Grudge Match: Reality vs. Scripted TV
While I wait for my new favorite show,
Da Ali G Show, to begin, I think I'll flesh out something that's been bothering me for a while - weighing the pros and cons of reality and scripted tv and if the spoils go to the victor, who shall that victor be? So Sunday nights belong to HBO and while I count down the days for the finale of my favorite materialistic Manhattan sexpot daydream
SATC, I'll busy myself with
Six Feet Under. I am a devoted fan, yet my blog never gets consumed by my burning desire week in and week out of how the plot will twist and turn and what befits my favorite mortuary misfits. Now, I guess what I am going to say applies to a comparison of
Six Feet Underand a reality show like
Survivor or
Idol, a reality show I'd classify as "participatory" because either the audience or the contestants have a real hand in what happens week to week (whereas another show like
The Real World doesn't quite change as much week to week). Generally speaking, scripted tv has been losing points in my book for sometime whereas the stock of participatory reality shows is certainly on the up and up. Why is scripted TV less interesting to talk about? Why doesn't it leave us on the edge of our seats the way the audience vote does on Idol? (There is no moment as dramatic - in the whole week, I submit - as the last commerical break before Ryan Seacrest gives the low-voter the boot) The strangest thing about Six is that it is anything but consistent, and for good reason. Every week brings a new writer, a new director, and thus the characters are really all over the map. The series follows a certain narrative line, but there can be very little continuity between weeks. The look changes, the soundtrack flips between punk and folk rock, and even the humor and dialogue is so dissimilar each week, sometimes it doesn't feel like the same show. Granted, the characters develop over time, but more often then not, these heavy crew changes really effect my satisfaction with the series. On the other hand, a show like
ER, the same kind of scripted hour-long drama, stays more true to form and characters don't seem to don a new skin with each passing week. I think that participatory reality shows invite "upsets" - think March Madness times a thousand. For example, if you are loyal to a show like Survivor, you usually have a pretty good sense about who is vulnerable and likely to get voted off. But every now and again,
BLAMO, someone gets blindsided (see Alex this week) and the show takes on a whole new dynamic, characters find new opportunities that didn't previously exist, and the drama takes a new path for the participants and the audience. You can be genuinely surprised when this happens and the results are inconclusive � unscripted. Taped television can�t deal with surprises well � when a cast member clearly wants out (think George Clooney in ER) it hits the papers months before he is written out by convenient fate like transfer, death, or what have you. Narratives aren�t permitted to really wander to the brink and come back again. Part of the allure of narrative is that stories provide us with a secure sense of beginning, middle, and end. Idol tries to supplant the shock of reality TV by showing you a farewell clip montage of the departee, an artificial sense of closure. But a show like
ER couldn�t very well do that and be expected to maintain its viewer following. It wouldn�t make sense if Dr. Greene just up and died one day, even though this is often exactly the kind of surprise we have to confront in life. Instead, the writers give him an uncertain brain tumor when he hints that he is approaching retirement. If he decides to stay, we go the remission route, if he decides to go elsewhere, then he dies in Hawaii like he did last spring.
I guess I don�t understand why the influence of the writers / directors has such a strong effect on
Six Feet Under. I am sure other shows have the same set up, but it doesn�t seem so blatantly obvious. I think two exceptions are shows like
CSI or a long-standing favorite,
Law and Order. I�d classify both of these shows as �event driven dramas� because the cast plays a minimal role in the success of the show. Consider how many pairs of detectives have slipped through the LAO cracks without so much as slowing down the run away train success of the series. In any given episode, occasionally you get to see the personality of a character, but the episode really hinges on the particulars of the crime and the evidence, the characters are clearly in the background and secondary to the primary event. This might be because
Six Feet Under is trying to be different and defy typical genres. Some weeks it is really funny, love story. other weeks it is hard-hitting and sexy vulgar like the
Sopranos, and other weeks it just comes across as distant and ill at ease. I don�t think that different directors has to be this influential, perhaps HBO is just going out of its way to represent different tastes and talents to an extreme. Maybe someone else watches this show or half of the other shows I�ve mentioned, we should talk about it sometime... the sooner the better, my social calendar seems to be at its most dilapidated, evidenced by the seriousness of the claims mentioned above.
Such is life. My show starts in five minutes and I feel better with this rant vented. Worked today despite the nice weather tugging at me to be outside and relaxed. Need to work again tomorrow morning, triggering the familiar complainy nasally refrain from within, I
don�t wanna go to work tomorrow� pout, pout, stomp, stomp.
ps - memo to my sister - new Sex and the City on Sunday, June 22 - new Ellen Degenres comedy special Saturday, June 21. I'll chill the Wild Vines.
posted by lmjasinski at 10:02 PM
