Television Interlude or I See Dead Shows

Just watched most of the first episode of John from Cincinnati (a new HBO series from David Milch (behind the superlative Deadwood) and Kem Nunn (wrote some passable beach quasi-mystery novels quite a while ago)). This is a surfing/mystery/supernatural/drama/soap (and aren’t almost all current dramas soaps in one way or another these days…another signifier of the rise of unwarranted sentimentalism in everyday media?) which had some absolutely stunning shots; like a classic western set on the coast but with phenomenally bad casting. Several generations of a dysfunctional surfing family form the basic community of this narrative into which a seemingly brain damaged character floats, and in his wake, supernatural events happen (one man finds himself floating a few inches above the ground, a dead bird comes back to life after being touched by a boy). This cipher of a character is the most egregious error of this show in that he is has all the charisma of a used dish rag…imagine Keanu with a lobotomy and on depressants.

I watched this in that strange state of “this is really hard to define” and “I don’t know if this is good or bad” until I arrived at the ‘no, another few minutes of my life gone forever” stage. I think they were trying to mix Twin Peaks with surfers. And I kept it on the screen as long as I did because the visuals were stunning. But pretty pictures do not a good show make. On further contemplation I think I know what really bothers me about these kinds of shows.

Always a big fan of the unusual and the attempts at strange, I loved Twin Peaks. But as odd as Twin Peaks was, it managed to convey strangeness and alternative realities without introducing the supernatural. Maybe I’m siding with Horatio rather than Hamlet in this respect but I like my fiction relatively ghost-free. The Sopranos shows what riches there are to be had in the quotidian and the operatic when properly combined (or Deadwood, or Rome) or the great crime based thrillers Shield, the Wire, Homicide, Oz. For me, those have been the great dramas of television so far, and there are no wizards or special powers there.

Don’t get me wrong. These are good times for super heros (the last couple of years have seen the best Superman and Batman movies yet; a couple of the Xmen movies are good, and I am really hoping the Silver Surfer takes the really bad taste that still lingers in my mouth from the Fantastic Four movie). But I could it be, to paraphrase the Nicholson quote, too many writers just can’t handle the truth; they’re not good enough to do reality. (To be fair it’s probably the developers more than the writers.) How many shows do we need where people see the dead, have visions, have powers? I have to think that this means something about our times beyond just the poverty of the writers and developers. Does it mirror the resurgence of the born against down south of us? Is it because deep down we think the world is lost, and only fantasies will assuage the pain (like movies in the depression)? Is it the natural reaction to a growing sense of individual powerlessness?

I don’t know. I do know that just as the Sopranos lives on in my head, as Tony and company join the other fully formed characters in my borrowed mythologies, they have come this close to me because they are bound by the rules of reality as much as they embody dreams.