Why TV evolves differently
Why American TV Shows Suck and How We’re to Blame
Most of the time
Hi, I’m Joe and I’m a TV addict.
It’s something I am neither proud of nor ashamed of — just something I have become over the last 60 odd years. I watch television.
I watched The Dick Van Dyke Show, when it was in black & white and mostly had one commercial sponsor — Kent Cigarettes.
I hummed the theme music to Bonanza, Combat, Wanted Dead or Alive, and scores of others as I grew up and matured while continuing under the spell of the little box in my living room.
So, I know TV.
I know good shows and bad shows and ones that appeared Frankenstein like — with bits & pieces of past shows put together in the hopes that the viewing audience wouldn’t notice.
I always did.
When the TV world changed.
I liked TV because of the words.
Yeah, I know, the images were cool.
Clint Eastwood on a horse or a wagon or with his arms wrapped around an actress bathed in desert heat was always interesting.
But the words put me into a different space. Into a better present, the distant past, and perhaps most excitingly — into the future.
That’s when Star Trek came onto the scene and blew my mind.
You see, 1966 did not start off as a very good year for me.
I lost my father during the summer and got to spend my vacation days feeling alone, lost, and in need of distraction.
I found it on September 8, 1966, when Star Trek first aired.
It was unique and near perfect and grabbed hold of both my shoulders and shook me until the anger and sadness started to fall away and I was bathed in the light of possibilities.
I was on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise and I was heading into space.
Not just around the globe, dodging satellites but to worlds unseen and unimagined.
Planets lightyears away and traveling to them in the time it took my family to drive to New Jersey.
Now that was amazing shit and I was in heaven.
It showed me that TV could be more than bang-bang.
More than barroom fights or perfect families, I could never recognize as real, living lives that were as alien to me as the soon-to-be-seen aliens on Star Trek.
It told me that greatness was possible even if the special effects weren’t all that good.
Because the stories were; those words were at it again.
The Bar was set — whether we realized it or not.
Star Trek may just have been the pinnacle of American television.
Not in terms of nothing since being any better, but that it set a standard for excellence that was often matched but never exceeded.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve watched some great TV shows and mini-series that were as good as anything on the big screen.
The Sopranos come to mind. Deadwood and the original Law & Order. Cheers and Seinfeld, Friends, and a few other sit-coms that rose to that peak and stayed there for a while.
TV content like fast food.
But when I fast forward to 2022, I feel the weight of ennui dragging me down.
I see the last two decades, not as a journey of development and reaching for a new set of stars but as treating TV content like fast food.
Overly processed, pre-packaged, cleverly marketed and delivered straight to our homes.
Last season I got to watch (briefly, one must taste everything, even if just a little) nine TV shows from the “pen” of Dick Wolf, the creator of the original Law & Order, and the 17 genetically similar shows that were spawned by it.
Were they all really bad? No, definitely not.
They just weren’t very good. Not because they couldn’t be.
Not because the actors couldn’t act.
But because too often the writers and producers and those hovering above, grind all creative impulses and potentially great ideas, into a formula that produces TV shows like loaves of bread.
Not too hot, not too cold, just right.
The other end of the rainbow.
So, I drifted across the seas to Europe and the UK and got to watch actors that looked a lot like me.
Got to see relationships being formed between people that were actually born before 1975.
Got to enjoy storylines that were not just about terrorists or serial killers, or terrorists posing as serial killers. But about people.
People whose lives veered off course.
Who lost faith, lost hope, found them again thanks to others, and redeemed themselves.
But not always. Some just died or walked away. Sun setting on a life they never really got the hang of.
But that’s alright, not all good stories have good endings.
Some people die like they do in real life. Some laugh while doing it —in a car flying off a cliff.
Others go quietly in the arms of another or on a lonely stretch of road at night when no one is there to say goodbye.
I also found that outside of America, there wasn’t an abiding belief that whatever worked one time had the potential to work again and again and again.
Forgive me Law & Order, but you do make for a good example.
L & O begot upwards of five different series over the years, all retooling the basic formula that worked.
I loved the original show. But it became too much like making chocolate chip cookies with an endless assortment of added ingredients.
Everybody loves them so let’s keep mixing things up until someone yells stop.
NCIS did the same thing, expanding to LA, New Orleans, Hawaii, and as I read recently, on to Australia.
F.B.I. became F.B.I Most Wanted and F.B.I. International. I heard F.B.I. Interplanetary was in the works. (Just kidding.)
The problem.
The problem as I see it and I honestly believe I do see it, is that shows that are created or more precisely “bred” from the same stock over and over again, statistically have a greater chance of producing offspring that are weaker than the parent.
Even if the networks believe that these shows stand a better chance of surviving because they are familiar to us.
They become less interesting and more derivative and over time, if the formula is repeated, likely to produce even poorer new shows and so go the ratings.
And our interest and viewership along with it.
Which speaks to why streaming services, cable (HBO), and other platforms are pushing primetime TV stats down and down. But that’s a separate story.
Let’s do it again — with feeling.
Show of hands — how many readers thought Rocky V was as good as the original Rocky?
How many thought Batman was better than, well, Batman?
How many watched Keanu Reeves in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still and thought it better than the original one made in 1951? I didn’t.
No offense Keanu, but the original story, had the newness of the concept, the real threat of nuclear weapons in 1951, and come on -
— Klaatu — Barada- Nikto — just can’t be compared with modern CGI at $80,000,000.
American movies and TV, the real Hollywood Movies that the world clamors for are good.
Maybe great when viewed from production values and attention to detail.
They are cinematic, action-packed, powerfully rendered and to often as predictable as a day at Disney Land.
And then there’s why.
Since the year 2008 (according to Wikipedia) there have been 29 movies produced from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
This doesn’t count those made from DC Comics or the umpteen different versions of Superman produced since 1978.
The point again — American TV and Movies keep dipping into the same well.
The same creative juices.
The same scripts — rewriting them for a 2022 audience instead of the 1972 one that originally saw the first version.
Each time a remake or a reboot or a re-reboot is made, some part of the original story, the original energy, power, and uniqueness is lost. Hell, it’s near-beaten to death.
And yet they keep on coming. Why?
Money.
Those 29 movies made from the Marvel Cinematic Universe cost (my guesstimate) about $4.5 billion to make, not counting marketing costs, merchandising, et al.
They earned 7 to 10 times that, but who’s counting?
So, when it comes time to greenlight a new movie, a new promising brainchild from an aspiring writer or filmmaker, even those who won at Sundance or Cannes, who gets the $150,000,000 or $5,000,000 — the sixth iteration of Dr. Strange or Thor or a wonderfully written coming of age story set in Brooklyn in the 1940s?
Here comes number 30.
The inevitable, unless . . .
The more we watch these movies at the theaters and leave the others for Netflix or Britbox; and the more we turn on Channel 2 or 7 and watch the newest from Mr. Wolf and others, the less likely the powers that be will invest in the unknown.
The TV show Quantum Leap aired in 1989 with Scott Bakula in the lead— a cool show, something new and interesting — back then.
There’s now a 2022 version about to air. Why?
Why bring an old, even if good concept back for another go?
Nothing else interesting came through the creative door this year?
Or was it money and fear?
Why risk $1-$2-$3 million developing something unknown but promising, when you can dip into that back lot well again and bring back something that worked before?
After all the viewing audience won’t notice or care.
They spend half the time on their cell phones anyway.
Dr Mehmet Yildiz George J. Ziogas Rebecca Romanelli Linda Caroll Jenine "Jeni" Bsharah Baines James Knight Stuart Englander