Gray's Anatomy (Season Finale)

Okay, so Shonda Rimes tells fairy tales. Her characters all speak with the same hesitant inflection, the same stutter and most of the time, they are self-absorbed and narcissistic. But, Rimes is also clued into the temper of the times and the need for integrity and truthfulness when so much of the public and political sphere is bereft of truth and integrity. Rimes for better or for worse "feels" the temper of of this historical period in a way that most television writers cannot, lost as they are in strange plots or repetitive narratives that hint at truth without understanding its foundations. There is a moment and it is brief, in the season finale of Gray's Anatomy, when the Chief asserts his leadership, his manliness and his integrity with enough force to reclaim his wife and his marriage. It is a poignant expression of the confusion between what we know about ourselves and our desire to live in an enchanted kingdom where deferred desires finally become real.

This year's finale is about childhood, about the losses, pain and learning that children experience without really understanding that they are forming the base upon which their adult lives will endure. Childhood for Meredith Gray is the discovery of her mother's real reason for trying to commit suicide (to attract attention) and Alex's revelation that he had tried to take care of his dying mother and failed to save her. Childhood is about pains that come and go without the perspective to recognize their impact. This show is about the success of psychiatry and the talking cure (Meredith finally understands her relationship with her mother.). It is about scientific experimentation (its mistakes and successes), but mostly it is about developing in the words of Miranda Bailey, a big picture view of the world. It is about stepping back from the seemingly endless swirl of everyday life with enough force to recognize not only complexity but also and more importantly, how to tell yourself a story in which you are both heroine and failure, but nevertheless can succeed.

In this context, honesty becomes a tool for self-effacement and for ego. The contradiction is obvious. You cannot at one and the same time be on top of the world and your game without also chipping away at your presumption that you know yourself well enough to understand what you are doing and why. Rimes balances between pop psychology and insight, between an Oprah-like obsession with reducing the world to a series of simple equations, to recognizing that fairy tales make the world go round. Rimes is the antithesis of the characters she creates. Her characters are immersed in the contradictions of a medical world that engages with death and disease while also pursuing dreams of perfection. For Rimes, perfection comes from the endless pursuit of the right story through a combination of dialogue rhythm and music. Every time that Rimes solves one part of the fairy tale another challenge rears its head.

Rimes's world frees patients from encasement in concrete (both psychological and physical), brings love to people where and when it is needed, and finally allows men to combine new forms of sensitivity with enough verve to remain at least partially macho. If all this sounds like a bit of a mess, then Rimes's has captured what other television shows cannot, the fact that fairy tales are always immersed in the detritus of what they leave behind just as most stories are not solely about the lives of the people they depict. Television is obsessed with narrating the clash between childhood dreams and adult failures (see this season's episodes of Lost). Gray's Anatomy in contrast revels in the romantic pain that comes from self-recognition. Narcissism it seems reveals an endless series of mirrors, none of which really capture the truth with enough depth to complete the story of any one character. This only happens when television series come to an end.

The New Television Season (Fall 2007)

I always look forward to the new Fall season on TV. I generally watch as much as I can in September and over the years, there have been some surprises, much banality, a great deal of repetition, and on occasion the extraordinary show that marks a new phase in the history of the medium.

This September, however would rate as one of the worst starts to a new season that I have ever experienced. Not only are the plots repetitious, derivative and generally unimaginative, the shows themselves are shot with no attention to detail, camerawork, or aesthetic differentiation. Many of the shows involve some sort of "supernatural" shift either through time travel — Journeyman — Heroes — Life (yes, that is the title) or through extra powers gained by God or medicine — Bionic Woman. Others are centred on close equivalents to time travel like Lost.

Then we have the medical shows with Grey's Anatomy having now developed a new lens that softens the eyes of its characters so that everyone looks like Meredith Grey. I call it the SQUINT. This is a mode of acting that makes you look sensitive when you are not, involved and attentive when you are not, and most of all empathetic (with an emphasis on the pathetic).

There are the police shows and the anti-terrorist shows like NCIS — with its tired characters, silly intrigue and CSI-like use of forensics by a goth character who seems to use computers that can find any information and a pathologist who listens to the souls of the dead to gather information.

The Reaper is about the devil (yes, the devil appears) and 'his' ownership of the main character's soul. Do what I tell you or you too will go to hell. I believe that this might be the twentieth incarnation of this type of show, just as Journeyman is Quantum Leap and Time Traveler retold.

I won't talk about the obvious relationships between Smallville and Bionic Woman, or Gossip Girl and the OC — the former about the tragedy of the superhuman and the latter about yet another bunch of rich kids with the same jealousies and school experiences as every other show ever situated in that key age of 0-21.

No need to mention the endless repetitions of Law and Order, CSI and CSI - other cities. There must be a logic to the patterns here and it is sheer lack of imagination.

Oh, catch Mad Men on AMC. It is the only show that actually tries to explore some new strategies of storytelling and aesthetically, it is beautiful. Set in 1960 in an advertising agency, we are presently in the final days of the battle between Nixon and Kennedy for the Presidency.

"24"and all that

The two hour conclusion to "24" was both anti-climactic and irrelevant. In fact, the hint at the end that Jack Bauer was contemplating his own death by suicide was gratuitous and unnecessary since we know the show has been renewed for yet another season. So, what went wrong with this show? Why did it fall apart?

For years the show has been based on the genuine fear that Americans have of another terrorist attack. It is not that that has disappeared. Rather, the nature of the fear has changed from an everyday sense that something is around the corner, to a wiser understanding that the rules of everyday life are not the same and that we are in a phase of history where unconventional controls over violence, conspiracies and irrational behaviour cannot be exercised without also compromising the very reasons we believe in the future and in democracy. (The writers of "24" should take note of the conclusion to the far more intelligent show, "Heroes.")

"24" has remained locked into forms of violence, evil and the general turmoil of power that have lost their intensity. The show has revolved around the same failures, overwhelming threats and simple resolutions for too long. It is a comic strip. But even Marvel knew when to change its heroes or invent new ones.

"24" spent a great deal of this season in a state of hysteria. The fatal error began with the first few shows when the nuclear bomb went off in Valencia (?) and then devolved into a silly chase show.

However, the key figure was Phillip Bauer, a seemingly incorrigible maniac whose dual role as father and killer, meant to be the opposite to Jack, dragged on through endless Oedipal reversals until he finally killed his other and equally evil son. Why did the show decide to include this particular theme? And why does this man get shot by the grandson in the last episode? I am not going to dwell on the psychoanalytic tangle of father-son-grandson, other than to say that the references are all too simple — haven't all our father figures failed us in this age of dystopic conundrums synthesized most tragically by the war in Iraq?

Even if "24" were commenting on this, and I have my doubts, the visualization they have given us does not explain why so many signposts in our society don't seem to be leading to any kind of truth or resolution, but rather to cynicism and the endless ruptures of bad faith and betrayal.

Poor Jack. At the end he believes in nothing and we have stopped believing in him. The character has been so diminished that I doubt the show can come back from the marginal status that it has now acquired.

Prison Break (à la carte)

I have been trying to figure out Prison Break for over a year. It began with the most conventional of premises, as do many television shows (which says something about the paucity of good writers working in the medium today). A man (Michael Scofield) decides to become a criminal so that he can be incarcerated in the worst jail in America in order to free his brother (Lincoln Burrows) who has been wrongly accused of a murder. The wrong man theme is a dominant feature of many films (Clint Eastwood is a master at it.) and also of television. The quest to right the wrong appears and reappears throughout the history of popular media and also popular fiction. It is always a quest and often (as in the films of Quentin Tarantino) truth does not win even though the audience is always rooting for the underdog and even Tarantino plays games with some possible endings which might, just might resolve themselves into a victory for right over wrong.

In Prison Break the brothers are not only overwhelmed by the reality that one of them will be executed, but must also contend with the fact that they are the victims of a conspiracy that reaches into the highest levels of the government and includes the President. (The time is right for this, but the transparency of the connection to politics in Washington, circa 2007 seems forced and overdone.)

I am a fan of "wrong men" plots and also of conspiracies, as long as I don't have to take things too seriously. In Prison Break, the weight of the conspiracy is determined by the need to continue the narrative and to keep the show on the air. In the first season, the narrative followed all the various improbable ways in which the plans for escaping from Fox River Penitentiary were hatched. The entire narrative was so unreal that it didn’t much matter that the warden allowed one of the brothers into his confidence and into his office, or that prisoners were able to dig a tunnel under the not so watchful eyes of their guards.

The narrative tension in this show comes from something else, the possibility of success in a world violently bent on making success impossible and where danger can be found not only at every corner, but also within the very structure of society itself. Danger is after all, the core of modern-day politics in Bushworld (to borrow a wonderful metaphor from Maureen Dowd). It is the framework for nearly every action Bush and his government undertake with the overriding intent being to make it seem as if sleeper cells are everywhere. Danger surrounds us (the core premise of 24 and a host of other shows) and hence we need and must be prepared for the inevitable violence not only of criminals, but terrorists.

But, we have so few avenues of escape from this box! No sooner does a character in Prison Break become ever so slightly happy, than he or she must be brought down either by murder or by suicide. The prison is within and the protagonists are fighting their inner demons as much as they have to confront a world that has lost its moral compass.

We live, I think, in simulated Shakespearean times where tragedy lurks within the very fabric of politics, is the essence of the everyday and where storytelling must limit itself to demarcations of good and evil with no grey zones and even fewer moments of pleasure (unless, that is, you count the perversity of competition on American Idol as pleasurable).

This existential quagmire has become even more complex on Prison Break largely because the show is no longer about a prison escape, but is about the brothers being chased by nearly everyone from wicked policemen to even more evil politicians. And of course, this is another and important convention in television and film — the chase, the endless battle of good guys and bad guys — not very forensic in the CSI sense, but endlessly compelling, because after all, we want the good guys to win. After an entire season of convoluted plots, Scofield finally ended the show last week by saying, "that's it, we have to disappear."

So they must, into the dustbin of television history because no recent show has had the nerve to reveal a President who had an incestuous affair with her brother. (Yes, the President is female which raises other questions.) He then commits suicide in a seedy motel. The show has a secret agent who may have been a lover of the President as well and who tries to assassinate her and a famous FBI agent who is a drug addict so obsessed, so flawed that he kills and maims with impunity.

In this mix of tragedy, conspiracy, farce and double-crossing, Dr. Sarah Tancredi, (Scofield’s love interest) herself a recovering drug addict and the daughter of a murdered Governor (yes, he was found hanging in his house), is a calm centre of love and affection, trying to right the wrongs and being tortured in the process. Again, she is so flawed that inevitably, her demons reappear through torture and pain (how about being nearly drowned in a bath tub?).

Lost in an urban wilderness that seems populated by aliens who tunnel their way into conversations, where everyone is listening to and watching everyone else, and surveillance combined with paranoia is at the heart of social interaction, the brothers on Prison Break epitomize the sharp edge of despair that our culture has tumbled into. The brothers and their doctor have a little bit of integrity, but they have no discourse, no means of explaining either to each other or to anyone else, why this conspiracy is so important. It seems that it is just not enough to point out the fatal flaws of a President because at the heart of this show is a deep sense that failure is at the core of storytelling and politics.

We are living in the era of Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears who invite surveillance, enact the tragic consequences of conspiracy and manufacture their reality as a theater in the round. This latter day atmosphere of trivial scandal is why Prison Break may well be a designed failure since its own ideology must prevent it from becoming a success.

Hollywood: Is the cinema dying?

There is a myth circulating in Hollywood and in the media that film is dying. True, box office revenues are down. The impact of flat screens in the home as well as DVD's and the Internet is changing the dynamics of viewership and audience. Yes, there are less people going to the cinema and the medium is changing because more people can now make films at home and then upload them to YouTube. There are many more venues in which films can be shown, which dilutes the power and the role of the majors. True, cinemas are closing and those that remain are deteriorating. Yes, there is more variety and many more choices available to people than ever before and this is highlighted by the strength of videogames.

BUT, the real reason that this is happening has much more to do with content, storytelling and the role of images in our society than with any substantial change in audiences. Hollywood has lost the ability to tell stories largely because it is so out of contact with the publics it tries to address. Much of the slack has been taken up by the independent cinema which in relative terms is thriving. Relative, because independent cinema needs to find small audiences and so can survive on less than the mainstream. I know that there are some people who will not be unhappy to see mainstream spectacle-oriented cinema decline, but I am not one of them. But, if the mainstream is to survive, it will have to reinvent itself, shed the marketing departments that dominate the selection of projects (when will producers realise that marketers have basically no understanding of audiences — which may explain why the vast majority of films fail) and develop new models of storytelling and narrative.

In my opinion, the cinema is not dying. The conventional approach to production and distribution is changing, but Hollywood producers still think that they are back in the 1970's. Examples abound. After many years of videogame production, audience building and the growth of production companies, Hollywood took notice and began to make films as if they were like games. The films failed of course because as related as the two media are, the activities of viewing are different. Videogames remain, in my opinion, locked into models of narrative that are as predictable and dry as Hollywood's have become, but at least some elements within the organization of a game allow for new strategies of audience involvement. The documentary cinema has risen in prominence over the last decade both because of reality television and the fact that there are so many stories out there that need telling. One of the few films that grasped this phenomena was "Good Night, and Good Luck" which used black and white film as a way of telling the important and often overlooked story of Edward R. Murrow in post-war America during the McCarthy era.

George Clooney's film took advantage of the strength of newsreels, combined that with close-up cinematography and then mixed in a soundtrack that not only evoked the era, but said something important about the media and their role as purveyors of information and opinion. Clooney didn't get much support from Hollywood for this film, but it succeeded nevertheless.

The cinema is not dying because audiences will always be hungry for stories and for new content that addresses their concerns or reveals experiences and worlds to them that they know nothing about. Ironically, a television series like Deadwood which is shot in the style of the cinema, has become a success largely because it manages to tell stories so well. The characters are powerful precisely as a consequence of the power of the FICTION. Here is David Milch, the brilliant creator of the series talking about his creative process. (From the HBO web site — producer of the show)

Executive producer David Milch warns that Deadwood is not a docu-drama about the famed outlaw town. "I want to make it clear," he says, "that I've had my ass bored off by many things that are historically accurate."

That said, Milch spent months immersing himself in the true stories of the people of 19th century Deadwood, absorbing not just the events, but also the subtle motivations behind them. "I like to read the primary materials; I love reading the Black Hills Pioneer, you know," he says. "I could read that all day. I'm interested in the personalities who were kind of the first prime movers in the community."

What has emerged is a picture of a place finding its own "order" without the benefit of laws. "Deadwood was a place created by a series of accidents. A kind of original sin — the appropriation of what belonged to one people by another people — was enacted with no pretense at all," he says. "You know, the people who landed in Manhattan, they paid 24 bucks. Well, maybe they got a bargain, but they still recognized the obligation to pay. In the Black Hills, the land had just been given to the Indians, to get 'em to move from another piece of land."
“I want to make it clear that I've had my ass bored off by many things that are historically accurate.

Somewhere between David Milch and George Clooney lies a middle ground for the new Hollywood. Go to the Ars Technica site for an interesting analysis on the future of videogames and why they may not be threatening Hollywood at all.