Emiliano Ponzi/ For The Times BEHOLD, YOUR CREATION

THE NEW TV

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2014

Emiliano Ponzi/ For The Times

BEHOLD, YOUR

CREATION

When viewers took control of the TV model, the

small screen hit the big time

By Mary McNamara

TELEVISION CRITIC

The New TV

H

ere are a few things that did not

exist in American television 10

years ago:

Binge-watching; recapping;

scripted series on networks devoted to old

movies, science and history; zombies; streaming services; popular series that end just because the story is done; film-franchise adjacency; shows that begin as miniseries and then

continue indefinitely; multiplatform viewing;

two concurrent versions of Sherlock Holmes;

A-list film directors; television shows devoted

to talking about television shows; live tweeting; micro-audiences; immediate remakes of

British series; any remakes of European series; European series; subtitles; cord-cutting;

horrific violence; series in which the cast

stays the same but the story changes; series

in which the title stays the same but the story

and cast change; really good computer graphics; comedies more dark than funny; amazing

international locations; an overabundance

of stories characterizing the many ways in

which television has changed in the past 10

years.

Here¡¯s the most important thing that did

not exist in the television universe 10 years

ago: ownership.

Technically, the citizens of these United

States have always been the proprietors of the

airwaves over which television was broadcast, but it didn¡¯t feel that way. We watched

what the network executives offered us when

they offered it. Good television was like good

weather, fleet and ephemeral; you enjoyed it

while it lasted. Maybe you watched it again in

reruns while you were sick or sad or trying to

get ahead on the ironing.

Sure, PBS geeks and HBO fans might buy

the boxed sets of ¡°Pride and Prejudice¡± or

¡°The Sopranos,¡± but for most people, television was something you did, not something

you possessed.

Now, of course, TV is controllable, portable and permanent.

Many factors catalyzed TV¡¯s recent efflorescence. HBO set the template for television

that was ¡°not television,¡± with scripted dramas and comedies so fine no one could deny

their artistic importance. Female stars, unable

to find work in film, began what would become a mass talent migration to television; the

successful rebranding of AMC spurred oth-

ers to pursue scripted drama; the rise of geek

culture revitalized comic-book franchises,

sci-fi, fantasy and even costume drama, while

refined digital technology made the special

effects required easier to achieve.

All of which contributed to the single biggest change in television: Like books, movies,

music and art, it¡¯s now collectible.

Any viewer with a DVR can build her own

lineup while anyone with a digital device can

create his own television catalog. After it airs,

a show no longer fades into the ether or migrates into reruns; it accrues, it accumulates.

So much so that many conversations about

television now revolve around how much

there is and how far behind we are ¡ª never

mind reading Ian McEwan¡¯s latest or catching

the current cast of ¡°Wicked,¡± we all need to

sit down and get through last season¡¯s ¡°Mad

Men¡± or ¡°Orange Is the New Black,¡± finally

watch ¡°Enlightened¡± or all of ¡°The Wire.¡±

¡°Need to¡± because now, more than ever,

our choices in television define us. Our relationship with television has always been

intimate. It comes into our homes, our bedrooms even, and now it stays. Like sports

fans and cable news devotees, we are what

we watch: Gladiators (¡°Scandal¡±), Truebies

(¡°True Blood¡±), Whovians (¡°Doctor Who¡±),

Colbert Nation (¡°The Colbert Report¡±), gleeks

(¡°Glee¡±), Cumberbitches (¡°Sherlock¡¯s¡± Benedict Cumberbatch), or Clone Club (¡°Orphan

Black.¡±)

¡°When television became archivable, everything changed.¡±

That¡¯s what veteran television writer

Glen Mazzara said to me a couple of years ago

during a conversation about the ¡°new golden

age¡± everyone was talking about with wearisome regularity at the time.

The show runner for ¡°The Walking Dead¡±

at the time, Mazzara had called me to say in

the nicest way possible that it would be really

great if television critics would stop comparing television to film and novels as if the comparison in itself were some huge compliment.

Television was an independent art form, he

said, and should be judged on its own terms.

But those terms were changing. Technology had granted the medium both a flexibility

and a permanence it had lacked before. The

idea that people could now watch a show in its

entirety, that they could take entire seasons

BEHOLD, YOUR CREATION | SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2014

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The New TV

with them when they traveled and collect

their favorites for further viewing, offered

television writers a shot at something historically reserved for an anointed few: legacy.

An unexpected turn of events when you

consider the dire predictions of less than 10

years ago, when many people assumed that

reality would soon control almost every time

slot on every network and that the television

set itself would vanish, replaced by a forest

of laptops and mobile phones. The scripted

drama was dead, the sitcom was dead, the

family hour was dead. Despairing critics

and viewers imagined a world in which the

broadcast networks were overrun with singing competitions, ¡°Two and a Half Men¡± and

the increasingly brutalized victims of ¡°NCIS¡±

and ¡°CSI¡± while the Young People watched

webisodically told narratives and YouTube.

Which, of course, they do. But they also

watch television, perhaps less than previous

generations and certainly on their laptops and

mobile devices, but also on their flat screens;

they watch it whenever they want to but also

in real live-tweeting time (hello, ¡°Pretty Little

Liars¡±).

The mathematics of replacement became

simple addition and then exponential multiplication. Scripted dramas and comedies

began appearing everywhere in every form;

even Bravo, reality central, is getting into the

game next month with ¡°Girlfriends¡¯ Guide

to Divorce.¡± Modern platforms such as Netflix and Hulu appeared, while the old became

new again: PBS went viral with ¡°Downton

Abbey.¡± The miniseries came back, NBC began experimenting with live performance,

and Disney Channel turned the defunct ¡°Boy

Meets World¡± into ¡°Girl Meets World,¡± with

the original child actors now the parents.

Even with the ability to build their own

schedules and fast-forward through commercials, viewers can¡¯t keep up, at least not

en masse. With so much competition every

night, few shows can pull the enormous audiences that were once necessary for survival.

Instead, the landscape is divided into smaller

fiefdoms of fans who, aided by social media,

comment on ¡°their¡± shows with psych-student fervor; people who are not paid to do so

now analyze television the way the women

of ¡°Sex and the City¡± analyzed their relationships.

And many shows are worthy of such analysis. Television, once the definition of popular entertainment, has subdivided like the

bestsellers lists into literary and mainstream,

into genre and targeted demographics.

These smaller audiences demand new

revenue models from the broadcast and cable

sides, and once again many executives are in

a panic, alarmed by the threat of saturation

or a world of dim sum TV, in which viewers

choose only what they want.

It¡¯s a rare moment in any industry when

the creative developments outrun the financial constructs ¡ª a headache for those tasked

with the bottom line but a joy for those of us

who are not. In this moment, television feels

more like ¡°ours¡± than ¡°theirs.¡±

Viewers made a hit out of ¡°Breaking Bad¡±

and ¡°Hatfields & McCoys,¡± out of ¡°The Walking Dead,¡± ¡°Game of Thrones¡± and ¡°Scandal.¡±

We fueled this age of exploration. And if the

electronic hearth has become more blazing

firmament than home fire, well, the night sky

may be vast and ever-changing, but it unites

us all the same.

mary.mcnamara@

BEHOLD, YOUR CREATION | SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2014

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