A Different Kind of Cop Show, Eh?

Life these days is stressful. It costs over a hundred dollars to fill the belly of that behemoth SUV, and that’s only going to let you run everyday errands for a week or so, and that’s if you consolidate lunches, meetings, shopping, grooming trips and just getting to work. Once you do get to work, you have to deal with office politics, and the gossip of who’s stabbing who to climb another flimsy rail up the corporate hierarchy. And to top it off, you have to worry if your cherished salsa and chips are going to end you up in the hospital with a case of salmonella. As if that weren’t enough, a retired senator/economist from Texas has the audacity to tell us, in perfect “I’m alright, Jack” style, we’re a nation of whiners.

We’re not whiners by any means—we’re stress junkies. We thrive on it, and when real life doesn’t feed us with enough tension, we’ll get a vicarious fix through the TV. Seeing those hopeless souls on game shows and reality series give us a momentary sense of smug superiority, just knowing we would have chosen the obvious “T”, and not the what kind-of-idiot-are-you “L.” In the comfort of our living rooms, we lord over all we survey, and pity the poor souls dripping in flop sweat on the screen.

Flashpoint (premiering on CBS Friday, 11 July, 10P EST, and on CTV—check your local listings) is all about stress, at least in the pilot episode. This Canadian import begins in the height of the conflict, as we see a really, really stressed out Croatian holding a gun to a woman’s head while a negotiator (Enrico Collantini) tries to talk him down, despite language barriers. Meanwhile, a police sniper is perched on a rooftop, coldly awaiting orders to neutralize the perp. It’s a brief moment that establishes the tone of the show. It cuts to a few hours earlier, when the day was just another day. The police sniper (Hugh Dillon) is a family guy, thinking he’s planning for a colleague’s retirement party, despite it conflicts with his wife’s fortieth wedding anniversary. The Croatian hostage taker began the day thinking he’ll reconcile with his estranged wife, despite a restraining order to the contrary.

It’s in the backstories that Flashpoint differs from the usual procedural cop show. It’s not the slam-bang take no prisoners action adventure to which American audiences are accustomed. There’s plenty of tension and stress in the pilot episode, but it’s tempered with an underlying sense of emotion. It achieves something very rare in television—it causes you to empathize with all the characters, rather than just dropping bodies to and fro.

As it stands now, Flashpoint is slated for a thirteen episode run. On CBS. But if the pilot is any indication, this is a series that should be picked up for the fall season. It’s a well-crafted show, full of irony mixed with action, served up in a balanced blend that’s more cinematic than episodic. It would be a shame to lose a show that illustrates how our day to day lives really aren’t that stressful, relatively speaking.

The Coming Convergence of Media

It’s another hot and muggy June night, and I’ve been working all day, dealing with what I’ll politely call “the public.” I get home, thumb through my mail, and discard the three no interest for six months credit card offers and the 75% discount magazine subscriptions, save the various bills, filing them in my mental rolodex with the idea I’ll pay them immediately, knowing I’ll wait for the “friendly reminder”, at which point I’ll overpay 20 cents, just to screw up their automated bookkeeping. After all, the most miniscule protests are the ones that fuel revolutions.

Anyway, it’s been a rough day, and all I want to do is kick back with a glass of red wine and the soothing tones of the television. Don’t misunderstand—I don’t want to be sedated by “unscripted” shows that feign reality by placing misfits together in a controlled environment, or so-called game shows that offer the promise of millions if the contestants make a lucky guess, or even formulaic sitcoms still retreading premises that were already shopworn by the early seventies. Even the news programs seem like they’re in reruns.

No—I need something else on nights like these, something to remind why I loved TV in the first place, why I rushed home from college classes so as not to miss the early anime Starblazers {known in Japan as Spaceship Yakamoto), why I fortified myself with copious amounts of caffeine to see those episodes of The Prisoner (which never aired before 3AM), why I left work early to make sure I didn’t miss an episode of 24, why I shuffled my schedule to recap Dexter.

Nights like these also remind me why broadband Internet is a wonderful invention (does anybody even remember dial-up?), and why I watch more and more TV on my computer. It’s not that it’s edging out TV As We Know It, but it is adding much-needed flavor to a broadcast soup that’s gone stale. Go to any of the Big Four’s websites—CBS, NBC, ABC, or FOX—and the homepage is decidedly more splashy than it was this time last year. They offer full episodes of their more popular series (as well as their struggling ones), and pepper their site with trivia, games and sundry items to entice viewers to watch their network, which, after all, is the most cutting edge of the four.

What it really means, though, is the Internet is making the traditional networks increasingly uncomfortable. As much as they like to say New Media is an unknown commodity (which was a large basis for the Writers’ Strike), they’re furiously circling their wagons for the invasion of a new way of watching TV. That new way is still climbing out of the primordial ooze, but it’s already evolved legs. And it’s learning, adapting the better TV of the past as it learns, inexorably carving a niche for itself in the evolutionary food chain. YouTube was arguably the first Internet network to capitalize on the cyberspace factor, and it remains entrenched in the Zeitgeist as the eminent force of New Media.

I certainly don’t want to diss YouTube. But its “citizen journalism” approach is sort of like a scattergun. There’s a lot of great content there, and it undeniably is a major force in our culture, influencing politics, entertainment, and even legal proceedings. It allows almost anyone to be a star, if even for the proverbial fifteen minutes. On the downside, it’s often a breeding ground for would-be paparazzi and tabloid gossip. All in all, though, it’s the perfect medium for our short attention span society. Whether a broadcast genius emerges from YouTube doesn’t matter. That it provides a possible platform from which that genus may rise is what makes YouTube important.

At the other end of the spectrum are sites like Hulu, which was gobbled up by Universal (NBC) and News Corporation (FOX) by the time it uttered its first cry. As such, it’s already become a promotional wing of the two behemoths, mirroring the content of the two parent sites, right down to full episodes being viewed “with limited commercial interruptions.” What bothers me most about Hulu at this point is that it’s full of promise, but it’s mostly a tease. You get full episodes of shows like Heroes and Arrested Development, but only enough to whet your appetite—they’re in random context, supplanted by clips. There’s a very small library of full-length movies, but there again, the movie collection consists mostly of promo clips. Hulu has potential, but right now, it exists as a marketing tool for NBC and FOX.

Somewhere between the two extremes of corporate self-promotion and citizen journalism are sites like Joost, bridging the chasm between Old and New Media. As I mentioned in an earlier article, Joost is a commercial venture, and it has inked deals with CBS, Sony, and Warner (among others) for content. A major difference, though, is that Joost shows its content with “limited commercial interruptions.” Sure, you occasionally get a little pop-up ad in the corner of the screen, but that’s not nearly as annoying as full-fledged commercials. In fact, I’d say the content far outweighs the minor annoyances.

Since I last wrote about the site, not even a month ago, Joost has added some impressive content, certainly not the least of which is the entire series of David Lynch’s cult classic Twin Peaks. The bizarre murder mystery serial was nothing short of a national phenomenon in the very early nineties, and it’s still ahead of its time, nearly eighteen years after it was cancelled. If you’ve never seen it, you’ll find yourself addicted to it. If you remember it, you’ll remember why America wanted to know “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” Unlike other mysteries, where clues unravel the mystery, each episode of Twin Peaks complicated the mystery even more.

As cool as it is that current viewers don’t have to wait an entire week to see what twists the next episode will bring, Twin Peaks isn’t the only retro series Joost has to offer. You can also, if you’re really a cultist, watch the entire run of Beverly Hills 90210, or view choice episodes of the highly stylized animated adventure Samurai Jack. In fact, you can a lot of TV here. More importantly, though, is that Joost offers European content, short indie films, global news, and music videos you won’t find on—say, MTV (as if you’re ever going to see videos on MTV these days.)

With the exception of YouTube—where anything goes—Internet television is wrestling with its own potential. At this point, it’s serving more as a promotional tool for the networks and studios. The networks are even airing original series on their websites, some of which are actually pretty good. While none of these series have actually made the television cut, it’s easy to imagine a time in the not too distant future when that may be how series are test marketed. It’s also not too difficult to see how the Internet, through actual viewing, and not silly save-the-show campaigns, might turn Nielsen on its ear, and set a new model for programming.

The Internet has already usurped the power of the once impenetrable fortresses of the studios. The upcoming 305, a Mad magazine send-up of 300 had its origins on YouTube, and is now the first viral video to be slated for a major studio production. Traditional television can’t be far behind, especially since it has a history of taking its cues from the movies. Now they’re faced with a new challenge—with the wealth of original programming on the Internet, anybody with any concept could be The Next Big Thing.

And that is going to force a rethinking of how business is done in La-La Land. It’s not that television is going to be swallowed up by the Internet. What will happen is that the Internet, with all its faceless minions, will become a major player in how the networks shape their programming. The computer and the television will meld into one entity, and it will be so painless, we won’t even realize it.

Let’s hope we don’t screw it up this time.

Sifting Through the Wreckage of the Writers'Strike

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The Writers’ Strike didn’t really alter the landscape of network television, unless you figure in the flood of game and “reality” shows left in its wake. Those were trying times, to be sure. But now that the dust has begun to settle, and the wounded sitcoms and dramas are limping into their abbreviated season finales, we can more clearly assess the damage the protracted war between producers and writers left in its wake.

Even before the strike began in November, the 2007-2008 proposed TV season was less than stellar. It was loaded with overly hyped shows that promised much more than they ultimately delivered. (Cane comes to mind.) On the other hand, it offered quirky nuggets like Pushing Daisies. In that regard, the strike was a godsend to viewers. It gave us a chance to take a deep breath, and decide for ourselves what may actually be worth our time.

The three-month strike ended in early March, and the networks are now trumpeting the return of scripted series with child-like abandon. All is well in TV Land once again, or so they’d have us believe. That pesky strike was only a minor diversion—a family spat, if you will. Family spats, however, lead to a realignment of hierarchies. And in the post-strike landscape, the networks are taking few bold steps. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the idea that there will always be some incarnation of the ER, CSI and Law and Order franchises.

That said, it’s unlikely that network television is going to undergo a revolution anytime soon. With all the ancillary markets out there—cable, DVD, online and so on—even the most ill-conceived project will find a niche somewhere. Jericho fans mounted a massive peanut campaign to save the series on CBS, but failed to turn out in numbers to save the series. No matter—they knew the Sci-Fi channel would give it the home they knew it deserved, if only in reruns. The most mind-bogglingly idiotic game show of all time, Deal or No Deal, has already found a rerun niche at NBC’s less than revered financial news cable offshoot, CNBC. Cable has become the dumping ground for series that couldn’t pull in mainstream ratings, where they can languish in perpetuity, bringing in enough viewers to keep the rabid fans happy while never posing a real threat to the networks.

Cult and critical favorite Friday Night Lights is a case in point. It will be back for a third season in October, but for only DirectTV subscribers will see it initially. Theoretically, NBC will air the new episodes in early 2009, but I wouldn’t hedge any bets on that happening. Sure, DirectTV has over 16 million subscribers, and a large reason for that is its sports programming. Friday Night Lights wasn’t really a sports program, though. My guess is it will flounder at DTV, be heavily promoted as a DVD boxed set and quietly die a lonely hero’s death.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. One thing the writers’ strike accomplished, however inadvertently, was that it gave programs an opportunity to live or die on the strength, or lack thereof, of their own merits. It also gave viewers more than ample time to consider where their preferences lay. As a result, some shows highly touted by the networks back in September are falling by the wayside, and other, more traditionally risky programs, are finding a second chance at life.

As a result, ABC’s Pushing Daisies is being renewed for the fall season, rescued from early cancellation, I think, by the writers’ strike. Without the abbreviated schedules and the juggling of timeslots that came about as a result of networks scrambling to hold onto viewers, it’s doubtful this quirky show would have had a chance to find an audience. Fortunately, Cavemen and Cashmere Mafia have been axed, and are unlikely to find their way elsewhere.

At CBS, fans can look forward to seeing their favorite CSI versions return, as well as Numb3rs, NCIS and Cold Case. Moonlight, the vampire detective melodrama is scheduled for at least four more episodes, and, if it’s retooled sufficiently, may have a chance to survive into the fall season. The Unit, however, may have fought its last mission, and Cane appears to be a casualty, as well.

Pseudo-science fiction didn’t work out too well for NBC last season, and the writers’ strike didn’t help any, either. Bionic Woman and Journeyman are both history, reduced to a faint possibility they may show up as filler on the Sci-Fi Channel. As feared, though, Knight Rider is scheduled to be a full-fledged series. Other than that, NBC’s schedule will stay pretty much the same. One thing I’m happy about is that the little viewed, but very intelligent cop drama Life will return in the fall.

The fates of newcomers Terminator: the Sara Connor Chronicles, New Amsterdam and Canterbury’s Tales are unknown at this point, but with American Idol, House and its Sunday night cartoon line-up, FOX really has no need to worry. I do think, however, that 24 may end up being a casualty of the writers’ strike. The series depended on momentum, and it lost it this year. Interest, I believe, has waned. On the other hand, Smallville and Supernatural have been renewed at CW, so anything’s possible.

At its height, the writers’ strike seemed a clarion call to revolution that looked poised to shake the studios to their core. But in the end, it was nothing but two factions nickel and diming each other. Now that the war is over, reconstruction efforts are centered on keeping that system in place. The writers are getting a bigger chunk of revenue from the ancillary markets, miniscule though that chunk is. What’s largely missing from the equation is any attempt to up the quality of programming across the spectrum. Instead, both the writers and studios are content to rehash the trite and true formulas with which they’re comfortable.

Admittedly, television ultimately exists as an advertising medium. Anything memorable that emerges from that is accidental. It’s all about demographics. Programs that sell product stay on the air—those that don’t, die. At least, that’s the way it worked before cable, DVDs and online programming. The viewer now holds unprecedented power in shaping the future of the medium. Both the studios and the writers need to realize that the profits they battled over will be linked to a product that holds up to repeated viewings. Otherwise, they’ll find themselves in the same position as the record industry, commiserating about the good old days, when mediocrity was enough to hold sway over the populace.

Jericho: Revenge of the Peanut Gallery

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Jericho: The Return could easily be subtitled “Revenge of the Peanut Gallery.” After diehard fans flooded CBS with thousands of peanuts (by some counts, 40,000 pounds worth) protesting the show’s cancellation, Jericho got a seven episode reprieve. It’s do or die time now for the post-apocalyptic series set in Kansas, and it’s returned as a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream.

It appears now that the “September” attacks launched against 23 cities and resulting in some 15 million deaths didn’t originate in North Korea and Iran, after all. Nope—it was an inside job plotted by some kind of shadow government in collusion with equally shadowy corporations. And they were so meticulous in their machinations that the dim-witted American public was utterly clueless. Nukes have that effect on people.

What made the first season of Jericho a ratings fiasco was its mom and apple pie version of the apocalypse. The premise of a small town in Kansas cut off from the world, struggling for survival in the face of unimaginable destruction, was never explored in anything resembling reality—or even satire. The kind of uncertainty that was the premise of the series breeds either panic or ennui, but in Jericho, a lets-pull-ourselves-up-by-our-bootstraps speech by Gerald McRaney’s character invariably brought the town together. Admittedly, in the second half of the season, a bit of paranoia was brought into play, mostly in the form of the town’s feud with the neighboring town New Bern, but even that came across more as high school rivalries than survival instincts. Even as they warring factions prepared for their final showdown at the season’s finale, it came across as a crosstown rivalry.

If the first season didn’t hold up to scrutiny, Jericho nonetheless built a small, but dedicated fanbase. Perhaps the campaign to save the show was based on economics, or maybe they just didn’t know that peanuts are more akin to beans than nuts. Either way, they’re unlikely to notice that the amped up, albeit abbreviated, Season Two takes the series more deeply into the valley of the lowest common denominator.

Where Season One focused on survival, however naively, Jericho now claims to focus on rebuilding and reconstruction. Taking its cues from everything to the American Civil War to the war in Iraq, with a little bit of the American Revolution thrown in for luck, the series now goes for a play at relevance to current events. It ends up being a series of clichés we’ve seen too many times before. Even more sadly, any “statements” it makes come off more as comic book morality than three-dimensional realism. Things take an ominous turn to be sure, but they presuppose that Baghdad and Jericho are interchangeable.

What was America is splintered into three different regions—west of the ‘blue line” (defined as the Mississippi River), the newly formed Allied States of America, based in Cheyenne, Wyoming has set up a decidedly right of center government, replete with revisionist history, an appointed president and a drive for a constitutional convention designed to redefine inalienable rights. East of the Mississippi is the tattered remains of the United States, now headquartered somewhere in Ohio. Which side will win apparently depends on an alliance with the reformed Republic of Texas. For reasons that may have logic in a parallel universe, Jericho becomes the focal point in the struggle for America.

To be sure, there are any number of allegorical allusions the series could have touched upon with such a setup. The show’s producers failed to hit on any of them. In a rush to either put the dog to sleep or keep it on life support. They’ve opted for the latter, crueler option. Rather than actually tackling the issues they’ve set themselves up to confront, they’ve fallen back on the future as Old West cliché, thrown in the inevitable Big Brother on a big screen TV, thrown in a renegade secret agent and a sympathetic military commander, dashed in equal parts conspiracy and romance, and tossed it to the viewer like so many table scraps.

The days of Jericho are numbered. Hokey romance and daft conspiracies can only fuel the imagination so much. Having seen three of the seven episodes, I see very little hope for either a satisfactory conclusion, or a promiseof a third season.

Then again, I hate peanuts.

Armageddon in Black and White

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The one thing that looms large in our collective consciousness is the prospect of Armageddon. Some twisted nerve in our psyches has a need to dwell on the unthinkable, and it’s probably because we just have to know how it all ends. Fail Safe takes that premise to one terrifyingly possible conclusion.

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The premise, originally presented in the 1962 novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, hinges not on troop movements but on the fallibility of our engineering arrogance. Sidney Lumet’s 1964 Playhouse 90 adaptation of Fail Safe remains a classic drama of cold war tensions. Like Dr. Strangelove (also released in 1964), Fail Safe postulated mutually assured destruction as the result not of war, but of diplomatic wranglings and mechanical failures. A computer malfunction prompts a U.S. bomber squadron to think they have orders to attack Moscow with nuclear weapons. Because of precautionary procedures, the order is irreversible. The crew’s training preempts them from accepting radio transmissions, as they would most likely be Russian decoys. As the planes race resolutely to accomplish their mission, it’s left to diplomacy to ward off global catastrophe.

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The 2000 version of Fail Safe is no less powerful than its earlier incarnations. Executive produced by George Clooney, it aired live and in black and white on CBS 9 April 2000. Even with Walter Cronkite noting in his introduction that it was the first attempt by CBS in 39 years to telecast a drama live, this is hardly an exercise in nostalgia. Granted, the Soviet Union no longer exists, and we like to believe that we’ve put the possibility of mutually assured destruction behind us. As this teleplay eloquently illustrates, however, the spectre of global holocaust still looms before us, regardless of how the players and the tactics have changed.

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Played as a live performance, Fail Safe has a sense of immediacy that a theatrical film would be hard pressed to replicate. Working within the parameters of what is essentially a stage play, the mostly male cast deliver performances that inexorably draw the viewer into the tensions the characters face. Richard Dreyfuss as the President and Harvey Keitel as the battle hardened but war weary General Black are particularly noteworthy in their pivotal roles. Sam Elliot and Brian Dennehy are also impressive as the gung ho congressman and the cocky desktop general who see their sense of wonder unravel as the East and West careen deeper into the nuclear nightmare. George Clooney, as the supremely dedicated pilot Col. Grady, in whose hands the fate of the civilized world rests, turns in a brilliantly understated performance.

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Fail Safe is much more than a daring experiment in live television, though. The fact that the actors were working without a net, as it were, heightens the tension of the telecast in that the format didn’t allow for second takes. Stephen Frears, better known as a film director whose credits include The Grifters and The Queen, proves his prowess in the live medium here, despite a couple of insignificant glitches. But the real power of Fail Safe is in its ability to convey the very real threat of humankind’s inability to harness the forces it unleashes. In that regard, it’s as timeless as the story of Prometheus. It warns us that in our hands, the world will end not in a roar, but in a sadly whining whimper.

Farewell to the King

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Tonight marks something of a milestone in the history of television. After nine seasons, The King of Queens airs is final episode, and with its conclusion, a chapter in situation comedies is closed.

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Airing on CBS opposite ratings juggernauts 24 and Heroes, it’s unlikely the demise of The King of Queens will be regarded with much more respect than a backpage obituary. It could have been saved, perhaps — placed in a different timeslot as it had been on more than a few occasions in the past — but it opted to go out with a modicum of dignity. Sometimes, you instinctively know your time has come.

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.Nonetheless, it’s been a good run for The King of Queens. Debuting 21 September 1998 (the same night Will and Grace premiered), The King of Queens ends its reign as the last live-action sitcom to have originated in the 20th century. That in itself says something. As much as the world seems to have changed in the 21st century, the series demonstrated that our core values — or at least, our sense of humor — haven’t radically altered since the early days of The Honeymooners. In fact, both series touched a common nerve in the American psyche.

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It wasn’t necessary to follow The King of Queens slavishly, any more than it was to follow The Honeymooners or I Love Lucy or Dick Van Dyke. Like the characters in those earlier sitcoms, Doug and Carrie didn’t change much from episode to episode. You could drop in on them anytime, and know without asking that Arthur was still living in the basement, that Carrie was still trying in vain to keep the household sane, that Doug was never going to grow up and they’d still be doing the same thing with a different twist next time you dropped by for a visit. That’s the way the world worked in old school sitcoms, and that’s why we remember them. They provided us with an odd sense of stability.

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That’s not to say that The King of Queens leaves us without resolution. Secrets are revealed left and right — secrets we heretofore never knew existed. And though it appears that Doug and Carrie will end their reign in divorce, the finale offers twists and turns to rival its network competitors. It might be a good day to finally invest in a TiVo.

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I won’t mourn the network passing of The King of Queens overmuch. I see it more as passing into an eternal life of syndication. Still, I have to wonder where the future of the network sitcom lies.