For those of you who have to yet to see NBC’s Monday lineup from November 24, 2008, you might want to skip this post, as I’ll be using several plot points as evidence.
As a writer, I tend to watch television with a semi-critical eye. Fully formed characters, well established settings, and plots that are realized and move – these things matter and they are what will get to me to tune in on a regular basis and push me to extol a show’s virtues both online and off. To put it bluntly, television shows should be well-crafted stories. Unfortunately, NBC’s Monday night selection seems to have forgotten this. The network’s flagship scripted drama, Heroes, is in need of some serious saving and the slow motion implosion of this property is threatening to take the rest of the night’s line up down with it. The products aren’t doomed, but they need to return to the basics of story to save themselves.
Heroes’ Hard Reboot
Last night’s episode of Heroes attempted to push the series into a hard reboot, something difficult to do mid-season, yet something that the show has needed for quite some time. The reboot, carried out in the form of an eclipse that robbed all characters of their powers, intended to return the show to where it had been in Season one. Sylar was once again a bad guy. Peter and Nathan were returned to their roles as contentious brothers. And Claire was once again in trouble. While stripping the characters of their powers can easily be written off as contrived and clichéd, it did push the series back towards a much more familiar ground, redrawing lines towards the Heroes the audience once loved. However, the reboot might have come just a bit too late. Even as Claire was being rushed to the hospital, bleeding from a gunshot wound, I found myself not able to care. Not one bit. None at all. All of the emotional capital that these characters had built up in their first season, and managed to hold onto through the short second season, had already been squandered.
The Road Ahead
The show needs some serious help to get back on its feet; the reboot, in and of itself, was not enough. Returning Heroes to the general, comfortable status of Season one will not work. In this case, the viewers are demanding blood, retribution, and they should be placated. NBC needs to show that it is willing to take serious risks on it’s flagship drama, and in doing so, get the audience to once again invest. How? It’s not easy, and perhaps the story will be kneecapped by contracts of those involved, but Heroes needs to start killing off characters. Not just second or third tier characters, but actual primary characters. The cheerleader? Dies from wounds. One or both of the Petrelli boys? Killed in the jungle. Any many more need to die. The show needs a serious cleansing.
A Map Drawn in Blood
The end results of the killings would pay dividends on multiple fronts. First, it provides a story-based motivation for those who survive to actively regain their powers. Second, it thins the cast out, allowing the story to return to a core group of characters, making the show easier for the audience to follow, and easier for your writers to craft. Third, if enables your writer to develop a believable, and seemingly insurmountable external conflict that humanizes the heroes (fear of death is perhaps the most human quality there is). And finally, and most importantly, it allows the viewers to re-invest in the characters. This might seem counter-intuitive, why would “we the audience” invest in characters that stand a very real chance of dying at any minute? Because we’re Americans, we love acts of redemption and of underdogs. Right now, your characters need to redeem themselves. Right now, they’re just wasting our time, and we’re going to stop watching.
Heroes Is Not Alone
NBC already pulled the plug on Christian Slater’s quasi-futuristic spy drama, “My Own Worst Enemy,” proving that perhaps the suits who make the decisions regarding scripted properties don’t have the heart for long, drawn out plots. Not that “Worst Enemy” was a piece of pure magic, but the premise of the show did show some serious heart, and stacked against the weakened and delirious third season of Heroes, it looked much better by comparison. As this show has been canceled, I won’t waste any bits over it. I will write about perhaps one of my current favorite television shows, Chuck.
Chuck
I was apprehensive about this show from the beginning. Why? It had ample opportunity to go wrong. And NBC has a history of not allowing most of its properties to get things right before pulling the plug. The show, however, has proven to be quite the success, due in large to the chemistry of the actors involved, and has become the highlight of my television week. Last night’s episode, the close of a three-story arc, showed a bit of self-awareness that crept beyond the fourth wall, and could have been seen as a plea from inside the writer’s room. The title character, very bluntly, asked if everyone in his life was actually a spy.
Exposing Flaws
Chucks question, while providing a means to reveal the doubts and frustrations of the character, also highlighted a weakness in the show’s formula – how many people can one person know who are actually covert agents on either side of a secret war? To answer the question, “Chuck, I think you’re pretty close to knowing all of them.” This means that the show is quickly coming up on a moment where it has to decide where exactly it’s going.
Remember the Basics
As I noted in the introduction, the basics of a good story, be it a short story, a novel, or a television series all revolve around three main areas: character, setting, and plot. So far, Chuck has pushed furthest into character and left the setting understood, and seems to have mined a bit too far into its general plot, using premise points as specific points, and in doing so, the show itself is in need of some serious guidance.
Embrace the Plot
The current plot formula is quickly running out of room to operate in. Right now, the two largest external forces which drive the plot are Chuck’s competing lives – that of a spy, and that of a hapless civilian. The character is leaning more towards hapless civilian, yet, his moments of spy ascension are the ones that get the audience to cheer. The powers that be need to move Chuck more on the path of breaking from his civilian life and towards being the spy, coming to grips with the role of reluctant hero.
Reinvent the External
The best means to do this is to allow the repeat antagonist to become something more than an ephemeral idea. Some work needs to be done on Fulcrum, the evil spy organization that serves as a string of cardboard baddies. Who is Fulcrum? What are their motivations? What is Fulcrum’s history? And what does that have to do with Chuck? The measure of a hero isn’t who he is, but that which he fights. Chuck is in dire need of an adversary.
Embrace the Backstory
Several Chuck episodes have paid more than lip service to Chuck’s being kicked out of Stanford. The Bryce Larkin character was used as a device to show him saving Chuck from the life of an analyst in the intelligence community, while single-handedly dooming Chuck to his current situation. Jill, Chuck’s old girlfriend, was also recruited at Stanford. The humiliation of being kicked out, wrongfully accused of cheating, has time and time again, been a motivating factor in Chuck’s personal arc. And thanks to Sarah, Chuck’s spywork, he has been granted his degree, partially closing the book on perhaps the single most humiliating time in his life. The “what” of Stanford has been discussed, but the over-arcing “why” has largely been untouched. Why were both the Intelligence community and Fulcrum recruiting at Stanford? Was Stanford unique? Was Chuck’s story unique? Is there a group of similar recruits, a virtual spy class of two thousand and X out there, right now, fighting an unseen battle? These are questions that should largely be answered to move the plot of the show forward.
Grow the Characters
Last night’s “Unleash the Casey” line brought a smile to my face, and was mentioned over a dozen times on Twitter, a sure sign that the primary character trait of the show’s pit bull (played marvelously by Adam Baldwin), resonated with the audience. Casey, who’s largely a foil for Chuck, shows that they know how to handle at least some of their assets.
The character of Sarah Walker, who’s primary trait seems to be the mystery surrounding her past, largely remains an unknown. Other than the knowledge that she dated Bryce, and that her high school life as a nerd was a cover, not much has been established about her. Her relationship with Chuck is constantly flirted with, and it’s generally understood that she has definite feelings for him. By keeping her sense of mystery, that relationship isn’t done justice, and her character should either have her backstory exposed, or have a her current story grown. This isn’t just a desire to have more screentime for Yvonne Strahovski, it’s a desire to keep one of the principle characters as a character and not mere a lighting rod for the title character’s failed and frustrated romantic interests.
It’s About Chuck
The character who perhaps needs the most work, is Chuck himself. Though numerous attempts have been made to qualify the character as a nerd, none have been fully embraced. The fact that he “likes and knows computers” is established by his job at the Buy More. However, the measure of a nerd is not a mere “like” or a normal measure of knowledge paired with wearing a pocket protector; nerds embrace their chosen medium like a true artist. That is to say that nerds find their true love and they follow it to the point of obsession. Nerds are rarely the socially awkward Jack of All Trades that Chuck has been made out to be, they’re typically single-field specialists, and it is their single minded obsession that renders them socially awkward.
Chuck works best when he’s taking advantage of his specialized knowledge, and when he readily displays his intelligence he is allowed to not be awkward, but to be shown taking steps on the hero’s journey. This needs to be both highlighted and contrasted. Though the character is ultimately human, he often feels boxed in and two dimensional under the weight of the current plot formula. The point of Chuck seems to be his growth from the emotional destruction of being kicked out of college and his descent into a sad, flat, nerdy lifestyle. Establish the lifestyle, and let Chuck take steps towards becoming a true hero in the fight against something, anything.
Know the Future
Though Chuck does not need to become a heavy serialized drama like 24, Lost, or even the first season of Heroes, the future of the show needs to be established. When the future is known, the characters can move forward, they can grow, and the audience can further invest in them. Doing so will hopefully ensure that Chuck the show gets to grow into the full potential that Chuck the idea has. And that should keep what is perhaps my favorite current show on the air from become stale and tired. However, this it the time where Chuck needs to really start making moves. With Heroes failing, and the audience starting to bleed away, the coattails timeslot and chemistry of the crew are not going to keep the show on the air forever.
NBC, if you need help with any of this, let me know. I’ll lend my pen your way.
Bradley Robb likes TV and books, and has an intense dislike for cinnamon. Once, Bradley stopped a Soviet T-60 with his middle finger. Bradley writes speculative fiction and edits Fiction Matters, and never really got the hang of talking about himself in the third person.