The Perils of the Extensive Post-Pilot Preview

January 16th, 2012

It is no longer uncommon for networks to post pilots online in advance of their premieres, with FOX most recently using this strategy to help launch New Girl to some very strong initial ratings (which have since that point slid considerably, but remain fairly solid). It gives the shows increased visibility within an online space, turning savvy consumers (those who will find it on iTunes, or Hulu, or OnDemand) into an additional marketing segment who will put the word out just enough that those 100 million people tuning into the Super Bowl, and tens of millions who will watch The Voice for two hours before Smash premieres on February 6th, will hear whispers of the show before it’s plastered throughout those NBC broadcasts (and, as Mike Stein pointed out on Twitter, a single person who has seen and enjoyed the Pilot at a larger gathering could spread the word quite easily).

Like many others, I sat down with the Smash pilot via iTunes this afternoon – I had not seen the pilot when it was sent out to critics last Fall, so I was more or less seeing this in the fashion that NBC intended. The difference, though, is that I’ve read a lot about this show, and have seen enough trailers to understand its basic premise (and the basic beats of the pilot) more than the average viewer. As a result, while I would say that the Smash pilot is well-made, and there were parts of it I quite enjoyed (mostly surrounding the musical numbers at the heart of the story), I didn’t get that thrill of discovery that you ideally want to have with a television pilot.

NBC isn’t particularly concerned about this, either: while they’re playing coy with the musical numbers themselves, they included an extensive preview of the remainder of the season at the end of the pilot download, providing viewers with a surprisingly comprehensive overview of what is going to happen in the show’s first season (although it is unclear just how many episodes we see scenes from). It’s a move that’s not entirely common in this day and age, but it’s a move that I find eternally frustrating as someone who tries to avoid spoilers at all costs, particularly with reality shows like Project Runway or Top Chef where the basic structure is already so apparent.

The question becomes, though, why a show that does seem to have a strong serialized component (represented by the behind-the-scenes soap component of the series) would be so willing to reveal their cards before the show even begins. While I don’t know the actual answer to this question, I want to suggest (while offering some basic impressions of the drama, and some spoilery details for those who haven’t watched it or the preview that followed) that NBC is admitting up front that watching Smash isn’t going to be about surprise so much as spectacle, mirroring my own experience with the pilot and charting an intriguing if flawed course for the series moving forward.

Technically speaking, the pilot to Smash ends on a cliffhanger: both Ivy (Megan Hilty) and Karen (Katherine McPhee) give their callback auditions, and we conclude without knowing which one of them has received the part. However, on some level it’s a show killing cliffhanger, in that one of the actresses being given the part would complicate them being positioned as two separate narrative threads. While McPhee’s character is obviously our central protagonist as the Midwest girl trying to make it in the big city, Hilty’s character is more sympathetic than early trailers seemed to suggest. While there is an effort to position Ivy as an antagonist, a ringer who gets in the way of Karen’s hopes to succeed, the fact that Ivy is the one who originated the role in the demo phase does give her a claim to the part, and that brief phone call back home to a disinterested mother does aim towards fleshing out the character.

At the same time, however, the show is equally predicated on the evolution of the musical itself, providing a structure with musical numbers, rehearsals, and everything else involved. If only one actress gets the role, they would either have to exit the narrative (which we know is unlikely), move into a different role within the musical (which was never actually brought up in the pilot), or start a new narrative entirely (which would seem to work against the structure being created, although the idea of the two actresses in dueling musicals would seem like a potential storyline for a future season, perhaps leading towards a Tony Awards showdown. But I digress).

In other words, while this cliffhanger creates a point of narrative interest, resolving it in our heads also creates a point of narrative conflict between the character arcs being drawn and the structure of the show moving forward. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to imagine what the show might look like after that point, especially if you have any knowledge of how a musical goes from script to stage, but NBC operates here as though it is terrified of any potential confusion this might create. They want you to know exactly what kind of show Smash is after watching the pilot, and so you get to see that the battle between Ivy and Karen will continue on for several weeks, weaving back to the “Sleazy Director Seduces Young Starlet” trope with Ivy and creating apparently an infinite number of scenes in which the principal creative forces within the series weigh their pros and cons like reality show judges.

It’s a decision that I find confounding as someone who doesn’t like spoilers, but it also suggests that for NBC this is a show being sold on spectacle. The preview gives away one musical number, but it also promises countless more, and the sense is that plot is irrelevant when you have the promise of seeing Broadway come to life on your television screen. The purpose of the preview isn’t so much to whet your appetite as it is to satisfy your every curiosity, ensuring that there will be plenty of relationship drama, production challenges (often caused, it seems, by relationship drama), and the lights of Broadway shining brightly as the two actresses bring Marilyn Monroe to life as only a fictional musical could. Not comfortable allowing viewers to imagine what these storylines might look like, despite the fact that nearly every one of them could be easily predicted by anyone with any level of television literacy, NBC wants you to know that this is the show Smash is going to be.

My issues with NBC’s preview strategy aside, I do have a bone to pick with the show itself, something that muted the impact of the narrative if not the spectacle involved (as the musical numbers themselves were very well done). Specifically, it bugged me that the creative side of the musical happened almost entirely offscreen, and that the speed at which the musical developed suggested not a single creative struggle. I understand that the pilot is working overtime to rush the conceit into place, and the writers need to get to real, live “Marilyn the Musical” in order to preview the kind of musical numbers the show intends to deploy in the future. The problem is that it makes Tom and Julia out to be these musical geniuses who turn an idea brought up by a housesitting assistant (who is totally going to sue for a creator/producer credit later on) into a full fledged musical entirely off-screen, without a single creative hiccup.

It’s an idealistic portrayal of the creative process, or in some ways a non-portrayal of that process. We see the finished product of Derek’s musical number and a quick bit of rehearsal, but we learn nothing about his process, focusing instead on his genius as identifiable within his work. Even the business side of the scenario is largely elided in terms of any finances, with the only real conflict created by Eileen’s divorce proceedings as opposed to a poor economic climate or any number of normal ways a Broadway musical might become a complicated enterprise. I’m not suggesting these won’t become a factor in future episodes, but the preview suggested that the creative process will remain a largely stable entity that is impacted by the soap opera surrounding it, rather than an inherently complicated process in and of itself (without the need for external forces to act upon it). It’s a presumption that this will remain the case, as the preview may be misleading, but this feeling is so prevalent within the pilot that I worry it will spread into the series as well, a worry that the preview comes close to confirming.

There is a great deal of potential in this project, and the cast and the music will be enough to keep me watching even after having a number of storylines laid out for me as though I wasn’t capable of anticipating them on my own. At the same time, however, the detailed nature of the preview also perpetuates some of my early concerns, suggesting that the show’s desire for spectacle might lead them past the kind of storyline that would do more to humanize these characters than any “Leading Man has romantic past with Married Lead Writer” storyline ever could. In trying to provide as much information as possible, NBC has actually led me to discount the show’s ability to tell nuanced stories, so defining the show based on hype and anticipation that any more subtle narrative seems unlikely.

In other words, while I may not want to know too much, perhaps it’s possible that NBC shouldn’t want me to know too much either.

Cultural Observations

• Cory Barker has some thoughts on the state of NBC’s development slate at TV Surveillance that are worth checking out, while I have my own piece on NBC Thursday Night legacy up at Antenna. And, if you’ll believe, I might have more to say about NBC in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned.
• The preview suggests that Brian D’Arcy James’ character is going to go back to work, so I have to presume that he’s going to go back to work as a singer of some sort? Having him in a non-performing role is allowed, of course, but it feels like a bit of a waste.
• Curious to hear what others had to say about the pilot (you can read Kelli Marshall’s thoughts on seeing a live screening of the pilot last week), so feel free to chime in below.

Shone’s argument is interesting, primarily because it does little to hide its anecdotal nature. He argues that while we might contest many choices that the Globes have made over the years, they have done enough good in enough instances to be “worth it” in the end. While some might question the value of their existence, Shone believes that looking at even a handful of examples where they were legitimately ahead of the curve, or where their whims happened to match with how cinematic history would remember a particular year in film, justify any travesties they might otherwise commit.

My brother’s question to me, upon informing me of the article, was whether I would suggest the same could be said for television, a thought that I was preoccupied with throughout tonight’s Golden Globes broadcast. Whereas the Golden Globes line up comfortably as a precursor for the Oscars, the Globes’ relationship with the Emmys is complicated by their differing eligibility periods and voting structures. However, building on Shone’s argument, there was evidence within tonight’s broadcast that some of the Globes’ voting habits that we might otherwise vilify in particular contexts proved to benefit shows that I like, and shows that may not necessarily be lauded to the same degree come September.

My takeaway from this is not necessarily a validation of the Golden Globes or the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but rather an increased belief that our assessment of award shows needs to become more nuanced, both in terms of how we perceive them as cultural entities and in terms of how we consider their industrial – as opposed to cultural – significance as a framework for understanding their greater “meaning.”

This is not to suggest, of course, that there weren’t the typical Globes disappointments during tonight’s broadcast, with the increasingly tepid Modern Family winning its second-straight Globe for Outstanding Comedy and Kelsey Grammer taking home the Best Actor Drama award over both Bryan Cranston and Damian Lewis. In addition, it seems difficult to laud the Golden Globes for their commitment to television programming so long as they lump together supporting performers from dramas, comedies, miniseries and TV movies as though that is an even remotely logical thing to do (and the opposite of Shone’s argument regarding the Globes’ commitment to honoring both comedy and drama within the film categories). As Ricky Gervais pointed out at one point in the broadcast, it’s very clear where TV stands at the Golden Globes given the seating arrangement which has them sectioned off into the outer edge of the audience, and it’s tough to get past that to see a particular value in their contributions to the medium.

I will say, however, that this was the kind of year when the Golden Globes seemed to serve a real “cultural” purpose within the world of television, or at least a purpose beyond providing valuable advertising space and legitimacy to pay cable networks. In the case of Mike White’s Enlightened, a little show that no one was watching, a surge in support from the Golden Globes played a huge role in earning the show a second season, and won Laura Dern a Golden Globe during tonight’s broadcast. Her win was not necessarily a shocking development for the Globes, as she has won twice in the past (and is even a former Miss Golden Globe) and thus is quite familiar to the HFPA voters, but it’s a case where a Golden Globe can make a difference to the future of a show that might otherwise be canceled.

Also, this year’s Golden Globes must be singled out as particularly interesting given that it will be the only awards show in which Mad Men will be ineligible over the course of that show’s run on AMC. Because of the Emmy eligibility periods, Mad Men‘s fourth season (airing in the fall of 2010) was eligible in 2011, while the show’s fifth season (which airs this Spring) will be eligible in 2012. However, the show’s complete absence in the 2011 calendar year meant that it sat out tonight’s Drama categories, making way for Showtime’s Homeland to win a much deserved award for a tremendous first season. In truth, Homeland will remain competitive at the Emmys later this year, setting up an impressive horse race against both Mad Men and Breaking Bad (which was, inexplicably, not nominated for the Golden Globe, but let’s focus on the positive here for a moment). However, this award means that even if Mad Men‘s Emmy streak goes unabated and the Emmys continue to (whether justly or unjustly) shovel Emmys into the hands of Matthew Weiner, this year’s Golden Globes assured that someone, somewhere had a chance to reward Gansa and Gordon’s stellar work (along with Claire Danes’ extremely strong performance).

Indeed, these are two potential instances where we might look back and think that the Globes got something right, making a decision that would prove them to be more prescient than their other nominations might suggest. In fact, Shone’s thesis is proven on the television side quite easily in recent Emmy history, with Steve Carell winning a Golden Globe for the first two seasons of The Office but never winning the Emmy he deserved for that performance. Indeed, if we go back a few more years, Jennifer Garner won for Alias before being defeated by Allison Janney (jumping categories to Lead Actress for the first time) at the Emmys. If you wanted to make Shone’s point on the television side, you simply need to sift through the lists of winners, and you could likely discover countless instances where history will remember the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as the people who got it right.

However, I still can’t entirely get behind Shone’s thesis, a hangup that has a great deal to do with the fundamental lack of transparency behind the Golden Globes. To be clear, I don’t mean the HFPA itself, although their shadowy nature is probably playing some role here. Rather, what I find so compelling about the Emmys is the way their legitimacy is visible throughout the process, as submissions are made, ballots are distributed, and then nominees are chosen to in some cases submit to extensive, relatively transparent processes through which winners are selected. While all awards are inherently flawed in their inability to prove that voters have objectively considered the best in television on a large enough scale to make their vote a comprehensive one, the Emmys seem built (with the screening of nominated performances for panels, and the distribution of episode submissions from nominated series) to ensure that at least some level of comparison is present in the final selection process.

I don’t think this necessarily leads to better winners, and can think of numerous cases where it has led to winners that I was quite frustrated with at the time. However, I find there to be solace in the science offered here, giving us the ability to understand why a decision might have been made rather than prescribing it to the whims of a voting body known for their love of whims. We respect the Emmys more than the Golden Globes not because their winners are necessarily better, but rather because we can better predict, analyze, and understand those winners. The lack of clarity regarding the Globes immediately throws the questions of “How” and “Why” into disarray: reading through Shone’s argument, for example, I found myself wondering whether the HFPA made those decisions for the right reasons, or if they just lucked into a decision that history would vindicate relative to the Academy Awards. It’s a silly question that doesn’t particularly matter, as a search for logic feels like a futile one with award shows, but it’s not necessarily a question I would ask of the Emmys, in part because I feel I have a better understanding of the “How” and “Why” of it all.

What I like about Shone’s piece, though, is that it does force us to differentiate between that which can be easily dismissed and that which could take on a greater meaning within awards like the Golden Globes. I feel confident that Matt LeBlanc’s “Hey, you played yourself on a premium cable comedy, and we never gave you a Golden Globe for Friends” victory will be proven a shallow reflection of the HFPA’s membership, but Idris Elba’s win feels significant both for the actor himself (deserving of a break of this nature) and for BBC America (looking to make a larger impact on the awards circuit with its imported programming like Luther and The Hour). Similarly, while Downton Abbey‘s victory over Mildred Pierce feels like another drop in the bucket in the former’s domination of the latter on the awards circuit, it is also the first time in at least two decades that PBS has won this award, a breakthrough for public television in a space recently reserved for the glitz and glamour of Hollywood stars slumming it on premium cable.

The cultural significance of these “victories” is hollow, I’m aware, but it’s not insignificant within an industrial context. Even Kelsey Grammer’s win for Boss, a victory that I identify above as a point of disappointment, is significant for its reflection of the foreign success of the Starz series, which so prominently flopped with American viewers. It’s a vote of confidence for the network’s decision to order a second series primarily – according to speculation – in order to be able to sell both seasons as a package internationally, where it’s clear that the HFPA have become attached to Grammer’s performance (and the show, given that they nominated it for Drama Series as well).

Shone’s argument very much rests on cultural significance, on some sort of moral sense of “right” and “wrong” when it comes to who is given a shiny trophy, something that I’m not convinced you can build an argument on when it comes to any awards (and that includes both the Oscars and the Emmys). However, I would agree with the takeaway of Shone’s argument, which is that we should investigate the winners of even the most maligned awards further in order to reflect on the significance they do have, within the industry if not necessarily within some sort of historical record of great television. Let us understand a show like the Golden Globes not as a source of legitimation but rather as a site of legitimation, a space where discourses of televisual quality are shaped and reshaped over the course of an often tedious broadcast, and a space that we should be analyzing beyond valuable, but ephemeral, breakdowns of winners and losers.

The result will not likely prove the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to be geniuses well ahead of their time, but I think it will prove the Golden Globes are worth more than the standard dismissal might indicate, an important step towards engaging with these awards on a deeper level.

“Summertime” and Televisual Space

January 8th, 2012

After rewatching the entire first season over the holidays with my parents, I found myself enjoying Shameless more than when it premiered (as I wrote about soon after), and I looked forward to checking out the second season. What I wasn’t expecting, though, was to find it so disarmingly different from what we saw last year.

This isn’t to say that the show has dramatically changed its approach to storytelling, although there is evidence to suggest that they are finding better ways of balancing the different character dynamics based on reviews from critics who have seen beyond tonight’s premiere. Rather, the fast-forward to the dog days of summer has created both a temporal shift and, more importantly, a spatial shift in terms of the characters and the world they live in. More generally, though, the long summer days offer a plethora of sunlight, dramatically transforming the aesthetic of the show and signaling a new season in a very direct, meaningful fashion.

I realize that this is not particularly evaluative, and if we were to speak exclusively on those terms I found the premiere promising but uneven, but I want to spend a bit of time discussing these changes relative to the question of space, an increasingly important factor as worlds begin to converge in a new spatial dynamic within the series.

The Gallagher house has always been small, but the question of space was always taken for granted. In fact, looking back, the show largely cheated by rarely showing Karl in the room with Lip and Cameron, isolating that space for the two older sons to interact while largely dislocating Karl within the home. Similarly, while Debbie and Liam technically shared a room, the fact never proved particularly important, the conflict a long-accepted consequence of having limited resources. We entered this story long past the point where the limited space of the Gallagher home was an important story point, which meant that we never really had a chance to focus on questions of space in that context.

Now, however, this is beginning to change. Debbie is getting older and wants her own room, creating a crisis of space that was perhaps unavoidable but not easily reconciled. Gender would suggest Liam bunk with the other boys, but there’s already three of them in that room, making such a proposition challenging (especially given that Liam is still very much a toddler). While Liam could move in with Fiona, that character has gained a certain level of spatial independence within the home given her central role supporting the family, although the arrangement for the daycare operation (with Fiona present for drop-off and pick-up for the sake of appearance, but with Debbie doing all the work while Fiona sleeps after a night out on the town following her shift at a nightclub) would suggest that Debbie is equally pivotal during the summer months. All of this is to say that the spatial challenges of the Gallagher home are expanding beyond broken amenities and staggered shower times necessitating invading Kevin and Veronica’s space.

Of course, the answer to their conundrum is sitting right in front of them, but it’s a space that the show has largely ignored throughout its run. Frank’s bedroom has gone mostly unused since he shacked up at Sheila’s for the free food and hot water, but there seems to be an unwritten rule that the space cannot be taken over, either because it could endanger their custody arrangement (with no space capable of being shown to child services workers as “Frank’s bedroom” in case of an inspection) or because they’re simply holding out on Frank eventually ending up right back where he started.

I make this observations in part because it feels like these two threads are now converging. Just as the Gallagher clan finds themselves short of space, Frank finds his space threatened by a newly explorative Sheila. Sheila’s struggles with agoraphobia were the first series’ most concentrated engagement with space, both capturing the character’s anxiety over space and rendering her home a particular isolated, controlled space in which multiple conflicts are forced to co-exist (as when Frank and Eddie were both living there, or the period after Karen effectively raped Frank). When Sheila finally escaped the house in order to save Liam and then in order to force Eddie out of the house following his embarrassment of Karen, it was largely positioned as a triumphant moment for the character, an arc that while not necessarily consistent was very well captured by Cusack’s performance. However, what I didn’t really realize at the time was how much the show was predicated on the spatial divisions created by her condition, and how much her steps outside that door threatened Frank’s position within the household.

“Summertime” brings this to the forefront, with Karen laying out that Sheila will see an entirely different world if she actually makes it all the way to the Alibi Room (as the map on her fridge, counting out her daily steps, indicates). Frank has been living two different lives in two different spaces, but the moment those worlds collide he is going to be revealed as a fraud. On some level, it seems difficult to believe that Sheila would have put up with him this long, or that she couldn’t surmise what Frank does at the Alibi Room for herself. However, so much of Sheila’s life has had to imagine the world outside her door that I’m guessing she has tuned it out, and so her awakening is a threat on a number of levels, especially once the novelty of new experiences wears off.

Still, for now there is something beautiful about Sheila striding down the street in the summer sun, the weather both a symbol of her increased freedom and a facilitator of that freedom. While the show has always used outdoor spaces, taking advantage of limited location shooting of a show that largely films interiors in Los Angeles, the new found warmth has made those outdoor spaces more liveable, habitable by the characters. It’s created a new balance between the Chicago locations and the Los Angeles sets, with the premiere featuring a larger percentage of location shooting than the average in the first season. Ethel’s garden creates another outdoor space where characters can interact with one another, while front yard conversation between Tony and Fiona emphasizes how the former’s new living arrangements complicate the spatial dynamic of the block. The increased mobility of the show’s characters is highlighting the way they relate to the spaces around them, with even some new “sets” (like the alley beside the bar, for example) being used as bridges between sets and the outside world (which is now more readily a part of the narrative).

Of course, on a more simple level, the show is spending more time outside, moving sequences like Fiona’s early morning sexcapades with James Wolk, Amy Smart and some old guy from a seedy hotel to a local park. This may not seem as important, but it still highlights how the shift in season would change character behaviors. Winter was never explicitly positioned as a necessary component of the first season, but in retrospect is was a central force behind where characters went, what characters did, and how characters made ends meet. The characters haven’t changed that dramatically between seasons outside of getting a bit older and some shifts in appearance (with Ian bulking up and Kevin ballooning out), but their routines are dramatically different given the shift in seasons, making for a very different kind of show in terms of what characters wear and, more importantly to my central concern here, where characters go.

As noted, this isn’t particularly evaluative, and my interest in space largely ignores the one storyline that I didn’t care for, being Liam’s kidnapping at the hands of some thugs who Frank lost a bet to at the Alibi Room. The storyline makes sense as a point of introduction, forcing the Gallagher’s to band together and robbing them of their summer savings to create a bit of tension and urgency in the coming weeks, but I’m hopeful that the show can figure out a better way to integrate Frank which doesn’t involve a scheme of this nature. I want a reason to care about Frank that doesn’t involve a toddler in a cage being his raison d’etre and a point of sympathy, and “Summertime” didn’t offer this. However, it also didn’t reintroduce Justin Chatwin’s Steve, and it also raised a number of interesting questions for Ian (now faced with Kash abandoning his wife and children) and Lip (still after Karen, still dodging a real future in favor of selling weed out of an ice cream truck) that I’m very much excited to see develop in the future.

The verdict on the season’s sense of balance, then, is a little hard to make at this point. I found the introduction of Fiona’s new routine a bit jarring, but in a way that I found effective, and the final shots of Fiona trying to prove something to herself by taking to the track were highly effective. It’s a strong launching point for the season, lest my decision to focus on matters related to my academic research interests suggest I was not otherwise engaged with the episode. I’m very much looking forward to seeing where this heads, both in terms of questions of space and in terms of questions of character, and while I’m not likely going to be able to review week-to-week I’m certainly drop in should either issue require further consideration.

Cultural Observations

• Kevin has generally been portrayed as fairly sympathetic and intelligent compared to some of the other characters, so I do think his enormous pot stash (and not realizing that the electric bill would balloon for his (broadly-drawn) racist boss living above the bar) were a bit of a stretch, dumbing down the character. I did like the expansion of pre-existing space that the room above the bar created, though.
• James Wolk nearly made the problematic protagonist of the compelling Lone Star likeable, so I’m intrigued to see what happens with his character here, someone who seems genuine but is unlikely to stick around for long given Fiona’s track record. I’m also excited for what feels like The Year of James Wolk, given his upcoming guest role on Happy Endings (another show I quite enjoy).
• While I am aware that Kevin wasn’t a small guy to begin with, Steve Howey seems to have ballooned between seasons, to the point where I expected a story justification. I don’t even mean this as a criticism, but it just felt unavoidable to me.
• I was going to say it was spoiler-ish to presume that Steve would return, but they left Justin Chatwin in the credits, which sort of took the suspense out of the situation.

Trench Warfare: Kurt Sutter vs. Critics, Round Infinity

January 4th, 2012

As a vocal critic of the third season of FX’s Sons of Anarchy, I was apprehensive going into its fourth season, and found myself more or less pleased with how the season went down. By dialing down the number of storylines, and focusing more exclusively on the inner-workings of SAMCRO (with additional storylines intersecting with the club dynamic quite successfully), the strong performances rose to the surface and the “plot mechanics” largely proved quite effective even if I would agree that the finale was a major step back in that department, ending up too cute for a show that purports to being so dark. Ultimately, while it didn’t make my “Top 20″ at The A.V. Club, it probably would have made a Top 25, which is more than it would have managed last year.

I didn’t have time to write about the show this fall, and I wouldn’t say I was particularly disappointed by this at the time: while the show was better than last season, it was better in ways that were not particularly surprising, and which other critics reviewing the show week-to-week were capturing well in their own reviews. Similarly, while I did have my issues with some of the plot developments, people like Alan Sepinwall, Maureen Ryan, and Zack Handlen were effectively covering the ground I would have covered, nicely capturing what proved to be a solid (if flawed) season of television that cemented the show’s future as a solid (if flawed) staple of the basic cable landscape.

However, when the season ended amidst a flurry of dismissive comments from creator Kurt Sutter regarding the critical reception of the season, I changed my mind. It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted to pick a fight with Sutter, who rang in 2011 by insulting me over Twitter, but rather that it felt wrong to be sitting on the sidelines while Sutter waged trench warfare on hardworking critics who were being criticized for doing their jobs (and doing them well). While I remain convinced that Sutter has a point regarding the limitations of weekly criticism with a serialized show, to suggest (despite his best efforts to suggest otherwise) that these limitations are a function of individual critics as opposed to the form made me wish that I had reviewed the series if only so I could stand alongside my fellow critics in support of critical analysis that reflects a personal, subjective approach to television.

What fascinated me about Sutter’s rants against critics towards the end of this season was that he had every ability to make a general argument and chose to make it a specific, personal one. In his elegantly titled “IT’S THE PROCESS THAT’S CUNTY,” he sets up an argument where the industry of episodic reviews is the problem, a circumstance that I don’t really disagree with. Given that the show was generally receiving solid reviews, a fact he himself acknowledges, it would be easy to simply observe that he struggled to find the value in episodic analysis of his show, which is a perfectly defensible position (and one other writers, like David Simon, have taken in the past). However, Sutter ultimately chose to single out critics like Mo Ryan and Alan Sepinwall, nitpicking at their reviews and suggesting that the problem was their lack of effort as opposed to the limitations of the form – although he suggests that this is the result of the system they’re being forced to work in, the binary drawn between these critics and others felt entirely arbitrary, and more importantly seemed entirely unnecessary to an argument about the form itself.

When I first read Sutter’s post, I had fallen a few weeks behind on the series, and in the midst of a busy semester I hadn’t been reading all reviews of the show week-to-week (largely just skimming one or two and then using Twitter to piece together the general response to the episode). So, although my initial reaction was that these attacks seemed unfounded, I went back to Mo and Alan’s reviews to see if maybe Kurt had a point, giving him the benefit of the doubt despite my best instincts. As it turned out, both had continued writing compelling, personal reviews which reflected their evolving opinion of the series as the season moved forward. Both were delivering reviews immediately after an episode aired, and while Sutter argued this meant they were rushed it simply meant that they had screened the episodes in advance, a process which gives you time to watch, rewatch, and collect your thoughts over an extended period. Effectively, I found no evidence to suggest that Sutter’s argument had any merit, leaving me with little to work with but a petty attack on critics I respect (and who, in continuing to cover the show, show a respect for Sutter’s work which is not returned).

Sutter’s concerns, however, suggest a growing disconnect between how critics are perceived by their readers and how criticism is received by the people who create television. I remain firmly convinced that the move towards a more personal, subjective approach to television criticism has been crucial to the expansion of the form, and that increased interaction between readers and critics have created a more valuable (if less “objective” or “evaluative”) discourse. Speaking personally, the way in which critics like Mo or Alan imbued their personality and their taste into their writing made them far more accessible, and helped foster extensive communities that inspired people like me to write television criticism and participate in these kinds of conversations. Weekly reviews have been a key source of this discourse, as we get to watch shows alongside critics, using their opinions less as a definitive take on the series and more as a guiding post for our own experiences.

Sutter’s response to Sepinwall and Ryan suggests that this is working perhaps too well. That he felt the need to make it personal, even refusing a post mortem interview with Sepinwall (before eventually changing his mind), indicates that he (like those who read and enjoy this criticism) viewed their reviews as an extension of their persons. Brian Lowry wrote a piece for Variety today in which he warned attendees at the annual January Press Tour to keep their distance from the stars and showrunners who they interact with over social media, but we could turn that around just as easily: where are the pieces warning showrunners about feeling too personally connected with television critics, leading them to lash out against those critics in a moment of frustration when they disappoint them by (allegedly) not putting enough thought into their reviews?

I don’t think Kurt Sutter is a terrible person for having this response, as I imagine most showrunners bristle at some of the weekly reviews their series garner (as I wrote about in the days following Sutter’s follow-up post about criticism in a review of The Office at The A.V. Club) – it is only natural that Sutter would feel protective of his show, especially when critics respond negatively to developments that Sutter knows are resolved in a particular fashion which might answer their criticisms. However, the fact that this response manifested itself so publicly, and so personally (aimed at particular critics in isolation, rather than the form or criticism in general) made me wish that I had had the time – and the sense of participation in the ongoing discourse around the show – to more actively express my frustration with Sutter’s argument in this matter when all of this went down.

It’s probably silly to be dredging this up again in 2012, and I know that those singled out by Sutter largely ignored his attacks and carried themselves with professionalism as they went on with their jobs like the hard-working critics they are. In addition, that Sutter approved a comment in which a reader criticizes him for singling out Sepinwall would suggest a mea culpa of sorts (given that the post likely drew additional comments which he chose not to approve, as has become the trend at his blog). However, of my regrets for 2011, that I wasn’t able to write a post taking a more active role in these discussions was one of the biggest – I raise it now not to start another fight with Kurt Sutter, but rather to emphasize the value of the work critics did analyzing (both positively and negatively) his series in 2011 regardless of his protests.

Tomorrow: Thoughts on going radio silent on the year’s best new series.

The End of Covering Glee

January 3rd, 2012

This was the year that the “3 Glees” theory died, in more ways than one.

More practically, the show hired a writing staff in addition to its three creators (Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk). While this hasn’t eradicated the problems with consistency that have plagued the show since its first season, it has made the simplicity of the “3 Glees” no longer adequate as a strategy for understanding the show’s creative formation.

However, simultaneously, a Tuesday night class meant that there was really no way I could continue to cover Glee in the way I had in previous seasons, outside of a few weeks where screeners were made available in advance. This meant that updating the “3 Glees” page even in order to reflect the writing staff’s contribution was simply not going to happen, which means it quietly went on an indefinite hiatus this fall.

Allow me to make the hiatus permanent as we begin 2012. Although I no longer have a night class on Tuesdays, and thus could continue to review Glee if I so desired, I think I’m taking this as a natural breaking point. While I intend to keep watching Glee, and I remain open to writing about the show when a particularly strong/weak episode emerges, this seems like as good a time as ever to say that I might be running out of ways to describe Glee’s failings.

I know – I didn’t think it was possible, either.

Glee hasn’t gotten dramatically worse this season, and on some level I’d actually suggest that this season has taken some positive steps in regards to basic narrative structure (with the use of West Side Story particularly strong in linking multiple story arcs together). However, the problem is that every step they’ve taken has been wobbly and inconsistent, and some steps which appeared to be in the right direction (like giving Quinn a more substantial storyline, or splitting up the two glee clubs) eventually swerved into a terrible one (like the nonchalant way Shelby’s affair with Puck and Quinn’s efforts to take Beth away from Shelby were swept under the rug, or how a single performance can reunite the two rival clubs as though very little has happened).

While I appreciate the effort to expand the show’s serial storytelling, it simply isn’t working, and it has made for a decidedly more frustrating experience than when the show was ignoring serial storytelling entirely. At least then you could say that the show was committing to a different storytelling mode – primarily focusing on single episode “themes” as opposed to long-form storytelling, outside of clearly delineated arcs like Kurt’s bullying storyline – that may not be maximizing the series’ potential, as opposed to butchering an attempt at developing stronger storylines. Compared to last season, it feels like what decent character development we find (like Mike’s storyline with his parents, or Santana’s coming out) is ultimately caught up within –and tainted by – the ongoing serialized elements that have been so poorly executed (like, for example, Santana’s coming out being forced by the inane congressional campaign that barely had any potential to begin with).

There is still plenty to say about Glee on a week-to-week basis, and my old pal Todd VanDerWerff continues to say them quite nicely at The A.V. Club (and it’s entirely plausible that, should he ever need someone to cover the show for him, I might well be the person stepping in as I have done in the past). For me, though, as someone who wrote about the show because I wanted to and not because it was a job, Glee has reached the point where I don’t think my experience watching it benefits from picking it apart. Perhaps it’s that I’ve resigned myself to its failings, comfortable in accepting them and just fast-forwarding through the boring parts or the songs I don’t like in search of the redeeming parts of the episode.

While I remain convinced there are redeeming points, and would comfortably isolate an episode like “Asian F” or “The First Time” as an example of compelling television that can emerge from the show’s formula, my investment in the sum of those parts has effectively melted away. “The 3 Glees” exists because of a desire to understand the larger whole of Glee, to try to connect the dots between the creative forces behind the series and the disparate elements which emerged within the series itself. However, at this point, I simply don’t care enough about the larger whole to spend any amount of time analyzing it, choosing instead to sit back and enjoy – or deride – the ride as may be necessary in that circumstance.

Tomorrow: Thoughts on a missed opportunity to piss off Kurt Sutter all over again.

NBC’s Community and Parks and Recreation

Aired: January to December

I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to write about television for a wider audience at The A.V. Club, no moreso than with my weekly reviews of The Office. However, as the show’s eighth season has signaled a decided shift in the show’s critical and cultural position, I’ve had a number of people effectively express pity for my position, forced to review a show that is pretty comfortably past its prime (but with just enough life left in it to remind us of the show it used to be).

And yet I’ve never felt it to be a pitiable job: sure, it’s nice when you have a show that you really like to cover in a situation like this one, but the show’s decline has been fun to deconstruct, and creating a dialogue with both devotees and spurned viewers has been a valuable insight how that decline is being received. While I might not love The Office, I love the process of writing about it, even though I can fully understand why others don’t feel the same way (which is why the number of critics reviewing the show has dropped off this season).

However, I will say that there is one thing I resent about covering The Office, which is that it means I don’t have time to review Parks and Recreation and Community, the two shows which precede it within NBC’s Thursday night lineup (or, rather, preceded it, given that Community is being benched for at least a few months). While other critics have been able to adjust their priorities, dropping The Office while continuing to cover the two shows that arguably merit greater attention, I’ve spent my Thursday evenings watching The Office, writing about The Office, and then using Parks and Community as a chance to unwind without a laptop in front of me.

It’s a different way of viewing than I was used to, and it seems as though it has affected my opinion of the two shows differently. While I actually feel as though my appreciation for Community has dipped slightly as a result of this viewing pattern, my general sentiments about the series less than they might have been a year ago, something about the comparative simplicity of Parks and Recreation has really suited this more casual form of viewing.

In the case of Community, it isn’t that I’ve suddenly turned against the show. However, there have been a few high concept episodes that have been met with a great deal of fanfare that simply haven’t connected with me on the same level. I don’t think this is simply because I’m watching them without writing about them, and I think any review I wrote would have been fairly critical of episodes like “Regional Holiday Music” (which felt overdone to me) and “Documentary Filmmaking: Redux” (where the meta-ness was overwhelming). Rather, something about watching the show more casually has allowed me to better understand my relationship with the series: when free of the (voluntary) commitment to writing about the show, and free from the expectations of a hypothetical audience of that review, I think Community is a very well-made comedy that I don’t have a hugely emotional connection with. While I certainly don’t want to see the series end after this season, a possibility given its current hiatus, I wouldn’t say that I’m necessarily leaping to join the “Save Community” campaign.

As a result, I didn’t really miss writing about Community. Part of this is because every other critic in the universe is writing about the show, which means that there was plenty of analysis of “Remedial Chaos Theory” to go around. This is not to say that I don’t have opinions about the show, or that I didn’t find “Remedial Chaos Theory” in particular to be a really tremendous episode of television, but there came a point this season where my appreciative ambivalence became more readily apparent. I still think Community is one of the strongest and more innovative comedies on television, but I have to admit that I have very little interest in exploring why on a weekly basis.

There were points during the fall when I almost felt my relationship with Parks and Recreation moving in the same direction. To be clear, I’ve always felt a stronger connection with Parks than with Community, likely because the show is more interested in fostering that emotional connection with its characters on a regular basis. And yet, when everyone seemed to be all choked up about Leslie and Ben (a couple that I had wholeheartedly supported at the end of the second season when it was first hinted at), I was left sort of perplexed: while I wasn’t vehemently against the coupling, something about the way they danced around the relationship had kept me at an emotional remove. However, I found myself plenty verklempt at the conclusion of “Citizen Knope,” an ending which focused on the more general character dynamics of the series as opposed to a single relationship.

Yes, “Citizen Knope” is perhaps too focused on just Leslie, but her position within the Parks Department is crucial to the show’s rhythms, and her relationship with each of her colleagues is a major source of both comedy and, perhaps more importantly, character development. That conclusion resonated for me because it put the viewer and the characters on the same page, all of us invested in Leslie’s campaign and its connection to her goal of making a difference in her community. And while I found that particular episodes of the season have worked better than others, that central principle has remained prominent throughout: even without reinforcing it through writing a thousand words about it every week, it has become clear that I truly do care about what happens on Parks and Recreation. And while part of me still wishes I had time to write about it, an excuse to spend more time in that universe, there’s something fitting about just sitting back for a half-hour trip to Pawnee every week.

It’s not uncommon for there to be comments on my Office reviews regarding the other NBC comedies, often comparing them in an effort to either disparage or defend The Office relative to its comic compatriots. We get this a lot, as people try to compare grades across shows (and across writers) as though they were considered relatively when the grades were given, which is simply not true. My general defense in these instances is to explain that I didn’t write those reviews, and that while I may agree or disagree with the scores in question none of it has any bearing on what I thought about a different show entirely.

Given that I haven’t been reviewing Community and Parks, my “evaluation” of them has been somewhat less formal. On some level, it comes down to where my remote control cursor wanders once I file my Office review. While the cursor will eventually get to Community later that evening, I will say that it pretty consistently moves to Parks and Recreation first – if you want to try to translate that into letter grades, be my guest.

Tomorrow: On the Double Death of “The 3 Glees.”

FX’s Louie

Aired: June to September

When, as a critic, you stop writing about a number of shows, there is always the risk that your opinion will begin to lean towards the critical consensus, especially if that critical consensus is as effusive as the praise surrounding Louis C.K.’s second season of Louie on FX. Similarly, in circumstances where you fall behind on a particular show and begin to soak in all of this praise, it’s tough to view the episodes piling up on your DVR with fresh eyes.

Louie had a very strong second season, but something about the way I watched it kept me from considering it the best television of the year – this isn’t to say that The A.V. Club (and various other sites/critics) placing it as the #1 show of the year was “wrong” by any measure, but I will say that I did not come close to putting it in that position (and, if we’re being honest, probably placed it higher than my initial instinct due to the indirect influence of other critics). Perhaps it was that I felt my experience with the show was unduly influenced by the critical culture surrounding the series, or that my DVR catchup method somehow changed the series’ impact (with its episodic segments mashed together as opposed to being parceled out), but Louie didn’t jump out to me as the best show of the year (nor did it necessarily jump out at me as a comedy, but we’ll save that genre conversation for another day).

I don’t know if this would have changed had I been writing about it, but one of the benefits of writing about things weekly is that you actually have to watch it every week. While critics still fall behind on things, writing about them requires being on the same page as everyone else, and there is something very valuable about that which I think we sometimes take for granted. In some cases we might frame that issue in terms of “spoilers,” with Louie‘s non-serialized structure that isn’t an issue; instead, it becomes about being a part of the conversation, and about feeling as though you’re watching a show on your own terms (rather than the terms set before you by the reactions of others in the weeks beforehand).

I felt Louie was one of the best shows of 2011, and I truly hope it makes a greater splash at the Emmys this year (which, given its small cast and C.K.’s nominations for writing and acting last year, effectively means a Best Comedy Series nomination), but I wonder how different my opinion would be if I had been writing about it. Louie seems like a rare show that would absolutely benefit from weekly analysis, given that each episode is presented as a distinct entity, with only a minimal connection to previous or future installments – we’re meant to dive into each episode and consider its meaning before moving onto the next installment, as opposed to withholding our opinions until we see how storylines are resolved. I’d actually argue that its episodic structure makes a compelling argument for the value of a broadcast schedule in an era of DVRs and OnDemand, a weekly glimpse into the mind of Louis C.K. rather than a season’s worth of comedy produced for television.

An episode like “Duckling,” rightfully singled out as one of the year’s best episodes by Matt Zoller Seitz, is somehow less effective when watched as part of a marathon, which is how I first watched it while catching up with the series. It’s also less effective when you stop halfway through because you have somewhere to be, just as I’m sure it’s less effective when you’re watching it weeks after everyone has marveled at its quality. While the lack of serialization might suggest the series would be unaffected by the way these new technologies can delay or alter our viewing patterns, something about the show’s structural ingenuity has made the process of discovery that much more valuable. There’s something less exciting about watching an experiment – which Louie remains, even into its second season – after you know how it went, and while it’s still possible to appreciate the series I’m simply not convinced it works as well when viewed outside of its initial broadcast.

In falling behind on Louie, it’s possible that my opinion of the series changed as a result. Of course, it’s also possible that my opinion – that Louie is an incredibly compelling series which I viewed as slightly more uneven than some of my fellow critics – would remain exactly the same had I watched the show in a more traditional pattern and wrote about it along the way. Either way, though, the discourse around Louie was one that I feel was incredibly important to the work of television critics this year, and a discourse I wish I could have been a part of.

Tomorrow: Sitting on the bench for the most beloved network comedies.

Showtime’s Shameless

Aired: January to March

With Shameless starting its second season next weekend, and with my parents recently gaining access to an expansive OnDemand archive featuring the series, I’ve taken the past week or so to introduce them to the “deranged” – my mother’s word –Gallagher family.

It’s not often that I rewatch dramatic series in this fashion, and I couldn’t tell you the last time I managed it. I didn’t write about Shameless more than a handful of times when the first season aired earlier this year, but rewatching the show has made me wish I had, both because I find myself really enjoying the show (more than my review of the finale would suggest) and because I think writing about it would have helped me confront my frustration with one half of the series.

In my mind, before the rewatch began, Shameless was a show trapped between two instincts. The first was a subtle character drama about children who struggle with a life that they didn’t choose, parents who have chosen to abandon them, and responsibilities that they have chosen even when faced with the potential to abandon them in kind. The second, meanwhile, was a screwball comedy built around a drunkard father we were meant to find funny, and who was suggested as the “star” of the show in promotional material suggesting it was about a single father (rather than, more accurately, about the impact of the single father’s absence).

These two shows still existed when returning to the series, and I still think that anyone who attempts to argue Shameless is either a comedy or a show about William H. Macy’s Frank Gallagher are quite simply wrong. However, I felt on rewatch that even Frank’s earlier antics (which had felt so tonally off on first viewing) seemed more comprehensible given what we saw later in the season. I’m not suggesting the character isn’t a terrible person, because he is, but some of the character work done later in the season (his one sober day, his attempt to steer away from his affair with Karen) provided a glimpse into a wide range of different behaviors and emotions rather than the same pattern repeated over and over again. Given his position in the series, and given that Macy is so aggressively (and visibly) playing against type, there is something very televisual about the character in the early going, but there’s a point where his actions feel less like an excuse to fall into a plot and more like a real (albeit terrible) person making decisions that held some semblance of logic.

I wish I could go back and write about the show because I think tackling the character on a weekly basis might have led me to come to this conclusion earlier. Shameless didn’t make it into my Top 20 for The A.V. Club, a fact which is largely due to my memory positioning Frank as more problematic than I discovered in the past week or so. I’m not suggesting the character isn’t still without issues, or that the show was otherwise perfect (it wasn’t), but I think deconstructing the show would have given me a greater perspective on how debilitating his presence truly was, and a more comprehensive understanding of both when and how the show transcended that problem to become about the younger Gallagher generation and some tremendous work from Emmy Rossum and Jeremy Allen White, in particular.

It’s unlikely that I’ll have time to write about the show in 2012 either, but I resolve to make an effort to drop in on occasion given that the rewatch has cemented the series was one of my most anticipated of the early months of 2012.

Cinemax’s Strike Back

Aired: August to October

Another series that just missed my Top 20, Cinemax’s Strike Back wasn’t entirely left out in the cold (unlike other shows I’ll discuss in the days ahead): I wrote a blog post checking in with the series, and also reviewed the finale – and, more or less, the season – for The A.V. Club.

There is some part of me that wishes I had written about the show week-to-week, if only to help the show overcome its low reputation to reach an audience who would have – and still could, OnDemand or on Cinemax’s MaxGo service – really enjoyed it. While the show’s average speed was not particularly subtle, and the desire to involve softcore pornography in nearly every installment proved a somewhat flagrant distraction, I think writing about the show week-to-week would have helped highlight the moments where the show committed to real character development, built great episodic two-part storylines, and delivered some gorgeous cinematography from some beautiful locations.

At the same time, though, I am actually sort of glad that time meant covering the show week-to-week was impossible, as I’m not convinced I would have appreciated the show as much if you forced me to dive into each episode immediately after watching it. On a practical level, the two-part structures would mean reviewing the first part would be pretty pointless, but even while ignoring that I don’t think I would have wanted to deconstruct this series.

This is different, to be clear, from there being nothing to deconstruct. Indeed, one of the arguments I made in defending the series was that there is something to deconstruct here, despite evidence to the contrary, and I think you could create an extensive dialogue about character work, narrative development, and a bunch of other subjects common within episodic criticism while writing about the show. However, there are shows we could deconstruct that sometimes we shouldn’t, shows that are better enjoyed and appreciated without the need to be taking notes or thinking about clever openings. It’s not about shutting off your brain so much as it’s about shutting off the part of your brain that tries to translate every thought into a critical observation.

The latter is easier said than done, and I’ve got a few thousand words about Strike Back linked to above which prove it. However, I feel that forcing me into that pattern week-in and week-out would have made it easier to lose perspective (oddly enough), easier to essentialize the show’s formula. There was something very valuable about not having to “evaluate” the show until the end of the season, a rare privilege that we don’t often get in an environment where weekly discussions are so dominant. Whatever value those weekly discussions have, I feel Strike Back benefitted from the broader perspective, as the subtle yet resonant arc structures could be more carefully mapped across the season. The show is still an action series with plenty of gratuitous sex and violence, but it all added up to something in the end, and I’m not sure that equation would have been as visible when viewed primarily at close range.

Tomorrow: Thoughts on not writing about my three favorite comedies of the year.

Looking back on 2011, I think it will be clearly marked as the year in which I no longer came to associate with the term “blogger.”

Now, to be clear, I do not mean to suggest that I have done so due to this term being derogatory: bloggers are good people, and serve as an important voice within the world of people who write about television (and, of course, numerous other subjects). However, more simply, I don’t think I updated Cultural Learnings enough in 2011 to justify laying claim to the title (given, for example, that this is my first post in well over a month).

The dropoff in posts has come out of necessity, primarily – the time I would spend blogging has been swallowed by increased responsibilities related to the “real life” side of my existence, which has left the “online life” side of things to occasional Twitter observations and my more “professional” work at The A.V. Club. On some level, my semester became a choice between continuing to watch television and writing about it, a devil’s gambit that led to a lack of content here on the blog and a surplus of content on my DVR.

I will admit, though, that I’m not entirely convinced I missed it. As Twitter becomes a more prominent form of discourse within the world of television criticism, and as my teaching responsibilities became more connected to the television I watch (and the meanings we draw from it), I haven’t felt as though I’ve said nothing about the things I’ve watched. However, I realize that on some level I’m going from over-explaining my thoughts about particular shows (like, for example, Community) to largely letting occasional 140-character observations represent my general opinion. I’m sure a psychiatrist would consider this a breakthrough given my penchant for verbosity, but it does create a vacuum of sorts for regular readers (especially those of you who might not use Twitter, who may think I’ve fallen off the face of the earth a bit).

This brings me to the subject of lists, perhaps in a backwards fashion. While I am generally against the idea of lists, creating them only when I absolutely have to, I think this vacuum has made me appreciate the idea more. Despite the nature of this season, in which lists become a major source of end-of-year debate (and end-of-year traffic), lists are for the people who make them and not the people who read them. They’re a source of reflection, an excuse to either force yourself to consider a year you’d rather forget or revisit a year you’d like to remember. While I know that all lists posted on the internet (including the list I’m introducing in this post) are designed to be consumed, there’s something disconcerting about lists that feel as though they’re made with that consumption as their primary (potentially exclusive) purpose. You don’t make a list so people will read it: you make a list because it will offer you something as its author, something that might just find an audience among those who typically read work related to the subject (for a great example of such a list, see Michael Z. Newman’s “Faves, 2011″).

In wanting to reflect back on the year that was, and look forward to the year that will be, my mind turned to a list in part because I felt like it would force me to consider the shift in my coverage of television more carefully. While I may no longer feel like a blogger, I perhaps feel more like a critic than ever before, even though I’m writing less than back in the days where I felt like my claim to the term was tenuous at best. And yet because it’s not my full-time job, I don’t get to write about everything I want to write about (as someone like Alan Sepinwall might come closer to attaining), which raised an interesting question to me: if I had only had the time, which shows airing in 2011 would I have most wanted to write about week-to-week? And, on a related note, which shows were I somewhat glad to have no time to write about, allowing me to sit back and observe their seasons without feeling like I needed to be taking notes?

Over the next week or so, I want to explore this question both to give myself an excuse to write about some things I really enjoyed (and wish I had had time to deconstruct) and to give myself a chance to reflect on both the function and value of episodic television criticism when it comes to how we, as critics, watch television.

So, if you’re so inclined, join me later today (and daily, as 2012 begins) to look back on The Year That Wasn’t, imagining a 2011 in which I wrote about the shows that I simply had no time to write about. While I have some idea of which shows I’ll be discussing within the feature, I’m also open to suggestions, so if there’s any shows that fell out of the rotation that you might be interested in reading about, feel free to leave a comment below.

Transmedia Legitimation: Dark Score Stories and the A&E Brand

November 21st, 2011

When I was alerted to the existence of Dark Score Stories, the transmedia marketing initiative that serves as a prequel to A&E’s upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s Bag of Bones, I was interested for two reasons.

The first is that Bag of Bones, a two-part miniseries starring Pierce Brosnan and Melissa George (among others) was actually filmed in my home province of Nova Scotia, which resulted in a large number of Brosnan sightings for friends and family and which meant that the photographs that comprise much of Dark Score Stories were in many ways a trip “home.”

The second, meanwhile, is that the campaign is being handled by the good folks at Campfire, who were kind enough to send along their work for their campaign for HBO’s Game of Thrones, and who have been equally kind in assisting me with further research in that area since that point. As a result, I was curious what their next major television project would entail, and how some of the transmedia lessons on display there have been transferred over to this initiative.

However, as effective as I think the campaign might be, I’m somewhat more interested in exploring the existence of the campaign than the campaign itself, although the two plainly go hand-in-hand. Looking through the book of photographs that A&E has sent out for the project, and the Dark Score Stories website, it is clear that Campfire has offered a vivid entry point into King’s fictional community, capturing the author’s trademark style while simultaneously introducing characters that will become more important in the film itself (which I have yet to see, but which I am interested to check out in December).

What intrigues me most, though, is the idea of how these kinds of transmedia experiences function in relation to channel brands, and in particular how those functions might differ with a television movie as opposed to an actual series. Obviously, there is an element of promotion to any initiative like this one, and the wide range of media coverage around the site was likely in many cases people’s first exposure to the film’s existence. However, while the momentum gained from Game of Thrones‘ campaign will carry into fans’ long-term engagement with the series over a number of years, Bag of Bones is an example of “event” programming, which to me creates a different set of expectations both for potential viewers and, perhaps more importantly, for the cable channel in question.

When I wrote about the “authenticity” of the Game of Thrones scent box Campfire created for that HBO series, I explicitly linked that to the HBO brand, something that is common throughout the marketing for any show on that channel. Dark Score Stories, while aiming for something a little bit more contemporary than that “artifact” from Westeros, is nonetheless tied up in discourses of authenticity, although in this case it has less to do with “historical” accuracy and more to do with legitimating the A&E brand.

Melanie Kohnen, who is currently teaching a course in Transmedia Storytelling at Georgia Tech, remarked on Twitter that her first impression upon receiving a copy of the coffee table book tied to the campaign – which she has since shared with her students, who are in the process of evaluating the campaign – was that “Someone’s really trying to reach for the Quality TV label here.” Quality TV is one of a number of legitimating discourses found within television branding, and the idea of how television is being legitimated has become the subject of an exciting new book (that I sadly haven’t had time to read) from Elana Levine and Michael Z. Newman.

In this instance, I think Melanie is right, and the book (which is very well made, and which features a selection of the black and white images collected on the Dark Score Stories site) and the campaign writ large are definitely aiming to legitimate what could be perceived as a “TV Movie” (which has taken on a low culture connotation when viewed in the context of basic cable) so that it might be more readily considered a “Four-hour epic miniseries” as the press materials suggest. This is not to say that the campaign isn’t also intended to make more people aware of the miniseries’ upcoming premiere, but the nature of the campaign seems designed to make a statement about its quality rather than to sell it more broadly.

On this level, I’m wondering if we might consider transmedia campaigns like this one as an example of channels looking for a way to translate the potential for “spreadability” (or, if you prefer, “virality”) within an online space into a more mediated, and more controlled, context that we might better associate with discourses of quality. Dark Score Stories is still able to be spread by people on Twitter, including a tweet over the weekend from prolific Tweeter Alyssa Milano, but visitors to the site will find something different from the traditional “viral” product, something that’s comprehensive and detailed rather than something designed to capture a moment in the zeitgeist.

That content, by the way, comes in the form of a series of photo essays, accompanied by audio commentary and featuring a number of subtly animated images in addition to traditional photographs (some of which hold hidden secrets). They are designed to offer a glimpse of life at Dark Score Lake in the period leading up to the film, and feature some characters that will be important in the film and others whose absence will be a key function of the plot. It’s a nice introduction to the world (especially for someone like me, who hasn’t read much if any of King’s work), and it makes me more interested in the project. However, while the fact that Campfire is able to offer transmedia storytelling opportunities is great, that it will read as “Quality” seems to be one of their biggest selling features, especially when campaigns are closely linked to the brand of the channel in question.

A&E, as a channel, is at something of a crossroads in terms of its branding, given that its most successful programs are either reality series (which have a tricky relationship with quality, even if I’d argue that is somewhat unfair in some instances) and procedurals (with their one original fictional series, The Glades, and reruns of shows like Criminal Minds). Indeed, a visit to the channel’s website over the weekend revealed the challenge facing Bag of Bones: while the film is the first item featured in the website’s flash animation was Bag of Bones, the next was Monster-in-Laws, which is then followed by the stars of Storage Wars. [This has since changed today, with Bag of Bones no longer present.] Like so many other cable networks, A&E bought big into cheap reality programming and the “basic cable procedural” trend in recent years, and it’s resulted in a strange environment to find the kind of “epic miniseries” that we more often associate with HBO or, in recent years, AMC.

Dark Score Stories feels like an effort to bridge this gap, a space in which the A&E brand can be clearly defined relative to discourses of quality television. While the miniseries seems out of place on the network’s general webspace, the spaces exclusive to Bag of Bones (including both the official site for the series, and the additional material at DarkScoreStories.com), are free of any additional A&E synergy beyond the logo and the network’s slogan – Real Life. Drama. – which is in this case seems to be emphasizing its second half (unlike the majority of the channel’s programming).

We can see some of this playing out in the coffee table book sent out to select sources (which in this instance does include me), as it ends up being trapped somewhere between an actual artifact – a book of photography ostensibly published within the story world of King’s novel and the small town he created – and the branding of the series’ marketing campaign. The materials suggest it is a “photojournalism portfolio,” diegetic within the world of the series, but at the same time the A&E logo is all over it (including on its cover), and the foreword comes from the film’s director, Mick Garris.

Now, this is not to suggest that this is simply a marketing tool, given that there are some really impressive touches that aim towards something that transcends its advertising function. For example, the book is supposedly published by “Zenith House,” which is a fictional publishing house that lies at the center of Stephen King’s The Plant, an unfinished novel that King began to publish in a series of e-book chapters in 2000. At least from what I can gleam from Wikipedia, the very idea behind the Dark Score Stories website is at least connected with the plot of The Plant: the fact that these photographs contain elements of the supernatural seems to reflect the role of photographs within King’s unfinished work. There’s also, on a more basic level, something fitting about an experiment in online distribution being directly referenced amidst an unconventional transmedia campaign of this nature.

However, it’s hard to ignore that these references embedded within the book are forced to sit side-by-side with the A&E logo, and that one of the final pages in the book removes all auspices of authenticity in favor of promoting the miniseries (complete with Brosnan’s name, the date it’s airing, etc.).

It is here where I sort of want to draw a generic distinction between series and miniseries. Obviously, any campaign for a series is tied to the channel on which it airs, but with a series the goal is to get you watching that channel over a series of weeks, which will in the process reinforce elements of brand identity over an extended period of time. By comparison, an event miniseries of this nature will be over after only a few days, and therefore has a greater chance of being ephemeral from a branding perspective. When a series runs for an extended period of time, it is constantly reinforced in its connection with the brand, traveling through word of mouth and through online discussions, but with miniseries you need to capture all of that potential energy (and all of the potential association between the product and the brand) in the course of just two days.

From a story perspective, a transmedia campaign for a miniseries like this one makes sense, and I’m more interested in the project now than I was before looking through the book and the website. However, I think at least part of me associates transmedia with a larger story world than a four-hour miniseries, and would expect this sort of buildup for a project more like ABC’s The River (which has a similar supernatural feel to it, and an extensive back story to be mined) or even something like The CW’s The Secret Circle (which taps into a history of witches within a small community). There, the story being introduced is the foundation for a serialized television experience, and could help foster the kind of fan interaction and fan engagement which could sustain that series for a greater period of time. While spreadable campaigns like this one have obviously dealt with more standalone projects from a cinema perspective (Campfire is, after all, always mentioned in connection with The Blair Witch Project, which their founders created), I do think that transmedia television campaigns are more generally imagined (at least for me) as something like what we saw with Game of Thrones which offers an introduction into something that might run for multiple seasons.

However, beyond simply wanting to draw more viewers, there seems to be a clear effort here to associate A&E with this project in order to position themselves as the home for “quality” television projects in the future. Dark Score Stories is a compelling piece of transmedia storytelling, but it’s also something that we might not normally associate with A&E as a network, which is perhaps why A&E’s logo is so prominent throughout. While the Game of Thrones campaign felt as though it was meeting expectations placed on the HBO brand, Dark Score Stories is confounding the expectations we might place on A&E (at least based on the channel’s current programming output), which feels like a message not only to viewers but also those in the industry who may have television projects of this nature that are looking for a home. It’s a message that A&E isn’t just the network for Storage Wars and Monster-in-Laws, but also a place where “Drama” can mean a supernatural thriller, and where television movies can be viewed as four-hour epic miniseries.

What Dark Score Stories offers is a way for that statement to be made for an entire month within an online space, as opposed to simply being located within the two-night broadcast (provided that the miniseries itself, free from the promotion, lives up to the billing). In a way, it serializes the discourses of legitimation found within a “quality” television event over a greater period of time, maximizing the potential for the brand and simultaneously increasing the potential audience for the project.

We’ll be waiting until December to see how successful they will be on that front, but exploring Campfire’s transmedia installation of sorts now offers us the ability to see whether Dark Score Lake is a place we want to visit (and a place that could help put A&E back on the Quality TV map).

Cultural Observations

• I’ll admit that, while there are probably a whole host of secrets embedded in the photo essays, I haven’t had time to search for all of them (although the one I found in the final set was creepy enough to give me an idea of what I might be looking for – zoom in on the seventh photo in that set).
• I focused more on the branding issues above, but I really like the audio function of the website: as beautiful as the photos are, it’s the audio essays that really draw the story and the characters to the surface. On the whole, there’s a really evocative sense of “Tone” to the project that fits the King aesthetic nicely, and aesthetically speaking I think there’s a lot of impressive work here.
• I don’t actually recognize any of the locations from the photos in terms of where they might be in Nova Scotia, but I can certainly recognize Nova Scotia in many of the images. I spent three summers working a job where I traveled around the province and explore many areas that I wouldn’t have normally visited, so I look forward to seeing how they’ve captured the beauty to be found there in the film (especially since it’ll be filtered through a horror lens).