If I were just starting out in the world I would want to
write for television. Hell, I want to
write for television NOW! I think it's the most
influential force on the planet. It may
not live up to its potential. It may
betray its potential every day, betray it so badly as to be a force for heinous
criminality. Still, I would love to
work in television. There is
world-saving potential in the boob-tube, but it can only be used in drips and
drabs.
A TV series is like nothing else in the world of
writing. It's huge. It provides a set of characters and a plot
world that arc across vast swathes of time.
How many years does a successful TV series run? Three, five, ten? I've seen enough series to be aware of a quality curve. The pilot episode and the first season are
full of birth pangs. The cast and crew
don't even know if they'll have a second season. Actors are getting to know their characters, writers are getting
to know their actors.
Seasons Three and Four are usually the best. Then there's a slump as writers and actors
get bored, switch out, change tacks, whatever.
If a series gets to Season Six it puts on a fresh coat of make-up and
regains the energy necessary to finish out its requisite nine or ten seasons.
We know that THE NEWSROOM will last three seasons. The HBO execs have told us so. I can barely imagine any drama so powerful
needing much longer to tell its story.
I'm a fan of Aaron Sorkin's writing. The Newsroom shows Sorkin's evolution as a
writer and maker of TV drama. Some of
Season One episodes are so good that they achieve that amazing and rare
quality of....of MAJESTY. That's right. Majesty.
Goosebumps.
The show's opening titles are a bit long but they convey to
us the reverence with which the producers view the tradition of broadcast
news. The iconography is there: Murrow,
Cronkite, Huntley, Brinkley, the faces of American television news in an era
when news was on at six o'clock every night and it was THE NEWS. It was not info-tainment. This tension between the exalted past of
journalism and the present tawdry state of...whatever-it-is...drives crucial
pieces of the plot.
Jeff Daniels plays news icon Will McAvoy, a monolithic
newscaster hewn in the Mt. Rushmore style of the Old School. He's young enough to be in the Peter
Jennings mold, yet crusty enough to harken back to the days of black and white
television. He's a bridge figure: he
brings echoes along with him. He brings
the times when The News was honest. He's
an Institution. He's powerful and
widely trusted yet his job hangs from a teeny thread that's held by the
Network's owners. Said owner is Leona
Lansing, played by a feisty Jane Fonda.
Her son, Reese Lansing, is the network CEO. Reese is in bed with Teabaggers, the Koch Brothers, all those
crypto-fascists. He hangs over Will
McAvoy like the fabled Sword, and there you have just a fraction of the
plot. Love interest, check,
psychotherapy, check, a staff full of college-fresh Millennials, check. Everything required to build plot tension in
a loamy garden of Relevance. That's all
right with me! Bring on Season
Two! Five Muskrats!
SHAMELESS: Not A Shame
At All
The role of Frank Gallagher must have made William H. Macy
shout with shameless joy. His character is the ultimate shirker. He's a sociopathic alcoholic single father
of six children. They range in age from toddler to twenty-something. He could care less. Frank cares only about booze and cooze. Frank never knows where he will wake up from
a night's carouse. As often as not, he
regains consciousness in a dumpster.
It's a miracle Frank never freezes to death on the streets of Chicago's
South Side. He seems to have one of
those special angels assigned to feckless drunkards, the angels that see to it
that lushes emerge from head-on collisions without a scratch, that they are one
step ahead of the piano that crashes onto the sidewalk. That kind of angel. Frank nurses a spark of amoral opportunism;
he may sit at the bar, fully addled with booze, but his wits light up when some
fool blurts that he's just come into money.
Frank slides his stool over.
Frank survives.
I hate Frank. This
is wonderful because a good villain drives a drama like nothing else. He's a malignant narcissist. Underneath all the sloppy booze behavior
he's cunning and articulate. He's left
all his motherless children in the care of oldest daughter Fiona. It's Fiona who has dedicated her life to
packing school lunches, getting kids to band practice on time, to being a de
facto mother of six at twenty two.
Fiona is desperately trying to keep the kids out of The System,
heroically striving to give them foundations of stability. Fiona is one big sacrifice. Her only indulgence is to have a
boyfriend. These boyfriends have been
historically abysmal, so when Steve shows up he seems too good to be true. He is, of course, too good to be true but it
takes a while to unravel his riddle.
Every character in this drama is finely drawn. Every casting choice is sublime. Oldest son "Lip" (for Philip), is
graduating high school with a 4.6 grade point average. He has no plans for college. His counselors, his siblings and his
teachers gnash their teeth over Lip's lack of ambition. He's being offered full scholarships to MIT,
Harvard and Columbia. His girlfriend
secretly filled out college applications because Lip has no ambition and
regards personal achievement as a game for suckers. Lip sees a world on the brink of collapse. Why waste all that effort getting degrees
when they're going to be useless?
The striking thing about the Gallagher children is their
loyalty to one another. Each carries
his or her weight. They have one
another's backs.
Their feelings about their father are complex. The younger
ones tend to adore him. Nine year old
Carl is Frank's disciple, taking lessons in larceny. Eleven year old Debbie thinks she's "daddy's girl"
until one day she learns the hard way that daddy doesn't give a fuck about her,
that "Daddy's Girl" is a bottle of Scotch. Fifteen year old Ian is
gay and has relationships with both an older rich man and a thug who pretends
to be homophobic. Everything about the
Gallagher family is complicated because that's what life is: complicated. Every solved problem begets two new and more
serious problems. Most of the problems
devolve upon Frank's escapades, cons, thefts and maybe even an inadvertent
killing or two. We know that he buried
Aunt Edna in the yard so he could keep collecting her Social Security
checks. Frank leaves craters with every
step he takes.
SHAMELESS is real
life writ large. Dysfunction exists in
the air, it is a basic component of modern oxygen and there's no escaping
it. Frank Gallagher stumbles around and
through the maze of existence as if with night vision goggles. He can see in the dark because he's the one
who made the dark. He's the perfect
role for William Macy. He's filthy, his
hair is matted, his clothes are rotting, he hasn't shaved in weeks. He should NOT have such a perfect set of
teeth but I think the producers weaseled out of that choice. It would have made Frank unbearable, a
visual trial more awful than he would have been worth.
A special award, an EmmyGlobeOscar, toEmmy Rossum as
Fiona. She plays this character with
strength and vulnerability. Fiona is
enduring stress and carrying responsibilities that would break a lesser
spirit. Her eyes show a desperate
clinging to what's left of her will.
She's "this far" from the edge, one more straw on her back
will overwhelm her. She's sexy but exhausted.
She has the look of a woman who, unless she catches a break, will age with terrifying speed after thirty.
The cast is a brilliant ensemble. The series shows the love and joy with which it is being made by
the production company.
This is a great TV series, one of the best I've seen. Five muskrats for SHAMELESS.
