Why don't they just talk with each other?

When I was a kid, I remember watching a soap opera after school one day and remarking to my mother, “why don’t they just talk with each other?  All of this would work out so much better if they would just talk with each other.”  (Just another one of those childhood moments when I tormented my mother with obvious insights.  Now I have a blog.  I can torment the whole world with them.)  My mother agreed, and we chatted about it.  Of course, it was obvious to us that if the characters just talked to each other at the start of the problem, there wouldn’t be an episode.  So in the most practical sense, we knew exactly why the characters didn’t just talk to each other.  But we also agreed that it seemed awfully artificial to manufacture drama via poor communication, and that it wasn’t a whole lot of fun to watch.

So I guess what I’m trying to say here is that poor communication is not the same thing as drama, and that the conflating of the two has been bothering me for literally decades. 

I understand that in life, sometimes things go unsaid that should be said.  People get trapped in fibs that start innocently and end in disaster.  People let simple disagreements fester into feuds and harbor secret loves for years.  So I don’t mean to say that poor communication can’t lead to drama in real live.  But all too often, on TV, it’s manufactured.   In real life, how often does the phone ring with bad news just after a cheating spouse says “I need to tell you something”?  How often does one friend counsel another, “don’t ever let them know.  They’d never forgive you.”  Or how often do you get the advice:  “Let me talk to the person you like.  Don’t do it yourself.”  I’m not going to say it never happens …but hardly ever.  And yet, that’s the sort of thing that happens all the time on TV.  And it's yet another common TV situation that we'd all be happier not to emulate.

These shows all depend, to some degree, on poor communication for their drama.  Sometimes it works well.  Sometimes, not so much.

Allegiance (NBC, New.  Spy drama.)

Watched: pilot

Premise:  A family of modern day Russian spies spy on their CIA-analyst son. 

Promise:  The CIA analyst is uncannily good (in fact, chalk one up for the problematic “genius”=neuroatypical roster) and a really interesting guy.  In fact, I think I’d quite enjoy watching a show about him—he’s basically the hyperanalytical counterpart to Covert Affairs’ wonderfully hunch-based operator.  But instead, the show is about the machinations of his family of ex-Russian spies who are pulled back into the spy game when he gets assigned an important case.  What unfolds is a tableau of lying and sneaking about in the guise of self-preservation.  It’s reminiscent of The Americans, but these spies lack the courage of their convictions—they’re really just doing it to save themselves from having to come clean to their son, who we’re told would never forgive them.  Perhaps he wouldn’t, but it takes a lot of work to get there.  The show expended most of its energy trying to convince us that these people, who really love each other, couldn’t just level with each other and tell the truth.  It came up with reason after reason, and although I sort of believed the reasons, I kept finding myself baffled by the lengths the characters would go to to avoid having a difficult conversation with each other. 

Meanwhile, if I had watched Allegiance prior to posting the Craaazy Lady Things post, I surely would have included it there.  The men in the show are logical (to a fault) and cool under pressure.  The women are motivated to illogic and self-destruction by love and lust and misplaced notions of “protecting the family.” 

Verdict:  Doesn’t work for me.

Secrets and Lies (ABC, new.  Long-form mystery.)

Watched: 2-hour pilot

Premise:  Like The Killing or Broadchurch, but from the perspective of the prime suspect rather than law enforcement or the victim’s family.

Promise:  This show is on the “slow-moving” bandwagon that seems all the rage right now, and while I sometimes love that (e.g., The Killing, Broadchurch), it’s very hard to do in a way that holds the viewer’s attention.  One can’t maintain a constant high level of intensity—that gets boring.  Instead, it needs an ebb and flow where high drama moments give way to small, personal, character developments.   (Or, in Dar Williams’ words, you need “the rise and gradual fall of a daily victory.”)  Instead, this show tries to be at high drama alert all the time, and—at least in the first 2 hours—doesn’t try to give us a chance to get to know who the people are.  And yet, getting to know the people is the whole appeal of a long-form mystery.  This show is also the worst “why don’t they just talk to each other” offender in recent memory—the “secrets and lies” of the show’s title are largely the product of the show’s enormous effort to place roadblocks in the way of earnest conversation among the characters. 

Given the premise, I assumed it would have much the same appeal as NPR's fantastic Serial – and I think it could, but it would require (a) some effort to let us get to know the characters and (b) some idea of where it’s all going (for example, showing us an eventual conviction or acquittal and then making the rest of the show a flashback).  As it is, we’re either stuck watching the man with the worst luck in the world get railroaded by a wholly unsympathetic cop, or watching a deeply unsympathetic cop identify and try to build a case against the right culprit.  Neither feels satisfying.

Verdict:  Doesn’t work for me.

Grantchester (Masterpiece Mystery) (PBS, new.  Law enforcement procedural.)

Watched: whole season

Premise:  A vicar investigates crime in rural 1950s England.

Promise:  There are two things going on at once in this series:  the first is a series of comfortingly interesting-yet-solvable mystery procedurals, happening on a one-per-episode basis.  The other is the personal story of the main character, a vicar in a small community whose apparent soulmate (to whom he could never quite admit his love) announces early in the first episode that she’s marrying someone else.  Over the course of the season, we get to know him and his friends, including the police detective inspector he consults with.  So while the episodic mysteries have the flavor of Father Brown or any number of other basic rural British procedurals, the larger arc is much more fulfilling than its more-formulaic counterparts.  The main character is both non-threatening and edgy—like a puppy dog with a studded collar—and despite being largely the fault of his poor communication, his personal struggles feel both realistic and sympathetic.  It’s no wonder that solving the case seems almost to fall incidentally into his lap:  people just hand the clues to him without realizing it.  I would too.  Robson Green is wonderful as the skeptical policeman who he convinces to work with him, and their friendship is compelling (and, if the world is just, will someday be the subject of some fantastic slash fic).  

Verdict:  Just Delightful.

On the DVR/Unreviewed:  still some from 2014, which I am losing hope of ever reviewing, plus Agent Carter , Empire, 12 Monkeys , Better Call Saul, CSI: Cyber, Dig, American Crime, The Royals, and iZombie.

The Angry Genius

I had a whole post cued up about modern detectives, but then I realized that what I really needed to talk about with this crop of new shows was the phenomenon of the Angry Genius.  The angry genius gets a pass on antisocial behavior and can treat people terribly with impunity.  The bigger the genius, the more anger.  What’s the genius angry about?  It’s seldom very well explained, but we can make some hazy assumptions:  sometimes it’s cosmic unfairness.  Sometimes it’s being underappreciated.  Sometimes it’s the fact that the angry genius’s genius is so great that there’s no one who can wholly understand it.

One thing is clear, though:  the Angry Genius is a man. In fact, he’s often a man who believes (often rightly, in the show's configuration) that he’s being held back by the women around him.  Female lieutenants, desk partners, and hospital administrators who for some reason think the rules are more important than the genius’s genius.  Girlfriends who dote on them, stars in their eyes, and still somehow stand in the way of their genius.  Occasionally the women actually help more than they hinder…and then get grumped-at for their troubles.  Either way, the women are supposed to shrug, shake their heads, and accept it.  That’s just the price of working near a genius.

Sometimes the Angry Genius formula works, even for me:  when the anger is framed as grumpiness and tinged with kind, human likeability (House; Lie To Me; Elementary), I can really quite enjoy it.  But when it’s just anger—or worse, the sort of cruel anger that feels sad around the edges—it’s just plain hard to watch.  And even when it’s enjoyable, it still highlights a fascinating gender disparity.  Women are allowed to be angry, but only under certain circumstances—when they or their families have been violated; when they’re standing up for the rights of others.  Being underappreciated or misunderstood may make women angry, but about the most they’re allowed to do about it is complain to their girlfriends or sulk on the couch with a glass of chardonnay and a tub of ice cream.  Women who lash out in anger are crazy and histrionic, or calculating and cruel, or monstrous.  Whatever they are, they’re not loveable geniuses.  For men, being “emotional” is framed an inevitable and sympathetic trait.  They can’t help it; they just have all those feelings and they don’t know how to manage them.  For women, “emotional” is framed as a criticism.  Why can’t those women be more reasonable?

Backstrom (Fox, new.  Law enforcement procedural.)

Watched:  first 5 episodes

Premise:  World’s most unlikeable detective leads a diversely competent squad. 

Promise:  Hart Hanson has a type:  the detective savant who lacks the ability to read or follow social cues, and the people who support and/or care for them.  But while Bones and The Finder feature loveable savants, Backstrom is generally mean and relies on a disturbing combination of bias and whim to solve crime.  In an interview, Hanson explained that they changed the character from the (book) source material to make Backstrom actually a good detective, which the original version apparently isn’t.  In the process, Hanson (et al) perhaps inadvertently created an Angry Genius, who we are supposed to sort of root for instead of reviling.  He has some redeeming human warmth, but he hides it well, and we are, I think, supposed to find his competence redeeming too.  But—like those football players (Vick, Roethlisberger, et al) who are so good at throwing or running that the public prematurely forgives for their heinous behavior—I don’t want to find his competence redeeming.  The supporting characters are a very wide-ranging bunch—so much so that they feel like they’re on about three different shows—and while they have the potential to become interesting, the show also works so hard at making them quirky that it feels artificial.  Part of the problem is that the network is airing the episodes out of order, which means we can’t follow the growth of chemistry among the characters or see Backstrom’s gradual personal growth.  But even if they were in order, I don’t think I’d find myself caring that much.

Verdict:  Not without redeeming qualities, but not enough of them to keep me watching.

Babylon (Sundance, UK show, new to U.S.  Drama/Satire.)

Watched: Episode 1

Premise:  Black comedy about the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) and its PR department.

Promise:  British satire of a particular vein that’s quite popular right now:  very angry, lots of swearing.  (Think The Thick of It.). It lacks the affectionate touch of, say, Twenty Twelve or Getting On.  It’s full of very colorful metaphors and strong performances, but not likeable people.  Is fatalism and pessimism run deep—the system is utterly broken and can’t be fixed, because people are unable to be anything other than callous and selfish, and as a result, will never rise to the dignity of their positions.  Here, too, there’s an angry man (well, lots of them, but particularly the chief) and a woman (the American PR specialist) who’s tremendously competent but seen as holding the man back.  And she can’t pull herself together on a personal level, because apparently that’s true of all professionally competent women.

As a story, it’s fast-moving and disjointed, with quick cuts between action, politics, and workplace drama that create tonal whiplash.  I understand why:  a show that were just bleak and cruel would be too hard to watch, but a show that was just satirical humor wouldn’t present commentary as biting.  But there has to be a way to make it feel like the anger and the humor fit together better.  And—at least for my taste—there has to be a way to introduce something encouraging.  And I don’t see that.

Verdict:  Edgy enough to draw critical acclaim, but edge alone isn’t enough to carry it for me.

Fortitude (Pivot, UK show, new to U.S.  Slow-motion Thriller, Quality Television).

Watched: first 7 episodes

Premise:  The swirl of intrigue surrounding a murder in an arctic settlement that previously had almost no crime.

Promise:  Visually, it’s gorgeous.  The setting is the arctic island settlement of Fortitude (presumably modeled on Svalbard), where people from around the world have come to settle.  It’s hard to get over how beautiful and bleak the setting (filmed in Iceland) is, and it sets the tone for the series, which is like the slowest-motion episode of the X-Files ever, but without Mulder or Scully.  OK, that doesn’t make much sense, but here’s what I mean:  the premise—two deaths in an environment of intrigue that mixes interpersonal drama with business; the foreboding “trust no one” mood; and the intrusion of a Scotland Yard investigator (played with subtlety and intentional incongruity by Stanley Tucci) into a tightly-knit and secretive community—was just barely enough to keep me watching.  I didn’t know why I was watching, I was just curious.  And as the story continues at the rate of one or two clues per hour, it’s getting weirder and weirder, and gradually turning from a Drama to a Mystery to a Thriller to a Supernatural Thriller.  All at the pace of frozen molasses.  

Verdict:  7 hours in, and against all odds, I’m still curious.

Battle Creek (CBS, new.  Law enforcement procedural.)

Watched: Pilot

Premise:  Odd-couple partners solve crime after being thrust together in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Promise:  This show is tonally all over the place.  I think it thinks it’s funny, wringing odd-couple humor from its pairing an angry sad-sack yet talented police detective (and his Bad News Bears-style department) with a slick, handsome, modern, effective, smug FBI agent.  But the tone is often one of anger and sadness as the lead cop’s occasional flashes of competence are overshadowed  by the consistent abilities of the younger, more handsome FBI agent.  I think we’re supposed to hate the FBI agent, whose studious naiivete comes off as smug.  (Also, an interesting casting note:  While they do a fine job of contrasting Josh Duhamel’s sleek handsomeness with Dean Winters’ grit, I find it jarring to see Winters in the aging sad-sack role; I’m used to him being the smug bastard.)  The show sets up a Battle of the Methods, pitting the old legwork-and-bluff approach against the high-tech-and-suave.  High tech and suave wins almost every time, but there’s still room for a little bit of guile and instinct to save the day.  To make a racquet-sports analogy (my, I'm sporty today!):  this is about a hot shot young athlete who runs his ass off and plays a great game and then gets beaten at the net by a drop shot.  And we’re supposed to root for the guy who hit the drop shot.  And the whole show marinates in so much anger that it’s hard to enjoy the humor.

Verdict: Neither funny enough nor dramatic enough to work, at least for me.

On the DVR/Unreviewed: Agent Carter; Empire; 12 Monkeys; Allegiance; Better Call Saul; Secrets & Lies; CSI: Cyber; American Crime.