Solid Summer Stuff

For the last few years I’ve really looked forward to summer TV.  Many summer shows trend toward lighter fare, focused more on generating entertainment than deeper meaning.  There are a few bold statements that are featured as summer “events” and a few oddballs that are pushed to summer because no one’s quite sure where they fit—but they’re scattered among television comfort food—shows that just sort of work.  For the networks, this may even mean imported procedurals (like Motive), talent shows, or physical-comedy game shows (like Riot, which has already been canceled, or Wipeout, which was renewed for a 7th season).  This is often when cable shines brightest, since the cable lineups aren’t competing with major network series, and cable networks can afford the risk and expense of making their best work, knowing that they’ll have access to enough eyeballs to pay off the sponsors.  The USA and TNT summer lineups return.  Syfy original programming gets bolder.  So You Think You Can Dance returns, and I do a little dance of my own, because that show is, as a friend of mine put it, minute for minute probably the best bang for your entertainment buck on television. 

So now that we’re midway through June, the solid-but-unexceptional showings have begun.  They don’t all work for me, personally, but they all feel very normal, like they are where they belong.  They aren’t appointment television, for the most part, and that’s good, because summertime is when people take vacations and may have to miss a week here or there.  And just because a show isn’t appointment television doesn’t mean it isn’t worth watching.  In fact, summer’s programming tells us—precisely because of its comfort-food nature—what makes viewers want to settle in for an hour of enjoyment.   

What do viewers (or at least programming executives) find entertaining, unchallenging without being boring?  Let’s see.

The Night Shift (NBC, new.  Medical drama.)

Watched: first three episodes

Premise: Each episode represents one night in a San Antonio ER staffed predominantly by ex-military doctors.

Promise: The show is essentially an updated ER, with special emphasis on the rebellion and joie de vivre of the undisciplined doctors on night duty as contrasted with their rule bound administrators.  Here, as in many stories, rules are impediments to justice, or in this case, to excellence in medical care.  Our heroes are risk-takers and rule-breakers, conditioned by the harsh, improvisatory conditions of their military service to do “what it takes” to save people.  Their bosses, concerned with things like insurance, cost, and legal liability, just don’t understand.  The female doctors are civilizing influences on the men, who don’t know their own strength, limitations, or emotions, and need the women to show them the way.

If that were all that the show was—as it was, mostly, in the pilot—it would get very old, very fast.  But the next two episodes have shown a bit more depth.  The administrator becomes more understandable and sympathetic as we learn more about him.  The doctors’ rebellion and problems with authority are placed in context, and occasionally—although not often enough for my taste—the show even demonstrates how they might have negative consequences.  I don’t want to sugarcoat this:  even three episodes in, the show still has plenty of problems.  It continues to take an almost dangerously romanticized and consequence-free view of rebellion, and expects the viewers to find rulebreaking as sexy as the characters do.  It continues to frame its men as more independent, complete characters than its women; the women are competent doctors, but are also all defined largely by their relationships with men, while the men (even the gay one) are given characterizations that go further beyond their romantic entanglements than the women’s do.  It all too often commodifies women, even the doctors, as sex objects (once even compelling an intern to go on a date with a doctor so a patient could receive medical service!).  Perhaps worst of all, its “comic relief” often involves treating patients with disrespect. 

However, it does one thing that works:  it integrates the characters’ personal histories, particularly their military service and the traumas it left them with, into their professional lives as civilian caregivers.  These doctors are heroes, but they are shaped by their service in indelible ways.  The show gives us a pretty wide range of post-military types, which I appreciate.  It’s a sign of the times that this is part of our reality now, and I imagine that our TVs will increasingly be populated by young former servicemen and women wrestling with the differences between military and civilian life.  That piece feels fresh and, considering the times we live in, more comfortable than I’d like it to be.  And between that and the fast-paced ER-style mixture of outrageous medical emergencies and soapy interpersonal drama, it feels not only sort of watchable, but sort of classic.  Plus, for those who, like, me, watch a lot of television, this show provides some very interesting alternate-universe crossovers.  Jill Flint's character is enough like her character on Royal Pains that one could imagine her having finished her stint in Africa and moving to Texas instead of returning to the Hamptons.  Brendan Fehr's character bears some notable similarities to his character from Bones (and I’m still looking for a way to incorporate his character from Roswell).  And in my head canon, Eoin Macken's whole lifetime as Gwaine on Merlin has now become the PTSD-induced hallucination of his The Night Shift character, searching for a sense of true heroism in an all-too-ambiguous war.

Verdict:  more watchable than it should be, considering.

 

Crossbones (NBC, new.  Action/Adventure.)

Watched: First two episodes

Premise:  Pirates!

Promise:  This show is more like what I expected Black Sails to be – a mix of swashbuckling, intrigue, and sexiness– rather than the mix of violence, politics, and sexual assault that Black Sails ended up being. (Such subtle differences.  Such important differences.)  The setup here is that a British loyalist spy (played by Richard Coyle with much of the same charm as his Covert Affairs character) is sent to assassinate Blackbeard (John Malkovich).  He has the same sort of spy savvy, and the same sorts of weaknesses, as pulpy spy greats like James Bond, Sidney Bristow, and Annie Walker.  So when he ends up in the Bahamas, he ends up infiltrating (and perhaps even supporting) Blackbeard’s organization. 

Malkovich has top billing, but isn’t the strongest part of the show—he portrays Blackbeard’s quiet menace quite well, but his performance sometimes comes across as phoned-in rather than subtle.  The strong part is our hero’s spycraft, and the intelligence of his allies and adversaries.  In that context, this is a show of moral ambiguity that works, as the intrigue plays out among people who are smart enough to know how to operate with great competence, but also smart enough to justify their bad decisions.  It doesn’t feel terribly new or original, but like a solid two-egg breakfast, it doesn’t need to be original to be tasty.  I want it to get bigger—to have more fun with itself than it’s having—and there’s plenty of room for that.   Whether it will actually take advantage of that room, though, is hard to predict.  Neil Cross, the show’s co-creator, is better known for gritty drama (and excellent gritty drama, at that:  Luther, Spooks…) than for fun.  In fact he’s not really known for fun at all.  So it's a bit surprising, and also encouraging, that the show has growing hints of the flirtiness that make spy vs. spy feel sexy.  And considering that the women are all supporting characters in a world that’s typically portrayed as misogynist, I’m actually pretty impressed by the diversity and competence of the show’s main women:  a white capitalist who controls most of the trade on the island, an Arab mathematician who advises Blackbeard, and an African bloodthirsty pirate in Blackbeard’s crew.  Feel free to note the latent racial stereotyping at work there, though. 

 

Verdict: If it embraces its spy vs. spy side, I see potential.  If it tries to be deep and gritty, it’ll just bog down.

 

Chasing Life (ABC Family, new.  Teen drama.)

Watched: pilot

Premise: Young journalist navigates professional and personal life after discovering she has cancer.

Promise: The show is an adaptation of a Mexican show, but it’s been largely adapted into the ABC Family mold.  Its characters are mostly archetypes (Mean, demanding boss! Intense overachiever colleague!  Rebellious little sister!  Perfect sensitive/funny/hunky love interest!)  But the main character is a more fully-realized person than those surrounding her, and I can see the potential for a few others to gain that sort of depth.  That said, I wouldn’t look to this show for understated realism.  It’s designed to exist at the highest highs and the lowest lows, without a middle ground, and if the last few seconds of the pilot are any indication, it will veer toward the sensationalist.  Our heroine’s bind is extreme:  everything she’s in control of (professional life, love life, etc.) is going exceedingly well, and everything she’s not in control of (her health, her sister’s personal decisions, etc.) is going exceedingly poorly.  Each day of the pilot is, by design, both the best and worst day of our heroine’s life; each bit of super-amazing news is coupled with something equally bad.  I expect that trend will continue. 

The main character’s central personality traits, set up unsubtly at the start of the pilot, may make her an interesting person, but also hamper the viewing experience.  They are (a) that she cheerily blasts through rules to achieve her goals and (b) that she doesn’t want to burden others with her negative emotions.  The former is fine, assuming we approve of her goals, but the latter means that she is constantly distancing herself not only from her friends and family, but also from us.  If she can’t ask for the help that she wants or needs, then it becomes hard for the viewer to feel anything for her but pity.  I can also appreciate her wanting to emphasize her ordinary professional and personal ambitions without making allowances for her health.  But her strategy for doing so—at least in the pilot—is to compartmentalize in a way that makes the show’s tone bounce between standard, glib romance/career fare and very heavy emotional fare.  The gap in the middle feels authentic—I imagine that’s the way existence would feel for a young professional in the main character’s situation—but as a viewer, I feel jerked around.

Verdict: Fits well in the ABC Family lineup, but too tonally mercurial for me.

 

Power (Starz, new.  Organized crime drama.)

Watched: Pilot

Premise: The glamorous and brutal life of a drug kingpin/club owner.

Promise:  This show has a lot going for it, on the surface.  It’s executive-produced by 50Cent, and the creator/showrunner is Courtney Kemp Agboh, known for (among other things) The Good Wife.  Its star, OmariHardwick, deftly portrays the stony power and inner neediness of the central character, and Naturi Naughton glows as his fiery and ambitious wife.  The show’s production values are stunning, and its story is a classic, embodying the excesses, self-delusions, and doomed love of The Great Gatsby, with the grand ambitions and big themes of a Shakespearean tragedy; although it isn’t a straight-up adaptation of anything in particular, it has clear echoes of Othello, Macbeth, and Richard III.  This is a story of love, loyalty, betrayal, and (yes) power, all writ large.  But for all of its great influences, it doesn’t really rise above its material.  With the benefits of all of those forbears comes the feeling that it’s all been done before.  Our protagonist is a deeply competent club owner, and a slightly less competent drug kingpin, but drugs are a more lucrative and dependable income stream than club ownership: he’s made himself a pair of golden handcuffs.  Fueled by a desire to live up to the impossible example of his father, he wants to go straight, but various barriers stand in his way.  He rekindles an impossible romance with an old flame who, it turns out, is on the opposite side of the drug war.  The result is that he’s living a triple life as drug dealer, club owner, and family man.  It’s a predictable set of organized-crime tropes set to an amazing, evocative soundtrack.

My biggest complaint with the show, however, isn’t that it’s all been done before.  After all, the law enforcement procedural has been done a zillion times and I’ll still tune in to a good one.  My biggest complaint is that it passes up the chance to engage in any sort of critical commentary about the worlds that it portrays.  Each is given a glamorous gloss, with little examination of the social factors that (for example) made “drug dealer” and “club owner” the most practical routes to career success for this smart, savvy African-American man; or that push the—also smart and savvy—women in his world into the extremes of “mob wife” and “the one who abandoned her community to become educated.”  And even on the occasions when it rises above the Madonna/whore tropes of its genre, it portrays its women as willing, even eager subordinates to its men without asking why, with all of their manifest smarts and savvy, they might find themselves in those roles.  (Example:  a woman’s boyfriend uses his key to enter her apartment without permission, apparently worried about her.  When she pushes back that he shouldn’t come by without warning, he says “most women would just be happy to know that someone’s looking out for them.”  She relents.  I think “no, creep, you just broke into her apartment.”)  More to the point, the show portrays the economic magnetism of crime, the glamour of the club business, and the privilege of wealth, with virtually no attention to those who get exploited to make each possible. 

Verdict:  It’s very pretty, and the soundtrack is amazing, and if you like big themes and organized crime, it’s good comfort food, well made.  If you want freshness or social commentary, it has less to offer.    

 

Murder in the First (TNT, new.  Law enforcement drama/mystery.)

Watched: pilot

Premise: long-form murder mystery drama set in San Francisco.

Promise:  I love a good mystery.  But it’s hard to maintain excitement for even the most intriguing mystery for 13 weeks.  So what makes long-form murder mystery dramas like Prime Suspect and The Killing work is that they’re as much about the characters as they are about solving the crime.  The creator of this show, Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, Murder One) knows a good mystery arc.  Here, our main characters are wrestling with challenges of their own (one’s wife is dying; the other is a single mom) while investigating two murders that are unrelated aside from their links to Zuckerberg-esque Internet whiz kid (played by Tom Felton, who has turned “unempathetic” into an art).

Here, again, are a concept and execution that don’t feel particularly fresh—but here, again, like the solid two-egg-breakfast, why mess with a classic?  Our putative villain may or may not be guilty, but we can sure love to hate him.  Our law enforcers are good-hearted and smart, surrounded by sadness and challenge, but pushing through and supporting each other.  Our men have familiar anger-management problems and our women wrestle with the familiar, precarious balance of work and family caregiving.  Aside from our genre-based trust that the detectives will eventually figure everything out and justice will eventually be done, the only real bright light is the female detective’s young daughter, who’s clever and inquisitive.  But those two things bring a good bit of positive energy to an otherwise sad world, and together they may be enough, since the show features characters we can empathize with, characters we can rail against, and a mystery we can wonder about. 

Verdict:  Solid Bochco.

On the DVR/Unreviewed:  The 100, The Red Road, Last Week Tonight, Halt and Catch Fire.

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