Bookworms & Television: Can They Mix?

I was reading this post on EW.com about how there are relatively few intellectual, bookish characters on TV, which seems really strange given that TV shows are created and run by writers, who are, by and large, geeky intellectuals. But they rarely write about characters who are overtly bookish and intellectual.

I think the main reason is the fact that it's really hard to write a bookish, intellectual character without them coming off as pretentious or hopelessly nerdy. Not that TV writers shouldn't try, but it is hard to find the right balance between showing the characters' smarts and moving the story.

Because of the medium, TV can't stop and show the characters pondering the events and philosophical implications of a book they just read. The character's inner thoughts have to be externalized in actions and dialogue, which is really hard to to with intellectuals, without them coming off as arrogant or worse, boring. Literary references that a huge chunk of the audience doesn't get generally don't go over well.

Not that I wouldn't love to see more bookworm intellectuals on TV, but I think it is kind of stupid and arrogant to try to write characters and shows that are specifically designed to come across as really intellectual. It's something you either have or you don't, and when you don't, it shows.

I don't think a show's level of "intellectualness" is determined by how many Shakespeare references the characters make or how much time they spend standing around discussing differential calculus. I think it's determined by how well the stories work and how well the themes of the show are reflected in the characters, whether they be Kafka-quoting astrophysicists or Lauren Conrad wannabes.

Why Don't More People Watch SYTYCD?

I try to hate reality TV. I really do. As an aspiring TV writer, I resent them on the basis that for every single one of them hogging a prime time spot, there are dozens of scripted pilots sitting on shelves in the networks' closets that will never see the light of day, and for each of those pilots, dozens of young aspiring-staff writers who won't get jobs because of it.

But there are a few shows that are just so lovable, I can't hate them. So You Think You Can Dance is one of them.

It really is tremendous, featuring gorgeous young dancers who perform routines so spectacular they outdo the set pieces in a lot of "dance" movies by a factor of a lot. The contestants are talented. The judges are crazy (although they do know what they're talking about). And the host Cat Deeley is thoroughly charming.

And yet, when it comes to ratings, SYTYCD gets trounced by CSI reruns.

Whereas fellow reality shows American Idol (SYTYCD and Idol are basically the same show, except they dance instead of sing) are ratings juggernauts. Even though in terms of looking at the episodes alone, they're not better shows.

I think the reason SYTYCD doesn't get the same amount of attention as Idol is the stakes. Nothing really happens if you win So You Think You Can Dance. So you're "America's Favorite Dancer". And you win a bunch of money. But nothing really happens after that.

Not so with American Idol. We get to see them have careers. Eight years later, and Kelly Clarkson's still topping the charts. When the producers use phrases like "Search for a Superstar" it's not just hyperbole--these people do very often go on to be very popular, very visible recording artists.

American Idol is a high stakes competition. We really want our favorites to win, or at least stay in long enough that they can score a record contract and not fade into obscurity. If they win, they're mega-stars. If they lose, we might not see them again. High stakes.

Not so with SYTYCD. Whether they win or lose, we usually don't see them again (unless they get a job as a choreographer on Dancing with the Stars or SYTYCD itself.) Maybe they go on to have great careers in Dance World, but most of us aren't linked in to Dance World, so we don't really see what happens to them after.

Maybe I'm reading too much into Reality TV ratings, but the fact is without stakes, there is no drama. If nothing good happens to the characters if they win and nothing bad happens to them if they fail, then why should we root for them? Answer, we don't. It's a rule that holds true for both scripted stories and real life competitions.

Stories need stakes. I sure wish more people would watch SYTYCD, though.

Some TV Writers Should Have their License to Kill Revoked

I know loads of people who love it when characters on TV shows (just look at all those people who watched Harper's Island.) It gives a show pathos, it reinvigorates plotlines, wakes up the audience and gives the brooding characters something new to brood about. To stay alive, a show has to maintain suspense, and what better way is there to remind everyone that characters are in jeopardy than killing one of them off?

Yep, from a storytelling point of view, killing characters can be hugely beneficial.

But I hate it.

It's the reason I stopped watching Lost. I gave up when they killed Libby. I really liked her, and felt really gipped when they killed her off without really doing her backstory. (For those of you who didn't watch or don't remember, Libby was one of the survivors from the tail section of the plane they met up with at the beginning of Season 2. She was the sweet blond one who started dating Hurley, right before she got killed.) They also killed off Ana Lucia, another tail section survivor, in the same incident. And then later I heard through the grapevine that they also killed Mr. Eko a few episodes into season 3.

That just made me mad. What was the point of introducing new characters just to kill them off a few episodes later? Why are Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are blessed with immortality, when other equally-interesting characters get killed for no good reason? Their deaths didn't really have a huge impact on the direction of the show.

I realize that Lost is a scary show that has to keep its creep cred up, and killing characters is one of the best ways to maintain suspense, but I think killing off new characters before we really get to know them is just stupid. It doesn't have the shock value of killing off someone who's been there from the beginning. And it feels like a rip-off, like if you thought this blogger you were reading was going to launch into an elaborate analogy for how much it sucks to feel cheated out of watching a favorite character and all they did was just babble lamely until they finish the sentence.

But then again, I might be impossible to please, because I also hate it when they kill off series fixtures.

As I got over Libby enough to start watching again, they killed Charlie. And I hated it. Partly because, Charlie could have easily escaped if he had just locked himself on the other side of the door. But also because, it didn't really make a difference in the grand story arc. Because even if Charlie and Des had both gotten out, it still would have been too late to warn Jack about the boat. And although Hurley seeing Charlie's ghost at the convenience store and running away was kind of priceless, there are plenty of other dead people Hurley could have talked to. (Like say, Libby!)

Maybe I'm a wimp, but an unjust, underwhelming death for a favorite character is one of the worst things a TV writer can do to his or her audience. Therefore, I'm coining this list of rules for killing off characters, which I promise I will follow 98% of the time if I ever actually become a TV writer.

1. Killing off a character has to affect the plot. And the bigger the character, the more it has to affect the plot. Eliminating a series regular should have a huge impact. I'm too lazy to think of an example right now, but y'all know it's true.

2. Killing off a character has to affect the other characters. A really good example of a well done character death is when Buffy's mom died. It was heartbreaking, and not just because we were sad that character was leaving the show. They devoted an entire episode to the aftermath of her death and all the other characters' reactions to it- the sadness, the denial, the wishing they could have done different and realizing they couldn't have. It was a great episode. Buffy was a great show.

3. The death has to be karmically sound. Don't you just hate it when they kill off nice characters who don't deserve it? Karma, justice, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it has to be respected in storytelling. I'm gonna use another example from a Joss Whedon show, even though I know I do that way too much. (SPOILER ALERT!) On Angel, when Darla, Angel's vampire sire and ex-girlfriend, comes back pregnant and discovers that because she's carrying child with a soul, she has a soul while it's inside of her. But that child can't be born in a normal way. (I know, vampire physics don't make any sense.) So in a final redemptive act, she stakes herself, so that her son can live. A dignified, redeeming end for a really, really annoying character.

4. Don't kill a character unless their story's been played out. This was the rule that was violated with Libby's death. If a character still has friends to make, people to torture, and/or tragic romances to suffer through, don't kill them. Not yet!

And last, but not least: 5. Don't kill the cute character with the funny accent. The most senseless TV character death of all time (that I can think of, anyway) was that of Dr. Carson Beckett from Stargate Atlantis. The adorable, instantly-quotable Scottish doctor was killed by of all things, (SPOILER ALERT) by an exploding tumor. WTF? It was unexpected, and apparently the producers did it just because they though that killing Carson would make a good episode. It didn't. If you want a lesson in how to kill characters off badly, that's the one. It violates all five of my randomly-made-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night rules. But if all TV writers can learn from this and agree not to kill Scottish doctors, Irish rogues, or British one-hit-wonders off their shows, Carson's sacrifice will not have been in vain.

So that's pretty much my take on character deaths. What do you guys think?

It's the Year 2009, You Promised Me Interesting Female Leads. WHERE ARE THE FEMALE LEADS?

A couple of weeks ago I announced I want to be a TV writer, and since them I've been spending the summer dissecting and analyzing various TV shows in hopes of learning episode structure, how much arc is too much arc, and how to come up with truly amazing characters. Then I decided I should actually write some of my reactions and discoveries down so I could prove I did something this summer. And then post them in a blog.

I decided I would follow in the footsteps of various other geeky bloggers and try to come up with my own list of my 25 favorite TV characters in half an hour. But as I started making the list, I noticed there was a disturbing lack of girls.

So I ditched that and tried to come up with a list of my 25 favorite female TV characters. And it was really, really hard. I even had to resort to using a few characters from shows I've barely seen just to fill it out...And I watch a lot of TV shows. It was disturbing.

And I honestly can’t figure out why. Part of it might be it’s harder to think of favorite characters when you’re trying to think of female characters that are also among your favorites. Or maybe it’s because I watch too many male-centric sci-fi shows. But I don’t think so.

I think it’s because even in this day and age, female TV roles aren’t as diverse as the male roles. Most women TV can be categorized as the Hot Girl, the Sassy Girl, the Plucky-Naïve-and-Cute-but-Not-Quite-As-Attractive-As-The-Hot-Girl Girl, Mom, the Mean Boss Lady, Manipulative Girl or the Token Smart Girl.

Unless it’s a female-centric show in which case there’s always a Zany One, a Straight-Laced One, a Tough One, a Superficial One, and a Bad Girl Nemesis.

It’s way too easy to categorize. Plus, even with the most complex and interesting women characters, most of them are played by really pretty actresses. Like it’s not enough to be funny and interesting, they have to be eye candy, too. Of course, all of that applies to guys, too. But it seems like it’s worse with girls. Am I wrong?

Anyway, this is the list I came up with:

25. Allison Carter from Eureka: A girl stuck in a town full of crazy genius scientist people. Totally identify.

24. Phoebe Buffay from Friends: “Smelly cat, oh smelly cat, what are they feeding you?” Easily the funniest character on Friends.

23. Zoe Washburne (Gina Torres) from Firefly: Zoe kicks butt, pure and simple.

22. Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) from Buffy/Angel (especially Angel): Cordy goes from being the selfish and superficial high school queen bitch to being heroic and kind of wise. Character development is awesome. But still, old high school Cordelia had some terrific lines. (“You say that like shame is something to be proud of!”)

21. Dispatch from The Unusuals: We never saw her, but in the show’s short run, she got in more good one liners than most characters do on shows that run for years.

20. The Women of Cicely, Alaska from Northern Exposure: Shelley, Maggie, Ruth Ann, Marilyn, Officer Semanski…All good shows make it tough to choose, but Northern Exposure makes it absolutely freakin’ impossible to choose.

19. Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) from Murphy Brown: Well, she’s a forty-something-year-old TV news reporter (think Diane Sawyer, only angrier) with a chip on her shoulder and a Motown song in her heart. What’s not to love?

18. Jaye Tyler from Wonderfalls: What makes Jaye absolutely brilliant as a character is the fact that she doesn’t know who she is. She graduated from Brown, and yet she’s so directionless she works as a retail clerk at a tourist store near Niagra Falls.

17. Fred (Amy Acker) from Angel: She’s so different from every other character on TV. From her nervousness to her accent to her knack for quantum physics, adding Fred to the cast really helped get Angel out of the rut that was Season 2 and into the awesomeness that is Season 3. (I haven’t seen the later seasons yet, so don’t ruin them for me.

16. Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram) from Monk: I like Natalie, but I think Mr. Monk’s first assistant was funnier. But that’s probably mostly because of her New Jersey accent.

15. Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Yay, girl power and snappy quips about pop culture!

14. Sharon McClusky from Desperate Housewives: I love McClusky, the old lady who lives across the street from Lynnette and sometimes babysits the kids. Her laidbackness is a perfect counterpoint to the crazy antics of the housewives.

13. Julia Sugarbaker (Dixie Carter) from Designing Women: Her rants are priceless. One of my favorites was from the AIDS episode, where she tells a bigoted homophobic woman, “If God were giving out sexually transmitted diseases as a punishment, you would be the first in line!”

12. Bess Martin (Rebecca Gayheart) from Earth 2: You hardly ever get to see a normal down-to-Earth girl on a scifi show. It was Bess’s common sense and big heart that won me over. I’ll never understand how she wound up married to Morgan, though.

11. Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) from Bones: The quintessential scientist who’s brilliant at solving crimes but totally out of touch with reality.

10. Olive Snook (Kristin Chenowith) from Pushing Daisies: Olive steals almost every scene she’s in, which is really hard when you’re on a show as good as Pushing Daisies was. (Why did ABC have to cancel it?) But the best parts are when Kristin Chenowith gets to sing.

9. Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (Katee Sackhoff) from Battlestar Galactica: Who doesn’t love Starbuck?

8. Lynnette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) from Desperate Housewives: I think the main reason I love Lynette is Felicity Huffman. She’s really great in this part. By far the most believable housewife, it’s really a lot of fun to watch her hatch all kinds of crazy schemes that usually backfire, but she stays grounded all the time.

7. CJ (Allison Janney) from The West Wing: Yet another one that’s kind of hard to explain. I think it’s Allison Janney. Or maybe as a pseudo-journalist I have a soft spot for the White House Press Secretary. But I think it’s the fact that CJ’s one of the few women on TV who’s not there for her looks. She’s there for her brains and personality.

6. Mary Jo Shively (Annie Potts) from Designing Women: Out of all the Designing Women, Mary Jo’s my favorite, because she’s the most true to life, just a normal single mom trying to get through life.

5. Mary Campbell from Soap: Also in the Lynnette-Mary Jo vein, is Mary Campbell. Or I guess I should say Lynnette and Mary Jo are in her vein. It’s nearly impossible to stand out in a cast of characters as whacky and entertaining as the cast of Soap, but Mary stands out because she’s the normal one. She’s the heart, the glue, that keeps the whole crazy family from flying apart, the straight man to everyone else’s goofball. Without her, the show wouldn’t work at all.

4. Kaylee (Jewel Staite) from Firefly: On most shows, the engineer is a gruff, world-weary dude, but Kaylee flies in the face of that. She’s a ball of pure energy, a ray of sunshine and as cliché that sounds, without her, I think Firefly would be a few shades too dark. It really sucks that we never got a true Kaylee-centric episode.

3. Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hanigan) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: How ? One of the best things about Buffy running so long was that we got to see the characters grow up, especially Willow. She started a fairly standard shy, nerdy girl, but she grew more confident in her own skin and her sexuality, discovered powers she didn’t know she had, and then finally learned to reign them in. Brilliant.

2. President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) from Battlestar Galactica: Best President Ever to Appear on Television. Fictional or otherwise. I seriously considered printing up a whole bunch of Roslin-Adama ’09 t-shirts.

1. Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) from Veronica Mars: Veronica is one of the most perfect TV characters ever, and yet she’s so deeply flawed. But that’s precisely what makes her so perfect. And if that actually made sense to you, you must be a writer.

So what do you guys think? Am I right about there not being enough interesting female characters on TV? What do you think of my list? Who would you put on yours? Get commenty!