Welcome to the
Third Golden Age of Television
Television. What a great invention. What a great way
to waste some time. Who wants to curl up with some book, after all,
when you can fill your brain with some mindless entertainment? Just
look at all the options: Lost. Heroes. Grey’s
Anatomy. Friday Night Lights. Battlestar Galactica.
The Office. My Name Is Earl.
Wait a
second. “Mindless entertainment”? Scratch that. How about
“intelligent entertainment” instead? How about this young
century’s equivalent of great literature? Sound absurd?
Welcome
to the Third Golden Age of Television. This decade, only seven years
in, has already produced more than its share of timeless storytelling.
Even shows no longer on the air—Arrested Development,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, The West
Wing—stack up as some of the greatest television ever aired.
And that’s without taking HBO into account. Add The Sopranos,
Sex and the City and Entourage into the mix and we
have got ourselves a Golden Age, indeed.
In some
ways, it all started with Joss Whedon and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Forget two hour theatrical films, Whedon proved that television could
offer twenty-two hours (the number of episodes in a full season) to
tell its narrative. Why settle for a short story, after all, when you
can read a novel? Even stand alone episodes helped push the plot along.
The characters were not two dimensional, but fully fleshed out, played
to perfection by actors and actresses made for the roles. Buffy was
a drama, but it could also be funnier than any comedy on television.
It was an amalgamation of numerous genres, expertly blended. And television
has never been the same since.
If “quality”
is defined by great characters and great dialogue, then the writing
on television this decade has never been better. The West Wing,
Gilmore Girls, Lost and Grey’s Anatomy
exhibit a style and substance that can stand up against even the most
literate of modern playwrights.
The
West Wing, for instance, had the rapid-fire dialogue of David Mamet
or Tom Stoppard, a virtual smorgasbord for the small screen. But that's
Aaron Sorkin, a playwright who went first to the movies and then television.
It’s understandable. How then do you explain Amy Sherman-Palladino
and Gilmore Girls? Sharp, quick and peppered with cultural
references, spanning a whole range of disciplines and topics, that series
has dialogue even more rapid-fire than The West Wing. And it
even harkens back to a “Golden Age” of old Hollywood: the
classic screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s.
Character
development on television this decade has also never been better. In
fact, Battlestar Galactica and Lost could very well
be the best character-driven shows in the history of television.
Lost
benefits from its premise: castaways on an island, trapped with a few
dozen people they previously did not know, each character is able to
“rewrite” their past. Thus we see their initial interaction
with a clean slate. Lost, however, also brilliantly uses flashbacks,
concentrating on an individual character each episode, to fill in that
slate for the viewer. Actions that take place on the island, therefore,
take on newer meanings when we witness what life was like pre-crash,
giving us a very nuanced fill-in-the-blanks, an intellectual exercise
in color-by-numbers, as far from a straightforward black and white (or
even shades of gray) as one can get.
Battlestar
Galactica, meanwhile, achieves deeper characters without the benefit
of flashbacks. Although loosely based on the 1970s Star-Wars
clone of the same name, this updated version is far from science fiction:
it is adult drama that just happens to take place in space, just like
Grey’s Anatomy is an adult drama that just happens to
take place in a hospital.
What makes
Battlestar Galactica a quality show is the collection of characters
who are, in one or another, “damaged.” The writers, meanwhile,
take there time peeling away the layers of each character, slowly revealing
the baggage each of them is carrying. Thus only after multiple episodes
do we understand the full impact and rationale for actions taken earlier.
This particular
Golden Age isn’t just about dramas, however. A few years ago,
Entertainment Weekly lamented the death of the television sitcom. In
truth, the television sitcom didn’t so much die but began a transformation
into something new. Arrested Development, The Office,
Scrubs and My Name Is Earl are just as funny as the
classics (The Mary Tyler Moore Show through Seinfeld)
although they are fundamentally different than these “traditional”
series.
There are
no distracting laugh tracks, for instance, telling us what is supposed
to be funny. They use a single camera format, as opposed to the multiple
format of days past. And both Arrested Development and My
Name Is Earl utilize a voice-over throughout each episode, and
often cut away to visually show a past event rather than using verbal
exposition. The Office, meanwhile, is filmed documentary-style,
as was the original BBC version.
But although
visually and even structurally different than sitcoms of the past, the
aforementioned series also differ in terms of their level of comedic
writing. Rupert Murdoch, on whose FOX network Arrested Development
originally aired, once referred to that particular show as “elitist,”
and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. In truth, however, Arrested
Development simply refused to “dumb down” to a “lowest
common denominator” as so many mediocre sitcoms do, but tried
to raise the bar instead. It assumed the opposite of so many other shows—that
we are not all idiots—and aimed for a higher level of comedy in
the same way as The Office and My Name Is Earl.
Even the
axioms invented by network executives in the past take on different
meaning these days. “Appointment television” and “Must-See-TV”
no longer imply what they used to, for we now have the ability to not
just watch a show during its regularly scheduled time period, but anytime
we want. Online even. Downloaded from iTunes. Via On-Demand cable or
TV-On-DVD. Like great literature, we are free to enjoy great television
any day, any time, any place we want. Even the word “television”
isn’t what it used to be, not with computers, iPods, mobile phones
and portable DVD players.
Just as
independent film sprang up ten-to-twenty years ago, paving the way for
production companies like Miramax as well as festivals such as Sundance,
many believe television production will begin utilizing the recent “anyone
can” technology and follow a similar “grassroots”
path today.
One significance
development in this arena is the recent advent of independent television
festivals, such as the New York Television Festival, first held in the
fall of 2005. “As the first creative festival for the medium,”
its web site declared, “the NYTVF will pioneer the movement of
‘Independent Television’ and construct a new path for program
development. Writers, directors and producers will be selected from
a national and international grassroots search and given the unprecedented
opportunity to showcase their originally produced Pilot Programs directly
to network and cable executives in a festival competition.”
So what
is the future of television? Although we will always have networks,
and thus a business side intent on making profits, all of this technology
also means innovation. Whereas the music industry initially failed to
recognize the influence of an Internet-driven independent movement,
even choosing to fight it instead, television executives seem intent
on not repeating the same mistakes, even appearing ready to embrace
the future instead. And since innovation also translates into creative
freedom, this particular Golden Age could indeed last for a very long
time.
More importantly,
the “common man” (and woman) now has a say, whether simply
by posting their viewpoints on the Internet, or picking up a camera
and filming their own show to “broadcast” on the likes of
YouTube. Truth is a grassroots revolution may indeed be under way soon
in television, an independent movement that could potentially make this
Golden Age even “golder.”
And with
a future that bright, has there ever been a better moment to be a television
fan?
(Editor’s
Note: Some of the observations in this article initially appeared in
PopMatters and Flak Magazine.)
September
3, 2007
