Re-evaluating the Turkeys

(No, this is not a food column)

When your writer was just a young lad, Dealville in mind, I read any TV-related book I could find.  More than one would do their best (in varying levels of journalistic ability) to document horrible shows...strictly programming, as at the time the behind-the-scenes stuff wasn't as marketable.  "Find out the truth of what happened at CBS!"  In the 80s and 90s, who cared?  "A look at the worst shows ever made!"  SOLD!

So, years later, it's interesting to note a response of two trends so many scribes felt the need to let their say be printed:
1. If they thought they'd seen bad sitcoms, maybe that had, but holy shit would the next 20 years deliver some junk
2. Once producers realized to cut out the middle man (being the host of a "news magazine" show or "daytime talk show") and let the freaks be freaks in their natural habitat, it changed programming forever.

For the first part, there are two aspects that grew like a fungus and nearly guaranteed shit. 

• You don't need a situation for a situation comedy. 

This put a lot of shows in trouble because, without a situation, the comedy had better be there.  With no situation, one to create comedy or draw in the viewer, you're needing to bank on a cast, or writing that will base plots on the characters.  And if your characters are nothing more than thin cliches, well, you're fucked.  Oh, and, you've made some shit TV.

Consider an 80s show that was considered a "turkey" afterwards, and in print.  "We Got it Made," which had the following concept: Two roommates (guys who are classically very different in personality) decide to place an ad for a housekeeper.  They end up hiring the first person who showed up: a hot looking blonde.  Their girlfriends are naturally suspicious, but the guys (and the housekeeper) insist everything is on the up and up.  That is, of course, until misunderstandings come up each week. 

Good lord, look how long it took me to explain that.  OK, now here's a new show on Fox, "I Hate My Teenage Daughter" and that situation: Two mothers who've tried to give their daughters everything they never had suddenly realize that their girls are turning into exactly the sort of mean, stuck-up people who made fun of them in high school.

Not a lot of "sit" in that sit-com...so they'd better bring the com, right.  Well, that brings us to the 2nd aspect

• As time evolved, you could get away with saying stuff that was "revolutionary" 15 years ago.

Red Forman on That 70's Show might end a scene with his son by saying "Think, dumbass!"  But now, that kind of line IS the joke.  We weren't 5 minutes into the pilot IHMTD when one character (one we hardly knew, to another that was being introduced) said "The problem is you're a dumbass!"  Whatever exploration may occur as the series goes on, there's the level of writing you'll see.

I recently had a dealmaking dinner with a longtime executive of a TV network, and he expounded on the topic without prompting.  "It's all piss, fart, shit, ass...but I have to read all the scripts.  The crowd in the seats only sees this stuff once.  I have to read these scripts all the time."  There will always be bad TV shows, we agreed, but he noted that today's bad shows are on a whole new level.  "They're boring...that's how bad they are.  You can't even say anything about it...you see it, you've seen it before...same shit...NEXT."  I wasn't sure if he was saying that as an executive, or a viewer. 

With more channels, more ways to watch, more people watching, the net to trap such shit has more and more holes.  It's harder and harder for network TV to maintain what grip they have left, which might be why of all the shows in TV history that have been cancelled after 1 episode, HALF have been within the last 10 years.  This makes for a deadly combination...

Would you rather go online and watch shows that were considered shit afterwards and find out...hell, this ain't that bad, or struggle through some of today's "hit new comedy?"  I'd rather have another drink.