Spin Me a Yarn
Last night I went downstairs to talk to my friend and
neighbor Neville. As he answered the door, he said, "Thank God, you can rescue me
from bad television. I'm watching Fifteen Minutes of Fame and it's wretched -- yet
oddly compelling in that wreck-on-the-highway sort of way."
Ain't that the truth? I don't know anybody who actually
feels happy with what's on television these days, but people -- even intelligent people
with lots of entertainment options -- watch it anyway.
How can this be? We have, as Springsteen so memorably put
it, "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)." In the bad old days, when we all had
antennas and could get only four networks, it was a given that those networks had to cater
to the lowest common denominator and that shows couldn't be too smart, too talky, too
edgy, too ethnic, too urban -- too different.
And, while there were plenty of shows like The Beverly
Hillbillies as a result of all those strictures, there were also occasional flashes of
brilliance, such as St. Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues, which were unlike
anything that had come before them.
Flip through the dial today and it really looks like The
NewYorker cartoon a few weeks ago got it right: A wife, remote in hand, asks
her husband, "Do you want to watch somebody cook or watch somebody remodel?"
Well, those shows are cheap to produce, compared to hiring
actors, directors, writers (something I'm in favor of), and other skilled professionals.
And the shows can be oddly comforting to watch -- I have no idea why, but nothing mellows
me out after a day of staring at a computer monitor like following a decorator through a
luxury loft as she talks of colors, lines, and thematic anchors.
On the other hand, I wouldn't give those shows a thought if
I were offered a real story instead.
It's not exactly an arcane desire. Humans probably told
stories long before they mastered fire, and "Tell me a story" is one of any
child's most heartfelt demands. Where do you find stories on television these days?
Not on the over-the-air (OTA) networks, that's for sure.
Other than -- perhaps -- Dick Wolfe's Law and Order network, I mean NBC, where are
the stories on TV? (Disguised as kiddie fare in Fox's perfectly realized animated
offerings, The Simpsons and King of the Hill -- but that's another story.)
On premium cable, mostly. Even more specifically, on HBO.
Look at HBO's biggest successes and you'll see Six Feet Under, The Sopranos,
Oz, Sex and the City, and The Wire. Never mind that there's also a
lot of disposable garbage on the network (hey, it's TV, that's a given), that's an awfully
impressive lineup. And that doesn't even include the HBO movie treatments of books and
plays and other special programming.
What do HBO's successes have in common? They are densely
written, complex, and adult. By adult, I don't refer to the fact that each of those shows,
to a greater or lesser extent, has male and female nudity; frank, almost clinical
discussions of various sex acts; graphic violence (well, Oz and The Sopranos,
certainly); or the "f word" every few seconds.
Where any of those elements advance the story or create a
realistic world for their action, I applaud them, but I don't watch The Sopranos
because the dancers at Bada Bing! are shaking their unfettered titties. No, I watch The
Sopranos because of its richly nuanced themes of loyalty and morality, because of
James Gandolfini's sympathetic portrayal of a reprehensible character, and because of Edie
Falco's and Lorraine Bracco's completely believable, complexly conflicted characters.
I watch The Sopranos because it doesn't smirk and it
doesn't fudge. Tony's a moral monster for all of his amiability -- we've seen him murder
with his own hands, we've seen him order a close associate's death, albeit regretfully,
and we've watched him burn down a friend's restaurant "as a favor." But Tony's
more than a simple goon, and none of the people around him are perfect, either -- Carmella
tries to be a good person, but she's unscrupulous when it comes to using Tony's notoriety
to get Blossom into college, to name just one compromise she's made. Similarly, Dr. Melfi
knows she shouldn't be associated with Tony Soprano, but she's afraid to cross him -- and
besides, it does have its advantages.
Oh, by the way, HBO didn't develop The Sopranos.
David Chase offered it to all three major networks first. They all passed -- probably as
much because they were uncomfortable with the Soprano's "family values" as
anything else. After all, I'm sure they reasoned, who could sympathize with a character
who can't stand his own mother?
That's the problem with broadcast TV, even today. Things
need to be neat. Likable rules! Of course, it's hard to sympathize with a character
we don't know who does unlikable things. But whether you know you're interested in a New
Jersey mobster or not -- or whether you think you're interested in a 1st century Roman
Emperor with a gimpy leg -- the character can be compelling if the writer makes us care.
And the way a writer makes us care is by making a character real. Once that happens and we
get to know Tony Soprano -- or Tiberius Claudius, for that matter -- we understand that
there's a lot more to their stories than whether or not they liked their mothers.
Watch network TV and you won't see fully fleshed-out
characters. In the interests of appealing to everybody, television characters resemble no
one. They are sketched so broadly that most of them don't even rate a one-sentence
description. A phrase is all it takes: the wacky neighbor, the bitchy co-worker,
the shopaholic blonde. Who cares about them -- who could care about them?
I have no interest in watching a show about a mafia
soldier, but I can't stop watching Tony Soprano. I didn't think I was interested in
watching a show set in a prison, but Oz made me care about a whole cellblock full
of sharply characterized specific prisoners.
The networks miss this so completely that they even try to
turn real people into stereotypes on their "reality" shows. Tune in to any of
them and notice how people get reduced to a single dimension, becoming "the
cook," or "the blonde," or the "gay guy."
One of the most basic rules in writing is that an abstract
style is always bad. If you write about humankind, you'll bore readers to tears, but write
about a single person and they're yours as long as you make them believe.
So, all you high-paid network executives out there, I'm
going to tell you how to save television -- and not so incidentally, your jobs. The
answer's simple.
Tell me a story.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
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