The Impossible Medium

As I sit here in my living room, diverting various media streams from a cluster of electronic devices into the monolithic conduit that is the house’s sole television, signal splitters and switchboxes vomiting cords across the room to squeeze some versatility out of a limited set of input and output ports, the irony of this audio-visual savvy isn't lost on me: It all enables the infantile regression that is nerdhood. As a matter of fact, this is the only form of infantile regression I can wholeheartedly endorse (middle school kids reminiscing about shows from 3 years ago, not so much).

Realize that this isn’t another dissertation on nerds. The word “nerd” is becoming painfully similar to the word “hipster,” in that it applies to absolutely everyone, and means absolutely nothing. However, the growth of the mindset itself—that is, a sense of deep completism and involvement with a lengthy story—has inarguably changed the way people take things in. Pair that with the mindless droning of people with worthless opinions and internet connections, as well as the legitimization of television as an art form, and you have quite a nasty situation on your hands, in which no one seems to have very much fun at all.

This thought comes partially from a discussion with a friend about the absence of any science fiction franchise which has actually managed to satisfy a solid majority of its fans by its end. We only came up with two examples: One is Firefly and its feature film coda Serenity, and the other is Doctor Who. These both have caveats, however; Firefly was rather cheesy from the first time the theme song played, so anyone who would have been alienated was weeded out within an episode or two. It burned brightly for a short time, never introducing any major arcs, and went out with a bang. Then, of course, the caveat with Doctor Who is simple: It never ends. It makes huge conceits which alter its continuity, thus eliminating the need for a finale. It didn’t definitively end in the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, or the zeroes, and it won’t end in the tens (and thank heavens for that).

On the other hand, there are shows like Lost, Battlestar Galactica, The X-Files, and many more which tackle gigantic, cosmic mysteries. Whether planned from day one or devised along the way, their massive fan bases are rarely heard proclaiming praise for those things, despite their obvious obsessions. The elements that comprise these shows can be mind-blowingly imaginative, absolutely original, and heartwarmingly sincere, and they attract people in droves to follow the show. However, it seems that if you take one of those imaginative, original, sincere elements and turn it into the ultimate MacGuffin, obscuring it, hiding it from the audience, making it the answer to the show’s major mystery… Everybody hates it, and they hate you for thinking of it. If I understand the internet correctly, they probably even hate your parents for conceiving you. The Scooby-Doo episodes and forensics plots in their subconscious tells them that the answer shouldn’t be truly supernatural, but that it should be as familiar as the backs of their hands… But is that really what science fiction is about? I think not.

The impossibility of satisfaction is beginning to become an issue with drama shows in general, and sometimes legitimately (I didn’t watch The Killing, but I’ve picked up a unanimous uneasiness over its finale). Instead of submitting to the endless cycle, spending hours on full television series only to be let down by most of them, I have to wonder when people will finally begin to understand the limitations of the medium itself. The rise of the television serial as a respectable, artist-controlled art form doesn’t happen overnight, and the remnants of the old broadcasting business (a disposable entertainment factory) prevent them from being made the same way movies are.

First, remember, the crew of an epic television series may include LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE. With so many cooks in the kitchen, we should be impressed that these shows even manage to exist in the first place. When the format is used to tell an ambitious story which is internationally loved while being told, the sense of pride and the exhibition of basic human spirit it creates is really quite wondrous. In some cases, maybe this feat makes its creators soft, and maybe it makes them go a little easier on themselves. The episodes that result aren’t received positively by the audience, because the show they fell in love with may have been produced in the midst of a grueling uphill battle: The producers fighting for good ratings, the writers vying for story control, the cast compromising its salary for the opportunity to be a part of something they believe in, and so on. It lights a fire for a show which dies out upon becoming a hit, and if that’s really what happens, maybe the complaints are legitimate.

But what happens when that struggle remains, strengthening the series and making people hang on, belaboring the disappointment for the last episode or two? That’s when we have to use a little insight, and realize that the show isn’t necessarily exactly as its creators intended. Actors may decide to leave, studios may not provide the budget necessary to tell a crucial element of the story, and standards may not allow a certain dramatic twist because of a content dispute. All these things add up to change the ultimate product of a show, so maybe the finale doesn’t go down exactly as written. Maybe Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaje turns out to be a prissy little girl who doesn’t want to work in Hawaii anymore, so Mr. Eko gets killed by the smoke monster and there’s no good explanation. Maybe Malcolm David Kelley grows a few feet like normal human children are supposed to, and the mystery behind Walt isn’t explained at all because the creators couldn’t do it the way it was meant to be done (that is to say, with the young actor at a specific age). It happens… These are epic poems being played out before your eyes. Maybe the creators’ eyes are bigger than their stomachs. Guess what? That’s the mark of a great artist.

Then, there are the shows which are made up as they go. Most nerds looks disdainfully upon this writing method, but when you go along for the ride anyway, only you are to blame for your unrealistic expectations. Realistically, the show may be made this way because its writers don’t even know if the show will exist in six months. They have to set themselves up for some sort of ending whenever it may come, and this may mean not overextending themselves to plan for the eleventh season during the writing of the second or third. Completely dismissing this method also denies one its greatest thrills: The great mystery fuels the writers too, and they get just as wrapped up in the tension as the audience, creating some amazing moments along the path to a potentially anticlimactic close. So Starbuck comes back somehow, and some of the timeline seems a bit off, and in the long run maybe you never accept the answers, but it’s pretty frakkin’ exciting in the moment, and it’s worth enjoying for its own sake.

Television is still a waxing medium, and should be viewed as such. Executives are still holding the creative forces of the industry back, because they think that mass audiences don’t have a memory that lasts more than seven days… and the unfortunate fact is, in most cases they’re right. The audience for intelligent shows with long-term plotlines is growing fast, but this audience isn’t quite universal yet. The climate is similar to that of film in the fifties, when audiences had to observe subtexts, because certain things just weren’t allowed on screen. Current television writers struggle for long-term story control (and even simply the rights to finish telling their stories), the way fifties filmmakers struggled against censorship. Despite this, modern-day film fanatics still look to many of those subtle, subtext-filled films as great works of art. Who’s to say that, half a century from now, the same won’t be true of the ambitious television projects being created now? What will change between now and then, making people see the sincerity and value in them? The key is to read between the lines and enjoy what we have now. It may not all shake out exactly the way it was supposed to, but you can see the frameworks of great stories, every corner filled with more detail than any single movie could ever include, creating worlds more fleshed-out than anything that came before. It actually makes film appear rather safe and easy by contrast. It’s going to get really good in the future, but nothing beats the sincerity and vigor of the ideas being made into series right now.

And here’s the other thing: Why not just enjoy it and stop treating your television like it’s a curse? You know, if you keep doing that, you really don’t deserve the privilege.