Mythology: Show Runners
By Martin Felipe
December 31, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
After all, as I've argued, we're in an increasingly sophisticated television age, and the auteurist aesthetic of film is making its way to the small screen. Show runners now develop followings, the way a Spielberg or a Cameron might enjoy in theatres. For the purposes of this column, I'm sticking to the names more associated with mythology television, also known as genre TV, a term that tends to ghettoize - which is unfair because while the Aaron Sorkins of the television landscape are certainly as talented and as influential as their sci-fi counterparts, they're the ones getting the awards, and much of the mainstream recognition. Not that mythology show runners don't get acclaim. They do, but they remain on the outside looking in, while they continue to influence and reinvent the medium.
Okay, well, maybe that's not entirely true. Lost did win the Emmy for best drama in its first season. Since then, however, Damon Lindelof and Carleton Cuse's island drama has had its ups and downs in terms of mainstream acceptance, and downs, downs, and even further downs in the ratings. It's won a few acting awards, and eventually got more nominations for the show itself, but as it grows more complex, and, let's be blunt about this, more sci-fi/fantasy, it becomes more obvious with every episode that Lindelof and Cuse are pretty unique in television's history.
Their predecessors are there, of course. David Lynch's Twin Peaks, Chris Carter's X-Files, but I can't really think of another show runner that gave us anything like Lost. While Carter teases us with a series-long mystery over the years, The X-Files relies more often than not on Mulder and Scully's week-to-week investigations. Peaks is more of an experiment, than anything else, successful in many ways, but unable to sustain the central "Who killed Laura Palmer?" macguffin for more than a season and a half.
Lindelof and Cuse have created a show predicated on delayed gratification in a supposed era of shorter attention spans. Is there another show that asks its viewers to wait six years for answers? For that matter, as smaller answers come, and bigger questions grow, is there a show that gets stranger and stranger? I mean, we know from the pilot that we're not dealing with verisimilitude on this island, but who'd have predicted that the monster was a cloud of black smoke? Or that there's a wheel in the bowels of the island that, when turned, causes time travel? Or that all island visitors are merely players in a contest between two as yet undefined supernatural entities?
They get away with their bizarre universe through the classic technique of unpeeling the onion, revealing layers over time. The smoke monster might have been a little much to swallow right off the bat, but after a season and a half of polar bears, mystery hatches, and Others, we were ready to accept it as part of our weekly visits to the island. For that matter, when the mystery and the mythology grow frustrating, they unpeel a little more character. We discover Locke's father issues, Kate's father issues, Claire's father issues - pretty much everyone's father issues. Assuming these two stick the landing, and I'm betting that they do, Lindelof and Cuse belong amongst the top ranked show runners of the decade.
Of course, another name shows up in Lost's credits, a person who admits he has little to do with the direction of the show, and that person is JJ Abrams. He may not have much to do with Lost, but he's just as important a name in mythology programming because of a little show called Alias.
Now Alias is as renowned for its downward spiral as it is for its legendary first two seasons. But what a couple of seasons they are. Lost gets a lot of criticism for being confusing, but it's "See Spot run" compared to Alias. I tried, time and again, to watch the show during its first few acclaimed years, but I could never figure out what was going on. Finally, once TV on DVD became the hot thing, I started from episode one to see what the fuss was about. The fuss was this; Abrams had created a show with layers of conspiracy, multiple agendas, convoluted character dynamics, and a somewhat supernatural mythology, just to keep things interesting. He doesn't dumb things down, nor does the pace slow for those first couple of seasons. He plows forward, full speed ahead, and expects you to keep up.
This asks a lot of a viewer, especially for a medium considered to be passive. It certainly gives the audience credit. In a business where the powers that be think viewers need a laugh track to know where the jokes are, and that each episode needs to reset, Abrams throws all such condescension aside and gives us credit, as viewers, to be able to think and figure out what's going on. And though, for whatever reason, late era Alias, not to mention Abrams' Fringe, is much simpler, Abrams shows us that we can enjoy a common denominator that's much higher than the networks normally give us.
The next names, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, accomplished several things this past decade with their masterpiece Battlestar Galactica. I'd say what seems like the simplest, or perhaps least impressive, accomplishment is that they take the core of a silly '70s relic, and realize the potential that the original's show runner Glen A. Larson can't find.
The show is, after all, a post apocalyptic tale of survival and, while Larson gives us singing aliens, daggets, and cowboy cylons, Moore and Eick explore the psychological ramifications of being among the handful of survivors of a devastating, almost complete cataclysm. A few thousand people left from a society of twelve planets, all holed up in a handful of space ships, always on the run, living with the threat of extinction, with no end in sight. It's not pretty, nor should it be. Moore and Eick offer little hope for our survivors. Any less would be a cheat. This is a deadly existence, and the stakes are the highest they could be. The seed of hope may exist, but the road to realizing that hope leaves a trail of compromise and blood behind it.
Moore and Eick grapple with big themes, offering little in the way of concrete answers. There are no morals, no lessons to learn, just the weight and the cost of survival. Lofty ideals, both on the right and the left, have little purpose in this universe; in fact, they only get in the way. Blacks and whites grow increasingly gray. In fact, it's within this gray that our heroes come to find their salvation. While many show runners lead their viewers toward a specific point of view, Moore and Eick present a world where the right and the wrong are both neither right nor wrong.
For that matter, they do away with the nonsense of the reset button trope of most episodic television. To return things to square one, week after week, eliminates the consequences. This is a world where the very future of humanity is on the line, and the stakes are as high as they come. Everything comes back to affect everything, down to the minor bumps and bruises characters sustain from week to week. These characters are playing for keeps and they'd better not forget it. Because, if they do, oblivion is the only result.
Which brings me to my favorite name of all. Joss Whedon, who really got started in the '90s, is, for my money, about as good a show runner as TV is ever likely to see. All the elements come together in Whedon's masterpieces (for those who don't know, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse), and must have influenced the above names. The developed characters of Lindelof and Cuse, the complicated, daring storytelling (not to mention strong female characters) of Abrams, the complex morality and uncompromising consequences of Eick and Moore, all of this and some of the wittiest dialogue this side of The West Wing.
I'm not here to say that Whedon doesn't have flaws, but to nitpick is to miss the genius. As his shows evolve, the characters and their relationships evolve with them. One never knows where an episode of a Whedon show will take you. While much network offering relies on giving the viewer exactly what they expect, Whedon seems to take great delight in upsetting the apple cart. Yet, few developments are unearned or untrue to the world and to the characters. His shows toy with the status quo, yet nothing is happenstance or without reason. Whedon explores the extreme possibilities, however, where most show runners pull back to the center, he commits to them and sees where they take our characters.
With the possible exception of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, his work really has never been a huge success in the ratings, but critics, other show runners, and a dedicated fan base have taken note. He shows how playing it a little less safe yields creative and artistic rewards, liberating the also daring likes of Abrams, Lindelof, Cuse, Moore, and Eick to also explore the limits of where a series can go. Luckily, he did this at just the right time, when things like DVR, on demand and DVD made loyal viewing, and catching up much easier for viewers.
Episodic, status quo programming is here to stay, and there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. Some of it is quality (House comes to mind) and comfort programming has its value as well. In the wake of Whedon and his kind, however, the potential is there for more complex televised narratives for those like me who are so inclined. Make no mistake, this stuff is art. It represents the possibilities of television to showcase literature. Folks like David Chase or Shawn Ryan explore similar types of storytelling in other genres, so it's by no means limited to sci-fi. Of course, a few hacks like Tim Kring and Heroes will come along and show us how such storytelling can go so very wrong. No good without the bad, right? In any case, we'll still see tons of procedurals in this upcoming decade. I'm just hopeful that we'll continue to enjoy the works of folks like Whedon as well.