thepopculturelife

It’s not easy being a TV series anymore. Why? Because an audience is a fickle mistress. She’ll think you owe her something just because she’s read the book you’re based on. She’ll think she’s smarter than you just because she’s seen The Wire. She’ll think she’s better than you because she’ll say its your job to entertain her, not her job to understand you, and ultimately she’ll think she doesn’t need you because NCIS is on in half an hour.

So why bother? Well because sometimes you might just find the one. The one who will send over 20 tons of nuts to CBS headquarters to keep you on the air for just seven more episodes (Jericho), the one who will pay over $5 million out of their own pocket to see you reach the big screen (Veronica Mars), the one who will form conventions and reunions and follow your universe into comic books, video games and novels long after you’re dead (every single Joss Whedon show) and as seen in the lecture (Morris 2013), the one who will lose their job, blow off their friends and harass complete strangers all in the hope of just seeing one more episode. Every TV series needs their soul mate, their fan-base who will stick with them through thick and thin. The fan-base that will only be disappointed in a misplaced plotline or character arc because they know how much better it can be. They will not turn away or switch off, they will be supportive and hopefully see their baby grow into the behemoth and cultural phenomenon that they know it can be.

What better example to discuss then than HBOs True Blood, the most shamelessly ridiculous show that year after year keeps getting sillier but continues to draw some of HBOs biggest ratings and most loyal fans. I’ve been with the show since it started, and I’m still here six years later on the hook for some of the most ludicrous television I’ve ever seen. So why am I still here? To answer this we have to first ask why I started watching it in the first place. Once upon a time, back in 2008 when I was far too young to be watching it, I tuned into the pilot and witnessed the start of something. I didn’t really know what it was but there was an interesting premise, cool characters, gorgeous cinematography, epic violence and a lot, and I mean a lot of sex. Basically I was hooked. Over the years, I believed it to be suspenseful, surprising and really top-notch TV and week after week for 12 weeks every year I would keep coming back for more. This is the True Blood experience that its fan-base enjoys.

However, watching the episode “I Will Rise Up” this week from Season 2 (cited in Morris 2013), I’ve just now realized how biased this experience is. Out of context and out of sync with the big picture that the season was drawing, I could finally see True Blood for what it really is. I’ve always enjoyed the show with a grain of salt, and as a self-confessed Truebie i’m not blind to its flaws. But when watching an episode at random, and the arc-based narrative goggles are off, oh my god is this show stupid. For a newcomer to the show to watch this episode and to have to follow a plot thread where “Meanwhile across town, Jessica and Hoyt are dealing with the fallout of realizing that as an immortal virgin she has a regenerative hymen” (I mean really? this is quality television?), it must seem like an outlandish piece of trash. As fans, we can simply just forgive and forget (I know I did), and idealise the journey we’ve been on.

True Blood is a heightened experience, everything is over the top and it doesn’t apologize for it. As a fan who’s been watching since the pilot I can still harken back to the interesting premise, the cool characters and the sleek look, and to date it remains the top dog in the “southern gothic-fantasy-horror-romance-comedy-drama” hybrid genre. But the secret to its success I think, doesn’t lie in its separate parts, but in its evolution from interesting premise to outlandish execution without losing anyone along the way.

References:

Morris, B 2013, Week 6 – Matters of Taste, PowerPoint Slides, RMIT University, Melbourne

So apparently the golden age of television is upon us. I really wish someone had told me and I would have tivo’d it. Was it on a monday night at 7:30 that the golden age of television happened? What about the silver age? or the bronze age? and can I just ask where we’re drawing these lines? The medium has certainly undergone structural changes over the past 10 years, no doubt, but does a different kind of entertainment necessarily mean a better one?

From the way the screening of Hollywood: The Rise of Television Series (cited in Morris 2013) discussed television in the new century, it implied that all of a sudden TV had become something more than what it had previously been capable of. It had begun telling stories that mere episodes weren’t capable of doing justice to as entire seasons had started to be far more cohesive.  As a result, people aren’t tuning into a show to watch episodes anymore, they’re tuning into the entire series. Personally, I didn’t realise that this shift had taken place until it was too late. My engagement with television was initially with reruns that were watched out of context. But this didn’t stop me from enjoying the hell out of shows like Moonlighting, Lois & Clark, and Friends without knowing what the series arc was. This is what television used to be capable of, mindless entertainment that you could take or leave without needing anything more to appreciate it. But when I started watching TV like Buffy the Vampire Slayer I could no longer simply tune into scheduled programming on a whim, I now had to schedule my life around my favourite shows. While Buffy might not be the best example of long-form narrative, (at the age of 11, The Sopranos was a little bit beyond me), even I could tell that I wasn’t coming back for just the next episode, I was just never leaving as there was no way I could simply turn the box off and forget about where these characters and stories were heading.

This it seems is where the newfound “golden age” can set itself apart. Television today is addictive, an episode can’t just be watched and forgotten about and DVD releases and online access mean that getting into series’ from the ground up is easier than ever. However, it also means that television is no longer meant to be experienced the way that it used to be. Stories are still defining what we tune into week in and week out but it’s no longer a question of “what crazy adventures will the gang get into this week?” but instead “how has the previous episodes events taken their toll on our troubled hero?”.  Now, is this really a better form of storytelling? Is it even television as television was defined in its inception?

As made evident in the screening, big names, big budgets, high energy and high patience for long-form narrative has meant a drastic overhaul in what people have come to expect from entertainment. But this is not a  story of one day everything changed and we entered a brave new world. No, this has been a long and stretched out evolution over the course of many shows that just kept raising the bar a little bit higher for what people could expect from their little black box.

In his book titled The Revolution was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers that changed TV drama forever (2012), Alan Sepinwall singles out 12 series that are indicative of the supposed new age of television; The Sopranos. Oz. The Wire. Deadwood. The Shield. Lost. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 24. Battlestar Galactica. Friday Night Lights. Mad Men. Breaking Bad. What he does not do however is discuss them as if they are of an inherent better quality than those that came before it. In fact, he discusses this idea of the ‘golden age’ of television as something that we have perhaps already moved away from and forgotten about. The golden age was a time of episodic television that did not require anything of its audience, it was an easy and simple time. Now our shows demand attention and respect for the boundaries they push and the stories they tell, as they constantly go further than any that have come before. We are indeed in a new era, but to call it a golden age is, I think, to miss the point entirely.

References

Morris, B 2013, Week 1: Introduction to TV Cultures, PowerPoint Slides, RMIT University, Melbourne

Sepinwall, A 2012, The Revolution was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers that changed TV drama forever, Kindle Edition, Self-published, eBook