fett on 4/4/2010 at 14:07

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I don't know what it is, but pretty much every show I've watched since this one leave me rolling my eyes at the terrible, terrible acting and completely incongruous and "coincidental" plotting. Was TV always this bad or is it just that The Wire was that good? I never noticed it before but now it's just cringe inducing. The only exception being (maybe) a few seasons of The Shield, but it drops plotlines all over the place, which The Wire managed not to do, while remaining un-contrived.

Rug Burn Junky on 4/4/2010 at 17:24

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I would say yes, almost all network shows really have been this "bad," but it's a function of the manner in which they're consumed. Up until recently, major network shows weren't designed for long form story arcs. They're written with the understanding that people aren't going to be able to watch every single week, so they were generally designed as self contained stories (also more suitable for syndication sales down the road). You can't make the major plot points of a given show dependent on things which happened in previous episodes which people may or may not have seen. There are a number of reasons that has changed in the past decade or so, the most notable being the DVR, another being the advent of DVD box sets supplementing (or replacing) syndication as the back-end money-maker, and third being the cable networks that were better able cultivate dedicated followings than the broadcast networks.

Just off the top of my head, one of the shows that was a stepping stone was Star Trek: Deep Space 9. It still had the production values of a second tier broadcast network, and some fairly hokey standard sci-fi genre conventions. But the later seasons started to develop long form story arcs which spanned multiple episodes. Next Generation had dabbled in this with Q and the Borg, but not nearly on the same level, with each episode building on the last. I wouldn't say it was groundbreaking, but it was definitely a pre-cursor to shows like Battlestar Galactica. And as was mentioned in the beginning of the thread, Twin Peaks also built its success on this formula, as did, to a lesser extent, Quantum Leap, and The X-Files (especially in later seasons). But none of them really escaped the clutches of being a broadcast drama, and the simplification that that introduced to the storytelling.

Obviously, the big 800-lb gorilla is The Sopranos. There's a reason it's considered groundbreaking, because it really was. Taking the drama of a story arc and placing it firmly across 13 episodes (even if they often worked in the smaller medium of overlapping 4-6 episode arcs), without losing the compelling drama of an hour long narrative, or ending up in the meandering, pointless realm of soap opera (where every story line stretches on for years with no meaningful conclusion). Almost all of the great shows on cable of the past decade owe The Sopranos a debt for making this a viable option. Before The Sopranos, there was really no outlet for this on American TV. The closest you could come would be a Made-for-TV Miniseries, like Roots, or North and South, but those were few and far between (and for some fucking unknown reasons they're always about the Civil War). I think there's a much longer tradition of this sort in British TV, where series ore often only 6-12 episodes and only given limited runs, which makes the HBO/BBC partnership make a lot of sense.

It really is a different genre of TV that allows for a much more intricate level of story-telling. One of the problems with both network dramas at one extreme, and soap operas at the other, is that you can't allow characters to develop or change too much, because the show's continued success is reliant upon continuing indefinitely in much the same form. That's an important element that's lost.

So the very genre itself allows for "better" TV. If you're going to succeed in the medium, you HAVE to build storylines and characters, and to do so convincingly, you need to stay away from cartoonish clichés. Contrasted to an hour-long network drama, where the regular characters are frozen in time, and the disposable characters introduced and forgotten on a weekly basis need to be built and come to their conclusion in 14 minutes of screen time - you need to hit people over the head because you only have one chance to introduce the necessary characterizations in that short window. Even contrasted to something like Lost, which effectively uses the serial format (and has the advantages that that entails as compared to the NCIS's of the world), the smaller cable shows are going for a more sophisticated audience, so they use much finer and more subtle cues to get their point across.

The key is, just like my whisky analogy or Cheesecake Factory analogy earlier, you have to compare them not to network dramas but within the same realm - and that really limits you to 3 networks atm: HBO, AMC, and fx (Don't get me started on Showtime, they're horrible). fx lapses into pulp, but still throws quality stuff up there (The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, The Riches, Rescue Me, and even Damages). AMC has two instant classics in Mad Men and Breaking Bad. and HBO has reeled them off for a decade (Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, Rome, Carnivale, The Wire, Big Love). All of them tend to have one thing in common: they stay away from the worst sort of coincidences and Deus Ex Machina clichés that riddle prime time shows (and that's why Showtime fails so utterly miserably at playing the same game), simply because they have the time to build the motivations that explain the causation of most events.

Plus, you can feel a production value for each network that shows there's a cohesive vision running that given network. It's a gentle sort of conditioning that sets you up to appreciate that network's shows. Even with wildly disparate genres (Rome's period piece versus the Soprano's gangland drama) you can tell you're watching an HBO show. That matters.

Now, even within the realm of cable serials, The Wire does exceedingly well, but even so it's not perfect on all levels, and there are elements that other shows do better. The storyline is about systemic corruption, and it captures that on a scale I've never seen - the city bureaucracies (both government and street-level) are almost characters in and of themselves. That's the focus, and the characters are all secondary, but that's ok, because that's Simon's forte as a former urban reporter. They still develop and explore the characters, but not as a primary focus of the show, and there are other shows out there that still do a better job of that.

Is there any one character on the Wire as interesting as Tony Soprano, Al Swearengen or Vic Mackey? I'd struggle to find it. Omar comes close, as does Bubbles, but still fall short. I'd say AMC has thrown down the gauntlet with two of the most interesting characters ever in Don Draper (Mad Men) and Walter White (Breaking Bad). The Shield does a masterful job with melodrama and tension, using that to give white-knuckle cliff hangers. Deadwood gave us the tension introduced by the growth of a civilization from a lawless environment. The Wire starts out with the advantages of the long form series, aided by the production values of the recent HBO tradition, and mixed in with an experienced writer like David Simon who's exploring issues he knows to his very bones. It knows what it's strengths are and plays to them. Which is why it's such a compelling and potent mix.

You can find flaws with every one of these shows, but the sum totals overshadow them so greatly that the flaws are minor. Each show though, plays to its own strengths and an appreciation for any one of them should highlight different aspects of the same eye-rolling crap you find on network TV.

Rug Burn Junky on 4/4/2010 at 19:13

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I'm not sure I disagree with you all *that* much. It's certainly flawed, as most of the fx shows are (I can't even watch Damages myself, and Rescue Me certainly suffers from oversimplification). But they're still a world above the network shows even with the massive flaws. Whereas The Shield is pure pulp which strives to be something more and on occasion succeeds, Anarchy never really rises above that limitation, but it still does the pulp well enough that you watch it.

I do disagree about the characters, because there's a certain level of complexity in both their motivations and their relationships. Every single one of them gets pulled in multiple directions at various points in the series - Jax, Opie, Tig, Clay, and a lot of it is left below the surface.

I don't think they ever hinted that John Teller's death was anything but Gemma and clay's fault - it's practically the premise of the series - the writer stated explicitly that Hamlet was a jumping off point in interviews.

And I would venture to say that Dexter is far, far worse than Anarchy on that front. I just watched all 4 seasons in the past two weeks, and I was incredibly disappointed by it. Everything's watered down, and so much of it is cardboard and inexplicable.* Plus, the character is played in such a way that you never get to confront the perverse sympathy you feel for the guy, because there are never any negative repercussions for the viewer, and they never make you feel revulsion. Contrast that with Walter White, where you see an inherently sympathetic character making entirely justifiable choices, and you watch him become utterly corrupted by those choices, in such a way that you actually have to question your own morality. Watching those two shows in such close proximity made me really realize what a missed opportunity Dexter is. That said, I still enjoy watching Dexter, but I can't think of it as anything but utter schlock.


*(Doakes? Seriously? You're an ultra elite black-ops guy - the type of covert agent that's so secretive that the government denies your existence, and you decide to just become a Miami cop and not only tell everyone in the department that you used to be black-ops, but cover your tracks so loosely that your ex-partner can just go have a chat with your contacts on a whim? Fuck, really? You're not even trying. And all of the "You're fired" "You're promoted." "You're demoted." "we're dating." "we're married." stuff happens so arbitrarily that it displays a cartoonishly simple understanding of how the world works, much more than Anarchy. )

Namdrol on 4/4/2010 at 20:17

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Part of the problem was I watched SOA straight off the back of binging on the complete Sopranos, so it paled but yes it's better than most (which unfortunately doesn't say a lot) and I am wanting 3 so we get to know what happens.
I was away from all media for 4 years till last May and Dexter 1 and 2 was the first thing I watched, so I'm biased and yes, they couldn't decide if they were making a comedy or a drama and till just before the end of 4 it had really started to drag but I do stand by it being a good show. ( I really hope they've got the stones to take that ending and run with it)
I've got the Wire sat here waiting right now but just haven't the time to commit for the next couple of months. (I'll just cane it till it's gone so am staying away)

Rug Burn Junky on 5/4/2010 at 00:11

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12 episodes, 50 minutes each, so about 10 hours a season, 40 hours total. I actually did it in under a week, and piled on the first two seasons of Breaking Bad at the same time (7 & 13 episodes, 40 minutes each, about 12 hours total).

Let's just say that I'm still blessed with a lot of time on my hands at the moment (I was also bedridden with a cold for two days that week).

Well, like I said earlier, it's possible for schlock to be enjoyable. There are some things that Dexter does well in spite of itself, and it keeps it entertaining in a mindless sort of way. Not everything I read is literature, not everything I eat is haute cuisine, and not everything I watch is high quality. Sometimes you really just want to sit back with a cheeseburger and a copy of Maxim.

Plus, there's the fact that I'm a bit of an OCD completionist once I start a serial. It's very rare that I won't at least see it through the first season. The only notable exception is Weeds, which I find suffered from too many of the Showtime flaws (see also: Dead Like Me).