Television

Has “Grey’s Anatomy” Jumped The Shark?

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I can usually ride along with the sillier aspects of GREY’S ANATOMY, much the same way I willingly suspend my disbelief and accept CSI techs getting DNA results back in 20 minutes, questioning witnesses, carrying guns, and driving chrome-plated Hummers.  But the season finale of GREY was just too much. 

An article in today’s LA Times analyzes the more outrageous aspects of the story.  Izzie, one of the regular characters, falls in love with Denny, a potential heart-transplant patient, and goes to outrageous lengths to make sure he receives a donor heart:

Izzie then deliberately cuts the pump lines of Denny’s heart’s left
ventricular-assisting device. Emergency cases get priority, and his
deteriorating condition will move him up the transplant list.  But Izzie’s disconnection of Denny’s assistance device (which initially
caused the heart to stop) ultimately leads to his kidney failure.  The other surgical interns learn what is happening, but they don’t report Izzie’s behavior to the supervising resident.

When
the truth comes out, the chief of surgery acknowledges that the
hospital’s accreditation may be in jeopardy, but he takes no action and
Izzie quits on her own. Because of his worsening heart failure, Denny receives the heart that was intended for the other recipient, but dies afterward.

All of this strained believability to the breaking point. Nobody was behaving in a realistic way in a realistic world…yet we aren’t being asked to believe it’s a fantasy world…we’re supposed to accept that it’s real. In other words, this isn’t James Bond, Harry Potter, or  the X-Men, where you know going in the rules of the real world simply don’t apply. The doctors in GREY are supposed to be real interns in a real hospital in the real world. But you’d never know watching the finale:

A prospective heart transplant patient would never sign a Do Not
Resuscitate order — surgeons would not operate on such a patient
because resuscitation may be necessary at any point. Second, if a heart assistance pump were disconnected, a loud alarm would sound.  Third,
interns could never monitor a sick heart patient for such a prolonged
period of time without intervention by at least a nurse, if not a more
senior physician. In the show, the interns watch Denny’s heart stop,
resuscitate him, give him emergency medication — all without
observation or intervention. In real life, such a stunt would be cause
for Izzie’s immediate arrest for attempted murder; the other interns
would likely be kicked out of the residency program.

The upshot, according to common sense and the LA Times:

In fact, the only truly believable scene is the correct use of
phenobarbital to put Dr. Meredith Grey’s dog to sleep because of
incurable bone cancer.

Shuffling the Deck

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Now that all the broadcast networks have announced their fall schedules, NBC has reassessed their competitive position and completely reshuffled their lineup. Kevin Reilly, president of NBC Entertainment, told the NY Times:

"It’s unusual for us," Mr. Reilly said of the wholesale changes in the
prime-time lineup. "We go first, and we are fourth. Unusual
circumstances lead to these kinds of measures." Such sweeping changes
in a network’s schedule so soon after it had been announced have
happened rarely, if ever.

[…]NBC ultimately ended up making changes every night except Saturday and Sunday.

The
advantage of shifting so many shows after the advertiser presentations
known as the upfronts was the opportunity to find some weaker spots in
the schedules of CBS, ABC and Fox, Mr. Reilly said.

…which raises the question among some industry observers: Did the network get the jitters or was their initial schedule a fake to begin with?

Bruckheimer is Spelling

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CBS has revamped their Sunday schedule, dropping their weekly movie and replacing it with three Jerry Bruckheimer series: AMAZING RACE, COLD CASE and WITHOUT A TRACE. Bruckheimer owns Sunday, which may be the first time a single producer has owned a night of network programming since Aaron Spelling owned ABC’s Saturday with TJ HOOKER, THE LOVE BOAT, FANTASY ISLAND and later with THE LOVE BOAT, FANTASY ISLAND  and FINDERS OF LOST LOVES (though Norman Lear came close with ARCHIE BUNKER’S PLACE, GLORIA, JEFFERSONS, and ONE DAY AT A TIME on CBS Sundays…the last hour going to TRAPPER JOHN MD).

The West Wing Finale…

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….is one of the reasons why God invented the "fast forward" button. What a snooze. It’s sad to see a once-great series end so badly (bad move airing the pilot first, it only illustrated how far the show has fallen).  But TV Critic Alan Sepinwall got all choked up and so did Bob Sassone over at TV Squad, who went one step further describing the episode’s obvious and maudlin final scene:

Could you have wished for a more orgasmically satisfying ending? Beautiful.

Pilot Pick-Ups

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TV Tracker, Variety and Nikki Finke are reporting several drama series pick-ups.

NBC has ordered HEROES (about ordinary people who have super powers), RAINES (Jeff Goldblum as a cop who speaks to the dead) and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, based on the movie…

The buzzword at ABC next season is "intertwined." They’ve greenlighted JJ Abram’s SIX DEGREES (about the intertwined lives of several New Yorkers), NINE (about several people whose lives are intertwined after spending 52 hours as hostages in a bank hold-up) and DAYBREAK (about a cop falsely accused of murder who races against time to clear his name and prevent another killing…presumably, he will also become intertwined).

Stargate SG1-3

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TV Squad pointed me to this Multichannel News article about the business behind STARGATE SG-1, which is shooting it’s 200th episode…and is the springboard for a LAW & ORDER/CSI/STAR TREK-esque franchise for MGM and SciFi Channel. Already, the studio is planning a second spin-off series (in addition to STARGATE ATLANTIS) and a feature film. What nobody mentions in the article (or anywhere else) is how much of STARGATE’s enormous revenue is going to Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, the writer/producers/creators behind the original 1994 movie that inspired the TV series.

This is the End

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Mark Evanier links to two TV critics and their lists of the Top Five Series finales of all time.  For me, the best would include MARY TYLER MOORE, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, NEWHART, THE FUGITIVE,  LARRY SANDERS,  M*A*S*H, THE PAPER CHASE and CHEERS.

My list of the worst finales would include SEINFELD, MAGNUM PI, MIAMI VICE,  FRIENDS, ST. ELSEWHERE, QUANTUM LEAP, NYPD BLUE and the two that MAGNUM PI had (the original,  which ended with Magnum getting killed… and the second,  after they talked Selleck into doing one more season, which  ended with Magnum getting married).

I’m a big TV geek, and a sucker for finales, but I’m not sure they are a good idea. Sure, you get a ratings pop, and they give audiences a chance to say goodbye to characters they love.  But I think one reason the majority of "final episodes" are mediocre at best is because most TV series, by their very nature, are intentionally conceived to be open-ended and run forever. How do you conclude something that was never designed to be concluded?

It’s one thing for Dr. Richard Kimble to finally be proved innocent, or for the castaways on LOST to finally discover what-the-hell-is-going-on. THE FUGITIVE and LOST are series built on ongoing quests for absolution and answers.  But do we really need to tie things up for private eyes, doctors, and homicide cops who we watch because we enjoy seeing them do their jobs?

In many ways, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND had the best finale of all — just another great episode.

Channel Surfing

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THE WEST WING seems to be going out with a snore rather than a bang. The second-to-last-episode, which aired Sunday night, was a total snooze. I expected much more of a build-up to the series finale. Instead, this once-great show has just sort of petered out over the last few episodes. It’s sad.

Maybe that’s because a lot of John Wells’ best writers are now working on THE UNIT, my new guilty pleasure. It’s invigorating,  action-adventure silliness, and I’m loving every minute of it. The show is like nothing else on television… except perhaps DEADWOOD, in that it’s one of the few series today where the characters, as a group, have a unique voice, a distinct way of speaking (in this case, you could call it Mamet-speak). It’s the best show CBS has put on the air since the original C.S.I.

Speaking of DEADWOOD, I can’t wait until the third season premiere next month…I think I’ve come to enjoy it even more than THE SOPRANOS (Is it just me, or has THE SOPRANOS become more of a comedy this season than ever before?)

Show Him the Money

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Robert B. Parker tells Zap2it that he has no hesitations
about selling his books to TV. 

The good-humored, Massachusetts-based Parker claims
"how much?" was his only question when the screen deal was made for
his Stone books.

"Seriously, somebody once asked me, ‘Why do you sell your books to Hollywood?’ I answered,
‘For money! What other reason is there?’ That’s not just for the television rights, but the books sell better. My latest Jesse Stone novel (‘Sea Change’) started higher and lasted longer on the New York Times best-seller list than any other. And gee whiz, Tom Selleck has done several Stone movies in the past year or so. I wonder if there’s a connection." 

That said, Parker is mightily impressed with the TV versions of his Jesse Stone novels. So am I. I’ve enjoyed all three of them and am looking forward to more.

"Selling your book is like selling your house," he
reasons. "You can go by it a year later, and they’ve painted it an ugly
color, but it’s not your problem anymore. In this case, when I saw the first
movie (last year’s ‘Stone Cold’), I actually got tears in my eyes. It was the
first time I’d ever seen stuff that I wrote come to life like that on the
screen. I think Tom has so nailed the character, it’s almost
breathtaking."

Mourning THIEF

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THIEF hasn’t been canceled yet, but judging by the way star Andre Braugher and everyone involved with the show is already mourning its passing today in the LA Times, the ax will be falling soon.

As soon as he glimpsed the ratings for the second episode early last
month, "I entered the grieving process," Braugher said by phone last
week.

Despite huge promotion, only 2.5 million viewers showed up for the premiere — we’re talking STRONG MEDICINE numbers — and barely half of those viewers showed up for episode two.

What happened? Braugher and others close to the show have their own
speculations. (Was there not enough action? Were Nick’s problems with
Chinese mobsters adequately explained? Were viewers turned off by
Nick’s ambivalent morality?)

[…]"Essentially, [viewers] didn’t like it," Braugher theorized. "The
audience saw something on pilot night that let them know they didn’t
want to come back."

Count me among them. I’ve only seen two episodes — and although I’ve recorded the others, I haven’t had any desire to catch them yet. If I don’t hurry, my Tivo is going to eat them soon.

There’s no question that Braugher is a compelling performer, but the serialized storyline is so ridiculously over-the-top that everyone comes across as annoyingly intense cartoon characters.  But what probably hurt the show the most was its complete lack of humor. A few laughs, or simply a smile or two, would have helped humanize the characters and make some of the more ridiculous plot moves easier to accept. One of the things that makes THE SOPRANOS so appealing is that it’s both a violent drama and a laugh-out-loud comedy. The same is true of NIP/TUCK.

The bottom line was that THIEF just wasn’t any fun. The same could be said of Braugher. I admire his intensity but it gets tiring and monotonous after awhile.  At least on HOMICIDE his humorlessness was off-set by an ensemble cast of eccentric characters (the rest of the characters in THIEF either blend into the scenery or are totally unsympathetic).  Braugher’s character  wasn’t someone you wanted to invite into your home every week. Or even spend an hour with.

Tony Soprano and Dr. Christian Troy may be sociopaths, but at least they are entertaining ones.