I'm not a big fan of comics, and especially not the kind featuring superheroes, but even I took less time than your average studio executive to work out that if you're going to port superhero comics over to an audio-visual medium, cinema is your absolute worst choice. For more than half a decade (well, for several decades, but there's been a glut recently), some of the finest filmmakers in the business have been trying to crack the comic book film formula. Some of their results have been financially successful, others have been well-received by critics. With the possible exception of Pixar's The Incredibles (I say possible because I'm not convinced that it's entirely accurate to describe the movie as a comic book film, not because I don't think it's excellent), none of them have even approached the distinction of good cinema, or the even more elusive honor of faithful adaptations. Most importantly, none of them have managed to replicate the intricately detailed, densely populated universes that are the hallmark of a long-running comic series.
What the comic book industry has chosen to ignore, driven by either snobbery or avarice, is that the medium best suited to their product is clearly series television. In fact, the two media share a large number of similarities which make them ideal for cross-pollination: continuous, open-ended storytelling; a mixture of standalone and multi-part stories; large casts of characters; slowly accumulating backstories and ever-complicating settings. Perhaps most importantly, whereas film is ultimately ingested in solitude, television, like comics, is a communal medium, constantly engaged in a dialogue with its audience[1]. More interesting, however, than the question of how comics can use television are the ways in which television can learn from comics--by far the more innovative and experimental field--about its own capabilities as a storytelling medium.
Which is why NBC's Heroes, the first unmitigated success of the new fall season, is at the same time a delight and a disappointment. The show's premise is simple. For some undisclosed reason, ordinary people all over the world (for which read: in the US, with one exception) are discovering that they possess superpowers. It doesn't take a great effort to imagine the standard network treatment of this premise--bring the newly-minted heroes to a recognition of their powers and to the formation of some sort of group by the end of the pilot, and then start churning out the standalone stories. Throw in some character arcs and recurring villains if you're feeling flashy, and end the season on a cliffhanger. The same approach, in other words, that we've already seen applied to every single televised version of a comic book story.
Four episodes into its first season, Heroes doesn't seem even remotely interested in going down that path. The rapidly unfolding plot is so intricate as to defy description, but it already involves a shady organization targeting heroes, a psychotic supervillain, and a Las Vegas mobster. The main cast runs into the double digits, each with their own supporting cast, emotional issues galore, and a wealth of backstory. Visually, the show borrows shamelessly from the comic book artist's toolbox, right down to episode titles artfully superimposed on walls or the hoods of cars, but it also makes excellent use of television's unique capabilities as a cinematic medium. Not since Ang Lee's Hulk has there been anything this close to an on-screen comic, and Heroes is a hell of a lot more fun.
Unfortunately, 'fun' is about as far as the show goes, quality-wise. On almost every qualitative measurement, it aspires to mediocrity. The plot is made of swiss cheese. The characters are one-note, most of them getting by on the charisma of the actors portraying them (Greg Grunberg, for instance, is playing the same lovable sad-sack created for him by J.J. Abrams in 1998). Said actors range from competent (Grunberg, Hayden Panettierre as an invincible cheerleader, Adrian Pasdar as a flying congressional nominee) to hilariously wooden (Tawny Cypress, who plays the girlfriend of one of the heroes, is stunning but tragically incapable of simulating emotion). The dialogue runs the gamut between serviceable but ugly to overwrought (especially in the all-too-copious voiceovers). For all that it is comics-derived, there's a very real sense when watching Heroes that its creators aren't heavily immersed in comics culture. They use the traditional set pieces of the superhero story, but thus far seem to have very little interest putting their own mark on these trappings or in venturing beyond cliché. Comic books are cool right now, seems to be their thought process, so let's make a show that looks like one.
What's keeping the show afloat in spite of these failings is first and foremost its frenetic pacing--there's too much going on at any given moment for us to notice the wooden acting, the leaden dialogue, the egregious plot holes. Perhaps even more important is the sense of whimsy that permeates every second of the show--this is pop corn storytelling at its very best, and the lousy acting and embarrassing dialogue are almost required for it to properly work its magic. The result is a trashy, thoroughly enjoyable televised comic book, just self-aware enough to poke fun at its foundations through the delightful Japanese salaryman Hiro[2], who is alone among the cast in recognizing--and embracing--the genre of his own life story. Heroes is pushing the boundaries of what television is capable of and what it can demand of its audience--in every respect but quality.
It's somewhat amusing, therefore, that through an accident of scheduling, I usually end up watching the latest episode of Heroes back to back with another new show about uniquely gifted individuals swooping down to save us from an unspeakable menace. I'm speaking, of course, of Aaron Sorkin's by now not-so-triumphant return to television, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a show which, among several others, has set itself the goal of discussing the capabilities, and the role, of television as an artistic medium.
The two shows make for an interesting juxtaposition since, even taking into account their very different approaches to plot, they have almost complementary strengths and weaknesses. I came across a brief review of Studio 60's latest episode yesterday morning, whose author commented that "I already feel, watching [Studio 60], like I'm watching the seventh season of a grand dame show which isn't nearly as good as it used to be, yet I have grown so close to the characters over the years that I just keep on hanging in there out of sympathy and love for them." Which strikes me as apt, and at the same time both a severe criticism of and high praise for Aaron Sorkin's abilities as a writer. What's keeping Studio 60 afloat are the technical accomplishments that the creators of Heroes expend so little energy on--dialogue, acting, characterization. Matthew Perry is a revelation as writer Matt Albie, and Sarah Paulson, for all that she's nearly bent over double by the weight of her 'sympathetic Christian character' plaque, is a delight. Nate Corddry is stealing every one of his scenes, and Amanda Peet is gamely doing her best with a plot device masquerading as a character. Only Bradley Whitford's character remains unlikable and, what's worse, underdeveloped. In the space of ten minutes in last week's episode, Whitford's Danny physically assaulted one of his employees and then publicly reprimanded an actress for being kissed by a man, and while there's obviously a story to be told about the kind of misanthrope who is only fully human around his creative partner, that's not the story the show seems to be telling. What's really weighing Studio 60 down, however, is its inability to settle on a direction, and to proceed towards its target with anything resembling grace and wit.
A canny publicity campaign created a great deal of internet buzz for the show over the summer, and the most frequently heard concern among Sorkin fans during that period was the fear that the creator of The West Wing would suggest, with his newest creation, that writing and producing a late-night sketch comedy show was as objectively important, as meaningful an accomplishment, as running a nation and leading the free world. Which, ironically enough, is actually the one hurdle the show seems to have cleared, and in fact its treatment of its setting has finally crystalized my understanding of the kind of stories Sorkin likes to tell. Alone among the seemingly endless parade of doctor, lawyer, cop, and other workplace shows, Aaron Sorkin's creations revolve around people who love their job, whose lives are their job, who are both fortunate and talented enough to be paid to do or talk about the things they love[3]. I still think Sports Night went too far in its use of hyperbole to describe the importance of making a sports news show, but even overwrought cheesiness is preferable to the tone Studio 60 is striking. Or rather, failing to strike. In spite of the fact that it obviously comes closest to Sorkin's heart, Studio 60 has yet to convey to its audience the joy of creation, the rush of accomplishment, that Sorkin's previous forays so effortlessly incorporated into their makeup. There have been a lot of complaints these past few weeks about the fact that the jokes and sketches in the show-within-the-show aren't funny. They're not, and this is serious problem, but not nearly as serious as the fact that the show-without-the-show isn't fun.
Which, of course, is directly attributable to the other great failing about which so many of its online viewers have been complaining, which is that Sorkin's primary objective in writing Studio 60 is to use it as a platform for his opinions about the future of television and of popular culture in general (with a secondary objective being using the show to settle scores with Hollywood enemies and aggrandize his own accomplishments). To my mind, however, the fact that Sorkin puts speeches in his characters' mouths isn't necessarily a problem--he did the same with The West Wing for four years. The real issue is that, when it comes to his own field, Sorkin has surprisingly little to say. Television should be better, it should challenge its audience and seek to raise the level of public debate rather than catering to the lowest common denominator. This is all very well and good, but what's the next step?
"There's nothing wrong with the medium, just some of the content," network president Jordan plaintively tells a young writer whose brilliant new show[4] she wishes to buy in Studio 60's most recent episode (which seems apropos of nothing, since the writer wants to make a television show--he's just planning to sell his script to HBO). Which is true, but also an oversimplification so profound as to render the discussion meaningless. The episode revolves around the coming together of opposites--secular Matt and Christian Harriet only caught fire as a writer and a performer when they started working together--and Jordan's argument is that it isn't right for those of us who seek high-brow, literate entertainment to hide behind a wall of privilege and disassociate ourselves from those consumers looking for silly entertainment, like the odious reality show she passes on.
Which is true enough, as such things go, but what Sorkin ignores is that there is no medium in which low-brow entertainment doesn't vastly outsell intelligent, quality material. The very best we can hope for from bestsellers in any field is that they be solid, hearty fun--early Beatles songs, Harry Potter, The Matrix. The problem with television is that unlike the other creative media, it doesn't give less popular but higher quality material room to grow. There is no fringe in television, no venue for independent creators, no experimental scene from which new ideas can percolate into the mainstream[5]. Jordan's right that there's nothing inherently wrong with the medium, but there's a hell of a lot wrong with the economic model governing it, and those problems are not addressed by the naive assumption that if you put good stuff on TV for long enough, America is going to get smarter.
In spite of their differences, Studio 60 and Heroes have in common a dual structure--they both operate on a story level and on a meta level, as a commentary on their medium. Both shows suffer from significant failings on both levels, but it is telling--and Aaron Sorkin would do well to draw the proper conclusions the next time he tries to talk about his medium--that Heroes--fun but soulless--is soaring, whereas Studio 60--earnest but unsophisticated--is crashing to the ground.
[1] This, by the way, is probably the reason why there are so few movie fandoms, and of those that do exist most are focussed on film series or on films derived from other media.
[2] Besides being funny, I think this choice of name perfectly illustrate my point about the writers' reliance on cliché. Yes, it's cute that a hero is named Hiro, but only to someone who isn't aware that Neal Stephenson went down this path fifteen years ago, and that he had the balls to give his character the surname Protagonist.
[3] His ability to appreciate and even celebrate obsessive affection for a single topic is probably why Sorkin's fans react with so much hurt when he lashes out at them for having a similar attitude towards his shows.
[4] Set--sigh--within the walls of an august political institution.
[5] Which is why, when television does innovate, it does so by mimicking other media--film, theatre, or even comics.
Showing posts with label sorkinverse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sorkinverse. Show all posts
Friday, October 20, 2006
Friday, September 29, 2006
Dear Aaron Sorkin: One Tiny Studio 60 Response
Welcome back to television, Aaron Sorkin--we've missed you! It's been a lonely three years without you, watching The West Wing teeter and topple (and then right itself, a little, towards the end). I've got quite a few things to say about your new show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip--most of them, just to be clear, quite complementary. But I'm going to hold off on any serious discussion for a while, let the show find its voice before I start taking it apart to see what makes it tick. Right now, however, I have one teeny-tiny complaint.
We all laughed, some of us less comfortably than others, at the LemonLyman.com subplot on The West Wing a few years back. Sure, you were sticking it to your fans for being so uppity as to have an opinion about your work, but you had the presence of mind to latch on to the caricature of the bossy, tyrannical forum moderator--a stereotype rooted in an all-too painful reality, which most internet users had probably encountered and lampooned themselves long before you thought to do so. Plus, only a cold, black heart could fail to find humor in the sight of C.J. Cregg threatening to shove a motherboard "so far up [Josh Lyman's] ass!" So you got a pass from internet fandom for that one.
Which might have inspired you to go back to that well in "The Cold Open," Studio 60's second and most recent episode, in a scene in which comedians Simon and Tom belittle a blogger for criticizing their show (or, more precisely, for having nothing better to do than blog critically about their show). And I'm sorry, but this time around the joke isn't quite so funny.
For future reference, here's how the world works:
You can make the premise of your show the argument that television should be taken seriously as an artform by the people who make and distribute it, or you can deride the people who do take it seriously enough to criticize it. You can't do both.
You can extol the value of professionalism, as exemplified in this instance by the credential system, or you can make the week's villain an evangelical magazine with a high circulation and then boggle at the notion that said magazine might get a credential to a major network press conference. You can't do both.
You can harangue television in a five-minute speech that has had the internet abuzz since June, calling for a commitment to quality and integrity, or you can have a blogger express the same thoughts only to be called a loser. You can't do both.
But most importantly, you can call bloggers and internet fans hacks and ridicule the notion that they have anything of meaning to contribute to the conversation, or you can have your characters decide that their cutting-edge, high-concept, razzle-dazzle-knock-'em-on-their ass cold open is going to be a Gilbert & Sullivan filk.
You can't do both.
We all laughed, some of us less comfortably than others, at the LemonLyman.com subplot on The West Wing a few years back. Sure, you were sticking it to your fans for being so uppity as to have an opinion about your work, but you had the presence of mind to latch on to the caricature of the bossy, tyrannical forum moderator--a stereotype rooted in an all-too painful reality, which most internet users had probably encountered and lampooned themselves long before you thought to do so. Plus, only a cold, black heart could fail to find humor in the sight of C.J. Cregg threatening to shove a motherboard "so far up [Josh Lyman's] ass!" So you got a pass from internet fandom for that one.
Which might have inspired you to go back to that well in "The Cold Open," Studio 60's second and most recent episode, in a scene in which comedians Simon and Tom belittle a blogger for criticizing their show (or, more precisely, for having nothing better to do than blog critically about their show). And I'm sorry, but this time around the joke isn't quite so funny.
For future reference, here's how the world works:
You can make the premise of your show the argument that television should be taken seriously as an artform by the people who make and distribute it, or you can deride the people who do take it seriously enough to criticize it. You can't do both.
You can extol the value of professionalism, as exemplified in this instance by the credential system, or you can make the week's villain an evangelical magazine with a high circulation and then boggle at the notion that said magazine might get a credential to a major network press conference. You can't do both.
You can harangue television in a five-minute speech that has had the internet abuzz since June, calling for a commitment to quality and integrity, or you can have a blogger express the same thoughts only to be called a loser. You can't do both.
But most importantly, you can call bloggers and internet fans hacks and ridicule the notion that they have anything of meaning to contribute to the conversation, or you can have your characters decide that their cutting-edge, high-concept, razzle-dazzle-knock-'em-on-their ass cold open is going to be a Gilbert & Sullivan filk.
You can't do both.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
You, Sir, Are No Stanley Keyworth and Other "Lay Down Your Burdens I" Thoughts
I actually had no plans to write about Friday's Battlestar Galactica episode, "Lay Down Your Burdens I", which I found decent but forgettable--certainly not an worthy counterpoint to last season's "Kobol's Last Gleaming I", which it was obviously meant to recall. Then last night I caught a rerun of the second season West Wing episode "Noël", one of the most harrowing hours of television I've ever seen, in which Josh is finally forced to confront the aftereffects of the trauma he experienced when he was shot at the beginning of the season. Like Chief Tyrol in "Lay Down Your Burdens I", Josh is aided in this struggle by a spiritual advisor--psychiatrist Stanley Keyworth, played by Adam Arkin. A comparison between these two retellings of the same story reveals, I think, quite a bit about what's wrong with Galactica these days, and what needs to be done to set things right.
The first thing that needs to be said when discussing these two episodes is that Aaron Sorkin doesn't own the copyright on the 'troubled main character is forced to confront their weakness with the help of a tough-talking, uncompromising spiritual advisor' plotline. It's a story that's probably been done dozens of times. In the comments to my previous post about the Life on Mars season finale, Niall Harrison made a very interesting point about the difference between predictability and inevitability: "the difference between stories that are diminished because you know what's coming and stories that are enhanced because you know." I suggested that the difference lay in the amount of story that one could predict--knowing how the story is going to end is not necessarily a hindrance to enjoying it; knowing precisely how you're going to get to that ending will usually ruin your enjoyment (the A plot of "The Captain's Hand" is a good example of the latter case). As Niall points out, however, there are stories in which knowledge of the plot's precise breakdown doesn't prevent the audience from enjoying it, and both "Noël" and the Chief Tyrol plotline in "Lay Down Your Burdens I" are that kind of story. We know exactly how the confrontation between the main character and the advisor character will proceed, if for no other reason than because we've watched television before--how our hero will rebel against the notion that he needs help; how the advisor will refuse to coddle and indulge him; how, at the crucial moment, the hero and the advisor will begin working together, struggling against their now common foe, the hero's illness.
That "Noël" is such a memorable and brutal piece in spite of its predictability can be ascribed to the both the actors and the script. The consistently superb Bradley Whitford brings an extra layer of prickly vulnerability to Josh's usual combination of intelligence and arrogance, but Adam Arkin more than matches the quality of his performance. In spite of the fact that he appears only twice over the series' run, Stanley is one of its most vivid, not to mention beloved, characters. In comparison, Dean Stockwell's character is, with only one exception ("Maybe I'm a Cylon and I haven't seen you at any of the secret meetings"), so by-the-numbers that I'm not even going to bother to look up his name--I'll just call him Al, in honor of a far more memorable performance.
Both the intensity and the subtlety of Sorkin's retelling far exceed those of Moore's. Last night was probably the fifth or sixth time that I've seen "Noël", and I still felt the urge to leave the room or change the channel when I realized that Josh was about to lose all perspective and start yelling at the President. If I ever bother to re-watch "Lay Down Your Burdens I", I know that I won't have that kind of visceral reaction to the Chief's attack on Cally. It was certainly a startling thing to watch the first time it happened, but without the element of surprise the scene is almost laughable in its crassness. Why is the Chief taking a nap--in his underwear, no less--on the floor of the inexplicably empty hangar deck? Why code Cally's search for him with the visual and verbal cues of a slasher flick? Why does the Chief look like if he's having a bad drug experience, not a nightmare?
Our heart breaks when we watch Josh first avoid and then confront the fact that he has been irreperably damaged by his traumatic experience. The episode's use of visuals and music manages to bring across the hellishness of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder--how it prevents its sufferers from taking any joy in their normal, everyday life by constantly forcing them to relive its worst moments. The Chief's dilemma, on the other hand, can strike us in one of two ways--either we start to seriously wonder whether the character is a Cylon sleeper agent (and, can I just say, please no--the device is now officially overused), or we know that he's a nutter. I don't think the Chief actually believes himself to be a Cylon, but like many members of the fleet, the stress of his situation has taken its toll on him, and it is neither surprising nor unusual that he should revert to paranoid self-doubt and suicidal thoughts. The script and Douglas' performance, however, fail to make us feel the Chief's pain or pity him for it--which is remarkable when we recall that this is one of the few truly decent and lovable characters in the cast.
The purpose of this comparison is not to complain that Aaron Douglas and Dean Stockwell are no Bradley Whitford and Adam Arkin, or that Ronald D. Moore is no Aaron Sorkin (although I'm not sure that that last comparison is so unfair. Many reviewers have drawn parallels between Galactica and The West Wing, and at the top of their game I think that Sorkin and Moore, while obviously possessing different skill sets, are roughly equivalent in terms of their writing talent), or even that "Lay Down Your Burdens I" falls short of "Noël"'s brilliance. The crucial difference between the two episodes is in the amount of care and attention that Sorkin and Moore put into these plotlines. "Noël" was famously written because Bradley Whitford stopped by Aaron Sorkin's office one day and said "You know, I got shot." Once spurred to address this trauma, however, Sorkin essentially held up his entire season in order to give it the delicate, thoughtful treatment it deserved. The Chief's plotline in "Lay Down Your Burdens I" was obviously written in order to fill up space (which, at the very least, gives me hope that "Lay Down Your Burdens II" will be a packed and exciting episode, in much the same way that "Resurrection Ship I" was), and while we could have a long discussion here about the Galactica writers' problems with pacing, plotting, and just in general making effective and intelligent time-management choices (which would once again bring us to the issue of using the previouslys as a dumping ground for not one but two unseen scenes, including a tearful confrontation between Starbuck and a dying Roslin in "Epiphanies"--how the hell did that end up on the cutting room floor?), as far as I'm concerned the issue here isn't how the writers divide their air-time but what they do with it. There's nothing wrong with writing a plotline because you need to fill up space, but once you choose to do so, there is no excuse for giving it the perfunctory and unthinking treatment that the writers gave the Chief plotline in "Lay Down Your Burdens I".
Not that this careless attitude towards B plots, or even A plots, is new to the show. Moore has said that the abortion storyline in "The Captain's Hand" was something that he wanted to raise and not deal with too seriously, and the result was that he treated both his viewers and his most intelligent character like idiots. I've written before about the Galactica writers' tunnel-vision--they have one specific story that they want to tell, a 9/11 allegory about the political and religious struggles that emerge after a species-extinction event, and they concentrate on that story to the exclusion of all other aspects of their invented universe. In the winter season, however, the writers have offered us precious little in compensation for the stories that they've ignored. We don't have time for a sophisticated treatment of the Chief's psychological trauma, or for an intelligent debate about reproductive rights and obligations in the fleet, or for a believable exploration of Lee's existential crisis, or for any exploration at all of his burgeoning romance with Dualla, because we're too busy doing what, exactly?
The fact is that Al and the Chief's session is a tiny part of "Lay Down Your Burdens I", but with the exception of Kara and Anders' reunion (because it's just so good to see Kara--the only character, I might point out, who has had a consistent, believable, and prolonged character arc this winter season--be so happy after so much pain) it is the only part of the episode that has lingered in my mind a mere three days after watching it, and even that is only because while I was watching those scenes I kept thinking of Josh and Stanley Keyworth. A great deal happens in the episode, some of it quite important, but almost none of it with the emotional resonance that I've come to expect from this show. Roslin and Baltar's political struggles are unremarkable (it's not really the topic of this post, but at some point I'm going to talk about the wrong-headedness of the show's treatment of politics in the fleet. I understand why she wouldn't like to come out and acknowledge it, but Roslin isn't actually running for President--she's running for mayor of a mid-sized town. The distance that the show enforces between her and the electorate is completely unbelievable) and their outcome is a foregone conclusion. It was interesting, for about five seconds, to see how the discovery of a potentially habitable planet might affect the fleet, but the way in which Baltar used the planet as a political tool was predictable, and since the writers aren't interested in a debate over whether to settle or keep moving (a worthy question, in my opinion) they handicap the issue by making the planet only barely habitable--a fact which Baltar conveniently ignores and which Roslin fails to convey to her constituents (someone remind me why this woman deserves to be President?).
Simplistic. Predictable. Conventional. These are not words that I ever anticipated using to describe Battlestar Galactica, and yet over the recent weeks they have become the only applicable terms. It's been suggested that the writers are having problems dealing with the extended season--writing 20 episodes is a greater challenge than writing 13--but the problems that have been plaguing the show are systemic, not structural. There is no longer any indication that the writers are infusing Galactica with their heart and soul. Their plots and character arcs are desultory and unexciting, and with only a few exceptions the best that they seem to be capable of is a vague decency. Episodes like last week's "Downloaded" suggest that the old Galactica's fire is still burning somewhere, but wouldn't it be nice if the writers could grant their human characters even a fraction of the attention that they lavished on these Cylons?
The first thing that needs to be said when discussing these two episodes is that Aaron Sorkin doesn't own the copyright on the 'troubled main character is forced to confront their weakness with the help of a tough-talking, uncompromising spiritual advisor' plotline. It's a story that's probably been done dozens of times. In the comments to my previous post about the Life on Mars season finale, Niall Harrison made a very interesting point about the difference between predictability and inevitability: "the difference between stories that are diminished because you know what's coming and stories that are enhanced because you know." I suggested that the difference lay in the amount of story that one could predict--knowing how the story is going to end is not necessarily a hindrance to enjoying it; knowing precisely how you're going to get to that ending will usually ruin your enjoyment (the A plot of "The Captain's Hand" is a good example of the latter case). As Niall points out, however, there are stories in which knowledge of the plot's precise breakdown doesn't prevent the audience from enjoying it, and both "Noël" and the Chief Tyrol plotline in "Lay Down Your Burdens I" are that kind of story. We know exactly how the confrontation between the main character and the advisor character will proceed, if for no other reason than because we've watched television before--how our hero will rebel against the notion that he needs help; how the advisor will refuse to coddle and indulge him; how, at the crucial moment, the hero and the advisor will begin working together, struggling against their now common foe, the hero's illness.
That "Noël" is such a memorable and brutal piece in spite of its predictability can be ascribed to the both the actors and the script. The consistently superb Bradley Whitford brings an extra layer of prickly vulnerability to Josh's usual combination of intelligence and arrogance, but Adam Arkin more than matches the quality of his performance. In spite of the fact that he appears only twice over the series' run, Stanley is one of its most vivid, not to mention beloved, characters. In comparison, Dean Stockwell's character is, with only one exception ("Maybe I'm a Cylon and I haven't seen you at any of the secret meetings"), so by-the-numbers that I'm not even going to bother to look up his name--I'll just call him Al, in honor of a far more memorable performance.
Both the intensity and the subtlety of Sorkin's retelling far exceed those of Moore's. Last night was probably the fifth or sixth time that I've seen "Noël", and I still felt the urge to leave the room or change the channel when I realized that Josh was about to lose all perspective and start yelling at the President. If I ever bother to re-watch "Lay Down Your Burdens I", I know that I won't have that kind of visceral reaction to the Chief's attack on Cally. It was certainly a startling thing to watch the first time it happened, but without the element of surprise the scene is almost laughable in its crassness. Why is the Chief taking a nap--in his underwear, no less--on the floor of the inexplicably empty hangar deck? Why code Cally's search for him with the visual and verbal cues of a slasher flick? Why does the Chief look like if he's having a bad drug experience, not a nightmare?
Our heart breaks when we watch Josh first avoid and then confront the fact that he has been irreperably damaged by his traumatic experience. The episode's use of visuals and music manages to bring across the hellishness of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder--how it prevents its sufferers from taking any joy in their normal, everyday life by constantly forcing them to relive its worst moments. The Chief's dilemma, on the other hand, can strike us in one of two ways--either we start to seriously wonder whether the character is a Cylon sleeper agent (and, can I just say, please no--the device is now officially overused), or we know that he's a nutter. I don't think the Chief actually believes himself to be a Cylon, but like many members of the fleet, the stress of his situation has taken its toll on him, and it is neither surprising nor unusual that he should revert to paranoid self-doubt and suicidal thoughts. The script and Douglas' performance, however, fail to make us feel the Chief's pain or pity him for it--which is remarkable when we recall that this is one of the few truly decent and lovable characters in the cast.
The purpose of this comparison is not to complain that Aaron Douglas and Dean Stockwell are no Bradley Whitford and Adam Arkin, or that Ronald D. Moore is no Aaron Sorkin (although I'm not sure that that last comparison is so unfair. Many reviewers have drawn parallels between Galactica and The West Wing, and at the top of their game I think that Sorkin and Moore, while obviously possessing different skill sets, are roughly equivalent in terms of their writing talent), or even that "Lay Down Your Burdens I" falls short of "Noël"'s brilliance. The crucial difference between the two episodes is in the amount of care and attention that Sorkin and Moore put into these plotlines. "Noël" was famously written because Bradley Whitford stopped by Aaron Sorkin's office one day and said "You know, I got shot." Once spurred to address this trauma, however, Sorkin essentially held up his entire season in order to give it the delicate, thoughtful treatment it deserved. The Chief's plotline in "Lay Down Your Burdens I" was obviously written in order to fill up space (which, at the very least, gives me hope that "Lay Down Your Burdens II" will be a packed and exciting episode, in much the same way that "Resurrection Ship I" was), and while we could have a long discussion here about the Galactica writers' problems with pacing, plotting, and just in general making effective and intelligent time-management choices (which would once again bring us to the issue of using the previouslys as a dumping ground for not one but two unseen scenes, including a tearful confrontation between Starbuck and a dying Roslin in "Epiphanies"--how the hell did that end up on the cutting room floor?), as far as I'm concerned the issue here isn't how the writers divide their air-time but what they do with it. There's nothing wrong with writing a plotline because you need to fill up space, but once you choose to do so, there is no excuse for giving it the perfunctory and unthinking treatment that the writers gave the Chief plotline in "Lay Down Your Burdens I".
Not that this careless attitude towards B plots, or even A plots, is new to the show. Moore has said that the abortion storyline in "The Captain's Hand" was something that he wanted to raise and not deal with too seriously, and the result was that he treated both his viewers and his most intelligent character like idiots. I've written before about the Galactica writers' tunnel-vision--they have one specific story that they want to tell, a 9/11 allegory about the political and religious struggles that emerge after a species-extinction event, and they concentrate on that story to the exclusion of all other aspects of their invented universe. In the winter season, however, the writers have offered us precious little in compensation for the stories that they've ignored. We don't have time for a sophisticated treatment of the Chief's psychological trauma, or for an intelligent debate about reproductive rights and obligations in the fleet, or for a believable exploration of Lee's existential crisis, or for any exploration at all of his burgeoning romance with Dualla, because we're too busy doing what, exactly?
The fact is that Al and the Chief's session is a tiny part of "Lay Down Your Burdens I", but with the exception of Kara and Anders' reunion (because it's just so good to see Kara--the only character, I might point out, who has had a consistent, believable, and prolonged character arc this winter season--be so happy after so much pain) it is the only part of the episode that has lingered in my mind a mere three days after watching it, and even that is only because while I was watching those scenes I kept thinking of Josh and Stanley Keyworth. A great deal happens in the episode, some of it quite important, but almost none of it with the emotional resonance that I've come to expect from this show. Roslin and Baltar's political struggles are unremarkable (it's not really the topic of this post, but at some point I'm going to talk about the wrong-headedness of the show's treatment of politics in the fleet. I understand why she wouldn't like to come out and acknowledge it, but Roslin isn't actually running for President--she's running for mayor of a mid-sized town. The distance that the show enforces between her and the electorate is completely unbelievable) and their outcome is a foregone conclusion. It was interesting, for about five seconds, to see how the discovery of a potentially habitable planet might affect the fleet, but the way in which Baltar used the planet as a political tool was predictable, and since the writers aren't interested in a debate over whether to settle or keep moving (a worthy question, in my opinion) they handicap the issue by making the planet only barely habitable--a fact which Baltar conveniently ignores and which Roslin fails to convey to her constituents (someone remind me why this woman deserves to be President?).
Simplistic. Predictable. Conventional. These are not words that I ever anticipated using to describe Battlestar Galactica, and yet over the recent weeks they have become the only applicable terms. It's been suggested that the writers are having problems dealing with the extended season--writing 20 episodes is a greater challenge than writing 13--but the problems that have been plaguing the show are systemic, not structural. There is no longer any indication that the writers are infusing Galactica with their heart and soul. Their plots and character arcs are desultory and unexciting, and with only a few exceptions the best that they seem to be capable of is a vague decency. Episodes like last week's "Downloaded" suggest that the old Galactica's fire is still burning somewhere, but wouldn't it be nice if the writers could grant their human characters even a fraction of the attention that they lavished on these Cylons?
Saturday, December 17, 2005
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