Mother Knows Best

Motherhood is, it appears, at least as much in the zeitgeist as epidemics are.  If we count The Lottery in both columns—which we really should—we’ve got the same number of “motherhood” shows as “epidemic” shows this summer.  

And if we can learn anything from these shows, it’s that women’s desire to be mothers makes them do totally irrational things.  Because, wow, do women do totally irrational things in these shows.  Each of these three show centers on women who are on one hand quite smart and very competent—and on the other, driven to a sort of madness by the force of motherhood.  They’re holding a womb lottery, for goodness sake, and swaddling virtual-reality babies in The Lottery; the lead is making deeply risky decisions about two different kinds of non-human children in Extant; and the fact that a woman acquired her daughter through kidnapping is the central basis of Finding Carter.  At least The Lottery acknowledges that different women are different from each other.  But the other two have pretty consistent visions of the mother as Mama Bear, ready to take on the world for the sake of their motherhood.

I’m not saying that mothers don’t, or shouldn’t, feel that sort of protective instinct for their children.  I am, however, saying that the Mama Bear mother is a trope, and we should be aware that when TV uses it, especially when it does so to the exclusion of other visions of motherhood, it’s defining a norm.  It’s not only announcing a vision of what motherhood is, but modeling a vision of what motherhood should be.  And when our models are so consistent—and so irrational!—it perpetuates stereotypes of women as defined by their reproductive capacity, as slaves to their own biology, and as unpredictable beings.  These aren’t bad shows—in fact, I’ve quite enjoyed each of them, in different ways.  But together, they send a troublingly monolithic message.

Extant (CBS, new.  SF Drama.)

Watched: first six episodes

Premise: Astronaut returns to earth after a 13-month mission to learn that she’s pregnant.

Promise:  The pilot is told in a combination of flashbacks after the astronaut (Molly, played by Halle Berry) returns, but the rest of the series moves forward and becomes something I didn’t really expect from the setup:  a drama about what makes humans human.  While Molly’s mysterious pregnancy provides the start to the story and its alien incursion into Earth presents the central conspiracy, the show quickly begins to focus at least as much on Molly's relationship with her “son,” which I put in scare quotes because he's a prototype human-emulating android who is designed to emulate humanity, and provides a lens into what that means both when he succeeds and when he fails in that regard.  The connective tissue between these otherwise-disparate ideas is provided by Molly, her husband (played by Goran Visnic), and an entrepreneur (played by Hiroyuki Sanada, who seems to have carved out a nice,  niche for himself in the U.S. playing powerful, possibly racially problematic, financiers with suspect motives).  

The result holds together better than one would expect, considering just how many ideas it’s bouncing around.  Part of it is the show’s relatively compact central cast:  it’s basically one family and the people in their orbit.  This means that although the conspiracy is far ranging, the show still has time to give its central characters the sort of internally contradictory personalities that make them seem real, and show us what humanity looks like.  It’s still a bit of a mess, though, and sometimes the android stuff feels tacked on to what would otherwise be a very serviceable Gaslight conspiracy/mystery about what happened to this astronaut.  And although both Molly and her trusted doctor are competent women, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that two out of the three women on the show are defined almost entirely by their relationships with motherhood (That is, Molly, and one of the android techs, who is clearly resentful that she isn’t a parent to the android the way Molly and her husband are).  That feels like a cop-out, and were it not for the doctor (who's well played by Camryn Manheim), I’d see that as a problem with the show.  As it is, I think it’s more an inevitable artifact of the show’s focus on parenthood.

Verdict: Feels more like two television shows (one about an android, and the other about an alien conspiracy), but both are strong enough to make me curious and keep me following along.

Finding Carter (MTV, new. Teen drama.)

Watched: first two episodes, 4th episode, seventh episode.

Premise: A teenager’s world is upended when she discovers that the woman she knows and loves as her mother actually kidnapped her from her biological parents when she was 3.

Promise:  The pilot moves very rapidly out of what appears to be a very happy, but also quite permissive, relationship between the teen and her (kidnapper) mother into the setting of the story:  the much more rule-bound and stereotypically suburban life of her biological family.  The teen, Carter, is stereotypical rebel, albeit one with a pretty convincing reason for rebellion:  she’s moving from a relatively freewheeling life, where she’s often told just how much she’s loved, into one with a lot of rules, where love largely takes the form of worry and constriction.   

It’s a great setup for teen angst.  Carter feels like she's been kidnapped into this new world, and it's a tough adjustment, at best.  Carter’s twin sister’s world is just as shaken up, but she doesn’t get the same solicitude Carter gets.  A bunch of inexplicably parent-less friends float around and influence the kids for good or ill, as they always seem to do in teen dramas.  And the most interesting character of the bunch might be Carter’s little brother, who is often overlooked, and latches on to Carter with heartbreaking affection.  Everyone wants things they can’t have; everyone keeps secrets they shouldn’t have to keep. Everyone needs something from Carter, which may not be what she wants or needs.   At its best, it’s a story about the destructive power of selfishness.  At its worst, it’s a pretty standard soapy teen drama, albeit one with a very different backdrop than most.  

Verdict:  interesting people in an interesting setup, but the sort of teen drama that one can skip some episodes of and still follow along.

On the DVR/Unreviewed:  We're working our way through, although we've miles to go before we sleep.  Including Dominion, Tyrant, The Leftovers, The Almighty Johnsons, The Divide, Manhattan, The Knick, Outlander, Legends, and Intruders.

Epidemic!

This summer, we’ve had an epidemic of shows about epidemics.  Or more accurately, we’ve had a few shows focusing on the need to combat or contend with an existential health risk to the human race.  There’s no question that an epidemic makes an appealing setup for a show:  it generates plot and high stakes, and provides room both for episodic action and a larger arc.  But on its own, “public health crisis” is a setup, not a story.  Without interesting characters, an epidemic is just a story about how everyone dies, or doesn’t die, and we don’t care which one.  Without a central tension of some sort—a mystery, or conspiracy, or antagonist, or personal struggle, or societal dynamic to explore—an epidemic is merely an exercise in high stakes without drama.  Just math, and heartless math at that. 

Perhaps I’m overly sensitive because right now, as we watch Ebola tear into West Africa, this trend hits particularly close to home.  It’s tempting to say that we shouldn’t derive entertainment from simulating human suffering, because TV inevitably tells a happier, more sanitary, less painful version of suffering than real life ever can.  But TV needs to do that, and I’d argue that it should:  we need to hold in our head the ideal that public health crises are solvable, that competent people can make a difference, and that happiness is possible even in the face of disaster.  At its best, TV reminds us of that, without making us forget how difficult the real situations actually are.  I’ve said this before about procedurals:  it’s very comforting to believe that evil can be vanquished in 42 minutes.  Likewise, it’s very comforting to believe that humanity can survive a disaster, even if it emerges changed from the experience.  And just as it’s tremendously interesting to watch a nuanced portrayal of how people respond to criminal tragedy (as in The Divide, which I’ll post a review of soon, or The Killing), it can be very interesting to watch a nuanced portrayal of how people respond to disaster.  But for shows about epidemics to feel worthwhile, they have to mean something. 

This summer’s offerings vary pretty wildly from each other in both approach and execution:

The Last Ship (TNT, new.  Action/Drama)

Watched: first four episodes

Premise:  Naval ship remains at sea trying to find a cure to the global pandemic that’s killed most of humanity. 

Promise:  This book is a very liberal adaptation of the 1980s novel of the same name, using a global pandemic instead of a nuclear war as its destructive backdrop.  I watched a few episodes because I really wanted to give it a chance.  I generally love Rhona Mitra and the post-apocalyptic setup has enormous potential.  But after four episodes, the only real conclusion I can come to is that it’s . . . boring.  It shouldn’t be, considering the high stakes and the fact that the show has a huge secondary cast to play with.  But the show has chosen tone over both story and character at every turn.  The tone is one of stoic heroism, which is on full display.  All the time.  They are stoic in the face of explosions (oh, so many explosions).  They are stoic through long, loving, highly-detailed tableaus of naval ordnance (really, this show treats firing torpedoes and machine guns like Baywatch treats running lifeguards).  They are stoic as they repeat orders to each other across the room in a procedure that feels authentic, but chews up a lot of story time.   They are stoic to the point of bathos when they consider their loved ones back on land.  (Side note:  when the XO learns that his son is dead, and the Captain learns that his family is tenuously safe, and the show expects us to feel the pain of the Captain, I call shenanigans.)

And they are bravely stoic in the face of cartoonish and (deeply, deeply) illogical choices, one after another.  That illogic is a real problem.  Over and over I found myself asking why someone couldn’t have easily predicted and avoided or fixed whatever the crisis of the moment was.  Three episodes in, for example, the villains angrily demand something they easily could have obtained on their own in the first episode.  And they keep threatening to destroy the one thing they want.  And I’d be willing to overlook that sort of issue more if I cared about the characters, but it’s hard to care about cardboard cutouts.  Without characters, the core of the story—the struggle to maintain food and fuel while conducting medical research—isn’t boring, exactly, but the interesting part of it is always going to be its impact on the characters, a set of people who have discovered that they are alone and in danger, and there may not be any safe space left in the world.  That’s a compelling idea.  But if we don’t care about the characters, then all the compelling ideas in the world just aren’t that interesting to watch.

Verdict:  Great, if you love naval ordnance and explosions.  But kind of boring if you want compelling story and characters.

The Strain (FX, new.  Horror.)

Watched:  First three episodes

Premise:  The CDC faces an outbreak of vampirism.

Promise: The show is also an adaptation, this time of Guillermo del Toro’s book of the same name.  It’s an effective mashup of epidemic/contagion and vampire/horror tropes, and the result is a good horror setup, albeit one that’s not terribly deep, and is occasionally unnecessarily gross.  Overall, the show feels like a SyFy show, and it would fit quite well in the SyFy lineup.  It feels a bit too campy, and a bit too predictable, for FX.  It has a lot of potential: the idea of the CDC encountering and fighting something as far out of the medical mainstream as vampirism is a wonderful start.  But like the previous show, it all depends on whether we care about the characters.  Here, the characters are more interesting than in The Last Ship, but they’re still cut from relatively standard molds, and the show is much more concerned with what they do than who they are. 

The show’s core theme—which we’re reminded of, over and over, including in the opening voiceover—is the power of love as a motivator.  People will do things for love that are contrary to the greater good.  It’s not the most original theme in the world, but it’s certainly a powerful one, and one might expect it to lead to some real emotional depth.  So it’s particularly surprising that the show feels so emotionally sterile.  The story somewhat mechanically pits the characters’ individual concerns for their loved ones against the good of the world.  Unsurprisingly, the characters are torn, and have to make close calls that end up informing the fate of humanity.  The result is that the characters are mostly wrapped up in what look like selfish concerns in the face of what we know to be an existential threat to humanity.  Maybe that’s realistic—and maybe it’s even insightful to recognize that that’s realistic.  But all of the choice-points seem trite (Child custody battle!  Wife with cancer!  Abuela facing deportation!), so what could feel really engaging ends up feeling sort of tired.  Add to that the fact that the only women on the show are, by and large, all foils for the lead, and I’ve lost interest.

Verdict:  Totally serviceable and well-made horror, but if I’m going to watch medicine confront questions raised by vampirism and the forces of love, I think I’d rather watch the deep, difficult, personal decisions of Shiki. 

The Lottery (Lifetime, new.  SF Thriller.)

Watched: first five episodes

Premise: A global fertility crisis threatens the future of humanity

Promise: This is a classic “change one thing” SF setup:  what would happen if there were no more children?  And it’s well executed.  The action starts several years after the last handful of children on earth were born, when a group of scientists engineer what appear to be viable embryos for the first time in years.  The government decides to hold a lottery to determine whose wombs to implant the embryos in.  As the scientists work to replicate their success, they also confront a shady conspiracy that may have caused the global fertility crisis, a fascistically overbearing government agency concerned with controlling the future of reproduction, and the inevitable international tension created by scarcity.  The show weaves its conspiracy thriller through a world shaped by this new medical reality—the gradual end of educational institutions, the possibilities of comparatively risk-free sex, and a creeping panic for the future of the human race. 

At the center of the show are a number of very competent people:  a scientist, a government official, a parent, etcetera.  Each is driven by strong ideologies, and for the most part they are all powerfully well-meaning, although that means different things to each of them.  They disagree with each other, but have to work with and around and sometimes against each other to accomplish what they believe is right.   It’s a dynamic that starts slow, but starts to work well after a few episodes, as the mystery builds and the characters become less isolated and more intertwined.  But for all the conspiracy, the show is at its best when it’s on the street, demonstrating the diversity of opinion of the population—just like our world, everyone is different and has different views about how things should work.  When they interview women on the street about why they are or aren’t deciding to put their names in the lottery, for example, the show really does a great job of reflecting just how diverse people’s views would be.

But perhaps the strongest statement this show makes is that it’s on Lifetime Entertainment For Women.  This is an effective thriller.  Sure, it happens to be about reproduction.  It happens to have female leads.  But seriously, is it too much to ask that a competent thriller with female leads might be Entertainment for Everyone?

Verdict:  Clunky in spots, but generally a well done thriller that keeps the suspense coming.

On the DVR/Unreviewed:  Still lots of shows! Most of which I've watched at least some of, but reviews are still forthcoming...  Dominion, Tyrant, The Leftovers, Finding Carter, The Almighty Johnsons, The Divide, Manhattan, The Knick, Outlander, Extant, and Legends.

Rule Breakers (or, USA! USA! USA!)

For a variety of reasons, I have a large backlog of shows to review; while I was traveling and addressing professional deadlines, most of the summer schedule sped by.  I’m only now catching up on the TV reviews.  But I will catch up—promise!  For the time being, I can offer three reviews and a set of Simon Bakers.  I could have connected these shows with any number of thematic threads, but at the moment I’m busy dwelling on the USA network and its programming decisions. 

Ever since USA set out on the “characters wanted” era, they’ve populated their schedule with shows about people who are in over their heads and have to rise to the occasion.  Their protagonists tend to be competent, well-intentioned people with strong (if sometimes unconventional) moral compasses and a need or desire to help others—to heal them, or find justice for them, or serve the public interest, or just plain do the right thing.  They find themselves, whether by design or misfortune, deep in the deep end and have to use extraordinary, often transgressive means in order to swim.  It’s a great recipe for compelling television, and USA has made it work over and over again:  Psych, Burn Notice, White Collar, In Plain Sight, Royal Pains, Necessary Roughness, Covert Affairs.  All very effective shows, each in its own way.  And Graceland, which sits in a more morally ambiguous place, but still focuses on a hero in over his head, casting about for justice.

Adjacent to these, but not identical, is Suits—which is also about someone in over their head, rising to the occasion, but it doesn’t have the same moral compass.  The protagonist’s occasion-rising there is all about his own success, and to the extent he helps others, that’s incidental.  To be honest, I find it less interesting, although that may have to do with its disturbing treatment of the legal profession and its canons of ethics than with how entertaining it is.  I know plenty of people who love it. 

In fact, Suits’ popularity may be to blame for the trend I’m seeing.  It’s happening a bit inside the shows, but it’s even more noticeable because of show turnover.  As it’s tweaked its schedule, USA seems to have downplayed the “moral compass” and “helping” aspects of its dramas, but kept the unconventional, transgressive protagonists.  The result is that the lineup isn’t so much about people having to rise to the occasion as it is about privileged people who break rules and get away with it.  And that’s just much less rewarding to watch.

There's something very American about rule breakers, especially those who break the rules in service of all that is right and just.  That's at least one (romanticized, but aren't they all?) version of the story of our nation's founding:  people didn't like the rules elsewhere, so they broke them, and in the process made a better world, with better rules.  And American entertainment certainly has a love affair with the hero who walks the antihero line.  Indeed, even the characters who aren't in over their heads, and still act like they’re above the rules, aren’t always unlikeable.  House, for example, thought he was above the rules and we still rooted for him.  But that was because (a) his rulebreaking was generally in service to helping people; and (b) even he had to endure the consequences of his poor choices sometimes.  The same is true of RaylanGivens:  he’s not good at rules, but he’s great at justice. 

But it’s a different story entirely when characters don’t have that well-meaning core, and never have to confront the consequences of their rulebreaking.  Those characters are just hard to root for. 

These shows all feature rulebreakers, albeit different kinds. 

Taxi: Brooklyn (NBC, new.  Law enforcement procedural.)

Watched: pilot

Premise:  A good detective is such a terrible driver that she has to team up with a taxi driver to solve crime.

Promise: This is a very silly, high concept for a show.  Totally ridiculous.  At its heart, though, is a bantery police procedural, which is a concept I can get behind.  Evaluating it on that scale:  It strives for banter and sass, but at least in the pilot, there’s something wooden about it—some crucial synergy between the writing, acting, and timing just isn’t firing on all cylinders.  It also isn’t quite sure whether it’s a drama or a comedy.  I don’t have anything against the concept of the quirky procedural, but even the quirkiest of procedurals has to decide ahead of time whether it’s trying to be funny or not.  I think this one wants to straddle the line, and it’s not quite working.  It has the potential to be a fun, light show, but to accomplish that, it needs more of a USA/TNT vibe than an NBC one.

Our lead—like so many TV cops nowadays—is motivated by the murder of a parent, and is risking her career to investigate the murder even though she’s been ordered not to.  And although she’s a good cop, she’s outshined at every turn—not only driving-wise, but also investigation-wise—by her taxi-driving partner, who has uncanny instincts for crime-solving.  Holmes & Watson doesn’t work so well when Watson is not only the great person but also the great investigator—in that scenario, Holmes is just the jerk.  Which is sort of where we are with this show:  the taxi driver has it all, and the cop is just—ironically—a vehicle for delivering him.

Verdict:  If I had infinite time, I might come along for the ride.  But I don’t, so I won't.

Rush (USA, new.  Medical drama.)

Watched: pilot

Premise: concierge doctor in LA is generally an asshole and generally gets away with it.

Promise: The central character is so deeply unlikeable, egotistical, and unempathetic that it’s impossible to root for him.  Like, I’m pretty sure that rooting for him actually actively makes you a worse person.  This isn’t just a doctor who takes drugs.  This is a doctor who does drugs.  It isn’t just someone with blind spots, who’s good at their job but bad with people.  It’s someone who literally accepts money to overlook the fact that a rich guy hit his wife as retribution for drinking his juice, and then tells the woman “can I give you some advice?  Don’t drink his juice.”  After that, it’s not a long trip to see where this show puts its women:  they’re pretty much all victims of particularly female sorts.  (Domestic abuse, breast cancer, unidentified abuse/trauma, etcetera).  Some of them have the personal strength and competence to rise above it, but the way they prove that is by rising above their victimhood.  That’s not true of the men, but they’re no less stereotyped by gender:  one is histrionic about an injury to his penis, another has anger control issues; most treat the women around them like objects.  But the truth is that there aren’t many complex characters here.  Everyone is a foil for this Rush guy.

And I want to be clear:  Rush is skilled doctor, and he’s not wholly morally unredeemable.  There is a sliver, maybe even more, of good in him.  And if I expected this show to be a redemption story—a story about this deeply flawed human finding and nurturing the remaining shreds of his humanity—I might be able to get on board.  But no:  although he knows it feels good to do good things, this man is unrepentant, maybe even proud, of being a bad person.  So as far as I can tell from the pilot, this is a story about a loathsome person, who everyone knows is loathsome, just being loathsome and occasionally stumbling accidentally into some good.  

Verdict:  Nope.

The Musketeers (BBC America, UK show, new to the US.  Action/Adventure.)

Watched: Pilot

Premise: Much swash is buckled in 17th Century France.

Promise:  This show has swash to spare.  The musketeers are charming fellows, and they’re surrounded by gorgeous costuming and set design, and there’s plenty of politics and intrigue swirling around to generate plots from week to week.  So that’s promising.  As of the pilot, though, the show seems still to be deciding whether it’s “high quality” or “fun,” and is occupying a middle ground without quite landing on either.  I was hoping it would be a nice replacement for the BBC’s Robin Hood, but this show’s pilot, at least, doesn’t quite accomplish it—it’s doesn’t quite have the same freewheeling, campy joy.  Or, for that matter, the campy joy of one of its co-producer's previous shows, Primeval.  The Musketeers' villain’s evil is more subtle, and the show in general lacks the twinkle in its eye.  But it easily may acquire it, if it wants to.  The central characters are all irresponsible in some ways and competent in others, which makes for some good banter and adventure.  What the show really needs—and doesn’t yet have, at the end of the pilot, but could easily develop quite quickly—is the sense of “all for one and one for all” camaraderie that we’ve come to associate not only with Musketeers, but also with good buddy shows. 

I’m encouraged that the Musketeers have a plucky, sassy female ally, but discouraged that in the pilot, she keeps being mistaken for and/or having to impersonate a prostitute.  The other women of note on the cast are Queen Anne, described by the King as “having more opinions than any other woman I’ve known” and a femme fatale who is, well, a femme fatale.  I’m really hoping they do more character development on the ally and the Queen.  Right now they’re pretty conventional, but BBC America’s period dramas have been pretty good at women who don’t “know their places,” and I’d enjoy seeing more of that. 

I’m awarding 3 SimonBakers to Satisfaction (USA, new.  Drama.) 

Premise, as far as I can tell:  after an investment banker discovers that his wife has hired a male escort, he decides to explore being an escort himself. 

Prejudice:  This is mostly a personal-taste-based decision born of time pressure.  My DVR filled up, and something had to go before I tried it, and Satisfaction got the honor because I don’t particularly enjoy stories about infidelity.  They tend to both bore and frustrate me.  I’m also not that enthusiastic about watching another show featuring the ennui of the privileged.  So that’s a double whammy for me.  But both are topics that that can be done well, and it’s possible this show has accomplished it.  I just won’t be watching it try.

Also giving 3 SimonBakers to Reckless (CBS, new.  Legal drama), chiefly because it is a legal drama.  It seems to feature some iffy ethics and some sensationalized sex crimes, too, but to be honest I haven't paid enough attention to know.  Maybe it's great, but somehow I doubt it.  

And finally, you may have noticed that I’ve skipped a bunch of sitcoms.  Not for taste-related reasons; I actually was quite looking forward to trying out Mystery Girls, Girl Meets World, Playing the Engels, and Welcome to Sweden.  As it turned out, though, other demands on my time took over.  If there are any new sitcoms that you recommend, let me know!

On the DVR/Unreviewed:  Oh, so many shows. These include Dominion, The Last Ship, Tyrant, The Leftovers, Finding Carter, Extant, The Strain, The Divide, and Manhattan.  Maybe others.  Golly gee, I'm behind.