The Box in the Living Room: Round 3
Here’s what I think happened. You want to hear this? Here it is: You got scared. You forgot that which Hollywood is so adept at forgetting which is the simple truth that writing is everything. Maybe in the movies directing is big. Directors can impose their vision on a script when they have months to film and gargantuan budgets. In TV, there’s no time for that. Directorial flourishes, okay, but you can’t change a badly written TV episode with great direction. The most a TV director can do is make it click, make it work. What? The actors? I’m sorry, did I forget them? Actually, no I didn’t. The thing is: They. Don’t. Matter.
Sorry, Us Weekly and National Enquirer subscribers. I hate to break it to you, but those people on screen? They’re not making up those lines on the spot. Not a single one of them. Somewhere, some under-appreciated writer has carefully decided what they should say and do and the actors merely carry out instructions. Story-driven media demands to be driven by (shockingly) the story.
So here’s what went down: You have a hot young actress. A rising star. She’s the marquee name on the show. In a way, you kind of gave her the break she needed. But she’s rising too fast. She’s getting into high-profile relationships with co-stars. She’s ending those high-profile relationships with co-stars and finding bigger, richer co-stars to hook up with. Now she’s making all these requests from the writers. “Don’t put me in so many scenes with my ex-boyfriend. It’s uncomfortable for me to kiss him. My new boyfriend gets jealous.” Blah, blah, blah. But the thing is, your writers are scared. They’re terrified at the prospect of losing their star. No star, no show, right? You forgot that the story is everything. That actor? That contractor? That vessel? Meaningless. You should have stood up right from the start and said, “We’re here to tell stories. If you’re worried about where that story may lead, the door is to your left. If you want to be a part of a great story and make a bit of money in the process, take a seat.”
But you didn’t. Now your fearmonger star is asking for co-stars to be excised from the show. She’s getting married, see, so she needs to have her exes out of the way. Oh, and did you write in my pregnancy? Because—congratulations to me and a big pat on my back—I’m expecting so my character is going to need to get knocked up as well. That won’t be a problem for an action-based show about undercover super spies, will it? Of course not. There’s a good little Word Processor Monkey. Now shoo, and go make me more famous.
Well you may be able to live with yourself, Alias, but I can’t. I hope it goes well for you, I truly do. We had some good times, you and me. But enough’s enough. You know I would normally be standing in ovation with a whoop and a whistle at the shocking death of a major character in a show. What a way to start the season! Except, no, it wasn’t. It was a cheap cop-out. A lame and bitter send-off to a guy who dared to be less of a star than our title character and who got caught in the wake of the Hollywood star machine. Poor sod. But forget about him, he’s just an actor. How about those writers? Sorry guys, you’ve lost it. Too many paychecks? Well phone it in to someone else. I’m out.
You had me, and you lost me. (Apologies to Eric Burns.)
Lost
Watching Lost is sort of like watching a cat stalk a bug. It’s very entertaining as it goes round and round, with brief snatches of brilliance in form and style here and there, but eventually you start to feel like saying, “Come on already!” Plus there is this feeling that when it does finally happen, it will be so sudden and abrupt as to just about ruin the rest of the experience.
Of course the big problem is that at least 85% of the enjoyment of Lost is speculating on what the maddening clues mean and training your eagle-eye to spot the less obvious ones. This is definitely an “Internet Chat Board” show. Where that starts to stumble is that at some point the clues have to become more than just tantalizing suggestions and form some sort of story. When that happens, the story better bring it or the show will fall flat on its face. Without the mystery, I can’t imagine what this show would have to offer.
Which is frustrating to me because as I’ve said before, I don’t have a problem with things being mysterious, where I get leery is when people try and shoehorn something like this into an open-ended format. People in the entertainment industry really, really need to learn the value of conclusions. I’m afraid they’re going to have to keep pouring on the mystery until we’ve all just run out of patience and given up before we’re finally told something dumb like “They were kidnapped by the government. And monsters!” At which point we won’t care, but we’ll still be pretty hacked that we wasted our collective time.
I want the show to push forward and start to reveal some of these mysteries. I want less of the flashbacks that don’t reveal anything new about the characters (in the Season Premiere we learn that Jack… uh… met a guy. Once. A long time ago. For like five minutes.) and more story advancement and/or dealings with new characters. And no, I don’t think adding a bunch of tail section survivors was the right way to go. There’s no reason why we couldn’t be introduced to some of the 30 people also part of the group who get zero screen time.
I still love the show and it hasn’t slipped since last year (other than retaining its inherent difficulties) but it remains a show I watch with great trepidation.
Cold Case
People talk about Law & Order being a very consistent show. In terms of structure—knowing what you’ll get in any given episode—that’s quite true. But I don’t think most people who use that particular adjective with that particular show are meaning anything else, and I don’t think they’re ever really referring to quality.
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