribe to the TVS Podcast on iTunes. It could be your Christmas gift to me!

It is that time again folks! The end of the year is upon us and that means it is time to look back on the highs, lows and WTFs in television from the past 12 months. There is a lot to reflect on in regard to television 2011. Charlie Sheen went crazy. Well, crazier. Comedy supposedly made a big comeback. We found out what The Event was, I think. Steve Carell and Michael Scott said goodbye and we were sad. The guys from Entourage also said goodbye, and we were less sad. AMC tried to break a Guinness Book World Record for number of stupid PR disasters by a cable network.

This year brought us a number of great new series such as Homeland, Happy Endings and Game of Thronesand a slew of horribly awful ones such as The Paul Reiser Show, How to Be a Gentleman and Charlie’s Angels.True Blood and Glee kept getting worse while Community and Justified kept getting better. 2011 was the year of Louis C.K., the year of sexposition and the year of The Killing. Over the next few weeks, I will be posting all sorts of lists, podcasts and pieces reflecting back on the year that was. So join me in saying farewell to what was a very compelling year in television. There will be so many lists.

Sometimes, certain television series just let you down. These series are not necessarily “awful,” (though many of the below series had their moments that basically reached those nadirs) but they fail to live up to the expectations you and most everyone else had in their mind. Maybe one series loses a quality actor/character and quite figure out what to do to replace them. Maybe another series does not really know how to tell its final story, stumbling towards the finish line. And maybe another is just older, broader and not as refreshing or interesting as it was five years ago. These things happen. These, ladies and gentlemen, are our veteran disappointments. Series that have been on the air for a few years or more, series that I still mostly love in my heart, but ones that I could not help but sigh towards throughout much of 2011. The disappointments vary and some are larger than others, but there was still something missing this year from the below series.

Dexter (Showtime): Like any year, there were a lot of bad television series on the air in 2011. But I am fairly confident in saying that this season of Dexter tops them all. This string of 12 episodes was so bad, I started reconsidering any affection or respect I had for the series in the first place. I started wondering if Dexter had ever been good, like at all. That’s how tepid this was. The showrunner turnover has been an issue in recent years, but never as much as it was this go-around. Dexter “tackling” (if you want to call it that, though I’d probably settle for “uncomfortably and stupidly smashing into”) religion sounded like an awful idea and was still somehow worse in execution. The season’s villain, one of the only things the writers tend to find a way to get right, had no point and relied on a twist that the audience figured out in episode two. Combined, the “theme” and the villain turned the series’ lead character into an idiotic shell of his former self. Dexter did one dumb thing after another this season and there was absolutely no reason for any of it. And this doesn’t even account for all the truly, amazingly terrible storylines all the supporting characters had in season six. I hate Dexter.

True Blood (HBO): Can you call something a disappointment if it just continues down an already-established path of stupidity and diminished quality? True Blood has never been consistently good, in fact, it’s probably been more consistently mediocre than anything else. Outside of that strong string of episodes in the second season, Alan Ball has more or less been comfortable shooting for lowest common dominator, trashy, soapy fun and usually, I’m just fine with that (see: most of season three). But season four of True Blood was so boring, so bloated and so miserable to watch. This year, the series lost most of its sense of tongue-in-cheek fun and wrongly embraced self-seriousness in all the wrong ways. Season four brought us a terrible witch storyline that never made an impact on anyone, an extremely offensive, misguided racist plotline that I think meant to erase years of racism and lots of new stupid characters to pile onto the heap of old stupid characters we already had.

Entourage (HBO): Much like True Blood, I never really expected a whole lot of Entourage, even in a final season. The series plodded along for much of the last three or four seasons and there was no reason to get my hopes up now. This of course made the final season even more frustrating when things started off surprisingly solid and then completely nose-dived into a place of suckitude that I don’t think the series had ever reached before. Entourage was never going to have a compelling or important ending. Life was just going to go on for the boys. But for whatever reason, Doug Ellin and his team strongly thought that the audience cared about Vince and E falling in love. E’s relationship with Sloan turned into one of the worst things on television (no hyperbole), and just for kicks, the final season stretched it out even further, making both characters even more hateful and dumb. You know, only to have them get back together at the end anyway. And Vince randomly falling in love and getting married to a woman who hated him 24 hours earlier (and of course, not showing us any of those 24 hours where he changed her mind)? High comedy. Oh, that part was supposed to be serious? I can’t believe I’m saying this in 2011, but thank goodness for Jeremy Piven.

Glee (FOX): I would guess that many a critic would have no problem putting Glee on a “worst of” list and frankly, I cannot really blame anyone who would do such a thing. I care more about Glee being better than just about any other mediocre program on the air right now and yet, this year the series struggled so mightily again that my attachment is definitely waning. As everyone who watches the series knows, Glee’s biggest problem is its inconsistency and in 2011, that inconsistency became completely entrenched as the norm. The early part of the year brought us the empirically “better” part of the series’ miserable second season, but many of those episodes were still dreadful, tonally dissonant and disrespectful to the audience just the same. This fall’s run started off about as promising as the series has been since way back in the fall of 2009, but season three ran off the rails so quickly that I can barely remember what or why I liked about those first few episodes to begin with. Glee is no longer worth caring about because the people making it don’t seem to care about treating the characters, the story or the audience with any respect. This is so unfortunate.

The Office (NBC): I find it somewhat hard to get too upset with The Office at this point. The series hasn’t been especially and consistently good since season five and now in year eight with the lack of new ideas or creativity showing, it is clear that it is time for everyone to move on. But when the series showed some signs of life with Steve Carell’s departure last spring, I had hoped that the new injection of life (whoever that ended up being) would bring some new energy to the writing staff. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. This fall’s run started off well, but quickly devolved into aimless material that holds absolutely no weight or importance, even for long-time fans. Ed Helms is doing all he can with the new position he’s been given, but the writing hasn’t backed him up one bit. The Office is just…there now. Nothing matters. Nothing is that funny. Why should we care?

Modern Family (ABC): I understand why Modern Family is one of the most popular series on the air right now. In fact, I love that it is. However, it really makes me sad that for a season and a half, the writers have basically phoned it in. The first season of Modern Family was wonderful because it nicely merged familiar, mainstream conventions of the family sitcom with some sharp writing and stylistic flourishes. Since then? Blah. If the brass behind Modern Family have no larger aspirations in terms of telling a “realistic” story about the realities behind, well, modern families, I am fine with that. But I had hoped that the series would still stay as funny and moderately insightful. It hasn’t. The ABC comedy is so broad, so obvious and surprisingly unfunny a scary amount of the time. The performances are still top-notch, but the cast can only do so much with diminished material.

Smallville (The CW): Smallville’s final season had a slew of fantastic, all-time-series moments and really lovely episodes. Clark and Lois’ relationship was handled with intelligence and grace, the reappearance of both Lionel Luthor and Jonathan Kent gave the season some gravitas and outside of a few nitpicky things, I don’t have anything but positive notes about the series conclusion. However, season 10 of the Smallville fell victim to the same thing that most of the last few seasons did: padding. For whatever reason, the writing staff always had issues arcing out their story across 22 episodes, leading to a middle run of episodes that always felt boring, weightless and unnecessary. The final season was no different. I was willing to give Smallville the benefit of the doubt for a few seasons when they weren’t really sure if they would be coming back, but in season 10, they knew, and the issues remained. Ultimately, I think the series would have benefited from a shorter, maybe 13-15 episode, final season.