It’s All Geek To Me — The More You Know: NBC and the Dangers of Serialized Drama
I’m very fortunate to have a public forum in which to get on my soapbox from time to time, especially when my beef is as vastly inconsequential as the particular target of my ire this week. But herein still lies a cautionary tale, so listen and take heed.
We all know that the very nature of advertising is deceptive; many products tend to make bold claims about their effectiveness that turn out to be greatly overstated, if not outright lies. Well, this summer, NBC crossed the Rubicon and showed how desperate they are for ratings because they officially, blatantly, and unequivocally lied to their viewers. Repeatedly.
As someone who likes to keep abreast of pop culture, and who also loves a well crafted mystery, I tuned in to the NBC series Persons Unknown when it premiered a few months ago. The show came with an interesting pedigree, being created by the writer of The Usual Suspects, Christopher McQuarrie, and the premise sounded pretty neat; seven strangers are kidnapped and left in a hotel in the middle of a small abandoned town with a force field around it, and cameras everywhere.
Well, NBC must have been fully aware of the demographic they were targeting — a mythology-hungry audience still angry and reeling from blue balls after the six seasons of unresolved plot-tease that was Lost. I say this because at the end of each installment, the gravelly voice-over takes pains to reassure viewers that “by the end of summer, all will be revealed.” I heard this and thought, “Well, that’s refreshing. Someone learned a lesson from ABC and created a compact and finite story that will have a satisfactory resolution, if not a revolutionary one.”
See where this is going?
Cut to the series finale. Not so much with the revealing. In fact, the ending was a cliffhanger. Yes, we find out the geographic locale of where they were being kept (more or less), and the name of the organization that was responsible (a name that means nothing— it’s a made-up institution), but not, you know, WHY THEY WERE TAKEN.
A little internet research after the fact revealed that the show’s creators intended it be an ongoing series, but with seasons that could be “self-contained.” I think someone needs to buy them a dictionary.
So, yeah, NBC just flat-out lied in their promotions, and as a result I took an eleven-hour bullet for you, my fellow ninjas. At least I can publicly take them to task about it, and warn you off the show. And I comfort in the fact that despite the deception, the ratings were dismal. It was moved from Monday nights, to the dreaded Saturday nights, to the even more dreaded Saturday nights on an obscure NBC offshoot cable channel. Which at least means there’s no danger of any further seasons, “self-contained” or otherwise.
The thing that really nerds…excuse me, I mean burns me up about all this is that I could tell halfway through the series that it wouldn’t end well. There were just too many crazy things going on to be explained rationally. Every vague reference to the purpose behind the kidnapping, every strange and largely expanding layer added on to the story sent my instincts screaming that they were making it up as they went along. Again. And still I tuned in.
So what’s the lesson to be learned here? I sure as hell should have done my research earlier, for one. At least I would have known it wasn’t intended as a mini-series. Especially now that we live in the post-Lost world where there have been and will continue to be more and more new shows wanting to be the next serialized mythology to be hotly debated at water coolers everywhere.
It would be nice if the business model for television could allow for a guaranteed multi-season slot for a show to give creators the freedom to tell a complete, expansive mystery. But it doesn’t. You got ratings? You got show. You got no ratings? You no get show. Infuriating as it is, the idea of making up your mythology as you go along ensures the longevity of your story if it should succeed, but also hopefully allows for a quick wrap-up if you crash and burn. Especially if you’re Joss Whedon, who’s definitely taken to planning ahead with these things.
So when it comes to serialized drama, I guess the moral of the story for us in the audience is, invest your time wisely. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Or just read a book.
Hey, look! The Event premieres September 20th! Let’s hope the event of The Event isn’t me punching my TV screen.
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