Too Easy

Because TV is recreation that interrupts the routine comfort of our lives and living rooms for regular visits, it has to walk a line between “too easy” and “too difficult.”  I’m not using “difficult” here to mean gritty.  Sure, violence and swearing and sex and other “adult” content can make something harder to watch.  But those things can also cover up for a show’s relative ease, allowing the show to pretend it’s all grown up when really it’s predictable simpleminded.

So what do I mean?  A show has to be interesting enough that it’s worth the interruption, but no so hard to watch that it feels like work.  It has to have enough emotional resonance that it makes us feel something, but not so much that it makes us hurt  without hope.  But what makes those things true?  What makes something easy without being too easy, and hard without being too hard? 

Of course a lot of this is personal preference, and variable preference at that.  Some days I want to know what’s going to happen before it comes.  Other days I want to be surprised.  Some days I want to sit there while warm fuzzies wash over me.  Other days, I want to watch something challenging or thought-provoking.  Some days I want to be told that life is manageable.  Other days I want to watch people make difficult decisions in a complicated world.  Some days I want to know that everything will turn out ok.  Other days I want to wonder whether that’s true.

Here are a few shows (all from 2016) for those “easy” days—some merely comfortable, some downright too-easy.  I don’t quite know what to make of the fact that there won’t be second seasons of the two I found watchable, and not of the two I didn’t.  Perhaps the people who really want easy TV want it even easier than I do.

Thirteen (BBC America, UK show, new to U.S Summer 2016.  Drama.)

Watched: series

Premise: Young woman escapes from captivity 13 years after being kidnapped.

Promise: You would think that a show about the aftermath of the kidnapping of a young woman would be hard to watch.  And—I can’t believe there have been enough of these that it’s possible to say this—we’ve become accustomed to twists and turns and secrets and lies in aftermath-of-kidnapping stories.  See, for example, The Family (ABC) and Missing (Starz).  This show hints at those, but it is is surprisingly straightforward and easy to watch, considering the difficult subject matter.  It becomes a meditation on trust and trustworthiness, confinement and freedom, and a story of personal strength.

Verdict:  A solid 5 episodes.  (There won’t be a second season.)

Roadies (HBO, Summer 2016.  Drama.)

Watched: Series 

Premise: The complex backstage ecosystem of a touring rock band.

Promise: This was a Cameron Crowe production, with all of the Cameron Crowe romanticism and  sweetness and emotional button-pressing.  This is a show about the beauty of chosen family, which is wonderful, but it comes in such an unchallenging package that it’s hard for the chosen family’s triumph to feel entirely triumphant.  We don’t have villains here, not really, just trying circumstances that we know will be overcome.  It’s a fantasy:  everyone’s acting, not being, but a few shining moments of authenticity and humanity make us nostalgic for something we’ve never really known.  This is a show about atmosphere as much as story or character, and that atmosphere is pretty comfy.

Verdict:  Like drinking cream soda: sweet, empty calories. (There won’t be a second season.)

                          

Chesapeake Shores (Hallmark, Summer 2016.  Drama.)

Watched: Pilot

Premise:  The lives and loves of a family in coastal Maryland after the big-city sister returns home.

Promise:  This show is fundamentally a romance, grounded in a charmed world where everyone has enough, the world is untroubled, sadness is temporary, and everything will be fine if everyone just does what they’re meant to do.  Men are builders and lawyers and soldiers.  Women are writers and innkeepers.  Handsome songwriters follow their dreams and love their dogs.  Parents put their children first.  Indeed, the one career woman—an investment banker—is facing no end of trouble for not putting her family first.  But that’s ok, there’s a dog-loving songwriter for her to fall in love with.  What, oh what, will become of them?  And I can’t shake the feeling that shows like this are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Verdict:  The show’s wholesomeness is refreshing, but it’s straight-up boring.  I found it genuinely difficult to get through a whole episode.

This is Us (NBC, Fall 2016. Drama.)

Watched: Pilot

Premise:  Follows multiple eras (birth, childhood, current-day adulthood) in the lives of three siblings born on the same day, two biological twins and one adopted.

Promise:  I have such incendiary anger about some elements of this show that I can’t find perspective on anything else about it.  In my defense, I looked for things to like, and didn’t find them.  Aside from the angering parts, it all just floated by without really creating any challenge or surprise.  So let’s settle on what makes me angry.  This is a show for which the description of one female character is “Rebecca strives to be a better mother to her children, and has issues with [her husband’s] alcoholism….Rebecca always wanted to be a singer, but gave up on her dreams in order to focus on her family” and the description of the other female character is “She is obese and struggles with issues of self-esteem that she greatly attributes to her estranged mother. Kate's relationship with her mother led to depression and eventually led to her taking Prozac, which she needed to stop taking due to the weight gain.  Kate decides that in order to lose weight she needs to join a support group. Kate, despite attempting to not get involved with anyone until she can get her weight problems under control….” So, yeah.  Women should give up their dreams to be mothers, and when they’re not good at that, they’ll give their children depression, which will make their children obese, which is a problem that needs to be fixed. 

Verdict:  This show would be too easy to watch, if it weren’t so angering.  But apparently some people like it.  NBC has renewed it for two (?!) more seasons.

In the hopper:  Still more from 2016 than 2017, and still working my way through both!