Television affects society a channel at a time
NEW PERSPECTIVES: By Adam Holmberg, Feb. 26, 2004
Vampires, according to Joss Whedon, are demons who inhabit the body of a human. When a vampire is sired, the soul leaves the body, replaced by a creature that may look like, talk like, and even share the memories of the human but is completely evil.
Angelus was a vampire sired by Darla, a prostitute dying of syphilis before she was changed, who did monstrous things – driving people mad, torturing children, wiping out whole families for pleasure - for 150 years until his soul was restored by gypsies. For the last hundred years Angel has suffered with the memories of his deeds as Angelus, and has established himself in Los Angeles as a champion of the hopeless, trying to make amends.
In season two of WB television show “Angel,” Wolfram and Hart – a law firm that could be described as Evil, Inc. – brought Darla, whom Angel had killed, back to life. However, she was human again and, like Angel, haunted by the memories of the horrors she caused. There was a price, though, for this humanity – the demon had been taken out of her, but not the syphilis. Seeing a chance to redeem himself once and for all, Angel swore to be by her side as she lived her second chance – the last month of her life, which would be stolen from her when Wolfram and Hart kidnapped her and had her changed again into a vampire.
Feeling that his second chance was stolen from him, Angel abandoned his mission and his friends to destroy Wolfram and Hart, going to Hell to find its home office and destroy evil itself.
Angel reached the end of his literal and metaphoric elevator ride to Hell only to find that he has stopped in the same place he started – here on Earth. Wolfram and Hart isn’t the source of evil – it just uses the evil that is in every single person. As Angel’s guide from Wolfram and Hart explains, “You see, if there wasn’t evil in every single one of them out there, they wouldn’t be people. They’d all be angels.”
At this point Angel has an epiphany – evil in the world comes from inside people, and he can only fight that evil by continuing his mission to help the hopeless.
After watching the wonderful episode in which Angel has this revelation – the denouncement of a brilliant season of “Angel” – I checked the entertainment news for the day to find that, despite an 11 percent increased in Nielsen ratings, “Angel” had been cancelled. Further research reminded me that WB Director of Programming Jordan Levin had just a month earlier announced that “Angel” would be safe for a sixth season despite the network’s order of a remake of the 70s vampire soap opera “Dark Shadows.” Now it appears “Dark Shadows” will replace “Angel” (by the way, the last remake of “Dark Shadows”, which ran on NBC in the early 90s , failed to impress fans of the original and was cancelled after 13 episodes).
Even if a show like “Angel” isn’t your cup of tea, I hope the above description will give you some conception of the originality and power brought to that show by its creative team. Whedon, in “Angel” and “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer,” brought an original, witty spin to a myth that has been duplicated thousands of times in just the past century and he created two shows with aspects of death in their central themes and used those shows to try and teach us something about living.
Unfortunately, “Angel” – a complex show that allowed its heroes to fall farther into darkness than I have ever seen in American television - will end at the end of its current (fifth) season – which, as mentioned before, is actually pulling in more viewers than ever - to be replaced by another remake that no one asked for. And unfortunately it is not the only great show in recent memory to be replaced by programming both shallow and unoriginal at least (and mindless and incompetent at worst).
What makes me angry is that our art is a reflection of our society, and television – like it or not – is the modern version of the Elizabethan and Greek theater. Television – especially network television - is produced under insanely stressful circumstances – usually an episode is written in one week, filmed in the next, and edited the third week with almost no room to correct mistakes. Like a play, most revision comes in performance, but there is still only a limited window to make changes before the show has to air.
Instead of going to a theater, modern audiences turn on their televisions, and there is nothing wrong with that if the show they are watching is “Angel” or “Homicide” or “Mary Tyler Moore.” In fact, every art form has advantages over the other – novels have more time to develop character than films, but films are more immediate and can stir deeper emotions than the written word.
What does it say about our society that we fill an art form that can engage us in a single story over a period of up to nine months – can inspire hundreds of discussions about the art around the lunch table or at the office or in any one of a thousand places – with stories that we watch, allow to manipulate us, then discard and ask for more? What does it tell us when one of the most popular television shows of all time – “Seinfeld” – was proudly billed as “the show about nothing”? And what does it tell us when we replace our shows that can move us and that try to tell us something about what it means to be human with a popcorn remake of a vampire soap opera?
I could turn this into yet another lecture about “the dumbing down of our society” but I won’t. I will just leave you with this: “Homicide: Life on the Street” ran for seven seasons between 1993 and 1999. Inspired by a bestseller by Baltimore reporter David Simon who followed a team of homicide detectives for a year and wrote about the grind and emotional toll of the job, “Homicide” mirrored its inspiration – it brought Baltimore to life and showed us not police chases or violent shootouts but instead allowed the detectives to come to life and allowed the audience to follow them on their beat and discover that homicide isn’t glamour and headlines – its about the end of life and how we deal with that end. The creators of “Homicide” had to fight long, hard battles with their network to survive, and ultimately the show was only allowed to continue because NBC’s programming director believed in it.
Yet, the “CSI” franchise – currently the most-watched show in America – will debut its “CSI: New York,” its second spin-off in the Fall 2004. Without arguing the merits of “CSI,” I will just say this – Anthony Zuiker, executive producer and creator of all three “CSI”s could have, with his clout, sent his show anywhere – Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis. However, instead viewers will tune into “CSI: New York,” the sixth new cop show in three years to be set in that city.
I expect it will be a hit.