2013 TV Year in Review: The Bad

As much as I enjoyed the year's TV lineup, I don't want it to seem like it was all good on the small screen. Per usual, there were a number of shows that simply didn't make the cut. So let's talk about them.

The Newbies:

I don't think anything proved to be a bigger waste of time on a weekly basis than Fox's The Following. I'd be shocked if any new series in 2013 had a bigger PR push leading up to the pilot. It seemed to have everything going for it. From Kevin Bacon making his debut as a TV leading man, to James Purefoy being fun and menacing, to the always preferable 13 episode season. And yet so much was missing or just lacking. The love story was pathetic and unbelievable, the multiple disciples Carroll had, all in exactly the place he needed them to be, strained credulity so much it was
laughable, the show never really deigned to show us exactly what it was about Carroll that made him so appealing and charismatic to these people in the first place, and so many things happened on a weekly basis simply because the plot required them to. Generally, when a story has plot elements that seem to come out of no where and have no basis in reality, it's because the writers haven't thought out their characters well enough for their decisions and failings or successes to seem organic. After the 6 episodes I watched (and 6/13 hours is more than enough to gauge a series in my opinion), the writers' sheer lack of clarity on who these characters were was obvious.

But just as bad as all that was The Following's pointless and egregious use of violence. As premium and even just cable shows continue to get more and more popular and more and more critical acclaim, basic cable has found itself in a position to ask what it is that sets these series apart from their own. As opposed to looking at the confidence and crispness of these shows' storytelling, it looks like Fox has decided it's just about the lax Standards and Practices these channels are allowed to employ on their programming. So the writers of The Following decided to cram in a lot of pointless and gratuitous violence and never understood that the presence of violence alone is meaningless without some kind of stakes behind it. 

In the end, The Following is a show of almost-but-not-quite. The Poe foundation could have been nice if the series actually seemed to know anything at all about Edgar Allan Poe beyond what has been made sensationalized over the years. The love triangle between the two not-so-gay guys and the cute androgynous psychopath would have been nice if the show actually understood the complexities of human sexuality instead of wanting to deal with it like a child who thinks kissing adults are funny and mysterious. And I say all of this acknowledging that enough people seemed to continue watching The Following to warrant Fox giving it a second season which starts soon, so maybe I'm the minority here (I actually know I'm not), but everything about this show reeked of bad storytelling tropes.

The other big deal new comer that fell horribly flat was Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I've already detailed my feelings about the first 7 episodes here, so there's not much more to say on the subject;

my thoughts haven't changed as the series has rounded out the 11th hour. But more importantly, after almost a full season by certain standards, AOS hasn't gotten any better and I've finally lost all desire to watch.

Possibly the most disappointing, if not outright offensive, thing the show has done thus far was to come out of hiatus with a huge campaign about finally giving answers on the Coulson mystery only to not deliver with the episode in question. Some light was shed on the issue, the story took a miniscule step forward, but the question of what actually happened to Agent Coulson still hasn't been answered. And the scant, pseudo-answer the episode provided did nothing to inspire me to even want to find out what the real answer is. So with all of the promise in the world, with the same team that was behind Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog leading the way, and with all of the might of Marvel's cinematic universe behind it, AOS turns out to be a bust. C'est la vie.

The Favorites?:

Forever proving that a series doesn't have to be new out of the gate to be a disappointment, last year saw a couple shows that simply couldn't get their shit together long enough to prove to be worth watching any longer.

Dexter had the unenviable job of trying to wrap up a series that had long outlived its usefulness in a lot of ways. This is a point upon which I certainly think I am in the minority, but while Dexter hadn't been great in many years, I don't think it reached a point of being fully unwatchable until it's final

season. Nothing the show has done since it's fourth season (which was a solid four years ago mind you) has been "good," but I don't think anything they did forced viewers to give up on the show en masse. And then there was Hannah McKay.

If there was one mistake Dexter made over the years, (and trust me there were many) it was in not understanding who their main character really was and trying to force more traditional TV storylines onto him. Dexter isn't the type of person to need or even really want a relationship. His whole thing with Rita was invented out of necessity and convenience, but somewhere along the line the show forgot that important fact and decided they wanted Dex to be a normal guy who just sometimes kills people. As a result we get characters like Hannah who have no purpose beyond being a love interest for a character who shouldn't have any more love interests. The character never really functions or gets off the ground in any serious fashion and as such she never really works.

On top of that, the show never really figured out what it wanted to do with the presence of Dexter's son, Harrison, so they invent an excuse to pawn him off on a number of equally useless nannies and baby sitters to justify daddy going off all night to murder people. Again it's an example of the show forcing events to fit the plot instead of developing organically. And with the opportunity to make Harrison into Dexter 2.0 given his experience with Rita's death, it's impossible to look at the route the show ended up choosing as being anything other than disappointing.

I haven't officially finished watching the last season yet, I gave up on it with about 3 or 4 episodes to go, but from what I've heard the ending did nothing at all to improve the show's overall standing, so I won't be rushing to finish up. But ultimately I think Dexter is just an example of how 8 years with a series is about 3 or 4 years too many.

The other show I said goodbye to in 2013 was Glee. The last time I gave up on a series in the middle of its run after years of dedicated, though declining, loyalty was the beginning of the fourth season of Heroes. At the time, no one realized that that season would the show's last, but after three years of diminishing returns, I finally had to say I'd had enough of the series. The same can be said of Glee, though I gave up on that series seemingly a couple years before it will officially reach its end.

The sad part about this is that I don't know that I can say Glee officially hit its rock bottom in 2013. Certainly the end of its fourth season left a lot to be desired, and featured the constantly offensive and deplorable Shooting Star which honestly should be brought up on charges for criminal negligence, but its return for its fifth season wasn't horrible. The two Beatles tribute episodes to kick things off weren't the worst installments the show had ever seen, and the Finn Hudson / Cory Monteith tribute was affecting no matter what logistical complaints I had about it. But where those first three episodes failed was in giving me a reason to continue watching. None of the storylines set forth in those early weeks seemed to be worthy of the screen time they'd wind up with (with the exception of the Santana / Demi Lovato love story that I actually am sorry to be missing), and the whole Kurt / Blane getting married thing was an active turn off for me. The best episode of the fourth season was The Breakup, and Kurt and Blane getting back together and then getting engaged on top of it totally undermined a lot of the brilliance of that particular hour.

But other than that, the problem with Glee in 2013 really just boiled down to More-of-the-Same-itis and I couldn't take it any longer. I couldn't handle more of Kurt and Blane drama, more of the show's misuse of characters like Tina Chang, more of the drastic shifts in characterization, or more of the ridiculous leaps in lack of logic that the show made on a regular basis. To an extent, I think that the fact that Glee stopped making any kind of sense years ago would be fine if it had at least continued to be funny. But that wasn't the case, and as such it lost pretty much all of its appeal over the years. The sad thing about the two most recent seasons of the show is that the New York based storylines have actually been enjoyable if not good while everything back in Lima has fallen into being unwatchable / offensive. If they'd just changed the series at its fourth season to be exclusively the story of the graduating seniors trying to make it in the world, I think it might have been a better choice. But I say that acknowledging that very few high school shows have ever successfully made the transition into college, and I don't trust Ryan Murphy with anything. But if we judge based on simple comparison, the New York stuff was way better and didn't constitute enough screen time to keep me watching the whole series, so I had to say goodbye.

Honorable Mentions:

1) Some of the best news to come out of the end of 2013 had to be the cancellation of True Blood on HBO. Much like Dexter, True Blood reached a point where it should have ended many moons ago, but there's a part of me that thinks this last season was the worst one yet. I don't know if it was the ultimately pointless Billith storyline, the continued insistence on keeping the peripheral characters at the forefront of the story (who honestly cared about Andy's kids?), or the show's complete unwillingness to allow Sookie to simply be single and ok, but whatever it was, this season never once found itself capable of being enjoyable. As opposed to previous seasons that saw brief flashes of entertaining storylines before the entire thing went down the toilet, this year it was just hard to get behind any aspect of the series. I will say that a lot of what they did with Jessica as a character was interesting, but I won't be sad to see the last of this show.

2) Ray Donovan was another series that started with a lot of fanfare, as Showtime shows tend to be, and very little payoff. I watched roughly the first 6 episodes and the different elements of the series never came together for me in a manner that would justify continued watching. Ray seemed like the kind of show with glimpses of good shows locked inside of it, but its inability to decide once and for all which show it wanted to be, which storyline it wanted to give the most weight, was a detriment. I think when a show, or any kind of story for that matter, tries to be everything, it succeeds in being nothing. But the glimpses nestled within it suggests the possibility that the show could be better in the future, or for all I know the last 6 episodes were much better than the first 6, but I doubt I'll be granted that information.

So there you have it, two posts about the highs and the lows of 2013's TV landscape. Stay tuned for my thoughts, hopes, desires, and excitements for 2014's TV season.

TV Review: Dracula (Season 1 Episodes 1-5)

I'm a graduate of the Whedon School of television. I've watched all of his shows, most of which while they were on the air, and have been a fanatic of his for a very long time. I like to think that this means I know good long-form storytelling when I see it, but I think it mostly means I've gotten used to "good" or "enjoyable" shows getting cancelled before they've had a chance to really find their audience. But when Dracula on NBC gets cancelled, as I'm almost certain it will be, that's going to be fairly tough pill to swallow.

It's not that Dracula is as good as Firefly or anything, it really isn't even in the same league, but it's surprisingly entertaining and enjoyable and delivers a lot of good things to look for in a series. And for it to be on NBC makes it even more surprising, but that fact also seems to spell its doom. Add to that its Friday night time slot (also known as the kiss of death), and its falling ratings and it seems like the show is doomed. Which is too bad because for the first time in a number of years NBC finds itself poised to deliver some real quality programming if they'd only sit back and allow the story to take hold and find its audience. Granted the show hasn't been cancelled yet, and after giving Hannibal a second season, some of the signs seem to point towards NBC finally learning it's important to be patient in the current TV market, but I won't rest easy until the show is officially picked up for a second season and we see what it and Hannibal are capable of doing with a little word of mouth press and some time under their belts.

There are two facts potentially coloring my view of Dracula: 1) I had very low expectations going in. And those expectations were only barely surpassed by what was ultimately a weak Pilot. 2) I binge watched episodes 2-5 in one morning. So it's possible that the show is only as good as I think it is when its being consumed all at once, but in the day of the DVR and Netflix and such, I don't think that this is a bad thing.

But enough about the fact that I think the show is good, here's why I think it's good (spoilers to follow):

1) Character, character, character!
I can't stress enough how important clearly defined characters with clearly defined goals and motivations are to just about every story. Dracula seems to understand who its characters are and what drives them to do the things they do. Everything from Van Helsing (Thomas Kretschmann) helping Dracula (with no pleasure from the action for either of them), to the complications in Mina (Jessica De Gouw) and Harker's (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) relationship make perfect sense. The show has yet to make a character decision that doesn't feel understandable and organic, and the few main characters we don't know as well yet (Lady Jayne Wetherby comes to mind) we know well enough to understand the decisions being made in the moment and I have faith that they'll get origin type episodes like Renfield got most recently.

2) The story is simple and interesting.
Dracula (the constantly sexy Jonathan Rhys Meyers but I mean really really sexy) is resurrected by Van Helsing so the two of them can embark on a quest for revenge against the shadowy cabal that ruined both of their lives. Everything Dracula does from taking on the persona of an American entrepreneur (bad accent and all) to getting involved in a Victorian race for renewable energy is dedicated to eliminating his enemies. Along the way he meets Mina Murray who happens to be the spitting image of his murdered wife and romantic wackiness ensues. The story is never convoluted or difficult to follow, but the focus on intrigue and the traffic of information leaves the series with the ability not to rely too highly on big action set pieces to keep your interest. This lack of reliance on pulse-pounding action was one of the first things I noticed when watching Game of Thrones, actually, and the same sensibility is found here.

3) A dedication to diversity.
This might not be a big deal to some people, but I think the way that this genre show is showing a dedication to presenting a story with queer characters and characters of color when it really doesn't have to is brilliant. The story is set in Victorian London, so it could easily get away with the idea that blacks and gays just weren't all that prolific. Instead they've made it a point to introduce important queer characters (yes plural!) and people of color into their early episodes. Compare that to another genre show, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and you've got a study in opposites. And worse, AOS has no excuses since it takes place in a contemporary world. But I digress, the point is that I don't doubt that each viewer will be able to see his/herself in this show by the time the first season is over, and the stories they're telling about race relations, gender equality, and queer visibility in their world are fun, interesting, and entertaining.

In the end, we're simply left with a good and enjoyable show. Now if only I could do something to ensure NBC would be smart for once and let it take its time to find an audience.

TV Review: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Season 1 Episodes 1-7)

I purposefully wanted to wait until about six episodes in before offering up a review of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.EL.D. because 1) all series need a little time to get their legs under them and 2) the last time Joss Whedon had a TV series (the amazing Dollhouse), it wasn't until the sixth episode that everything took off. Granted, that time, everyone involved with the show repeatedly reminded viewers that the sixth episode would be the best and we just needed to hang in there to reach it. No such assurances were offered for AOS, and after seven episodes I've realized why: It simply isn't going to get any better. Another thing I've realized about the show is that no matter what anyone says and no matter how much ABC wants to promote it as such, AOS isn't a Whedon show in the traditional sense. It lacks Whedon's trademark humor and quick fire dialogue, there's no standout character for the viewers to really latch onto for better or worse (the fan favorite Agent Coulson not withstanding, more on that in a minute), and there's no real season long story arc yet (which after 7 hours is a significant problem). Acknowledging early on that this was not a Whedon show changed my expectations and allowed my enjoyment of the show to increase, but it didn't make the show any "better," and as someone who really wants to like this show, I find this to be problematic.

I think the biggest and most glaring problem facing AOS is how episodic its format has been. Coulson's team tackles a specific threat each episode. Instead of setting the team against an enemy and allowing them to do battle intermittently throughout the course of the season, the creators have decided that it would be better to give them an ever changing threat or problem to solve. This could be a good thing as it would give the writers the opportunity to expand the already established Marvel Cinematic Universe, but for some reason the show doesn't appear to be doing that. The threats are typically contained to the episode in question and they haven't done much to expand our understanding of the world in which the characters operate. Nor have the episodes done anything to enhance our understanding of the characters themselves. At this point in the show's run, we've really only been given two separate serialized stories: What really happened to Agent Coulson, and what's the story behind Skye's parents, and both stories have been done poorly. Skye's story is arguably the most interesting of the two at this point, but that's only because it's new. Its novelty, however, also works against the show as the story's introduction in the fifth episode feels rushed and comes out of nowhere without giving the audience time to really care. The fact that Skye is looking into the S.H.I.E.L.D. in order to discover the truth behind her own origin should have been introduced in the first episode to allow suspense to build around it organically. It also wouldn't hurt to have the story center around someone more interesting than Skye, but that's another issue we'll get to in a bit. The Coulson story was the main thing I took away from the first episode and it was the primary source of interest for me as a viewer. But as the show has dragged on and on with no real headway being made on that front, I've found my interest to be lessening with each passing week. Again, this would be easily rectifiable if either Coulson came off as a significantly different character than he was in the Marvel films, or if the show just showed us some kind of forward momentum towards a resolution instead of just teasing us with hints that he's "different" every week.

The characters are the second problem facing the series. None of them are interesting. Besides our previous ties to Coulson (which as I mentioned already have been growing thinner each week), Malinda May is the only character that seems to be even remotely three-dimensional at this point, and I can't help but think that this has something to do with the fact that she hardly ever speaks. If the writers gave her as much dialogue as they do the others, she'd probably be ruined just as quickly. None of the characters feel like fully developed people yet so much as cardboard cutouts who exist to do the one thing they each do. The show doesn't strive to surprise us with out of left field character beats. This is most obvious in one of the show's better episodes to date: F.Z.Z.T. Simmons is infected with some kind of Alien virus transmitted through static electricity and the team, Fitz in particular, rush to try and find a cure before she basically explodes and kills them all. Even though the scenes that follow are entertaining, nothing in them is surprising. Of course Simmons would throw herself from the plane instead of risking the lives of all of her team, of course Fitz and Simmons combined brain power would come up with a cure that works in time, and of course after complaining the entire episode that he needed something action-y to do, Ward would jump out of the plane before having his parachute fully fastened and save her. Again, this was all very entertaining in the moment, but I don't think it did much to add coloring to the characters we'd been faced with for five hours already. But the worst character ever award certainly goes to Chloe Bennet's Skye. She's boring, she's annoying, and her continued presence on the team is totally unjustified. She's a double agent and then she isn't, she's a computer hacker who has to be fitted with a bracelet to stop her from hacking computers because she can't be trusted, and her sole purpose continues to be to tell the team "no" for some reason or another each week. It's pathetic.

Shows in general, and Whedon shows in particular, work best when each major player's position within the group makes narrative sense. The best example of this from the Whedon-verse is Firefly. Not only do the characters have an immediate purpose (pilot, mechanic, doctor, muscle), they also serve a deeper role of representing elements of Mal's soul that he's lost over the years. There's never a question about one of them being left behind or replaced with someone else capable of doing their jobs because the audience understands why they're there. Or as Mal puts it when asked why he'd come back for Simon and River, "You're on my crew. Why we still talking about this?" The same cannot be said about Skye; surely if her only purpose is to be a computer hacker, the team could find one far more trustworthy and reliable.

All of this boils down to a show that's not in full command of itself yet and is falling into bad storytelling methods. These problems are problems I would expect to have been ironed out after two or three episodes. That they're still so prevalent and that they're all so easily fixable, tells me that the show probably won't get much better than it's been thus far. Or at the very least it'll require an entire overhaul to make it better. I don't want it to seem like I hate the show outright. I actually find all of the episodes watchable if not enjoyable. But I'm not rushing to my TV set each week to make sure I've caught the latest installment. I had high expectations for the series given the stellar work Marvel's been doing with its cinematic universe and the names attached. It's sad how hard those expectations of a great show have come crashing down around the reality that it's little more than middling at best. Do we really want to dedicate 22 hours to something that will never be more than mediocre?