Not Only Movies- 2010 Television Stunk Too

2010 will rightfully go down as one of the worst years for film in recent memory. Of course when it starts with Tim “too-cool-for-source-material” Burton's Alice in Wonderland earning more than $300 million domestic, what would you expect? Nevertheless, 2010 was also a remarkably unfortunate year for television.

The 2009-2010 Television Season

The 2009-2010 television season brought with it the finales of a glut of major television franchises. While most had seen much better days, many had at one point or another served as significant players.

The Long Timers

Syndication favorite Scrubs finished out its nine year run with the maligned final season derogatorily referred to as After Scrubs, due to its focus on mostly new characters (who actually weren't that bad once they got their feet wet and no longer had to deal with a regressed Dr. Dorian).

Heroes received a long overdue cancellation after three years of being embarrassingly directionless and redundant.

ABC's Ugly Betty ended.

FOX axed 24 after nearly a decade just as its final season began to improve (though the Dana Walsh storyline still makes no sense).

After 13 years, FOX let go of Mike Judge's King of the Hill. Possibly the network's most underrated cartoon, King of the Hill never lost its down-to-earth core or forced the characters into increasingly zany adventures.

In a shock move, NBC didn't even give its nearly two-decade old flagship series Law and Order a chance for a final episode.

One of FX's first noteworthy series, Nip/Tuck, finally limped towards it ultimate conclusion.

Also, although DirectTV picked it up, FX canceled one of its best series, the ethically challenged legal drama Damages, after a really strong third season that made up for its disappointing second one.

And Lost finally proved that the showrunners really had no idea what they were doing. (That 10 minute DVD "epilogue" furthered showcased their inability to answer anything.)

Also worth mentioning is American Idol. Though returning for the 2011 television season, Idol is doing so without the show's most identifiable mainstay, Simon Cowell.

The Short Timers

Highly publicized new series, some with potential, also got the shaft after a relatively short life.

Early during its second season, Joss Whedon's Dollhouse learned that it was only going to get a half-season order and finally presented a show worth watching (at least until the senseless series finale).

Starz' Party Down, one of the funniest shows on television, was unfortunately canceled after its second season.

SyFy axed the often-muddled-but-nevertheless-fascinating Caprica to make room for a more action packed spin-off of Battlestar: Galactica.

And ABC's Flashforward...could have gotten better, I guess. If they got rid of, or drastically reduce, Mark Benford. At least its second half was better than that of fellow the-next-Lost V's.

The 2010-2011 Television Season

Whether you loved the shows or hated them, the end of the last television season clearly left many open time slots. So what did the networks give us to replace these series? Put simply, the 2010 television season has been nearly universally lame. Unsurprisingly, the best new programs appeared on FX, HBO, and AMC. Unfortunately, two of the best ones were canceled.

Cable- The Unfortunately Canceled

The modern television landscape is full of series about detectives/proto-detectives solving a crime-of-the-week while dealing with some sort of overarching storyline. These season-long plots help give these show a better sense of complexity (even though they are virtually ignored for the vast majority of each episode), and a stable of recurring characters provide a sense of history and continuity. These elements make mostly fluffy shows come across as deeper and better than their direct predecessors like Knight Rider and The A-Team. This is called USA Syndrome.

FX, the best network for original programming in both quality and quantity, began airing Terriers. Of all the "detective" shows on television (including the other 2010 FX original Justified), Terriers quickly rose above them all. Bolstered by strong performances (especially from leads Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James), a well-integrated season-long arc, and clever writing with a brilliant ear for interpersonal relationships, what made Terriers unique was its heart. By heart, I mean a pain and honesty not present in most other television shows.

Similar to detective shows, spy programs have also found homes on their airwaves over the past decade (and even longer if you want to go back to shows like Mission: Impossible, Man From U.N.C.L.E., and Get Smart). Recent spy shows like Alias, Chuck, and 24 are fast-paced series that essentially function as a weekly, hour-long action movie that, oddly enough, are better than most action movies.

And then there was Rubicon. Also unfortunately canceled, Rubicon was probably the best new series of the season. By the time Rubicon came about, AMC had developed an untouchable standard with Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Trying to compete with those series would be a daunting task, but Rubicon managed to pull it off. Often accused of being “slow,” Rubicon blossomed into one of the strongest spy shows probably ever put on television. Centered around an intelligence agency (in particular one employee uncovering a massive conspiracy), the show's deliberate pacing was perfect in building tension, developing rich and realistic characters (Arliss Howard's Kale Ingram was easily a standout of the most recent television season), and showcasing the hardship and monotony of actual "spy" work.

While most modern spy series seem to borrow somewhat from the Bourne template with a focus on fighting and explosions, Rubicon dialed everything back and found kin with movies like the Francis Ford Coppola classic The Conversation. One of Rubicon's greatest features was that the main characters never used computers. Whether going over documents, reciting facts, or trying to translate a potential terrorist's conversation, the team at the American Policy Institute used their brains. Their knowledge and analytical abilities came from inside them, not Google or some sort of instant facial recognition software. It was a small element, but one I personally admired.

Cable- Those That Thankfully Survived

However, several worthy new shows from 2010 did get renewals. HBO's excellent 1920s gangster drama Boardwalk Empire and David Simon's superb New Orleans post-Katrina character drama Treme will both return in 2011. Although the more popular True Blood and Big Love are decent, these two shows come closest to the quality that made HBO so impressive during the first half of the 2000s.

AMC's The Walking Dead continues to add to the network's high quality.

In addition to Terriers and Justified, FX also premiered the best comedy of the new season and possibly the best comedy on television today. Most accurately categorized as a dark comedy with hints of 1970s-era Woody Allen, Louie features comedian Louis C.K. playing "himself" and the strife and angst that comes with being him. Managing to find the perfect mixture of humor and depression while using surrealism to enhance reality, Louie is respectably unlike anything else on television.

The Networks

As an audience, we expect better from cable but the big five networks lost more shows and more important shows than its cable counterparts. What did the CBS, NBC, FOX, and ABC give us to replace those massacred at the end of the 2009-2010 season? Not much.

Constantly promoted as the child between Lost and 24, NBC's The Event must be a bitter disappointment to its two revered parents and the network hoping for the next big talked about hit.

None of the new shows seems to have made an impact on the cultural landscape. Although series like Hawaii 5-0 get good ratings, they lack a buzz. Yet last year, on the comedy front alone, the networks offered cult and critically revered shows like Glee, Modern Family, and Community.

And, of course, there was The Late Night Wars.

Why Did Culture Fail So Terribly In 2010?

Recently it was announced that movie attendance was down significantly in 2010, an unsurprising fact. Last year featured a significant dearth of quality films, both from independent studios and big budget ones, and very few word-of-mouth films or big budget spectaculars. As described above, television also suffered last year from losing important stalwarts, lacking place-fillers, and Jay Leno.

Was 2010 the year the effects of the economic recession hit Hollywood? That's one theory that I can neither prove nor disprove.

Will 2011 continue this trend? Obviously, it's too early to tell. We do know that audiences will see a significant increase in Major Movies Of The Week, especially in summer, but television remains unknowable. Previews of mid-season replacements like superhero fantasy The Cape and dating sitcom Perfect Couples do not bode well for the first half of the year, and it is impossible to tell what's going to happen during the 2010-2011 pilot season.

NBC: 3 Hours of Comedy; At Least Some Of It Funny

Recently, NBC announced plans to turn its Thursday night line-up into 3 straight hours of comedy, following the massive failure of The non-Celebrity Apprentice. Time to look at the upcoming line-up.

Community (8:00 PM)

Since the original mission of this blog was to concentrate solely on the negative, there is not much to say about Community. It's the funniest show on network television and is constantly innovative, surprising, unpredictable, and hysterical.

Perfect Couples (8:30 PM) - New Show

Starring The Waitress from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Olivia Munn, the lesbian triple agent from Flash Forward, and the Hot Guy from 100 Questions (more on that show later), Perfect Couples is the new mid-season comedy coming soon on NBC. According to the official website, “Perfect Couples depicts the misadventures of three engaging couples as they struggle to find out what makes the ideal relationship - and how to maintain it through humorous trial and error.” There's a normal couple, a high drama/high passion couple, and a perfect couple.

It sounds like it belongs on CBS.

Details about the show are lacking at this point, but it seems a betrayal of the uniqueness and freshness offered by the other comedies on NBC. And, Perfect Couples sounds perfectly suited for a ubiquitous Laugh Track, which the other shows wisely avoid.

Of the five other shows that have made up the NBC Thursday line-up over the past couple of years (six if we're including My Name Is Earl and seven if you want to include the short-lived Kath and Kim), none concentrated on “the relationship.” While characters in all of those series loved and lost, romantic entanglements were but one aspect to those series, and never the centerpiece. As important as Jim and Pam's courtship is to The Office's success, it was never the sole focus (although at times it felt to be).

Besides, if NBC was devoted to this type of show, they should have just kept 100 Questions.

More on that later...

The Office (9:00 PM)

Almost canceled after its first season, The Office has become NBC's flagship show for Thursday nights. With the highest ratings and most public recognition, this American take on the British classic is the sun around which the rest of the lineup orbits. Whether this will continue when star Steve Carell (who plays boss Michael Scott) leaves for greener pastures next season remains to be seen.

However, maybe Carell leaving will provide the show with the shot in the arm it needs. Over the past couple of seasons, this once quirky and charming mockumentary on the modern office environment has strayed dangerously close to sitcom territory, with many of the characters either losing their charm or becoming one-dimensional caricatures. Other problems include scene-stealers like Creed and hipster douche Ryan suffering from a dire lack of screen time, and new secretary Erin constantly forced to walk the line between adorable and retarded.

The recent episode The Christening highlighted many of the show's problems. While The Office has regularly taken us out of the office and often strains credibility about where the camera crew would go (why would they follow Pam to school in New York?), it was never as bizarre as the episode featuring the christening of Jim and Pam's child. Why would the entire staff be at a Christening for the child of co-workers they barely seem to like early on a Sunday morning? Early. On a Sunday Morning.

At least the episode Andy's Play earlier this season, about Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) co-starring in a local production about Sweeney Todd, can be somewhat rationalized because it was after work, not early on a weekend. Although the end of episode sing-a-long with the Sabre/Dunder Mifflin employees was a bit disconcerting. Remember, these people do not like each other. (And, while we're on the subject, enough with showcasing Ed Helms' song-and-dance abilities. It seems like every other episode features another musical rendition of something or other by Ed Helms.)

Back to the topic. The Christening episode ended with yet another Michael Scott hissy fit where he jumps on a bus to Mexico with a youth/young adult group with Andy in tow before they decide to abandon ship and return back home. The showrunners have developed quite the problem in finding the balance between a pitiful-yet-likable Michael Scott and pitiful-yet-annoying character.

While hashing out complaints about The Office, there's also Jim Halpert. When the show started, apathetic salesman Jim (John Krasinski) was the most relatable guy on the show. He was miserable in work, miserable in love, and overall miserable in life. The job at Dunder-Mifflin was just a job, but he did not seem to have anything else going on for him and, besides Pam, he didn't have any dreams or aspirations.

Since then, Jim received numerous promotions within the company, became the best salesman in the branch (he reached his commission cap in the latest episode), got the girl, got the wife, got the baby. He went from the lazy guy who had nothing to the guy who has it all, yet still suffers from a lack of passion/interest. Originally, Jim was an outsider who rebelled against the system in minor ways- pranks, jokes, sarcastic looks at the camera, etc.- but now he has become part of the machine, even his recently attempts to alleviate boredom seem to lack the pleasure and creativity that made the character appealing. While I am all for character growth and completely understand that when people get married and have children they tend to settle down, the arc sapped Jim of the qualities that made him a leading man/co-leading man at the show's inception and replaced them with nothing.

To give an idea about what to expect in this big final Carell season, the next new episode on December 2^nd, contains this plot description. “After reading an article about China growing as a global power, Michael (Golden Globe winner Steve Carell) decides China must be stopped before they take over the US.”

The South Park Did it Already

Parks and Recreation (9:30)

After a first very shaky season, Parks and Recreation returned for its second season in September 2009 with a series leaps and bounds beyond its first six episodes. Originally accused of being a The Office ripoff, the second season of Parks and Recreation presented remarkably deep characters that engaged in unexpectedly intelligent, honest conversations. As low-key, small-government-loving director of the Parks department, Nick Offerman's Ron Swanson (with sax playing alter ego Duke Silver) emerged as a truly great television character.

So NBC axed it for the first half of the 2010-2011 season.

30 Rock (10:00 PM)

Despite its reliance on celebrity guest stars, 30 Rock remains a strong player in the Thursday night line-up. Is it better than Community or Parks and Recreation? No, but it is a steady performer. However, as the show wraps up its fifth season, Kenneth needs to own NBC or everyone should be dead by his hands.

Outsourced (10:30 PM)

The latest edition to the Thursday night line-up is Outsourced. Based on a 2004 movie, Outsourced is an oddly-paced (its reliance on broad humor makes the show feel like it needs a laugh track, yet its lack of timing seems more suited to a dramedy) series about Todd (Ben Rappaport), the American manager in an Indian call center for a company that sells novelty goods. Todd is also ridiculously unlikeable, creepy, and comes across as just about every bad boss in a Lifetime Original Movie.

The best I can figure is that Todd is supposed to be charming and a decent person. However, due mostly to Rappaport's performance, he comes across as a worse human being than David Cross' hapless pathological liar Todd Margaret. Of course, having a dick for a lead character is not necessarily a bad thing. In Community, Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) is a vain, self-involved douchebag, but it is who he is. The other characters acknowledge it, he admits it, and it works. Similarly, in The Office, Michael Scott is a bit of an oblivious asshole but his incompetence is belied by his patheticness and, through Carell's performance, the sense that he generally means well.

Todd has none of the qualities that make those two characters work. He's scummy, and although he seems to think that he's a good person, you never get the sense that he means well. Condescending and self-centered, Todd seems to have zero interest or care in the foreign exotic culture his job thrust him into. He regularly gets annoyed when his employees won't conform to, or have an intrinsic understanding of, American standards of behavior, while it's doubtful that he's even picked up so much as “The Child's Guide To India.” Of course, it does not help that all the writers seem to know about India is arranged marriages, silly names (Todd laughs at every new Indian name he hears), and they worship a number of wacky gods.

Because a show like this needs an unrequited love story, Todd is unreasonably drawn to Asha (Rebecca Hazelwood), a subordinate who works in the call center. She is set to be arranged married to someone else, much to Todd's dismay and anger. Asha's ability to spurn Todd's blatant and forceful advances seems to only make him want her more, and Todd's feelings towards her make Boardwalk Empire's Van Alden's attraction to Mrs. Shroeder seem positively darling.

Todd has one-dimensional underlings (all the characters are one dimensional for that matter) like Madhuri (Anisha Nagarajan), Gupta (Parvesh Cheena), and Manmeet (Sacha Dhawan) to help him with his dirty work. I can only assume they go along with Todd's schemes because either they believe it's how people act in America, they fear being fired if they don't assist, or both.

100 Questions

During the summer of 2010, NBC aired six episodes of 100 Questions in place of Parks and Recreation. Starring Sophie Winkleman (a Brit who actually spoke in a British accent) and Collette Wolfe, this laugh track permeated show was a “brilliant” throw back to the era of Seinfeld and Friends where every other comedy on the NBC line-up (Caroline in the City, The Single Guy, Union Square, etc.) was a rip-off of Friends, which itself was an inferior knockoff of Seinfeld.

100 Questions followed Charlotte Payne, a woman seeking the love of her life at a dating service. At the beginning of each episode, Gay Black Dating Service Guy asks her a question, and the following half hour features a story from her past loosely related to that question.

One immediate problem: the show did not give any indication how far in the future the questioning takes place (e.g. are the questions asked in 2010 while the answers occurred in the 2000s? Are the questions in 2015 while the answers are today?) or how many questions Payne answers in a given session, given that each “episode” was a different question.

As a gimmick, it lacked cohesiveness even in the six few episodes that aired. The episodes did not end with GBDSG and Payne having a “Mork Calling Orson”/What Did We Learn moment nor was it used as a framing device, as a different subplot generally wrapped up over the closing credits.

As mentioned, the show was a Friends-ian ripoff, and Charlotte's gang of misfits consisted of Nerdy Guy. Hot Guy. Stupid Girl Friend One. And Stupid Girl Friend Two: The Foreign One.

The show was also responsible for one of the most oddly designed bars (as in the place they went to drink/hang out) in recent television history, and this theme song.

Just listen to that.

Nevertheless, there was a charm to 100 Questions. The lame laugh track, the way too close friends, the Sitcom 101 dialogue and jokes, 100 Questions was terrible without being ironic or meta about it, which is rare these days. Unfortunately, it was not renewed.

The new season starts on January 20.