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.