Ahh, it’s my favorite time of year again.
For all the little kids, that time of year would be Christmas as
they rush down to the living room to pounce on their presents with
glee and inspect them like swarthy antique appraisers. However, for
TV critics, their presents come a little earlier with the arrival
of fall and the onslaught of crispy, fresh TV pilots just waiting
to be ripped open.
As I caught some of the season’s newest shows, I could not
help feeling just plain tired. If we take a look at the fall
line-up, everything is the same. They may have different titles and
characters, but the commercial, glossy quality is itself about the
same.
I think it’s MTV. Television is just way too influenced by
MTV; everything looks like it.
Yeah, I blame it on MTV.
I blame MTV for everything: our high crime rates, global
starvation and the crumbling virtues of man … yeah, it all
started with MTV.
Manufactured by corporate TV execs drinking lattes in their
office, all the shows are obviously catering to sheets of
statistics of what the specific cusp of 13-year-olds and
15-year-olds are watching today. The corporate wizards have come up
with a strategy to gain teen MTV viewers by placing montages of MTV
video clips into the shows themselves.
Take for example, “Fastlane.” “Fastlane”
is pretty much self-explanatory: It’s about fast men who
drive in fast cars chasing fast women … very quickly. It’s
your new millennium version of “Miami Vice;” however,
it’s trying so hard to be edgy it works against itself. With
little clips from Madonna’s “Ray of Light” and
Dr. Dre’s “Nothing But a G Thang,” it’s so
Hollywood slick without any creative plot that I could swear USC
was behind it. With a cameo from Fred Durst and VJ, and actor Bill
Bellamy as Deaqon ““ yes with a “Q” ““ the
show is so trendy, it screams, gasps, and bleeds for an MTV
audience.
For the more mature audience ““ basically those that have
outgrown watching Britney Spears in public ““ there’s
“Push, Nevada.” Again, another combination of what
we’ve seen before. James Pufrock, a straitlaced Internal
Revenue Service tax man investigates some fishy business deals in a
kooky town called Push.
The special twist to this show is that the lead character,
Pufrock, has a Jimmy Stewart complex a la “Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington,” especially when he tries so hard to look moral
that he seems constipated. I admit it’s hard to try and jazz
up a show about an IRS guy (ooohhh, sounds more attractive than an
enema) and to this end the show resorts to something out of MTV.
There are shots of a car driving in the desert that I swear was
part of a Stone Temple Pilots video.
In addition, there are quick zoom shots that are supposed to
make the show look cool for the 21-year-olds and under, but it
simply made me kind of ill for a while. I wonder what other types
of shots the show will come up with in an attempt to divert the
audience’s attention from the fact that Pufrock is talking
about the IRS … again.
I can understand the pressure for TV execs to pump up ratings.
With all the novelty ideas coming from HBO and films (both of which
are allowed to show more skin), TV networks are absolutely
desperate to get people watching.
Especially with “Friends” leaving after this season,
all the networks are trying to think quickly of something to put on
the airways that can sucker all the viewers into watching. But we
all know from HBO and NBC’s sweep of the Emmy’s,
it’s good shows (“The Sopranos,” “West
Wing”) that tell interesting stories and revamp old formulas
that are the heavy hitters. Shows don’t have to resort to
sex, drugs and quick zoom shots to get good ratings and critical
approval.
Plus, we already have MTV and now MTV2, so what’s the
point of watching MTV3, 4 or 5?