Sass

Back in the first couple of seasons of Merlin (one the real “interactive television” greats), my friends and I observed that frequently, the day was saved by what we termed “inappropriate sass”—one of the show’s young women would betray her station and challenge the king, leading (directly or indirectly) to the episode’s happy resolution.  The women didn’t have the in-world authority to solve the problems themselves, but their background impertinence often drove the plot.  Perhaps we found it so striking because in the real world, so many of us have developed the subtle skill of insinuating our ideas so as to make those in power believe that they were their ideas.   We have learned, sometimes the hard way, speaking truth to power doesn’t necessarily end that well for the speaker.  So it was refreshing, in those seasons, to see sass rewarded with success.

We called it “inappropriate” sass, but of course the whole concept of “sass” is predicated on inappropriateness.  There is no such thing as sass without hierarchy; sassy people, by their nature, do not conform to their “proper place” in the chain of authority.  Sass is most often the domain of women, particularly women of color, and gay men.  Have you ever heard a straight, white, cis man referred to as “sassy?”  I’d hazard not.  Because sass is a form of insubordination, which of course cannot exist without its predicate, subordination.

Sassy characters are great.  But we should notice that, in some sense, their stories necessarily take place in someone else’s world.   When we see strength as sass, we recognize and perhaps even reinforce a particular power structure.

Three shows in this review, each of which makes me think about this power structure in one way or another.  Interesting, all three are BBC shows about English and British history.  Hmmm.

The Last Kingdom (BBC America, New Fall 2015.  Period Epic).

Watched:  First 4 episodes

Premise:  In England in the 800s (A.D.), a young man navigates between allegiances to the invading Danish (Vikings) and his lineage as an English landowner.

Promise:  there is a grittiness to this that’s reminiscent of Game of Thrones, and it has some of the same medieval epic appeal with fewer of the objectionable elements that make Game of Thrones unwatchable for me.  It takes place in a time and place that wasn’t particularly kind to its women, but it isn’t rapey, and it doesn’t endorse the unfairness.  This story is fictional, but based enough in history to feel genuine, and it succeeds very well at getting across the heady mix of violence and politics that make for a high-stakes epic.  Interestingly, our hero, Uhtred, is a relatively simple-minded man, prone to prideful and ill-considered decisions.  He isn’t just a flawed hero—he’s flawed, period.  But somehow, that only makes the history and people around him feel more genuine.  For my part, I’m watching the show about his best friend and sometimes lover, Brida, who was enslaved by the Danes at the same time as Uhtred when they were children.  She is miles ahead of him in both intelligence and good sense, and is rewarded for that with her fellow characters’ disdain and the viewers’ admiration.

Verdict:  I’m not entirely sure why, but it’s reliably intriguing.

Indian Summers (BBC/Masterpiece.  New to US; aired Fall 2015.  Period Drama.)

Watched: Pilot

Premise:  Politics, romance, and intrigue during the British Raj in India.

Promise:  I think this was angling for a “Downton Abbey” vibe, but it didn’t get there for me.  It matched Downton in its gorgeous setting and filming, and like Downton, it highlighted the stories of people of many classes in a very stratified society.  Here, though, the class dynamic took on a grander scale, as the stratification of the British was superimposed on a place that was highly stratified to begin with.  Overall, though, I think I didn’t connect with it because it lacked the little daily victories and defeats that make the first few seasons of Downton so compelling.  

Verdict:  Alas, kind of boring.

Home Fires (BBC/Masterpiece.  New to US; aired Fall 2015.  Period Drama.)

Watched:  series

Premise:  Stories of women involved in the Women’s Institute in rural Britain during WWII.

Promise:  In contrast to Indian Summers, this show was full of little personal daily victories and defeats, and all the stronger for it.  The show focused on the daily social and political challenges faced by those the war’s noncombatants, and deeply personalized a variety of characters, from society women to servants to teachers to farmers to conscientious objectors and the medically infirm.  Mostly, these were small personal stories, set in the backdrop of national scarcity, frustration, and fear, recognizing that during those years, it was the women who held things together in Britain and, all too often, the men who made it that much harder to do.  And yet—and yet!—these women were all so afraid of losing their dreadfully inconvenient men.  I don’t doubt the story’s realism, nor do I condemn the women for that.  And I understand that from a storytelling perspective, the women’s sometimes-irrational loyalty made for excellent stories.  But I found it striking. 

Verdict:  Charming, entertaining, and sometimes powerful.

On the DVR/Unreviewed:  Blindspot, Scream Queens, Rosewood, Quantico, Supergirl, Wicked City, Flesh and Bone, Into the Badlands, The Expanse.  (I'm trying to get to these before the end of the year, although that seems vanishingly unlikely.  If not, early 2016!)

Unfair Advantage

This Fall featured several everyday superhero shows in which white men are given extraordinary power and placed above the law, and yet, we’re still supposed to feel sorry for them.  It’s an odd trend, and it’s worth examining for a moment.

Many superheroes start as underdogs.  That makes sense.  It’s easier to get excited about someone getting the power they need and deserve than it is about an overdog being handed even greater advantages.  So to offset the “overdog is handed advantages” problem, each of these shows paired these advantages with a terrible price.  We are meant to recognize that the price more than offsets the advantage—and in several cases, it actually does—but price notwithstanding, it was very hard for me not to identify the overarching theme of each show as “with great power comes great adventure (oh, and responsibility too).”

The unfair advantage problem is exacerbated by the fact that these empowered men are generally paired with  tremendously competent women and/or people of color who are not handed the same unusual advantages but are still expected to help the empowered man be his greatest self.  It’s hard not to contextualize this television trend as part of a larger sociopolitical picture in which political, racial, and religious majorities all to often overlook the advantages and power they hold in society and interpret challenges to their dominance as persecution, obliviously expecting the less-privileged to step aside or even support them in their indignance. 

I don’t mean to condemn the shows.  It's true that with great power can come great adventure.  And several of the shows, I think, are actually quite good.  But the concept makes me squirm—and the fact that it’s a recurring theme this year makes me squirm even more.

The Player (NBC, new Fall 2015.  Action/Adventure.)

Watched:  All episodes.  

Premise:  Former FBI agent tries to prevent crimes and unravel larger mysteries while a shady conspiracy bets on whether or not he’ll succeed.

Promise: In the interest of full disclosure, I know people involved in making this show.  But even if I didn’t, I am quite confident I still would have liked it.  Tonally, it was a bit uneven, but most of the time it embraced the tension and humor of Person of Interest or Human Target.  Philip Winchester and Charity Wakefield each comfortably embodied their respective roles as Adventure Man and Computer Woman, respectively.  (And although there were a few things that didn’t work—the conspiracy plot felt labored, and there were a few cringeworthy moments of gender and racial stereotyping—there were a few things the show did exceptionally right.  First, although it handed its protagonist power at a price, it handed equivalent power (and price) to its supporting characters, each of whom lived above the law but rode a razor’s edge of personal danger.  Second, it was one of very few shows on the air to feature a competent STEM woman who wasn’t infantilized or de-fanged with a quirk-punk aesthetic.  And third, although the show set up as its inciting incident the protagonist’s loss of his wife, it wasn’t at all about fridging.  In fact, it became increasingly clear over the course of the season that the show’s women and people of color (and that’s pretty much everyone else on the show) were all resourceful, savvy fighters just as much as the white male lead was.  Ultimately, I enjoyed the show because it was fun—about ingenuity and fights and chases and ridiculous heroism and silly, over the top conspiracy.

Verdict:  The show has for all practical purposes been canceled, and I’m sad about that.  I would have liked to see it find its tone and stride. 

Minority Report (Fox, new Fall 2015. Superhero Procedural.)

Watched: first 4 episodes

Premise:  After the age of pre-crime enforcement has ended, an adult pre-cog endures risk to continue solving murders. Based on the movie of the same name.

Promise:  This show was a great opportunity to critique the dangers of a surveillance state.  And yet, at every opportunity, it seemed to endorse the police state and the pre-crime concept.  Even Person of Interest is more wary of surveillance-based assumptions, if that’s even possible.  And that was only one of the many areas where this show fell frustratingly short of its potential.  Despite good racial and gender diversity in its cast, the show fell back on exactly the troubles this post led with—a bunch of women and people of color have to endure risk and tie themselves in knots to allow this gifted-yet-encumbered white man to be effective, and the only benefit they see from it is vicarious based on his success.  And unlike the Player, this one had a “quirky” tech girl and didn’t have any freewheeling fun.  

Verdict:  This one, too, is effectively canceled, but I’m not so sad.  I wanted to like it.  But after a while I got tired of watching what felt like propaganda for the surveillance state.

Limitless (CBS, new Fall 2015.  Superhero Procedural.)

Watched: Fall season.

Premise:  A slacker gains temporary drug-induced access to ultimate intelligence and deploys it for the FBI. Based on the movie of the same name.

Promise:  Like the others, a white guy is given an advantage and a very shady opportunity to do good, and takes it, relying on the help and support of women and people of color who endure some of the same risks but are not given the same advantages.  Here, though, the guy’s personality tends toward smugness and self-pity about the opportunity’s downsides.  By all reasonable measures, this one should be the worst of the bunch.  And occasionally it does feel a bit insufferable.  But despite myself, I find its joy and fun sort of infectious.  The show’s concept is annoyingly unscientific, but the show helps the viewer get past that by employing a tone of self-aware comic-book fantasy that lightens the mood of what could otherwise be intense or troubling subject matter.   (A few shows are doing this.  iZombie has some of it; Scream has some of it; I can’t think of others off the top of my head, but Limitless takes a very explicit form of it.)  Every episode has a theme that uses entertainment genre as a jumping off point, some more obvious than others, that rewards entertainment obsessives like me.  (The most distinctive was an episode that very explicitly embodied tropes and references from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.)  Most of the time, this tactic is fun and effective rather than grating.  And I have to admit, I am a sucker for shows where the hero wins by being smarter.  (MacGyver Forever!)

Verdict:  I still find the central character’s smug self-pity sort of insufferable, and I still sometimes have trouble suspending my disbelief of the central concept, but I am entertained.

Agent X (TNT, new.  Action/Adventure.)

Watched:  First 6 episodes (I had to look that up; they blend together a bit).

Premise:  The Vice President’s office has a secret operative who carries out independent missions in the national interest.

Promise:  I initially thought this was a sort of cross between National Treasure and The Player, but now we’re a few episodes in the “secret society” element has faded a bit into a more conventional conspiracy arc plot, and the tone has settled not far from that of the Transporter TV series.   Here, like other shows in this batch, Action Man has an Important Job To Do, is given a Resourceful Handler, and is placed Above The Law at a personal cost of having to be Emotionally Isolated.  Unlike the other shows, the premise doesn’t always involve Action Man relying on the support of less-empowered women and people of color…but that’s because there aren’t many women or people of color with whom to invest that sort of challenge.  There’s no shortage of competent women, but aside from the Vice President (played by Sharon Stone, who could be a real guiding force, but sadly is often shown being tied up in her own emotions and/or one step behind those around her), they’re mostly sexy day players with whom our hero flirts while relying on and/or saving them.  Like Transporter, the action takes precedence over the personal aspects of the stakes, making the personal elements seem tacked-on, providing faux depth rather than genuine humanity.  The show also passes up lots of opportunities to deal with the sort of moral challenges and ambiguities that the premise—giving the Vice President secret Constitutional power to act domestically and on foreign soil contrary to known law—could really explore in interesting depth.  But, perhaps disappointingly, depth isn’t the point here.  The point is silly action fun, and the show generally delivers that.  

Verdict:  Lots of missed potential, but no shortage of silly action fun.    

On the DVR/Unreviewed:  Blindspot, Scream Queens, Rosewood, Quantico, The Last Kingdom, Supergirl, Wicked City, Flesh and Bone, Into the Badlands.

     

Emergency Ensembles

The medical emergency ensemble drama is a well-established genre, with ER as its flagship.  (Emergency! From 1972 may have been its pioneer, although I’m not expert enough in TV history to know for sure.)  Its moving parts are almost as interchangeable as the law enforcement procedural, nowadays, and it’s very difficult to make one that feels fresh or new.  That’s not necessarily a terrible thing—like two eggs and hashbrowns, it’s a classic for a reason—but it makes it a little harder for me to get excited when a new one comes along. 

This year, there are two new ones, Code Black and Chicago Med.  Both feature teaching hospitals in busy urban areas.  (Echoes of 1994, when ER and Chicago Hope both premiered).  Both feature improbably good-looking doctors handling emotionally and ethically challenging cases at the sort of crushing pace that ER made famous.  Both promise stories about the characters’ personal development and relationships as well as their medical challenges, although Chicago Med seems set up to be a bit soapier while Code Black which spends more of its time addressing the urgency of the doctors’ work and the toll that urgency takes on them and their patients.  And both feature a host of very expected gender stereotypes.  Men are defined by their levels of arrogance and perfection; women by their relationships with men and children.  On Code Black, even the hardest and most accomplished women are nurturers, whose personal losses guide their professional decisions to a fault.  On Chicago Med, it’s not much different.  But that’s to be expected:  on these shows, everyone’s a trope.  What makes them interesting, or not, is the extent to which they enrich and subvert those tropes.

I’ll review the two shows together, because each benefits in its own way from the comparison.

Code Black and Chicago Med (CBS and NBC, respectively.  New Fall 2015. Medical Dramas.)

Watched:  First 10 episodes of Code Black; first two episodes of Chicago Med.

Premise:  The emergency department of a busy teaching hospital (in Los Angeles and Chicago, respectively).

Promise:  Chicago Med show takes place in the extended NBC Universe that includes Chicagos Fire and P.D., as well as all of the Law & Order shows (and, via Detective John Munch, Homicide: Life on the Streets, The Wire, and The X-Files).  I find the idea of an extended TV universe very appealing, and for that reason I endorse the show conceptually.  But do I want to watch it?  Meh.  It feels very ordinary.   In contrast, Code Black is a stand-alone, and I expected to be just as bored by it.  But I’m not.  I think that’s because it’s masterful at the art of emotional manipulation, injecting just enough dramatic surprise into its storylines that I care.  It gives us enough information about the patients that over the course of an hour, we actually come to care about many of them, as well.  It can get old:  I don’t think anyone’s ever come into the Code Black ER without asking “Is my [husband/wife/child/partner/friend] all right?” and urging the doctors to help that other person first.  But it’s a technique that works.  The patient focus takes time, so it comes at the expense of story about the doctors themselves, but I don’t miss that.  It forces the doctors' stories to be more efficiently told, and I actually appreciate that the pace of the doctors’ stories is unfolding slowly rather than rocketing along at the pace of their treatments.  It seems more natural this way.

Code Black also incorporates a gender dynamic worth discussing.  The central characters of the show are the lead nurse, who’s male and known as “Mama,” and the lead doctor, who’s female and known as “Daddy.”  What I find fascinating about the nicknames is what they say about our expectations for different kinds of leadership.  The doctor leads through intimidation and high expectations (“Daddy”) and the nurse leads through encouragement and compassion (“Mama.”)  Beyond that, the characters embody very ordinary gender norms to a disappointing degree, especially the doctor’s lingering fixation with her deceased children, but they seldom play the nicknames for laughs—they’re just there, in the background, reminding us of our gender expectations. 

And that’s sort of the difference between the shows more generally:  Chicago Med is a little more comfortable; Code Black is a little more thought-provoking.  Chicago Med has the normal ebb and flow of medical rush; Code Black is entirely frenetic until the tiny moments when it’s entirely still.  Chicago Med sets up the usual “rules inhibit brilliance” dynamic; Code Black once in a while reminds us why those rules exist.  Here are some specific contrasts:  in each, a man islife-threateningly injured while carrying an engagement ring.  In Chicago Med, they give the ring to the fiancee-to-be, the man dies, and we watch the woman grieve and make decisions about organ donation.  In Code Black, they decide not to tell the woman, but end up saving both of them and let the patients have the romantic proposal moment with each other.  Here’s another:  in each, a woman carrying an IVF fetus is endangered.  In Code Black, they do a risky surgery to preserve her last chance to have a child with her deceased husband.  In Chicago Med, they convince the genetic parents to risk their fetus’s life to save the surrogate. I’m not saying that either show makes better storytelling choice than the other, but it typifies the difference between them. Chicago Med creates emotional suspense by reminding us that the doctors know more than their patients.  Code Black creates emotional suspense by making us care about the patients. 

Verdict:  I’m continuing to watch Code Black.  I’m not continuing to watch Chicago Med (just as I don’t watch the other Chicago shows, and for much the same reasons), but if you like the others, you’ll probably like this one.

And a SimonBaker, for a show not about saving lives, but about ending them:

The Bastard Executioner (FX, new.  Period Drama.)

Premise:  In medieval Wales, an honorable knight works as an executioner in his enemy’s court.

Prejudice:  I watched about half of the first episode and set it aside for time, thoroughly intending to return.  And then I didn’t.  I have every reason to believe it’s a good show, albeit one criticized for being unnecessarily gory and (like so much historical drama) focused on  the travails of vengeful men.  After I learned that the show’s creator had asked for it to be canceled after its initial 10 episode order, I ended up deleting it for space, with some regret but also a little relief that I wouldn’t have to watch so much blood.  

On the DVR/Unreviewed:  Minority Report, Blindspot, Scream Queens, Limitless, Rosewood, The Player, Quantico, The Last Kingdom, Supergirl, Wicked City, Agent X, Flesh and Bone, Into the Badlands.