While I thoroughly, if a wee bit begrudgingly, enjoyed every moment of the new rom-com Forgetting Sarah Marshall, one of its subplots was especially hilarious, keeping me in stitches for hours after the film ended. In the film, the protagonist’s ex-girlfriend, the eponymous Sarah Marshall, is the star of a hit TV crime drama called Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime (a clear send-up of the very real and likewise redundantly-titled CSI: Crime Scene Investigation). The clips of this fictional show were so hysterical—characters oozing misplaced sensuality over dead bodies in the morgue, dialogue full of horrible puns, outrageously unrealistic sexualized crimes, and dramatic music emphasizing each new twist with a knowing ba-BUM — that I’d probably be willing to pay to see the film again just for those brief snippets. Except, I don’t really need to go to all the trouble (and expense) of trekking back to the theatre. If I have a hankering for spectacularly over-the-top sexually-charged dramas, all I need to do is turn on my television, sit comfortably on my couch and wait. Significantly, the satirical Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime from Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a pretty reasonable facsimile, maybe ratcheted up only a notch or two, of what’s actually on these days (including shows that I used to be able to take seriously that have since jumped the shark—you know who you are…coughERcough). To add insult to injury, as the film’s closing credits roll, a preview for another fake show, Animal Psychic, combines the premise of Ghost Whisperer and with that of Dog Whisperer, resulting in a concept that is both laughably outrageous and not too far from the peculiarity of very real offerings about, say, immortal detectives or heroic dolphins (to mix my contemporary and historical examples). Like Karen from Will and Grace often says, slurred with drink: “It’s funny ‘cause it’s true.”
Obviously, sometimes peculiar concepts work and they work quite well. Shows like New Amsterdam or Flipper, while I only barely remember the latter and have admittedly not yet had a chance to watch the former, are established on slightly absurd fantasies. But that’s all fine and good. It’s one of the wonderful things about television: it allows us to live comfortably in the realm of fantasy for an hour or two, where we can imagine a world in which we may befriend dolphins or can live forever. As far as I’m concerned, comedies have free-rein as far as ridiculous plot twists go, and dramas should be able to operate under whatever guidelines govern the creator’s vision for the show’s world, however fantastical that premise may be. As far as central tropes go, most things are fair game. For example, it’s ridiculous to imagine that tiny little Cabot Cove is so full of criminals; at the rate of murder per capita established on Murder She Wrote, everyone in the town would be dead in a few years. But these are the types of scenarios we have to accept in order to enjoy televisual make-believe and find pleasure in each episodic storyline. Especially in the procedural drama, a diverse offering of compelling plots depends on an already-established, set foundation of inalienable facts about the show, its characters and their lives—even if it’s Nancy Drew being 18 years old for over seventy years. So, I’m not interested in quibbling about the premises of shows, although I suppose someone might want to take that on as a pet peeve (but, do we really want to watch shows about real life? Really? I don’t think so.). Rather, I’ve been noticing an increasingly trend lately toward plots which exceed the bounds of the even the most carefully-constructed drama’s pre-set conventions. Older, long-running, popular shows—ER, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (the original Law and Order has somehow remained pretty even keel), and CSI (although more so its spin-offs than the original) seem to be especially guilty of this. Characters act completely out of character completely out of the blue, relationships are upset and/or established (or both) at every possible opportunity, certain characters experience more traumas and/or dangerous situations in one season than any person does in a lifetime, and every week is the “most shocking night on television” or an episode so incredible that “you’ve never seen anything like it” or something “you have to see to believe.” Gone are the days when realistic character upheavals could sustain an entire season of well-developed and emotionally resonant plots—like Detective Christine Cagney suffering date rape and struggling with alcoholism in the final season of Cagney and Lacey. This wasn’t tackled in one or two action-packed episodes; her pain filtered through every day interactions in a dozen episodes, little moments of vulnerability as she tried to maintain a grip on her job and her professionalism. And this is just what we might expect of tough, stoic Cagney when her personality is established in the early seasons. This is not to say that all contemporary television shows are guilty of this pandering to spectacle. But when Doctor Romano had his arm cut off by a helicopter blade in Season 9 of ER only to be killed by a different helicopter a season later, I had to say enough is enough. What, are we to believe that helicopters are out to kill Romano? And how many times can Abby and Luka get together and break up and date other people and get back together and have a baby (who is, by the way, born premature and almost dies) and then almost get engaged but not and then definitely get engaged and then plan one wedding but have another? I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. I know I’m picking on ER a little, but I could have just as easily chosen another whipping boy to make my case. For example, two weeks ago on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Detective Olivia Benson went on an undercover operation in prison and was beaten and very nearly raped and killed by a corrupt prison officer, last week her secret relationship with a reporter ended when he was suspected of being a leak in a criminal case, and this week, if the previews are to be believed, she’s going to be kidnapped by a deranged Robin Williams. What a month for Detective Benson! We need to put a moratorium on the never-ending, lightning-apparently-does-strike-the-same-place-twice plot twists or soon these oft-maligned characters are going to come out of the TV and throttle their creators. Albert Einstein said that God does not play dice with the universe. Neither do TV writers. But some of them are playing Russian Roulette.(NEXT WEEK: “Yum-O.” Giving new meaning to the term couch potato: watching people eat and the cult of food TV.)
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