Interactive Television

Some shows, which I sometimes call “Quality Television,” demand full attention and concentration.  Others are best as “background television,” best enjoyed while working, cleaning, cooking, writing, or being otherwise productive.  But a very special breed of shows demands a more active version of watching—a version that involves talking back to the television.   Pointing out the absurdity of the characters’ actions.  Pausing to ask, “so let me get this straight.  Is this really what’s happening?”  These shows are Interactive Television.

I have a couple of friends I often enjoy interactive television with.  (Glasses of moscato and bowls of ice cream are optional, but recommended.)  For a long time, our interactive favorite was Merlin.  It was perfect:  pretty and well-made, charming, but deeply silly.  Its characters made wonderfully illogical decisions.   The show’s drinking game wrote itself:  drink every time someone stares portentiously out a window.  Every time a character watches someone sleep.  Every time the characters come up with the least direct plan possible and/or put only half effort into some life or death situation.  Every time a character demands “proof” of a self-evident fact.  Etcetera.  Then came Tower Prep, a show whose premise (I described it as “Hogwarts meets The Prisoner”) was truly inspired, and which had flashes of absurdist brilliance, but ultimately could be boiled down to, as one friend described it, “We care more about competing in an intramural tournament for a made-up sport than we do about trying to understand why we’ve been kidnapped from our parents’ homes and brought to this mystery prison.”  Then came Zero Hour, a work of absolute interactive brilliance that had to be experienced to be believed.  (Seriously.  Seek out Rob Bricken’s reviews of the show on io9 if you doubt.  And the show got SO MUCH CRAZIER when they burned off the remaining episodes, after Bricken's reviews ended. It was a true masterpiece.)  So when that ended, we wondered what would come next.

                                                                                                                                                        

We tried Sinbad, but it didn’t quite have the interactive alchemy—to work, a show has to be just a little bit bad, and Sinbad was just a little too bad.  Interactive shows have to be good enough for you to want them to be better.  If they aren’t that good, then they’re just bad.  And truly, deeply bad shows don’t work for interactive television:  making fun of those is like kicking someone when they’re down.  So it’s a delicate balance—an interactive show has to be good enough that you care enough to make fun of it, and bad enough to have something to make fun of.  It has to take itself seriously—otherwise, it does the mocking all by itself—but it has to have enough lightness to keep the moscato-fueled mood alive.  And it has to have a sort of twisted internal logic that couldn’t possibly function in the real world.  It’s a tough task.  Sleepy Hollow has filled some of the interactive void, but our real find this year was Witches of East End, reviewed below.  And I just knew that Atlantis would be good interactive fodder.  I haven’t tested it with my friends…but now that I’ve watched the pilot, I totally will.

Witches of East End (Lifetime, new.  Supernatural drama.)

Watched: first three episodes

Premise: A family of women practice witchcraft and face supernatural dangers in a modern-day coastal town.

Promise: In the first five minutes of the pilot, the following things happen:  A mysterious woman draws a symbol on the ground, glares at two preppy neighbors, and kills them on the spot.  A young woman accidentally casts a spell that makes her mean mother-in-law-to-be choke on a canapé.  (We still, three episodes in, don’t know if the mother-in-law survived.)  And the same young woman, who by the way is engaged to a man unironically named “Dash,” reports that she had a sex dream about a dark, handsome stranger…whereupon that stranger walks into the engagement party.  Really, that’s pretty much all you need to know about this show.  Well, I should mention the crazy aunt:  sometimes she’s Madchen Amick, and sometimes she’s a cat.  Don’t get me wrong:  there is real mystery and danger afoot, and real romantic tension.  And in all seriousness, it’s nice to see a show populated mostly by competent (if insecure) women.   But mostly it’s hard to be serious about this show.  It is deeply silly, but it has an undeniable charm, as if the characters are just having fun being themselves. 

Verdict:  Interactive television.

Atlantis (BBC America, British, new to U.S..  Fantasy.)

Watched: Pilot

Premise: Modern young man is marooned on the lost island of Atlantis, which is sort of like Ancient Greece.

Promise:  This is produced by the same folks as Merlin, and it has many of the same charms and flaws.  But after several seasons of moscato and Merlin, I have a deep affection for cryptic prophecies, bromance, unpredictable combining of magic and science, mangled mythology, inappropriately sassy princesses, and the sort of "whimsy" that comes with its own woodwind music.  Again, most of what you need to know can be summed up in one scene.  After our hero lands smack-dab on top of a new guy, they both brush themselves off, and have the following exchange.

Hero: "Where am I?"
New guy: "You're in Atlantis."
Hero:  "Atlantis...as in the lost city of Atlantis?  As in the mythological city under the ocean?"
New Guy:  "Why do you say lost?  And how could a city exist under the ocean?  Surely everybody would drown."
Hero: "Either I'm dreaming, or I'm hallucinating....or I'm dead.  Am I dead?"
New Guy:  "No, you're very much alive, although I think you're delirious.  I'm sorry, I'm forgetting my manners.  I'm Pythagoras."
Hero: "Pythagoras?  You're joking.  You're the triangle guy."
New Guy:  "How did you know I've been thinking about triangles??" 

As in Merlin, there's a hero and his buddies, and a rebellious princess, and a seer who refuses to be straightforward about anything.  And a king played by a genre celebrity—this time, it’s Alexander Siddig rather than Anthony Head, but you get the idea.  It’s still not clear to me what makes our hero, Jason (as in “and the Argonauts?”  Hard to know) special, but he’s the sort of accidental hero we’ve become accustomed to.  So overall…silly, and charming.  Which makes it:

Verdict:  Interactive television.

On the DVR:  Nothing new, but that's only because I owe a few Simon Bakers.  And never fear, more new TV coming in January...which is not very long from now!