I’m back! After far too long away. It’s good to be back.
A friend of mine who knows an awful
lot about stories once told me that she’d been taught that every story can be put
into at least one of two very broad categories of metaphor: “Man goes on a journey” and “stranger comes
to town.” That’s almost certainly right—as
long as they’re metaphors, it’s not that hard to fit at least most stories into
one or the other of the very-broad boxes, and indeed often into both.
What’s most interesting to me about
the frame is its probably unintentional, but still stark, gendered nature. (Which I hasten to attribute
to my friend’s teacher, not to her.) Men
go on journeys; all non-men are
strangers. And as I think about it, I
notice how rare it is for TV shows to subvert that frame—not only
because TV protagonists are usually men, but also because when a show has a
female protagonist, she’s often framed as the “new girl,” fish out of water, or
person thrust into an unfamiliar situation, rather than the one setting out on
a journey. There are exceptions, of
course, but as I cast my mind about for examples, I keep coming back to
that: journey shows (whether of the
physical or metaphorical variety) are most often about men. Which, I suppose, means women are more often
starting their stories as outsiders (or “others,” to use a well-worn term) than
starting from a position of acknowledged ability and self-determination. And perhaps it’s worth acknowledging that
when these women succeed, they’ve had to dig themselves out of that hole before
even setting out.
A few shows about epic journeys or
strangers coming to town, below. Do they
subvert the gender expectations? A
couple do, sort of.
Olympus (Syfy, UK/Canadian, new. Action/Adventure.)
Watched: pilot
Premise: The personal journey of a
young man with the subtle name of “Hero” as the Greeks attempt to banish their
gods to Hades.
Promise: My plan, after watching the
promos, was to enjoy this as “interactive television” where it could join such
greats as Merlin, Atlantis, and Witches of East End. But interactive television can’t just be bad. It has to be not only bad, but also good
enough that you care enough to talk back to it.
And that’s where this falls down:
it was just a jumble of familiar Greek-mythology and history names with
little connection to their actual history or mythology; a nonsensical and
disjointed story; and confusingly low production values. Well, low production values for all the
scenes that weren’t bizarre, ultra-violent battle scenes shot in loving slow
motion. The hero is “special” in an
entirely non-distinctive way (not surprising, given the name “Hero.”) The women are either manipulative villains or
object-like maguffins. I think the show wants to be
the next Game of Thrones, which to my mind is (a) something you need a giant
pile of money to do, which this show clearly doesn’t have; (b) a questionable
goal in the first place; and (c) if you’re going to undertake it, best to try
to do it without the violence and misogyny, rather than relying on those as
your lynchpins.
Verdict: Perhaps I’m judging it too harshly, after
watching only the pilot and extrapolating from there. But ultimately there was nothing about the
pilot that made me care enough to want to watch episode 2.
American Odyssey (NBC, new. Action/Adventure/Conspiracy Drama)
Watched: first seven episodes (season so far)
Premise: After her unit is bombed, an American soldier
is trapped behind enemy lines and has to fight against a vast global conspiracy
to try to get home.
Promise: This also isn't the time for my rant about tacking "American" on to a noun and calling that a title, but rest assured the rant is still there. In any case, the show tracks the journey of the soldier,
Odelle Ballard, and a number of story threads stateside as her family figures
out how to deal with her being missing and presumed dead, and various others
deals with trying to uncover the conspiracy that is keeping her existence a
secret. By far the most interesting
thing about the show is that it makes its Odysseus figure female; otherwise, it
has too many plots and too little direction, as the show meanders through a
rather ordinary corporate/corrupt government official/private military
contractor conspiracy and a relatively unsurprising (but very twisty,
coincidence-laden) journey across a strange, dangerous land.
The show subverts the gender expectations of
the “man joes on a journey” trope, but misses crucial opportunities to be
really interesting. I want Odelle to be
unusually insightful or resourceful; instead she relies a lot on a combination
of petulant moxie, luck, and the men around her. I don’t mean to say that she isn’t a good
hero, or that the show doesn’t do some cool things, including making one of the
helpers a brave and clever (albeit stereotypically victimized) drag queen along
the way. But it feels like most of the
characters are all falling from situation to situation rather than trying to
drive their own fates. Probably the most
interesting character is the teenage Malian Arab boy who, against his better
judgment, befriends and helps Odelle on her journey—and it is he, not Odelle,
who often seems in charge of their decisions.
So what could be a really cool set of parallels with the Odyssey (I had
really been looking forward to modern takes on the Cyclops and the Lotus
Eaters! And watching the husband at home doing the equivalent of weaving and
unweaving every night) ends up being a pretty ordinary conspiracy/adventure.
Verdict: It’s not a terrible conspiracy/adventure. It’s just that it could be even better.
Watched: First two episodes
Premise: After a car crash, a Secret Service Agent finds
himself in a mysterious and self-consciously quirky Idaho town.
Promise: It's "strange town comes to man" as much as it is "stranger comes to town," which is to say it's the latest in a a long tradition of prison-town
bewilderers ranging from The Prisoner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner)
to Persons Unknown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persons_Unknown_%28TV_series%29).
This one has some really odd time
dilation elements, but otherwise its main difference from those shows is we
also get some of the story from outside, as the prisoner’s family wonders what’s
going on and sets out to figure it out. I’m
a fan of the “one reasonable man in a world gone mad” trope (perhaps best done
by Life On Mars), and this show has that coming out its ears. As summer fare, it does its job, and it doesn’t
pull its punches at showing how brutal and disorienting the experience is for
our hero. The cast is dense with
highly-regarded actors (perhaps because of its connection with M. Night
Shyamalan?) and one gets the sense that none of them is being particularly
challenged by their relatively ordinary roles, but the plot is chugging along
nicely as one would expect from a show with a pre-announced 10-episode run, and
although nothing in it feels particularly original, it does present a genuine
mystery.
Verdict: solid summer fare.
Finally, a few SimonBakers (which, for the uninitiated, is a 1-5 scale of my disapproval of shows I haven't watched):
The Royals: (E!, new. Drama.) Two SimonBakers. I can see the appeal of turning the Royal
Family into a sort of fictionalized reality show. The Kardashians have been given a certain
type of royalty; why not follow that to its logical extreme. But I’m not the target audience, and watching
privileged people being catty and desperate (whether in reality or fiction)
just doesn’t appeal that much to me.
A.D. The Bible Continues: (NBC, new. Drama. Reviewed here because although it was billed as a miniseries, it was given, although ultimately did not succeed at earning, an opportunity for renewal) Four SimonBakers. Again, I can see the appeal of turning The New
Testament into Game of Thrones. The
source material is halfway there already.
But it seems a crass attempt to appeal to the prurient instincts of the
religious right, which may be good business sense but makes me really not the
target market.
Coming
Soon: some backlog, perhaps, and a
bunch of new shows that start around the first of June.
