The Networks Are In Trouble: This is News?

Earlier this week, the New York Times business section ran a front page article on television. In it, it said that ratings were dropping across the board for every major network, that interest in reboots and reality shows were down, and that even football was having problems getting an audience. In other news, the Earth revolves around the sun, cows go moo, and politicians are less than truthful.

I am frankly amazed that it has taken this long for everyone to realize just how dire the state of network television is. Certainly the artistic forces behind television have been beefing about it for at least a decade, ever since the seven year gap where no broadcast series was nominated for Best Drama. But now that the networks are losing money, everyone is calling it a crisis. However, this can’t come as a shock to anybody who’s watched television closely for the last twenty years. Yes, millions of people are migrating to cable and streaming services for television. That’s where the good stuff is.  And you know how I know this? That’s where all the talent has been migrating for nearly twenty years.

Entire books have been written (and no doubt will continue to be written) about this phenomena, doing far greater justice to the subject than I can in a smaller state. For now, I’m just going to focus on the first great migration – that period in the era of the first decade of this century when it seemed like all of the talent in TV was working on HBO.

And it’s not that much of an exaggeration. HBO had the right people in charge who were willing to get talent to try and earn a niche of their own. Most people believe that this started with The Sopranos, but in reality, it started a full two years before that when Tom Fontana, the genius who wrote so many of the great episodes of St. Elsewhere and Homicide decided he was tired of network interference, and took up an offer to work for the commitment of an eight-episode drama set in a maximum security prison. The show was called Oz.

Like most progenitors of great art, a lot of critics didn’t get what they were watching at first. TV Guide and the New York Times never quite warmed to it, but other publications like Entertainment Weekly realized what the hell Fontana was trying. It wasn’t just that the series was unrelentingly grim and bleak in a way that most series anywhere hadn’t even tried, or that there was so much blood and male nudity onscreen. It was that there were no heroes, and not a lot of people you could even really like. It was a show that was willing to take risks – in the Pilot, Fontana introduced a character named Dino Ortolani, seemed to set him up like he was going to be a lead, and that killed him at the climax. Gruesomely. The series who introduced a couple of major characters a week, and kill off just as many by the end of the episode. It was radical, and even now stands as one of the bleakest offering cable – or anywhere, in fact – ever tried.

Slowly, other talents migrated towards HBO. In particular were the holy trinity of Davids; Chase, who had worked on I’ll Fly Away and Northern Exposure; Simon, who took over Fontana’s role as brains behind Homicide, and Milch, the force behind NYPD Blue. Each were the creative freedom to do what they wanted to do, and once again, I’m not just referring to the profanity, nudity, and violence, though all three writers were more than willing to use them. What all of them wanted to do was experiment in ways that the networks, whose sole focus has been on making palatable for mass consumption, would never have allowed them to do. Chase wanted to make a drama about a sociopathic wiseguy who had mother issues that emotionally damaged him. Simon wanted to tell a story about the war on drugs, ‘where the cops work for Enron and the dealers work for Enron, and both sides get punished for their loyalty.” And Milch reinvented the western by using an improvised system for scripts that had driven the staff and writers of NYPD Blue insane the last years. The executives were willing to give them the freedom to do this, and we now consider The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood among the greatest shows ever made.

And the networks reaction… was to yawn. All of the networks were guilty of this to some extent, but the biggest offender by far was CBS.  In 2000, they produced CSI, a police procedural about crime scene workers that was technically sharp but emotionally empty. When it became a smash, every network duplicated it, especially CBS. NBC’s reaction was to put up three more Law & Order franchises over the next four years, keep it hit comedies on the air well past their expiration date, and milk ER until no one cared about it any more. Only ABC tried to do anything to reverse its fortunes, and that came out of desperation. Tottering on fourth place, in 2004 they introduced a series of brilliant creative programs, some of which were just satires and revamps done refreshing well (Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal) or series that were truly moonshots (Lost). And once those series became smashes, every network tried to replicate them.

Now, this doesn’t mean the network became artistic voids. On the contrary, a lot of the comedy series of the past twenty years have been among the best ever created – Parks and Recreation, The Middle, black-ish, 30 Rock, and Community have been among the most dazzling I’ve ever seen. And every so often, the networks will produce genuine gems – The Good Wife, Parenthood, Friday Night Lights, 24, and American Crime are clearly astonishing works. But with the fracturing of the TV audience becoming for and more clear with each year, the network keep trying to do one of three things: procedurals, remakes (if not out and out continuations) of old series, and reality show after reality show. Is it any wonder that after years of having the same dreck forced upon us, millions have migrated to services where the series are different? Say what you will about cable, it’s hard to believe Shameless and Billions can exist in the same universe, much less on the same network. Cable networks have so many different original series one can hardly find a common thread. NBC is basically the Dick Wolf network by now.

If the networks want to save themselves – and if the article in the Times tells us anything, they clearly need to – they need to be able to free themselves from the creative restraints they seem to have. They need to give series more time to be a hit, they need to make fewer remakes and be willing to risk failure. When NBC was tottering around fourth a decade ago, they decided to stop trying to make functional series and keep going with series that generally weren’t cookie cutter. They failed a lot, but at least they were failing upward, and now they’re number 1 again. Of course, they now have an entire night to devote to Dick Wolf’s Chicago series, so that may not last. But that’s the lesson they need to take if they want to stay relevant and more importantly, solvent. Will they? I really hope so. Of course, they may choose to reboot Scrubs first, but at least we can hope.

Escape At Dannemora: Ben Stiller's Unlikely Return to TV

Ben Stiller has always been one of the harder talents for me to get a grasp on it. He has genuine talent as an impressionist and writer (even after a quarter of a century, the cancellation of his sketch comedy series still seems like one of Fox’s biggest blunders), but as an acting presence on the silver screen, he has always been off-putting. Occasionally, in a film like Royal Tenenbaums or Tropic Thunder, you can see some of the genius that he once had permeate, but the majority of his films have always seemed to be empty shells, which is why his popularity at the box office has always escaped me. So, the idea that his return to television, much less helming a Showtime mini-series based on a true story, seems like a plot from one of his worst films. And yet, Escape At Dannemora plays like one of the best mini-series of a year that has already produced several superb ones. It probably helps matters than Stiller has limited his presence to directing, leaving the acting and writing to other artists.

Escape is based on one of the more bizarre true stories in recent years. Set almost entirely in a maximum security prison in upstate New York, it unfolds slowly, like some of the best prison movies. The story focuses on the three principals: Richard Matt (Benicio Del Toro, demonstrating again why he is one of the great character actors of our time) a multiple murderer with a flair for art, and negotiating the black market that makes up the prison; David Sweat (Paul Dano) a struggling inmate, trying to deal with the desertions of his family and support system, and Joyce ‘Tilly’ Mitchell (an almost unrecognizable Patricia Arquette) the fifty-ish prison wood shop supervisor in an unhappy marriage who has affairs with both inmates, and becomes an unwitting (or is she) co-conspirator in their attempt to escape..

Matt has a very soulful attitude, who despite ‘having done some messed up shit’, has an eye for art and literature that you just don’t expect to see in a con, or even a lot of other people these day. One day, in a sweep of the block, he finds himself in a hidden panel, and begins to think of a way to get out. He recruits Sweat, who used to be an engineer on the outside, and is far more desperate to get out than Sweat is. Sweat and Tilly were clearly engaged a passionless and not very subtle ‘affair’, and Matt finds a way to easily manipulate her, and it becomes very clear early on that part of her finds even the illegality of this arousing in a way her domestic life isn’t.

Escape has arguably the best cast of any mini-series this year. In addition to the three leads, David Morse plays a sympathetic prison guard, a man more than willing to look the other way when contraband becomes visible in people’s cell, and Bonnie Hunt,  one of the most undervalued actresses in any medium, as a representative of the New York Attorney General, who comes in to interrogate Joyce while the escape is still going on. Stiller’s direction, an art that is generally ignored in the field of television, is surprisingly subtle. He manages to make the claustrophobic world of the prison, and the often magnificent snowscapes of the world, seem equal in the eyes. When Matt says that he looks outside his cell, and can ‘see the tower’, he manages to make us see it too.

Even if you remember how the true-life story played out (spoiler: not well), Escape at Dannemora remains a stark and subtle story. How much of that credit should go to Stiller and how much to Michael Tolkin, the writer is hard to say, but there’s a steady hand that you don’t expect from the man who brought us Night at the Museum. This is a good limited series to wrap up the year, and a good direction for Stiller to proceed in.

My score:4.75 stars.

Homicide Episode Guide: Lines of Fire

Teleplay by James Yoshimura; Story by Tom Fontana & James Yoshimura

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

As I have mentioned on multiple occasions within this guide, throughout its run NBC programmers would constantly show episodes out of their intended order, something that was usually detrimental to a series that depended on week-to-week viewing. On one occasion, though, I think the programmers made the right call.

In April of 1999, three high school students in Columbine would engage in one of the most notorious mass high school shootings in history. With Homicide now coming to an end, NBC executives no doubt considered that it would be insensitive to show an episode that ended with the murder of a young child. Unfortunately, as a result the episode that aired on April 30^th would be the penultimate one of the season (and the series), which would cause more than its fair share of continuity errors, which will become evident very soon.

The greater shame, however, is that far fewer eyeballs were viewing Lines of Fire when it finally aired. And that is a great shame, because it’s pretty clear that Fontana and Yoshimura were planning for the episode to be another seminal one, much like last seasons The Subway. There are great similarities between the two. Yoshimura wrote both episodes, it’s one of the few Homicide episodes that has no footage of the squad room, and only a few of the detectives are involved. In addition, Kathryn Bigelow, who directed the  Season 6 finale, and is one of the great filmmakers of our era, helmed this episode, and it’s a far better show of her abilities than Fallen Heroes was. The episode basically centers around a series of conversations between two men: in this Mike Giardello and Emmett Carey. Carey is in a much more strained situation than John Lange was last year – he’s already shot a cop by the time Mike starts talking to him, and he’s holding his two children hostage. In The Subway, Frank had to confront a man with his eminent death. Mike is a similar situation – he has to convince Emmett to release his hostages, but if things go bad, QRT will put him down. And in both cases, the episode ends fatally, but in this one the consequences are much worse.

Mike and Gharty are called in for a police involved shooting, but not a serious one – the cop is even laughing about it because he’s going on disability. When Emmett sees Mike on TV, he tells the hostage negotiator that he’ll only talk to Mike. Mike and Stu get swept in. Mike slowly manages to build up a rapport with Emmett, and is just about to get him to give up the gun in exchange for breakfast when Emmett’s ex-wife shows up, and inflames the situation by screaming profanities and worse, derivatives, at her husband.

One of the clearest differences between this and so many other hostage negotiations that we saw before and since is the presence of a third party who immediately makes the situation worse.  Lucy loathes her husband, and even when she’s told that he’s shot someone already, is utterly contemptuous of him. She wants her kids back, and honestly doesn’t believe Emmett capable of violence towards anyone. When she breaks past QRT the second time, she starts berate him again, and he fires at her. Lewis and Bayliss are called on scene for the murder, and even they can’t believe the odds that he was able to kill her that cleanly from that far away.

Even at that point, Emmett Carey’s fate is not yet sealed. Though the negotiation team is pissed at hell at what has happened, Mike still thinks there’s a chance to get the hostages out alive. When he goes back in for the second time, he now has to keep telling Carey that his wife his alive in order to get him out. Emmett knows that things are bad – he’s not educated, but he’s no fool – but he wants to believe Mike. So he agrees to hand over his gun for a pizza. Mike agrees.

Mike comes in with a pizza, a soda and a candy bar. The situation ekes along slowly. Emmett is still resistant. Then he needs a stiff drink. He walks towards Mike, QRT prepares to deliver the kill shot – and Mike gets in their way, handing him a Coke. This may be Mike Giardello’s defining moment with the squad, and like so many on this series, it doesn’t end well. The two of them manage to keep up their conversation, and Carey agrees to surrender his stepdaughter – whom he has made very clear in the episode isn’t really his child. The second the girl is clear of the gun, Mike turns around, and three shots ring out – two killing the younger boy, one killing Carey. Mike’s immediate reaction is one of sure hatred – “Kill yourself fine, but you don’t kill your kid, you son of a bitch!” and then quiet despair. He knows there was a moment, and the fact that he let it pass will probably haunt him for the rest of his life.

About the only way that this episode suffers in comparison to The Subway is that Giancarlo Esposito and Ron Eldard are not Andre Braugher and Vincent D’Onofrio. Nevertheless, both actors are definitely at the peak of their talent in this episode. Esposito gives what arguably his best performance on the series as a man playing outside his depth and yet somehow more than up to the challenge. By the end of the episode, you find yourself realizing that its unlikely even Frank Pembleton could have handled the situation any different or any better.

Ron Eldard, at the time of this episode, was largely known for work on a failed sitcom and a recurring role on ER. He delivers what is arguably his best performance in television period, playing Carey as a desperate man who was driven to this situation, not out of violence or any moral failing, but simply because of circumstance. Hundreds of little things had to go wrong for Emmett Carey to end up in the situation where he is today, and you feel a lot of sympathy for his situation, until his final act, which no one can forgive. Attention should also be paid to Gerety for fine work as Gharty, both in his talking with Carey, and his utter terror that Mike will get killed and he’ll have to explain it to his father.

Were it not for the confluence of events that led up to its delayed showing, I have no doubt that Lines of Fire would be held as one of the great episodes of television, and would no doubt have gotten the level of recognition at the Emmys. As it is, the episode ranks (along with Shades of Gray) as the creative high point of the final season, and clearly one of superb episodes in a series that was full of them.

My score: 5 stars

Homicide Episode Guide: Self-Defense

Teleplay by Yaphet Kotto; story by Eric Overmeyer & David Simon

Directed by Barbara Kopple

Yaphet Kotto has always been the true Renaissance Man of Homicide. While Clark Johnson and Kyle Secor have been more than great directors, Kotto has always focused his attention on writing. In each of the previous seasons, he has turned out a teleplay that has at the very least up to the usual high caliber of the rest of the writing staff, and now he completes something that has become, much like the Law & Order crossover, an annual tradition. Adding to this work, he now has the benefit of another member of the Giardello clan to write for, and not coincidentally, both he and Esposito get to exercise their acting chops to a high caliber.

Al is still pissed at how Mike and the Bureau wrecked the McBride case a few months back, and we see him going to Barnfather openly opposed to his son working in his unit any longer. Barnfather is his usual political self, and tries to stay neutral. However, when Al leaves his office, he gives him the first bit of good news he’s had in awhile: if Gee takes the exam, he’ll be promoted to Captain next month, a job that he has been owed ever since Russert’s promotion way back in Season 3. Al naturally assumes there’s a catch, and there is – we just don’t realize the link until the episodes almost over.

Meanwhile, Falsone and Stivers are investigating the murder of Loren Burke, a high priced corporate attorney, shot five times in his bed. When they go to question his ex-wife, Eleanor, they find her with her attorney willing to confess to the murder. Eleanor is a federal prosecutor, whose worked with the department before – she even recognizes Stivers from a previous case. But it’s not until she comes into the squad room that we begin to see the fix is in. Danvers and Mike Giardello, both of whom have worked closely with Eleanor, but who ostensibly should be on the side of justice, seem to be bending over backwards to make sure that she doesn’t go to jail or even formally charged. There are very extenuating circumstances – Eleanor was severely beaten by her ex-husband, and he had violated a restraining order against her. It’s very clear that Loren Burke was the scum of the earth. But Falsone and Stivers are not willing to bend, and very quickly see the holes in her statement, in which she claims she shot her husband in self-defense. She claims that Battered Spouse syndrome affected her judgment, but the ME’s report says that her husband was fast asleep when he got plugged.

It’s not until Eleanor is headed to arraignment that things begin to start getting weirder. The supervising judge notes that Danvers and the defense are acting like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and decides to hold her for high bail. We then see that Burke is the niece of a Baltimore politician, who seems to be greasing the skids for her. Then, in another conversation, Barnfather almost causally mentions to Mike that his father will get the promotion – if things go well for the Burke case. Al agrees to talk to the judge (who is African-American), and doesn’t like the fact that he’s taking heat for being too firm with this defendant (who is a rich white woman). This leads to a conversation between Mike and Al, where he basically begs his father to just take the promotion. Al asks Mike if he knows something, and why he’s hiding it, and Mike just says: “Because you’re my father, and I love you.”

But both Giardello pere and fils have an innate sense of justice, and go to Danvers with what they know. Apparently, there was a $4 million life insurance policy out on Burke, and while no policy pays out if the payee murders the subject, a woman called wanted to know if the payout if their was a ruling of self-defense. Danvers realizes he’s been played, and changes his tune very quickly. When Councilman Reynolds sees Al at the new arraignment, he refers to Gee as ‘Captain’ Gee knows that he’s going to twist in the wind before his fate is decided, even though he thinks it’ll never happen. Al has been accused of not being politically astute, but in this case, his sense is dead on.

For this plotline alone, the episode would be well worth watching. But Kotto has developed a fairly good couple of subplots. Lewis catches an armed robbery, where the robber has used a knife as his weapon to cut a person and kill another. Under the eyes of the squad, he takes Ballard to the crime scene, and they have trouble getting along from the jump. Meldrick clearly doesn’t appreciate her view on how the victim knew the robber was white, and doesn’t seem particularly impressed when an all-black crowd offers no answers. He then ditches Ballard after another robbery takes place (equally disdainful of an all-white crowd that offers no intel) and manages to catch the robber when another would be victim shoots him. When Falsone gently tries to prod him on how he seems to be having a problem working with women, he denies it, but considering his problem with Sheppard (and a couple of seasons ago with Howard) there might be something to it. Due to the approaching end of the series, this is never explored again.

Falsone is already chafing over what’s going on with Ballard. She’s not dating yet, but she is…bowling. Grissom apparently asked her to join the ME’s bowling team (her hugging Scheiner after making a spare almost makes the episode in itself), and he’s upset because this is what they did on their first date. Honestly, it’s amusing that, after breaking up with her last week, this is what irks him more.

And Gharty continues to spiral. Telling Laura he had the flu, he spends almost the entire episode in the Waterfront getting loaded. Since the episode takes place over two days, this is very concerning. Admittedly, he’s still upset that this will his first wedding anniversary alone, but it’s rather disturbing to see how much Stu has fallen this season. And he still hasn’t hit bottom.

Self-Defense isn’t perfect. Bayliss, Munch and Sheppard get almost nothing to do in this episode, and the fact that Michael Michelle has been given almost no work in three straight episodes is kind of alarming, even for those who don’t like her character. But it features Kotto in good form as both an actor and a writer, and gives a good showcase for Mike and Al’s personal relationship. Of all the losses that would come with Homicide’s departure, the fact that Kotto has not written another episode for TV is one of the sadder notes.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Series That Should Be Rebooted

So, I’ve told you why a series should come back. Now, for a harder question – which ones?

Someone – maybe it was Gene Siskel – that it’s not the classic movies that should be remade, it’s the ones that didn’t quite work. There’s no need to remake perfection, but the flawed series or the ones that were ahead of their time, they’re the ones deserving of being remade. I can only think of one time where this has actually happened. In 1998, Rob Thomas developed a series called Cupid  in which Jeremy Piven played a psychiatric case who believed he was the Greek God of love who had been banished from Olympus, and needed to match a hundred couples before he could return. Paula Marshall played the psychiatrist assigned to his case, who found himself intrigued by the patient, and tried to help/cure him. In 2011, Thomas remade the series with Bobby Canavale and Sarah Paulson playing the lead roles. Both series were fascinating to watch, but neither could even run half a season.

So, with this as our keystone , here are some series I think should either be rebooted or returned to.

American Gothic

Two of the series on this list were developed by Shaun Cassidy. By far the more interesting one dealt with a small town in Iowa run by one of the most evil sheriffs you might ever see, played by Gary Cole in one of his best roles. The series dealt with Caleb, a young boy who might be the sheriffs illegitimate son, and who also was haunted by the ghost of his murdered sister. While other characters, including a reporter and a deputy tried to figure out just how deep the roots were, one could clearly see that the Sheriff as a precursor to so many of the antiheroes that now dwell in the television landscape. It was ahead of it’s time, and I really want to know who it was at the door.

Brotherhood

In my mind, this is Showtime’s first true masterpiece. Set in Rhode Island, the story focused on the Caffee brothers – Michael (Jason Isaacs) a member of the Irish Mob, and Tommy (Jason Clarke) a representative in the Rhode Island House. The series dealt with their struggles both on either side of the law, as well as their relationship with their family, particularly the matriarch Rose (Finanoula Flannagan). Given the fact that the ratings were microscopic even by Showtime’s standards, it’s remarkable that the series managed to last three seasons. But I still think that the series, like Deadwood,  had one more year to run to wrap up all it’s stories. It might be hard to get the cast together, but wouldn’t it be something if Amazon or Hulu picked up the ball?

Invasion

After Lost became a hit, ABC made numerous attempts to try and come up with a serialized drama with a sci-fi format. By far, the one that came the closest to working was their first series. Set in Florida, after a hurricane, Invasion  slowly told the story of two families, linked by a sheriff (William Fichtner) who seems to be hiding more than his share of secrets about what might be happening, who starts out as the villain, and becomes more complex as the series unfolds. It was relatively successful, but was inexplicably canceled. Considering that one of the main leads was a brother who was a conspiracy blogger a few years before we knew the term, its hard to argue that it still might resonate.

Joan of Arcadia

One of the last truly original series that CBS has done, the series focused on Joan (Amber Tamblyn in her star-making role), a high-school student living in Maine, who starts having conversations with God, who takes the form of senior citizens, grade schoolers, telling her to do certain things without any real reason. The series lasted two years, and was canceled just when it was at the point of giving a clear mission statement.

Compared to many formulaic CBS series, which are basically cut in paste, this was a rare drama that took faith seriously, and yet had a dry wit that so many high school dramas often don’t. It also managed to work by having Joan have a real interesting family, including a police lieutenant (Joe Mantegna) , an older brother who had been in an accident and was now in a wheelchair (Jason Ritter), and an artist mother (Mary Steenburgen). Considering the success of God Friended Me,  a series that has a similar blueprint, I think the market for it is still out there. It would have to be better than the next NCIS spinoff we’ll inevitably get.

Profit

                        We say the phrase ‘ahead of its time’ so much these days that the phrase has become a cliché. But there’s little other way to try and describe this 1996 series that featured Adrian Padsar in one of his greatest roles. As Jim Profit, a fast rising corporate executive, Profit is determined to do anything in his power to take control of a company – anything. Who was he? Why was he so obsessed with this company that he rented his apartment directly across from him? And why in God’s name did he sleep naked in a cardboard box? These questions were sadly never answered, because while critics loved it, it wasn’t what viewers wanted to see after Melrose Place.   David Greenwalt has gone on great success, but few series were as ambitious as this show that, to quote one critics, “played like an FX drama that time-traveled from 2007”. Jim Profit wasn’t nearly as reprehensible as Walter White or Frank Underwood, but maybe that’s just cause he never got the chance. I think the world’s ready for him now.

                        Sports Night

                        It’s been nearly two decades since ABC canceled Aaron Sorkin’s quintessential dramedy, but I’m still pissed at whatever network executive chose to do it. You had Peter Krause, Felicity Huffman, Josh Charles, Joshua Malina and Sabrina Lloyd doing Sorkin’s material, and you killed it even though the ratings improved.  It’s not as short-sighted as whichever NBC executive killed off Freaks and Geeks, but it’s close. They’ve all said that they’d be willing to get together again. And it’s gotta be simpler than trying to reboot The West Wing.  You’ve already brought back Roseanne. Why not bring back another 90s gem?

                        Wiseguy

                        This was TV legend Stephen J. Cannell most ambitious and daring series. Featuring  an undercover agent who infiltrated crime rings with some of the most memorable villains in the history of the medium (even with the cloud Kevin Spacey is under now, there’s no way to forget just how magnificent his work as Mel Profit was), and arcs that would go one for more than a third of the season.  Cable now makes it a rule to spend a season following a single storyline, but not even Damages or Justified  was daring enough to follow two or three. Think of it as 24 but moving at a much more relaxed pace. And considering how different the world of organized crime is these days, there are far more opportunities than there were in its original incarnation. Ken Wahl eventually left the series at the end of the third season to pursue a movie career, and they tried to carry on without him. I think one might be inclined to see that as less of an obstacle  - you could even do a different season with a different mole. It might be seen as behind the curve now, but I still think there might be room for it.

Well, these are my ideas. They might not be as imaginative as the geniuses who are thinking of bringing back Mad About You and Alias, but I present them just the same.

The Returning Series: What They Are, What They Should Be, And What Should Come Back, Part 1

These days, it seems that every broadcast network, cable service, and streaming is bringing back some incarnation of an old – or in many cases, fairly recent – classic series. Whether it’s CBS’ reboot of Magnum P.I.  with a female Higgins, Fox’s reincarnation of Last Man Standing, or the CW’s return of Charmed, it’s really starting to see that we’ve run out of new ideas for series, and have now started reincarnating the old ones.

It should be noted, of course, that like the reboots themselves, this is nothing new. We’ve gotten new versions of The Twilight Zone  every twenty years and Star Trek  was constantly being revisited long before J.J Abrams put his stamp on it. What is becoming different is the fact that more and more often these new incarnations are  just the same series with the cast much older than they were when they signed off. This still isn’t anything radically new – Jackie Gleason and Art Carney did another version of The Honeymooners more than a decade after the classic series was canceled. – but it is doing little to change the narrative that broadcast TV evens wants to try and join the radically different world of cable and streaming, where most of the great series currently reside. (They also bear guilt in this, but we’ll get to that in a minute.)

Now, I can understand, if not defend, why network TV is doing this. With audiences fragmenting at an ever increasing rate, one wants to have series with a ready-made audience. And considering that some of the highest rated series in the last couple of seasons have been returns of these series – Roseanne and Will & Grace being only the most obvious examples – one can understand why every network should jump on the band wagon. And I’d be willing to get on board with this – if these series had anything new to say. But the sad truth of the matter, many of them don’t. The various returns of 24  didn’t have anything new. The return of Murphy Brown, while culturally relevant, probably will age even less well than its antecedent. And even the series that represented the Zeitgeist at one point – I’m thinking most obvious of The X-Files – showed little imagination.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad X-Files came back, if for no other reason than for the fact that it brought back it gave us two more incredible Darin Morgan scripts to add to the world, and showed once again, how ahead of his time he was. But the reboot basically just showed how little imagination Chris Carter and his colleagues had, dealing with storylines that really should’ve been left for dead, and bringing back characters who likewise. It basically featured all the things that made the series so problematic in it later seasons, with little of the joys that made it worth watching.

At this point, you probably think I loathe the various reboots and returns. This is where things get complicated. I’m in favor of them, if they have a new vision, or they have a new way of telling their story.  And the fact s, I do believe that there are some series that should come back to television with the original cast, if their original story was left unfinished.

Let’s start with two examples of the former. Twin Peaks: The Return  was probably one of the most anticipated series of 2017. Given all the buzz about it, and the remarkable amount of secrecy surrounding it,  it would’ve been easy for Lynch to just revisit Twin Peaks  twenty five years later, like he promised when the original series ended. That’s exactly what we didn’t get. We didn’t even get the original Agent Cooper, until the series was almost over. We got a vision of surrealism, madness, frustration, dark humor, and confusing stories, featuring many of our old favorites, and hundreds of new characters. In other words, we got something that was almost, but not entirely, unlike the series that debuted on ABC in 1990. That’s a formidable achievement, considering what the original was.. It was the most bizarre thing about the return. It was also the most wonderful.  Even if you barely understood what the hell was going on, you couldn’t deny its vision. Lynch has talked about doing a follow-up season, and that’s one I wouldn’t mind seeing.

A different kind of cult sensation was Arrested Development. One of the funniest series of the 2000s, with one of the greatest casts of any series ever assembled, people had been fighting for a continuation of the series for more than five years. In 2013, Netflix granted us a Season 4 – that bore very little resemblance to anything  the Bluths had ever shown us. Critics and fans were up in arms because it wasn’t what they had wanted to see. I was privately delighted, for exactly that same reason. Mitchell Hurwitz could’ve easily given us another season of the Bluth’s doing the same old thing. Instead, he created an interlocking 15 episode story where the cast didn’t interact for much of the show. Was it the show we remembered? No, and that’s the point. We got something better. And maybe it’s worth getting a new season every five years or so for just that reason.

Now, let’s talk about some series that deserve the returns they’re getting. Veronica Mars is one of the most beloved series that I never got around to seeing. Featuring one of the most dynamic teenage heroines who never appeared on the WB, and a series format that really was remarkable even for its time, a lot of people were pissed when it got canceled. (I’m sure there are still CW executives who still get Mars Bars in the mail.) And the love for that series has not diminished more than a decade later. When Rob Thomas used Kickstarter to try and raise funds for a movie based on it, he got all the money he needed from fans in less than 24 hours. And even though there was the film and some books, there were still people who wanted another season. And now, Hulu is giving it to them, with a very busy Kirsten Bell attached. I’m sure there will be disappointed fans regardless, but this is a story that never got finished.

Similarly, Deadwood, one of the landmark series that brought about the new Golden Age has been promised some continuation of the series ever since it was cancelled. The set was struck, the actors have since moved on, most of them achieving superstardom in film or other TV series, and even though HBO executives admitted they made a mistake cancelling it, it seemed finished. Even when word came out earlier this year that we were going to get a movie, Timothy Olyphant said that he’d believe it when he saw it. Well, he apparently believed, because he and a dozen other series leads (including Swearengen, Ian McShane) have officially been cast for a movie that is going to come out in 2019. I don’t know if it’ll be on HBO or released to theaters (if it is, we have a very interesting discussion as to whether a movie can get an NC-17 based on language alone) but its looking like its really going to happen at last. It will definitely be worth seeing, even if it is ten years later.

Those are the series that should be coming back – and that’s my biggest problem with so many of the returns. They seem to be ignoring that they wrapped everything up with a bow, and are now deciding to cut the ribbon in half. (Why else is John Goodman alive in The Conners?) The stories that should come back are the ones that either never got to finish their story, or had a good premise that was never given a chance to come to fruition. In my follow-up, I’ll discuss several series that should come back – and that I’d watch if they did.

Homicide Episode Guide: Zen and the Art of Murder

19. Zen and the Art of Murder

Teleplay by Lloyd Rose; Story by Julie Martin & Tom Fontana

Directed by Miguel Arteta

                It’s not clear if Tom Fontana and company still thought Homicide was going to come to a conclusion or whether they’d come back for one more series. It’s interesting to note that they seemed to be in the process of cleaning up all of the detritus that had made the seventh season such a wreck for most of the devoted followers (myself included). In Zen and the Art of Murder, they wrap up two of the messier storylines of the season, one simply and perfunctorily, the other anything but.

                The Falsone-Ballard romance officially comes to an end in this episode. And at least the writers are decent enough to lance the boil neatly. Falsone goes to Ballard, awkwardly tries to bring up the situation they were left in last week, and Ballard deflates it by simply saying they’re done. The end. Basically never dealt with again. In a bizarre way, its fitting that the worst storyline in the series history ends in a typical Homicide fashion.

                The main story of the episode deals with the murder of a Buddhist monk in a ‘temple’ in Baltimore. Lewis and Munch get called in, and from the start Munch, who’s in a pissy mood from the beginning (we’ll get a hint as to why in a couple episodes) seems even less inclined to give a solid investigation. As soon as Bayliss hears about the case, he wants to give involved – he knew the victim personally (one can’t imagine the Buddhist community in Baltimore is that large), and the minute he gets involved, Munch opts out. We knows he’s had problems with Bayliss all through the season – he’s been partnering with everybody but him in the last couple of months – but he has no problem walking away from him. This doesn’t make Meldrick any happier. Bayliss tries to look at this with an open mind, and Meldrick wants to treat it like any other investigation. When he hears that James Felder had had multiple affairs with his congregants, as well as with a married one, he focuses on that, and is less inclined to believe when even the cheated spouse says he was impressed with the man’s public confession.

                But the investigation takes a turn that no one sees coming. Hearing that a homeless man had stalked the temple earlier, Bayliss goes chasing after him, and finds him. It is clear from the moment we see the suspect – Larry Moss – that this guy is certifiable.   He waited on a soup line, got some soup, and apparently got so angry that Felder gave him a spoon, that he stalked him and beat him to death. Then he pulls a gun on Bayliss, and it becomes clear very quickly that he intends to kill him. Bayliss shoots him. Dead.

                And something inside him clearly breaks. Giardello tries to reassure him he did the only thing possible, but asks for a crisis worker to watch him. Lewis tries to convince him that he did the right thing, and even goes so far as to call him ‘a pretty good cop’. But Bayliss, who had a major problem with his sex life last episode, now finds that everything he thought he had learned spiritually seems to have changed nothing in him. He refuses to go and have a beer with Meldrick, and he’s never the same again. Taking a life has been a step too far for this particular murder police.

                This is the last time that Homicide will focus on Bayliss until the final episode, and it features the truly last great performance from Kyle Secor, who remains as always the guts of the series. But the secondary storyline is nearly as good. Ballard and Gharty get called in to investigate the shooting of an eighteen-year old. In a rarity for this series, there are three eyewitnesses to the murder, all of who claimed to have gotten a good look at the shooter. Ballard hears this, and says: “Too good to be true.” And it is. The victim’s sister identifies the killer as a friend of his named Jocko, and his mother seems to confirm it. But the man who claims he got that he ‘saw everything’, gives a completely different description, can’t pick the suspect out of a photo array, and when they finally get him in a lineup, can’t ID him. The case falls apart quickly after that – the suspect’s alibi is shaky but viable, he refuses to confess to the murder, and it turns out that the victim’s mother was coached by the sister to ID him. Danvers quickly tells them they can’t make a case, and the murderer walks. In a rarity for the series, we are given definitive proof that Jocko was the killer – we see him through the gun away in the final moments of the episode. However, I don’t regard as a violation of the rules Homicide has been playing with, as for once, we are seeing the failures of police work even when we know the guilty party is in custody. It’s also refreshing to see Peter Gerety doing some actual solid police work in a season which has seen him mostly regulated to personal (if well done) stories. His genuine dissatisfaction is built out of frustration rather than any personal prejudices, which is different for his character as a whole.

                In many ways Zen and the Art of Murder is a back to basic Homicide. Neither Giancarlo Esposito nor Michael Michele are present, so we have the mix of the cast that made so much of last season a delight to watch.  And you can definitely see the directions that Bayliss’ character could now go, considering just how well they managed to handle Sheppard’s arc in a similar situation. Unfortunately, the following week NBC, having shown perhaps far more patience than it really could’ve, finally dropped the axe on the series. As much as we’d like to see them as part of a sign of improvement, from now on the series is simply going to be running out the clock.

My score: 4.25 stars

Homicide Episode Guide: Truth Will Out

Teleplay by Anya Epstein, Story by Noel Behn & Tom Fontana

Directed by Keith Samples

As Homicide continued to wind its way towards its end, the series seemed to be in the act of resolving the weaker storylines of the final season. Keeping with the nature of the series, however, even doing this would cause its own level of anguish. In Truth Will Out, they mirror it with a cold case that shows just how torturous the past can be..

Falsone and Stivers are called by Josephine Pitt, a twenty-ish woman who saw Falsone get commended for the Slone case (Finnegan's Wake) and wants him to investigate an old murder - the 1972 death of her toddler brother. The twist being, she was accused of the crime when she was three years old. Brooke Smith, a talented character actress given a rather sympathetic role to play, plays Josephine as a woman who has spent her entire live in torment over an act she can barely remember. And now that she is pregnant, she feels that she can't endure raising a child. The detectives agree to look into the file, and find that the investigating detective from 1972 was none other than Al Giardello.

Gee remembers the case - "No one forgets their first murdered child" - and reluctantly gives them the ok to go forward. They talk to the mother, who tells a convincing story, but seems like someone who just wants to move on. When they get to the medical examiner, it becomes very clear that this guy wasn't of the level of some of the better ones we've seen on this series, and Gee admits that the man, in true Homicide fashion, only kept his job due to politics. He orders Jeffrey Pitt to be dug up, and the new examination reveals that while the cause of death could match falling from a tub, there were also signs of abuse.

The interrogation session is one of the best of the season, and certainly the longest - it takes more than ten minutes to get through. There is a level that is unrealistic when Josephine walks in, and confronts her mother about what happened that hot August day. It's hard to imagine that Gee would've allowed this, but he's been so invested in this case, it's almost forgivable, mainly because it works. Mrs. Pitt, played excellently by the late Elizabeth Ashley, acts increasingly defensively until she eventually become accusatory, blaming her daughter for the murder of her son. We also get to see Al in the interrogation room. Again, this is unlikely, but considering he is in charge of the unit, and was the investigating officer, it's not as impossible as some of the other things that have happened this season. Yaphet Kotto is excellent, as we get a rare glimpse of just how good a detective Giardello must have been in his prime. When he finally confronts the mother on what's she done, it's chilling - and all the more so, because we never hear her confess.

There's also an all too rare scene of Al and Mike discussing old family business.  Throughout the episode, Al tries to remember when an illness that befell his beloved Charisse (flashbacked to way back from Season 3) that made him feel powerless, and tries to find out from Mike as if that might have served as a distraction from the death of Jeffrey Pitt. But as we eventually find out, the dates never matched, and Al can't excuse himself for erring in his judgment. He sees the consequences of his actions - Josephine Pitt has spent her life tormenting herself over this, she'll never speak to her mother again, and she can't reconcile with her father. It's rare to see Al this reflexive, and its more than welcome.

The past is also reaching out to bite Bayliss in the ass.  Investigating a suspicious death with Ballard, he meets a patrolman who later turns out to be gay. They have an intimate conversation, and it seems it might move on to something more. Then we learn that Gaffney is pissed because he and his wife (that prick got someone to marry him?) found Bayliss' website (which we saw a few episodes ago), and demands he take it down. Suddenly the squad, which has been more or less neutral to Tim's sexuality, is under fire. The other detectives (the male ones) are angry about Tim talking about his sexuality. Talking. When Bayliss and Ballard go into get info from a narcotics detective, he doesn't even look at Tim when telling them about their deceased. And after Bayliss goes to see a patrolman who stood him up, he barely escaped being assaulted. Tim has never wanted to be a crusade - he makes this very clear - but faced with the overwhelming pressure, he shuts his website down. And thus begins the process that will lead to Bayliss' burning out of the department.

I should mention, by the way, that Ballard and Sheppard are completely supportive of Tim. The homophobia in the Baltimore PD only seems to go one way. It's interesting to consider this in Simon's The Wire, no one will have a problem with the out black lesbian detective, but the white male captain will hide his homosexuality from everyone, except on one occasion, the viewer.

Ballard is inclined to be more sympathetic because the other sour storyline from Season 7 is drawing to a close. Ballard and Falsone have been carrying on their affair in secret ever since Gee discovered them, but Stivers found out about it, and now she is concerned. Falsone and Ballard try to go into hiding, but by the episode's end, it becomes clear that Stivers is going to force the issue, saying that if Gee asks about it, she's not going to lie. Thank the lord the writers are finally getting rid of this particular piece of detritus.

Truth Will Out is a solid episode of the series, which seems to have more levels than the usual Homicide title. The truth should be revealed, not because it's the easy thing, but because it's the right thing. Josephine Pitt may never be all right because of what happened, but at least she can now be a better mother than hers ever was. But for the detectives working these murders, the truth about their personal lives just makes their already difficult professional lives even harder.

My score: 4.25 stars.

Still Crazy for Her: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Final Season Review

One of the true jewels of television is airing its final season on the CW. The fact that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has managed to survive to a fourth season is remarkable. It's ratings have been microscopic, even for the network that airs it, and I doubt even one of the lesser cable or streaming services would be willing to keep it on the air with the numbers it does have. Which is a great tragedy, considering that this series is likely one of the great series of the past decade, certainly one of the most unique.

Rebecca Bunch has been on a hell of a journey, one that even the most advanced cable series probably wouldn't have dared take their lead on. Starting out as a more than slightly delusional twenty-ish New Yorker who relocated to West Covina to chase her ex-boyfriend, she has finally been effectively diagnosed with a borderline personality. And after three seasons of talking in terms of destiny and irresponsibility, she finally seems to be on the right path. Of course, this being Crazy, that path led to her spending a few weeks in prison for a crime she wasn't responsible for, and has now become infamous as 'The Rooftop Killer'. But now, Rebecca finally seems to be the woman she appeared to be in the first few episodes - a good person following her heart.

Never was this more clear in last week's episode, where she faced the exact same situation she was at in the Pilot. Offered a partnership in her law firm, she used the exact same dialogue and behavior to walk out of her firm, and go into the lobby to work at a pretzel cafe. And being Rebecca, she immediately screwed that up, wrecking the franchise for a colleague of hers. Then, she decided to stop being an attorney and open a pretzel company. But when Paula, whose been really supportive of her, said it was a destiny, Rebecca responded: "I don't believe in destiny. I don't think I ever did. I just don't think the law is right for me." This is a decision she couldn't have come to even a few episodes ago, and reveals a level of evolution that you'd be hard pressed to find on any TV show.

And it's not just Rebecca who's evolving. Josh (Vincent Rodriguez III), who has never seemed particularly worthy of Rebecca's love, and has always seemed incredibly dim-witted, in the season premiere, finally decided to go into therapy himself. (Ironically, its the husband of Rebecca's therapist.) He's actually making some progress on himself as a person, which I never would have happened. Of course, he's still a little slow on the uptake (when he goes a disastrous date, he doesn't realize that Uber has to call before getting the cab there) but its definitely there.

Every other character is showing signs of growth as well. Heather, Rebecca's best friend, has finally admitted that she is capable of love, and has decided to get married. Of course, first she agreed to marry her boyfriend just for insurance purposes, but still.... Darryl, now a father again, is beginning to realize he doesn't need a mother for his new child. Even Nathaniel has finally decided, after nearly two seasons of gruff menacing, that actually is a human being, that he loves Rebecca.

All of this is fine stuff in its own right, but as those few but faithful who have watched Crazy from the inception know, the series is also a brilliant musical, with all the songs written by Rachel Bloom.  And if nothing else, she continues to put up some of the most brilliant satiric numbers in the history of... honestly, there's no precedent for this anywhere. Last week, she gave a 'Fresh Prince style rap song' called 'Don't Be A Lawyer' to a fringe character, which is the funniest argument for not going to law school, and ended with a perfect self-aware joke that I wouldn't dream of spoiling. Then, after spending the entire episode ranting at the pretzels, two pretzels became Muppetized and began singing a Simon and Garfunkel type parody, involving every pretzel reference you can imagine. Even the opening theme has become a self-satire on where Rebecca is. Now it's a parody of seventies-TV shows theme music, starting with introducing us to the wrong Rebecca, and telling us basically every screwed up thing Rebecca's ever done, before going back to the 'other' Rebecca, who punctures that joke. ("I live in this park!" she said last week.)

I've said it countless times before, and will say it one final time - Rachel Bloom is arguably the greatest discovery to come out of TV and music in the last few years, and its a travesty of the Emmys that they refuse to nominate her or her show for anything other than technical awards. (Granted, Bloom's picked up a couple of trophies this way as a result, but still!)  I still don't know whether this series or Jane the Virgin (the other brilliant, underrecognized CW series coming to an end this season) will go down in history as the CW greatest triumph. What I do know is that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has been one of the most joyful and remarkable experience I've ever seen in all my years of watching TV. I'm sorry its ending, but I'm glad it' lasted long enough for Bloom to give it the proper farewell it deserved.

My score: 5 stars.