On Television: Action and Soap Opera; Scandal and Arrow

Weak for love. If you count a man turning you around, hiking up your skirt, and undoing his zipper as love.

For the past several years, my consumption of TV has increased as a direct result of my movie-going and book-reading decline. Movies just couldn’t give me the characters; books, the action (without amateur level writing). So, TV seemed like a good medium. I didn’t need to think too much; I could be distracted by the internet. It was escapism after a hard days work. But quite frankly, I find TV viewing aggravating. And it’s draining. I’m a zombie.

Simply put, TV writing really is god awful. And even good shows, the ones hailed as art, really aren’t that ambitious. They are narrow in their scope and stylish. Anyway, I spend more time frustrated over the things shows get wrong, which has counteracted any joy from when I started watching.

I’m particularly thinking about Scandal. My progression watching Shonda Rhimes’s show mirrors that of her first show, Grey’s Anatomy. Both started as hardboiled professional dramas with some quirky characterization that diffused more and more into overwrought soap operatics. I watched less; everyone else watched more. Now, Scandal is no longer even episodic, the weekly “Fixer” cases completely gone, the main storyline of “Who’s the Mole?” not even a real a storyline, just a placeholder for tension while the soap opera of Olivia and Fitz continues to play out. Where once the romantic (read: lust) storyline played in the background as a thread of tension that charged the political storylines, the romance has pushed all aside and dominated, to the point where the revelation of the mole just seemed not that big of a deal (and it didn’t help that I’d completely forgotten who that character was). The big deal heading into Scandal’s second season finale is…Fitz chose Olivia, will she give up “fixing” and be his first lady? The answer should be “no.” Since choosing her, he’s increasingly become more bossy, exercising his role as alpha male. She’s letting him. I get it: she’s shocked. But sooner or later, time to wake up, honey. This isn’t love. It’s lust. It’s power. It’s dreaming, “If only I could be normal and want what every woman wants…a strong man and some babies and to be happy.” But the closer you get to it, the more it’s a nightmare. The grass is always greener on the other side.

Double banger: He’s shirtless, but he has scars.

Aarow is another show where the balance and weaving of soap opera and action really doesn’t work. Whereas in Scandal, the romance is dumbing down what still is (if not as much) a sharp, intelligent show, in Arrow the game of hearts is just turning the whole thing into a still salvageable mess. Although, even without the romances, it would still be a solid B-rated show.

In the beginning Arrow introduced too many love interests. Pretty girl after pretty girl was introduced, always making doe eyes at the lead. The Huntress was an interesting subversion of this, but not enough to make it all work. The women are pretty much set pieces to work between the archer and his villain. Dinah started out as a strong female lead; she was independent from the hero and had her own goals. However, now in Oliver’s orbit, she’s just a love interest, a catalyst in the darkening Oliver/Tommy dynamic. The characters are being forced into an overbaked, hormonal triangle. I’m not even going to begin unpacking the dumbness and rash logic that has led to the triangle generating story, but suffice to say, it’s ridiculous if Dinah is used to turn Tommy evil. And Malcolm and Tommy are too much like Spiderman’s Green Goblin, or so it seems right now.

Over and over, I see shows I love get bogged down in poorly written soap opera, where the characters take on nonsensical motivations in the name of a writer’s high themes. It’s supposed to be art, but it’s an amateurish mess that audiences obviously love. The one show I loved that balanced romance and action, with the action maintaining favor is now cancelled…Deception.

With Deception, there was a central love triangle; however, the triangle wa built into the story; it didn’t diffuse it. But I have to accept what I want to see is not what anyone else wants to see. I like hard boiled, high stakes soaps like Dallas, Ringer, and Deception, whereas most seem to prefer there soaps more relationship focused. The more Scandal turns into a love story, the bigger of a hit it becomes. Arrow’s conceit forces it to continue to struggle to maintain balance, and I think having a male lead plays a large role in its allowing to do so while increasing in popularity. Arrow isn’t classiied as a soap…it’s a superhero drama with strong character elements. No, it’s a soap. Making Oliver’s mother so central to the conflict ensure that. Soaps aren’t just about romance. Soaps can be centered around family (and I’d argue work better this way).

Also, there’s a catch-22, a very draining frustrating catch-22, to TV viewing especially pilot seasons. You want to invest, but you are afraid if you do the rug will be pulled from under you when it’s cancelled with no resolution, but if you don’t invest then it’s going to get cancelled anyway. I’m aware that’s a run-on. NBC could have at least aired a miniseries over the summer to wrap up loose ends.

The general consensus is that women (a stereotype of a heterosexual women between 18-middle age) are the primary watchers of TV. They watch, a show succeeds. And they want romance. But man, what kind of romance do the want? Where’s the love between Olivia and Fitz? It’s all lust. Will the show explore this or just take the hyper I love you/I hate you scenes as shorthand for true love? Probably the latter. Scandal gone Twilight.

Anyway, seeing the ups and down of TV shows in their quality has made for some mediocre living. Each night wondering if the shows I watch got it right isn’t the problem: it’s the constant mixing of greatness and crud that makes it unbearable. Aarow tells a good action story marred by some cliche soap tropes…ugh. Scandal is hooked on Olivia and Fitz now, but the secondary characters are enjoyable and sooner or later things will have to settle so Olivia can get back to work…right? She’s not actually going to agree to take the first lady route? RIGHT??? When the second season first started I wondered if the show could pull off a 22 episode season. The first half was great, the second has struggled for plot.

I will read this someday. I promise. Someday I will not be busy; I will not be tired; I will have nothing to do.. (What happens to people who break promises?)

I should read more. Who doesn’t say that? But I should/want to read. I just don’t have the energy. Researching self-publishing and revising leaves me tired. Also, finding a book is a daunting task. By the time I find one, I just want to sit down and veg in front of the TV. I love a good classic, but writing sci-fi makes me want something more contemporary and imaginative. There is a big grab bag, which my novel Sympathy-B is a part of, and it’s mixed when it comes to goods. Going through them is time consuming, but I have settled on one: Legend by Marie Lu.

Ultimately, it’s not the form, it’s the storytelling I’m after. Whether novel, movie, or tv show, I want a sense of intelligent and creative storytelling where the characters have spark and layers and the mode (visual or prose) also has it’s own spark. With prose, the struggle is finding books where the writing can conjure my imagination (not just my imagination working overtime to bring dull prose to life). Unfortunately, with all genre storytelling (I’m speaking from experience too…I’ve been there), the need to generate plot, our story, (character, a literary writer’s story) often overwhelms character (as character, and even setting, can overwhelm plot in a literary/hybrid novel). And as plot overwhelms, the character’s, particularly their motivations, compromised, the storytelling loses scrutiny.

Is genre fiction art? One one hand it’s all art, because it’s all craft. On another hand, it often doesn’t reach a level of creativity and storytelling skill to make what you are experiencing seem like art, artful. The same goes for literary fiction, but cultural biases based in stereotypes works in its favor. Genre fiction is struggling to validate itself as art, because it isn’t held to a standard. Any great art, should be able to not only survive scrutiny, but flourish under a close reading that reveals a spring of motifs and themes. Unfortunately, the hasty and unskilled writing makes the work unravel under examination, falling a part into mediocrity. So viewers learn to just skim the surface, see how a work suggests or uses signifiers to get at complex ideas, and ignore the faux pas that plague the work from creating a coherent message (or worse, create a message that’s unintentionally oppressive to a group of people). When people do try to hold genre to a standard, people protect the form by trivializing it: “Don’t take it so seriously, it’s just a TV show.” Yet, when people say it’s not true art, they are also called snobs and pretentious. People will defend the genre they love by simultaneously encouraging people to not take it seriously, then judging those that don’t. Ultimately, the subtext seems to be to just love whatever’s done and justify it however you need to. I wish I could. I think too much as is.