Cognitive Dissonance, or the Detriment of Expectation

Brand recognition is a tremendously efficient way of creating expectations.  If the sign says “Starbucks” or “McDonalds,” we know exactly what’s on the menu and how it will taste (for better or worse).  The same goes for shows:  we rely on branding, for example, to predict what a spin-off will be like. We rely on our knowledge of source materials--comic books, novels, movies--to predict what an adaptation will be about.  We rely on our knowledge of producers, creators, or showrunners to predict what kind of show we’re in for:  Bruckheimer, J.J. Abrams, Whedon, Chuck Lorre, Henson—with each, you know what you’re likely to get.  But brands aren’t always a blessing.  A familiar brand almost certainly gets people to tune in, but it might alienate others.  And if the show doesn’t live up to viewers’ expectation, the cognitive dissonance of getting something unpredictable may make it harder, not easier, for the viewer to enjoy the product.

This happened for Elementary:  viewers who tuned in for Sherlock Holmes got something else—a clever, entertaining, well-constructed crime procedural with some Holmesian flavoring, but very little in common with the original Holmes canon.  Elementary didn’t need the Holmes brand to tell good stories, so it's not entirely clear why it chose to brand itself as a Holmes adaptation.  Other shows have relied on Holmesian elements without doing so: Monk, House, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Rizzoli & Isles, Psych, Lie To Me….the list goes on and on.  Monk actually adapted at least one of its mystery plots directly from the Holmes canon (Mr. Monk and the Three Pies, from The Adventure of the Six Napoleons).  These shows are at least as canonically Holmesian as Elementary, which routinely uses names from the canon but—aside from Holmes and Watson, who share some similarities with their canonical forbears, almost never matches canonical names to canonical character traits.  For the Holmes fan, this takes quite a bit of getting used to.  A certain population of Holmes fans rebelled.  Others—those less familiar with the Holmes canon, or those who just enjoyed the good procedural and were willing to look past the show’s digressions from canon, kept watching it.  But let's be honest, those people probably would have kept watching anyway.

Still, there are a few reasons to brave these pitfalls and name a show for a known property.  One is to get eyeballs in the door.  People might be more likely to tune into a familiarly-branded show than a completely-new one.  Some of those people might stick with it even if it’s not what they expect.  The population of viewers driven away by cognitive dissonance may be smaller than the population attracted by familiarity.  And more generally, perhaps people should sometimes be forced (or more accurately tricked) into experiencing things we don’t already know we’ll like.  Plus, there’s something to be said for citing one’s sources.  Even if a show diverges wildly from its source material, it’s probably better to identify the source material than to pretend the show sprang, full-grown, from the head of the show’s creator.  And where does one draw the line?  I’m sure, for example, that although Masters of Sex is based on a real story, it diverges from actual history.  Actual history is often very interesting, but seldom fits neatly into storytelling norms.  So I would be surprised if the show hewed precisely to the facts.  I'd probably even be disappointed if it did.

So as I began writing this little rant, I thought my conclusion would be that shows should make a choice:  either embody their chosen identities, or choose new identities.  Authenticity or bust.  But now that I’ve spent all this time writing…maybe it’s we, the viewers, who should get over our closed-mindedness.  Maybe a “reimagining” can be just as valuable as a retelling.

That said, I’m still going to complain when a show claims to be one thing, and turns out to be another.  That’s just bad branding.

Reign (CW, new.  Costume drama.)

Watched: Pilot (a second episode has aired, but I haven't watched it yet).

Premise: Teen angst and politics in the French Court featuring a heavily fictionalized Mary, Queen of Scots and her ladies in waiting.

Promise:  The whole thing is historically way off, which is hard for me to get past.  I would so much rather watch a period/fantasy drama about made-up characters than something that purports to be history and totally isn’t at all.  I’m not talking here about the art direction, costumes, hair, etc. which are inaccurate but gorgeous—these things seldom hew closely to history, and arguably shouldn’t, since we need to be able to identify with them in order to identify with the characters.  I’m talking about historical facts, to which this story bears very little resemblance.  And I keep bumping so hard against that that it’s hard to enjoy what is, otherwise, a pretty fun/juicy teen drama with higher stakes (Life! Death! The future of nations!) than we usually see in such things.

So I’m going to try to review this as if it’s all just made up fiction, and words like “Scotland” and “France” and “England” refer to some alternate reality.  And viewed that way, it’s a surprisingly entertaining show.  There are elements of the insipid teen drama here – love triangles, fickle hearts, lots and lots of flirting – but on the whole, the show uses the tropes in ways that make them feel un-hackneyed, or at least less hackneyed than I’d expected.  People have reasons for their choices other than their fundamentally mercurial teenaged natures, and those choices have meaningful stakes, rather than feeling slight or soapy.  Likewise, there’s a mysterious element in this show (Ghosts? Or merely extremely deft conspirators?) that adds to the story.  This is quite a contrast from, say, The White Queen, whose “women’s magic” just felt gratuitous and vaguely sexist.  Finally, although there’s plenty of teen sexiness in this, it doesn’t have the “everybody fall into bed” quality that has become a teen drama epidemic—mainly because, given the constraints of the time, falling into bed was a much riskier activity (at least for women) than it is now.   I’m not saying this show is perfect—it has some of the wooden acting and contrived plots we’ve come to expect of teen dramas, and its anachronism bumps in some bothersome ways sometimes—but it maintains its teen drama appeal for those who like that sort of thing, and adds well-done elements for people who like costume drama as well.  In a way, it’s the best of both worlds—juicier and more fun than The White Queen, but more meaningful than the average teen drama.  It’s no Downton Abbey, to be sure, but it’s closer than I’d assumed it would be.

Verdict:  Terrible history—but maybe-not-bad television.  I'll have to keep watching to make sure.

Strike Back: Origins (Cinemax, new.  Action/Adventure.)

Watched: Pilot

Premise:  British Special Forces officer fights terrorists, seeks redemption.  

Promise:  I love Strike Back.  I love pretty much everything about it.  Great, straight-ahead action and adventure.  Things blowing up.  Firefights and chase scenes.  Complex, charismatic, competent characters.  Gorgeously-filmed yet brutal settings.  Really complicated global politics boiled down into a set of in-the-moment yes or no decisions--yet somehow managing to retain the moral ambiguity of those decisions.  (Which is not to say the politics of the show aren't problematic.  They are.  But at least the show doesn't ignore that fact.)  I can even go along with the gratuitous sex, because everyone is doing exactly what they want to do, and while the show's take on sexual politics is pretty problematic, it's also deeply complicated, and even sometimes quite thoughtful, and I appreciate that.  But what comes across most of all from Strike Back is its joy.  Even when it's telling the most complicated, brutal story, the show is having fun.

So you can imagine I was very excited for this spin-off, which tells the backstory of how Section 20 got started and the events leading up to the Strike Back pilot.  And indeed, the show has a lot of what I love from Strike Back.  It's just as complicated, just as beautiful, just as action-y.  The storytelling is just as effective.  But it's missing the joy.  The main character (Richard Armitage, in an outstanding performance) is broken in a serious way, and his search for redemption and vindication are powerful.  But whereas Scott and Stonebridge are broken in ways that turn their important and dangerous work into adventure, Porter is broken in a way that turns his adventure into important and dangerous work.  To be clear, I'm enjoying the show--but it's not quite what I thought I'd get when I tuned in to a Strike Back spin-off.

Verdict:  Is it Strike Back?  Not quite.  But it is top-rate action/adventure.

Dracula (NBC, new.  Supernatural drama.)

Watched: Pilot

Premise:  A vampire (Dracula), masquerading as a wealthy American industrialist, haunts Victorian London and fights a shadowy anti-vampire conspiracy.

Promise: The pilot packed a lot of information into one hour. Too much, perhaps--it started so many plot threads and introduced so many characters that it was a bit hard to follow and know who's who.  But it had a lot to do, because it had to replace all of our knowledge about Dracula and his story with a completely different story and dramatis personae.  Much like Elementary, this is a "reimagining" of a well-known canon.  And much like Elementary, it uses a lot of canonical names, and seemingly arbitrarily assigns them traits that have little or nothing to do with their canonical roots.

It's possible that, like Elementary, the show will end up working, although it will never quite feel like Dracula to me.  I wonder (as I do with Elementary and Reign) why the creators felt compelled to use familiar names for intentionally unfamiliar things.  But once one gets past the cognitive dissonance of those inauthenticities, it may turn out to be a good story.  The show's production values display a sort of idealized Victoriana: clean, mannered, and theatrical.  The tone is exaggeratedly seductive.  The plot promises to be intrigue-based and probably somewhat convoluted.  I suspect that in addition to highlighting various flirtations, the show will it will end up focusing on the continuing rivalry between Dracula and the conspiracy of vampire hunters, and on Dracula’s obsession with the young, practical Mina Murray.  But there's a lot of other things it could focus on, too--the weird and advanced technology that Dracula seems to have invented, for one. Whether the show will be fun to watch is harder to predict--it could be campy and fun; it could be overdramatic and fatiguing; it could even be boring.  It'll all depend on whether the characters become more identifiable.  If we start to care about them, we'll start to care about their stories.  If we don't, I don't think the pretty art direction and sexy tone will be enough to keep me watching.

Verdict:  Some good elements, but it's not compelling, yet.  So the jury's still out.

On the DVR:  I think it's time for me to issue some SimonBakers for shows I'm never going to get around to watching. But that's a choice for another day.  The DVR is currently home to Lucky 7 (canceled), Sean Saves the World, Witches of East End, The Pete Holmes Show, Naked Vegas, Adam Devine's House Party, and as of tonight, The Returned.