2007 TV Season

I meant to write on this weeks ago, but somehow it seems appropriate waited. You know, because we've come that much farther into the season and the industry is facing a writers' strike. Or maybe it seems apt to me because now I understand the shows better and have begun to see--or think I see--where they're going. Ironically, given that I'm a media educator, I get only two channels: NBC and PBS. So the title of this entry is rather misleading; it should be NBC's 2007 Season. Oh, well. Right from the start, when I first heard about the line-up, I was immediately struck by the number of science fiction or comic book shows. No, none of them are directly adapted from comic books, but they are like comic books. Or science fiction. Witness Monday night: Chuck, Heroes, Journeyman. Witness Wednesday night's big show: Bionic Woman. And even Phenomenon, the magician's game show, could be considered science fiction. ("What do you mean? Magic isn't real?!") Oh, and let me be clear here: I like science fiction and comic books. I don't use those labels in a derogatory way.

I'm sure some of you are thinking, Chuck? How is that science fiction? Well, let's see: A guy becomes a spy after an uncountable number of images enter his brain via an e-mail; he sees certain things subconsciously and his brain flashes on images from the database, then he suddenly knows and can explain connections and plots. Hm. Sounds like SF and a comic book to me, especially when you add the larger sort of conspiracy stuff and the sense of humor. It even has a ridiculously attractive superspy female lead (who could almost have stepped from the pages of a superhero comic except that her proportions are anatomically possible).

So on to Heroes. For a full commentary on the first season, see my capsule review from September. I find the quality of this season a little lower than last, but they still do cliffhanging fantastically well and the expanding plot and plot twists continue to suck me in. I do not have the problem with the increasing number of heroes that some people have, but I tend to like sprawling storylines. Clearly, this is the stuff of comic books. I've made that case in detail below, but just, well, consider the premise: superpowered humans whose abilities come from genetic mutation. Hm.

Journeyman? Dan Vassar is a time traveler. 'Nuff said? (And if you get the reference, I owe you a cyber kewpie doll.) I'm not sure if the show is better because it has the family conflict/strife that arises from Dan's inability to control his traveling, but it adds to viewership, I'm sure. (And I love when the son sees his dad disappear, never mind the later "It's cool, Dad" conversation. "You're magic." Okay, maybe I'm a sucker now that I'm a daddy, but that one almost brought a tear to my eye. Maybe 'cause it's like when Elias looks up at me with big brown eyes and says, "Daddy, you're my hero.") Anyway.... Dan Vassar is a newspaper journalist who, in the first episode, finds out he can travel through time. Throughout that first episode, through a series of events, he finds out that each time he travels, he tracks a specific individual; he has some kind of wrong to right regarding that person. In this way, the show follows in the footsteps of earlier shows like Voyagers! (1982–1983) and Quantum Leap (1989–1993). In those shows, however, the protagonists knew they had to fix things, and they had tools or other characters to help them figure out the specific mission of each episode. In Journeyman, Dan has to figure out each mission on his own. There is another traveler, a character tied to his own past, but she doesn't exactly help--well, not usually. As of last week, the series seems to be on the verge of revealing or exploring a deeper plotline, an underlying conspiracy or direction. Dan and the other traveler have been realizing that they are sent or called each time they travel, but the writers have not yet had them expore the deeper meaning of why or who is doing the calling or sending. This is pure comic book stuff--time travel, mission, larger hidden agenda.... Further, there are complications: Dan's brother Jack, a cop, worries that Dan is endangering his family and falling again under the sway of his gambling addiction. This has led to some other law enforcement officials taking a closer look at Dan. As they say, the plot thickens.

And then there's Bionic Woman. It doesn't get much more comic book-y than this. This is a remimagining of the 1976–1978 TV show, which itself was a spinoff from The Six-Million-Dollar Man TV show (1974–1978) starring Lee Majors. In the first episode, Jaime, a bartender who has taken on guardianship of her younger sister, gets in a car accident, nearly dies, and wakes up bionic. There is much conflict around how this happens and around her adjustment to her new reality. The organization behind her transformation is called the Berkut Group, "a clandestine paramilitary group devoted to protecting the world from rogue organizations working to prevent the end of civilization as we know it." Yep, that's the line, said by the group's head, Jonas (Miguel Ferrer, putting his goofy-creepy persona to work very aptly), to Jaime just after our hero has had, let's say, a bit too much to drink. The rest of the dialogue is as follows. Jonas: "So are you in, or are you out?" Jaime: "I'm definitely out. Now I gotta throw up." Well, of course, she's not out. After all, we need a show. Jaime joins, reluctantly--and what's better than a reluctant superhero--and soon faces Berkut's first bionic woman (Katee Sackhoff, better known as Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, another reimagining), among numerous other foes. This show is part Alias and part Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's entertaining enough, but it has none of Alias's abiding charm nor any of Buffy's mad language skills and precious little of its sense of irony; and Michelle Ryan is no Jennifer Garner or even Sarah Michelle Gellar. As one friend said to me, It's just not campy enough.

So NBC alone has four shows revolving around science fiction concepts or in the style of comic books. Why is this? What is it in our culture and at this time that makes the networks (well, this network) believe that these kinds of shows will be successful? For that matter, each actually seems to be successful--Heroes is in it second season, and the others have become water-cooler fodder around the country. Sure, sure, there are other reasons for their success--Chuck is a comedy, with its mismatched lovers, high geek cred, marvelously psychopathic CIA operative (Adam Baldwin from Firefly), and superdorky sidekick; Heroes is episodic and filled with beautiful people; Journeyman has a focus on the family that likely draws in viewers who might not otherwise be fans of a show with this premise; Bionic Woman has, well, hot chicks in action (no, I don't mean to be sexist; I'm speaking to a certain image and a certain demographic). But at base, they are all comic book shows. I can't imagine that these shows would have succeeded ten years ago. What is going on in the world now that makes them popular? As a fan of these kinds of shows, I'm glad; I enjoy the heck outta these programs. As a media educator, I have to wonder.

(Images: Heroes c2007 NBC Universal Pictures/Tailwind Productions; Chuck c2007 Warner Bros./College Hill Pictures; Journeyman c2007 20th Century Fox/NBC; Bionic Woman c2007 NBC Universal Television)

Anniversary Adulation? (9/11)

When I got to school that same day (September 11), I decided to revisit an exercise (for my Media Literacy course) relating to the 9-11 attacks. We worked on that, but then I found myself exploring a tangent, internally. It seems that the United States (and maybe other western cultures) have a preoccupation (I almost wrote "obsession") with anniversaries: 9-11, Pearl Harbor, various civil rights events, the list goes on. Some of these anniversaries are commemorated with national holidays; some are not. But I began to wonder why. Why are we so interested in anniversaries, and why do the media support or even initiate these commemorations? (And how about that word "commemoration" anyway?) I don't mean to make a value judgment or question the validity of these anniversaries, just ask the question. As I had heard those radio moments, I had wondered, Why are all these shows noting this anniversary? Is it what the listeners want? Is it what the producers think the listeners want? How often are the producers (of any given show or movie) wrong about what the listeners or viewers want? As I listened, and as I noticed news in print or on the Internet about other anniversary commemorations relating to the 9-11 attacks, part of me thought the whole thing rather maudlin. I mean, I was there in New York City that day; friends of mine were endangered; I will never forget. But I didn't lose anyone in the attacks in New York or on the Pentagon or on that field in Pennsylvania. I merely shared in the communal grief and loss that so many millions of us experienced (and continue to experience). So I expect it's different for those with a closer connection. And who decides how many anniversaries should be commemmorated, or with what frequency? When do we stop noting the anniversary? Or stop making events around such a date? For 9-11, there was a big thing last year, on the fifth anniversary, but judging by newspaper accounts, the sixth-year anniversary wasn't much smaller. I remember a huge 50th anniversary event (or set of events) around D-Day. But then the 60th was a big deal, too. So for whom are these anniversaries held? For whom are the events put on? Are they just part of the media circus? Or are they satisfying a larger, deeper need? (Of course, I can surmise my own answers to some of these questions...) But then I'm the guy who sometimes questions why people "need a place to go to" in order to remember a loved one who has died. I don't judge others for needing it, but I wonder why. On a very personal level, my brother is buried in a cemetery in Addison, Maine, far from where I live, but I remember him in my own way, on my own time, and nowhere near that lovely resting place. Maybe the anniversaries serve a function that is similar, communally, on a large scale and individually, to that served by cemeteries.

A 9-11 Media Moment

On my way to work on the morning of September 11, I turned on my local morning talk show (which airs on the all-talk/sports station). A song was playing, and it went on much longer than the usual clip. As I listened to the lyrics--"Let's roll for freedom, let's roll for love"--I made the connection ("Let's roll") and remembered the date. The song seemed well-constructed, but the message seemed a bit too... something. I guess I felt it was feeding into celebration of those brave souls who fought against the hijackers on that fall day in 2001, as well as playing off of larger fear issues. It turned out to be by Neil Young. I was quite surprised that the man who brought us the ironic lines "We got a thousand points of light... for the homeless man/we got a kinder, gentler machine-gun hand" would present, maybe 14 years later, another song that is so... well, almost the opposite. In the earlier song, he was criticizing the presidency of the senior George Bush, using Bush’s famous inaugural speech ironically. The song ended, and there was no commentary. It seemed to be the closure on whatever they'd done for talk about 9/11.

I changed the channel and landed on the Free Beer and Hot Wings show, the generally sophomoric replacement for Imus on my local classic-rock station. Two men were debating the question of who was truly behind the attacks on September 11, 2001. One was the editor-in-chief of something called Skeptic magazine; he was putting forth an idea of conspiracy. The other fellow was on the other side, supporting the standard story (al-Qaeda, terrorists). Both were Ph.D.s. Both sounded reasonable and smart, at least up to a point. In about five minutes, however, neither fully addressed the other's points, and each engaged in some level of ad hominem attacks. The Skeptic fellow ended with commentary on the debris. Experts would have expected jet-fuel-caused collapse to result in 15 stories of debris; there were only about three. Also, there was a fine dust over Manhattan for days, and 1100 bodies were never recovered. Computers, furniture, steel, people had been vaporized, he said. So the causal mechanism (what a great phrase) had to be some higher-energy source. Then he made a leap--"probably something developed within the Star Wars program, something involving lasers, masers, or plasmoids [not sure about that last word]." That seemed to be a considerable leap of logic or faith. I’m not taking a stand here on the question of alternate possibilities regarding who and how these acts were perpetrated, just relating how this exchange struck me. And on the other side, the largest argument against conspiracy presented by the fellow supporting the standard story was that people can't keep their mouths shut--how would the truth not come out? He referenced the Lewinsky scandal and the Clinton impeachment--“There were only two involved in that event, and the story got out.” Again, this does not seem to me like clear and skillful debate. Rather intriguing for 15 minutes spent with radio personalities, no?

Were there official news cameras at this event?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaiWCS10C5s

To be fair, it's hard to tell what was going on at many stages. At first look, the young man was not being violent or disrupting the event. From what I could see, he had his turn at the mic, and he asked his questions vociferously but not entirely belligerently. I did not see him get tased--there were some flashes of light and some screams, and you can hear someone commenting on the taser before Meyer screams--nor could I see his actions once they had him in the back of the room. Any words or commands spoken by the police before dragging him away were unintelligible. Kerry, according to all reports, was willing to answer his question. And I did not see the young man physically attack or even verbally berate the police beyond asking, again vociferiously and eventually with profanity, what they were doing and why they were arresting him. I would hope that matters like this would be investigated. I expect it to drop off the news radar pretty much immediately, however, assuming it saw any coverage beyond Internet and local.

The Squid and the Whale: Opinionated Movie Comment #2

The Squid and the Whale, Jesse Eisenberg, David Benger, Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, William Baldwin; dir. Noah Baumbach
The Squid and the Whale, apparently based on the writer-director’s own past, presents the dissolution of a family. The father, Bernard (Daniels), is a once accomplished novelist; the mother, Joan (Linney), is a new novelist, and the older son, Walt, is not impressed. He is also not impressed with a number of other things he learns about Mom along the way. Walt (Eisenberg) is deeply under the thrall of Dad, to the extent of parroting his literary opinions about books that he himself has never read and defending Dad’s every action to his little brother, Pickle (Benger). Eisenberg, by the way, played the protagonist in Roger Dodger, as well as the youngest brother in the short-lived television series Get Real, and in this film he again allows his quiet rapidity to bring to life a pained teen groping awkwardly toward adulthood. David Benger, who plays Pickle, is one to watch; he gets some of the best lines and the ickiest and most painfully laugh-inducing subplot. But he never plays it dishonestly or obviously. It seems that Bernard and Joan loved each other deeply once, but life has had its way with them. As Linney says in the ancillary material, no one is entirely to blame, and no one is free of blame. That may just include the boys. Neither handles the split well, though the manifestations of their pain are very, very different. There’s not much more I can say without taking away from the film. So much of what I loved in this movie resides in the smallest of moments, a line here, a seemingly mundane act there. Deception, often of the self-directed kind, is a rule that all the family members seem to follow, though Mom is mostly honest with herself and sometimes painfully so—but not until forced—with her children. The use of music is subtle and pointed; like his producer, Wes Anderson, Baumbach has found small forgotten tunes and woven them neatly into his tapestry. Also like Anderson, Baumbach merges absurdity (watch Pickle—ew) with verisimilitude; at one point in the film, I wondered if it was in fact directed by Anderson (and here I’m thinking of films like Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, not the later Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic, which Baumbach co-wrote). This director doesn’t cop Anderson’s style, but there is a definite similarity of atmosphere. The Squid and the Whale is more real (though not necessarily more true) than Anderson’s works, and for some this film will be hard to watch. It could easily strike too close to home. There’s a lot right with this movie, and almost nothing wrong. Baumbach and company have created a painful and almost real portrayal of a family in distress—or is that in crisis? (image copyright Squid and Whale Inc., 2005)

Bias: Book Critic at Play #2

Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How Media Distorts the News, by Bernard Goldberg
Goldberg was a CBS News reporter and, later, correspondent, for twenty-eight years. In 1996, he wrote published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he pointed out that the mainstream news media (CBS specifically, but also NBC and ABC) had a liberal bias. This op-ed touched off a firestorm, and everyone from Dan Rather and his producer on down to the lowliest newsroom staffer was either extremely angry (betrayed) by Goldberg’s act or at the very least pretended not to know him. How dare he? Goldberg says that he had done the worst thing possible, and he relates some extremely outrageous comments from Rather (whom he calls The Dan and speaks of as a godfather character whose words mean the very opposite of what they seeem to mean) and from Andrew Heyward, the CBS Evening News producer (who, when Goldberg said he had not pointed out in the editorial that Heyward had often agreed with Goldberg that there is a liberal bias, said “That would have been like raping my wife and kidnapping my kids!”). Goldberg’s editorial, which is reproduced in the appendix, criticizes a “Reality Check” segment by a reporter named Eric Engberg, in which then-presidential candidate Steve Forbes’s flat tax is referred to as “wacky” (among other things), and uses that segment as a springboard for pointing out the media’s liberal bias. His criticism of the segment is deserved, and the piece is fairly well-written. In the beginning of the book, which he wrote five years later, after weathering the storm and staying with CBS long enough to earn his pension (a fact he shares late in the book), he goes in-depth with this thesis—but only after some seriously sensationalistic tale-telling. If you can get past the News Mafia conceit, there is some interesting critique. Goldberg points out that the bias is not as simple as giving democrats a pass and grilling republicans (good, because we know that the media doesn’t do either of those things). He suggest that it is insidious, and thus harder to fight. The example he uses at first—and the strongest example he has to offer—lies in how the news anchors label those they bring into the studio for comment. Conservatives are labeled as such (conservative think-tank such and such); liberals are just identified by job title (NOW president so and so). This is a valid point, I think. I have noticed anchors say something like “and for a comment from the right, here’s…” and not introduce left-wingers as clearly (or identify them at all). Goldberg suggests that this is because the media elites (as he calls them—shades of Ann Coulter, or maybe her rhetoric features shades of Bernard Goldberg) don’t see liberals as liberal—they see the liberal viewpoint as simply… reasonable (his italics). His point, ultimately, is that the media elites are liberals and they allow their personal perspectives to color how they present the news. Well, all right. Let’s grant that for a moment. This muckraking whistleblower then makes some interesting leaps: the country is vastly conservative; network heads are liberal; working mothers are the cause of many of society’s ills. I question the first; I believe we are mostly centrist at heart. Or rather we want what we want; we want personal satisfaction, and if others don’t get in the way of that, we don’t much care what they’re up to. The idea that network heads are liberal is… entertaining, especially when Goldberg himself points out that the moment news began to go wrong, to lose its integrity, its willingness to tackle new issues, is when network heads realized that news could make money. So he connects the dots from money to content choices, but still blames the media elites’ liberalism for their softheadedness. Further, he claims that he is criticizing liberal bias, and he even asks some good questions about why certain stories are left untold, but parts of the book are criticisms not of media but of human behavior and life choices (daycare is a big one). Goldberg may have a point about media bias, but it’s buried in a whole lot of anger and political bias of his very own. (book cover c Perennial Library, 2003)

Heroes (Season 1): Terrific Television #1

Heroes (television series), Season 1, huge ensemble cast, assorted directors
Just maybe the best new TV series of 2006–2007. I say maybe because I’ve really only seen new shows on NBC—so what? Studio 60, Brothers Donnelly, 30 Rock? Heroes wins. Hands down. A near-perfect-pitch comic book show not based on a comic book. Even the “To Be Continued” at the end of each ep is properly lettered. And on that topic, this is one aspect of the show that makes it stand out: its structure. Like the serial films of old, like some 1950s TV, each episode ends with a cliffhanger. This sort of episodic storytelling is nearly foreign in television today. It adds to the unusual nature of this viewing experience, and it shows a sort of daring on the part of the producers. To watch this show, you have to really watch--devotedly and regularly; one episode missed, and you're lost. In the imagined world of Heroes, some humans have reached the next step in genetic development. They have powers beyond those of mortal men. Sometimes, these powers are mundane; sometimes, they are history-changing. The first season seems to be mostly about discovery (though there is also the mission: to prevent an explosion from devastating New York City): Wow, I have these powers, now what the hell do I do with them? And how in hell do I control them? If I’m counting right, there are nine major characters—yeah, nine, one of them a sidekick. Add the geneticist (and dig the name: Mohinder Suresh; that’s just cool) and the super-powered villain (and a very bad villain he is), mix in the mob boss manipulator, and you have some damned fine serial television for the comic book set. Naturally, I love it. Perhaps not so naturally, so does my wife. Appointment television is back.) From a media perspective, this raises questions of theme and content. This could not have aired successfully even probably five years ago. What has changed that a show of this nature can be such a huge hit? Is its success solely the result of the growing acceptance and profitability of comic book movies in the mainstream? Maybe, but some have pointed recently to the success of TV shows, particularly Smallville, the reimagining of the Superman myth, which tracks Clark Kent/Kal-El in his youth in smalltown Kansas. (For the record, I've seen only the first season of that show, and it was quite good, but very different from Heroes.) I think the success may actually have something to do with themes: at the center of the show is the fact that these superpowered beings are hiding; some are good, and some are bad; what would happen if their existence became known? This is subtext, until the episode that takes our cast five years into the future. By then, their existence has become known to the public, and they are being registered, tracked, and sometimes eliminated by the human government (which is using superpowered being to hunt other superpowered beings). The word "terrorist" is even used--and hence the subtlety is gone, but we often need to be slapped in the face with themes. In this way, the show harks back to the X-Men comics of the mid-1980s, which had at their core issues of racism, prejudice, and questions about combatting those negative elements of human nature. Still thinking about media and its treatment, I'm surprised I haven't seen commentary on the violent nature of Heroes. It is, at base, a comic book, so it's not surprising that violence is often the problem and the solution to the problem. There are parts that are quite bloody, not Saw or Quentin Tarantino bloody--you still can't do that on television--but fairly bloody for network television. (Now that I think about it, the use of blood and gore is probably not above the level of the average Law & Order or CSI episode...) In some cases, might seems to make right, but then there is surprising depth. The internal journey of Hiro Nakamura (who can bend time and space, and whose dialogue and storyline contain much of the humor of the early eps) is about growth, coming of age, facing inner demons and doubts. His is not the "powers for good or evil" conflict faced by so many comic book heroes (cf. X-Men and Spider-Man to name but two); he knows he is a hero, he will be a hero--he just doesn't know quite how to get there. He may well be the moral compass of the show, and he is a marvelous hero for geeks everywhere.

Stranger Than Fiction: Opinionated Movie Comment #1

Stranger Than Fiction, Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emma Thompson, Queen Latifah, Dustin Hoffman; dir. Marc Forster
This is not your mother’s Will Ferrell. Well, more aptly, it’s not my brother’s Will Ferrell. If you know Ferrell only from his stereotype-based parodying of the American male, do yourself a favor and pick up this movie. Imagine: You are a workaday shlub, even worse, and IRS agent whose life is all about numbers. Imagine that one day, as you are brushing your teeth (39 strokes back and forth, 39 strokes up and down—or maybe that’s 38), you suddenly hear a voice. Not voices; a voice. Imagine that you soon discover that someone is narrating your life. Are you crazy? Maybe. But no, it seems that someone is actually narrating Harold Crick’s life. And death. “Little did Harold know that at that moment he marked his impending death.” (Okay, that’s not the exact line, and Zach Helm is a better writer than I.) Ferrell delivers not broad comedy, not slapstick, but satire, a postmodern narrative of love (Gyllenhaal, who has a beauty that rises from inside, plays an anarchic baker who pays only the portion of her taxes that will go to social services and other good stuff) and life, of moments seized and stolen, of nobility by accident or at least by surprise. His Harold Crick may just go down as one of fiction's (or at least filmdom's) great reluctant heroes. Of course, the other acting talents don’t hurt, the story is utterly absorbing, and the direction, at first gimmicky, is just what the story needs (watch the use of CGI charts and scientific-seeming numbers and notations). I laughed, a lot, and I nearly cried, at least twice. Oh, and the excitement for the art of storytelling evidenced by the director and the writer—never mind the actors—is nearly palpable. I mean, who makes a joke that depends on the line, “That’s called third-person omniscient”?

Book Critic at Play #1

American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang
This graphic novel is outstanding in all ways: art, plot, story, dialogue, themes… It’s about assimilation, it’s about growing up, it’s about time and place. As I was reading it, I was unsure. Once I finished, I wasn’t sure if it all really worked. I’m still not sure it all merges perfectly, but I am sure that I am impressed--and I would recommend this work to those who are already interested in the form and to those who aren’t. As graphic novels continue to grow in depth and acceptance, I keep thinking about a course and how it might all hang together: historicity, time and place, coming of age…. Maus was probably the first to break out into the mainstream, to show those outside nerddom what comics can really do, but it clearly is not the last. But back to this work…. There are three alternating story sets: isolated tales of the Monkey King (a monkey chieftain who becomes a god almost by sheer dint of will); anecdotes from the life of Jin Wang, a San Francisco-born Chinese boy, who grows from probably 9 to high school age through the course of the story; and the cringe-inducing visits of Chin-Kee, the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype, to his oddly WASPy looking cousin, Danny. These last tales have a laugh track, so the author is clearly up to something here. Somehow, these three sets of tales do in fact come together at the end (and you’ll be wondering the whole time not only if but why), and it is then that the themes are driven home. Jin is a wonderful character--troubled, compassionate, selfish, often lost, reacting in deeply human ways to his heart’s desires--and the dialogue is alternately heart-wrenching and funny. Yang knows what he’s doing, and we should look forward to more from this gifted writer-artist.