What makes good TV?
I so don't have time to be expounding on this, but it calls to me. I must write it.
This is a feeling I think most writers know--when there's something that's so close to the surface of your subconsious that you have to just get it out of you before you can move on, so that's why I'm writing this--to have it someplace other than the forefront of my mind.
What makes good TV? And furthermore, what makes good TV shows stay good TV shows?
I think great TV series have a lot in common with great book series. And basically, I think long-lasting dramas start with the situation and long-lasting comedies start with the characters.
Take the longest running drama on TV for example: Law and Order. How many characters have run through that show in its 10+ years? I don't even know. All I know is that every week there is going to be a new dead body somewhere in New York City, and the police and the prosecutors are going to have to work together to solve it.
Same goes with CSI. Or ER. Every week there's a new problem walking through the door. The fuel for the show isn't coming from characters alone. There's a perfectly believable source for fresh conflict. That's the stuff great dramas are made of.
In contrast, take a show like Dawson's Creek. Where was the conflict for that show? In broody, self-involved kids and the drama of their daily lives. No wonder it ran out of steam when a show like Buffy--about a bunch of kids--had staying power because, you guessed it, each week there could be a fresh conflict walking through the door.
So that brings us to Veronica Mars--the number one show on my Tivo.
Veronica and gang are on life support, and as badly as I hate to admit it, I'm not entirely surprised. Something is missing this season. The whole show seems to be a little out-of-step. So why? What's going on?
It's a show about a college student-slash-private eye. There is plenty of sources of conflict when you're a pint-sized crime solver, so why is it struggling?
The same could have been said for the latter seasons of Alias. She was a spy! And yet like most shows, I didn't realize how much it slid until I went back and watched some of the earlier episodes.
So why do really great shows with plenty of external conflict slide sometimes?
I think it's because they forget about the internal conflict.
Season One of Veronica Mars was nearly perfect in my opinion because Veronica had a perfect external driver for her internal conflict.
Internal conflict: she's a misfit at a school where she used to be popular; she's just broken up with the school's golden boy; her family is the town joke; she has been violated and traumatized and the people who were supposed to help laughed at her; and finally, she's mourning the loss of both her best friend in the world and her mother.
Those are the things that are going on inside of Veronica's head in season one. None of those things are really all that unusual as teen fiction and TV goes. What's different and, I daresay brilliant, about VM is the external conflict that drives her.
Veronica's internal conflict stems from a very external source: Lilly's murder. Find the murderer--things get better.
Alias was much the same way. In the beginning Sydney was hiding her life with the CIA from SD-6, and all of it from her friends. Then the friends went away. Then SD-6. And by the end it was all about the external--the missions--we no longer had amazing scenes of her talking to Francie on her cell phone, listening to her friend complain about her terrible day while bullets flew around her.
Great dramas have characters with meaningful internal conflicts and external conflicts that drive them.
That, in my opinion, is why Grey's Anatomy is the best show on TV right now. Every week there's a new case walking through the door; and every week it relates to what the characters are going through in some way. Brilliant, brilliant writing. It's a testament to this show that it's still good after Meredith and McDreamy are together and happy and virtually conflict-free. If the only reason people are watching is to see if two people get together, then you've got problems.
Okay, this has gone on way longer than I intended. But there's my take on great TV. Take it or leave it.
-Ally
This is a feeling I think most writers know--when there's something that's so close to the surface of your subconsious that you have to just get it out of you before you can move on, so that's why I'm writing this--to have it someplace other than the forefront of my mind.
What makes good TV? And furthermore, what makes good TV shows stay good TV shows?
I think great TV series have a lot in common with great book series. And basically, I think long-lasting dramas start with the situation and long-lasting comedies start with the characters.
Take the longest running drama on TV for example: Law and Order. How many characters have run through that show in its 10+ years? I don't even know. All I know is that every week there is going to be a new dead body somewhere in New York City, and the police and the prosecutors are going to have to work together to solve it.
Same goes with CSI. Or ER. Every week there's a new problem walking through the door. The fuel for the show isn't coming from characters alone. There's a perfectly believable source for fresh conflict. That's the stuff great dramas are made of.
In contrast, take a show like Dawson's Creek. Where was the conflict for that show? In broody, self-involved kids and the drama of their daily lives. No wonder it ran out of steam when a show like Buffy--about a bunch of kids--had staying power because, you guessed it, each week there could be a fresh conflict walking through the door.
So that brings us to Veronica Mars--the number one show on my Tivo.
Veronica and gang are on life support, and as badly as I hate to admit it, I'm not entirely surprised. Something is missing this season. The whole show seems to be a little out-of-step. So why? What's going on?
It's a show about a college student-slash-private eye. There is plenty of sources of conflict when you're a pint-sized crime solver, so why is it struggling?
The same could have been said for the latter seasons of Alias. She was a spy! And yet like most shows, I didn't realize how much it slid until I went back and watched some of the earlier episodes.
So why do really great shows with plenty of external conflict slide sometimes?
I think it's because they forget about the internal conflict.
Season One of Veronica Mars was nearly perfect in my opinion because Veronica had a perfect external driver for her internal conflict.
Internal conflict: she's a misfit at a school where she used to be popular; she's just broken up with the school's golden boy; her family is the town joke; she has been violated and traumatized and the people who were supposed to help laughed at her; and finally, she's mourning the loss of both her best friend in the world and her mother.
Those are the things that are going on inside of Veronica's head in season one. None of those things are really all that unusual as teen fiction and TV goes. What's different and, I daresay brilliant, about VM is the external conflict that drives her.
Veronica's internal conflict stems from a very external source: Lilly's murder. Find the murderer--things get better.
Alias was much the same way. In the beginning Sydney was hiding her life with the CIA from SD-6, and all of it from her friends. Then the friends went away. Then SD-6. And by the end it was all about the external--the missions--we no longer had amazing scenes of her talking to Francie on her cell phone, listening to her friend complain about her terrible day while bullets flew around her.
Great dramas have characters with meaningful internal conflicts and external conflicts that drive them.
That, in my opinion, is why Grey's Anatomy is the best show on TV right now. Every week there's a new case walking through the door; and every week it relates to what the characters are going through in some way. Brilliant, brilliant writing. It's a testament to this show that it's still good after Meredith and McDreamy are together and happy and virtually conflict-free. If the only reason people are watching is to see if two people get together, then you've got problems.
Okay, this has gone on way longer than I intended. But there's my take on great TV. Take it or leave it.
-Ally
posted by Ally Carter at Wednesday, March 21, 2007
2 Comments:
Buffy--about a bunch of kids--had staying power because, you guessed it, each week there could be a fresh conflict walking through the door.
I think what also helped is that Joss and Co. often resolved most of the main arcs of the current season so they could go some place new the following year, while building on what they had (I think Joss calls it "cumulative knowledge"); there were also some very good writers who played with language and attempted to subvert certain themes. I don't think bringing in new monsters every week is what made the show great; the monster-of-the-week formula could have gotten rather boring, if that's all they did.
The writers also made it personal for Buffy -- Angel, Faith, Willow, and even Jonathan, to name a few, were great villains because Buffy was attached (in different ways) to them and/or their victims. I think that's what Veronica Mars had in its first two seasons, but it seems to have lost that quality this season. The disappearing cast doesn't help either.
Joss and his writers had to change the format of Angel's fifth season, as directed by TPTB, and for the most part they pulled it off, I think, so I don't think it's necessarily VM's change from a season long murder mystery to shorter arcs that's the problem. Mostly, I think it's that it's not personal enough for Veronica. My favourite episode of this season is "Spit and Eggs" (and not just because I love Logan ;) ) -- compare it with the resolution of the Dean's murder and, to me, the lack of emotional resonance in the latest episode is very clear.
As for Grey's Anatomy... I've sort of given up on it. I don't like the way the characters play musical beds or the Very Special Episodes during sweeps; it feels a little too manipulative and tiresome to me (Meredith is the "Grey" in "Grey's Anatomy"; one can only cheat the audience so many times). And the show has a tendency to be very unsubtle with its metaphors. I still like the Meredith and Christina relationship, and Bailey and Addison and Alex, but the on-and-off-again Meredith and Derek just dragged on far too long, for me.
Also, Supernatural, which I recently started watching is on at the same time, and I think they do drama very well, within the monster-of-the-week format. I don't watch for the ghost stories: I don't like horror, which is why it took me so long to start watching it. The brothers' relationship is a thing of beauty, even if the writing is not always brilliant or the execution consistent. I also love that it doesn't take itself seriously all the time.
Friday Night Lights is another show to which I've very quickly become attached. It's not particularly subversive or original, but it does emotion very, very well. It takes clichés and stereotypes and turns them into 3-dimensional characters and compelling story lines. And I don't even like or understand American football.
For me to be invested in a show or its characters, there have to be (fairly consistent) episodes that evoke emotions in the characters that ring true to whatever situation they are in, from silly to sombre (which in a Whedon show, sometimes happened all in one line). Dealing with consequences or emotional fallout is another key factor; if the characters don't care or there are no lasting results of their actions, then why should the audience care?
Re: Dawson's Creek versus Buffy. You know you won't get any arguments from me about Buffy kicking Dawson a** all the way to the curb, because I'm about as big a Buffyholic as you can get, but in terms of LASTING, the shows aren't actually all that different. Buffy lasted five seasons on the WB, and another two on UPN, for seven total seasons. Dawson's Creek lasted for six seasons total. Both shows are now in syndication; both have released DVD's for pretty much every season.
Buffy definitely has a much bigger cult following (as is evidenced by the fact that the Buffy fandom is STILL huge, and people are still having Buffy conferences, and Joss is writing season eight as a comic book series), and in terms of the affect it had on the TV landscape in general, Buffy was huge, but I really think that comes down to the superior quality of the writing over all, just as much as it does to the driving concept of the show. Buffy was brilliant and it functioned on so many different levels, AND ( I would argue) it, unlike Dawson, made the transition from a "teen show" to an "anybody show." I think ten years from now, Buffy will STILL be in syndication, and the fandom will still be going strong, and that you won't see the same thing for Dawson's Creek, but it's kind of hard to make a statement about staying power yet.
And I seriously know way too much about both of these shows.
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