Somebody’s Been Tinkering With My Television

Television and film writer Greg White offers an insider’s perspective on why great television can suddenly go so bad. 

 

Television can’t be any better.

Every show and every episode of that show you love is like a newborn baby. The show’s very conception started with the same twinkle-of-an-eye seed in some writer’s mind.

After a child is born, the pureness wears off as it walks outside and society wipes its grubby hands on that nice clean baby. Some kindergartner teaches it naughty words and by the time it gets to high school, it’s smoking in the boy’s room.

Often, the things you say won’t happen to your child, end up happening. The same with a television show. And producers, as the “parents”, just need their shows to reach the magic age of four. That may seem young, but there are enough episodes in the can after four seasons to sell to any cable or network station to rerun, hopefully for so long that one day only the only audience is the cockroaches scrambling about after mankind has surrendered the remote, and the planet. Then the mailbox money, those residual checks, gives them a reason to live. At the beach.

I wish viewers saw the show that the writer got dressed and sent out the door. Yes, some scripts are a total mess and not ready to face the world, and some are more polished. We all want our shows to popular and win awards; it means we raised a successful show.

But before viewers see a show, someone the writer doesn’t respect might hack away at a joke, their intrigue, even a beautiful speech to a lover that made them weep as they wrote it. Network executives who have failed up, and are afraid of their own shadow, just wave a cell phone in the air, order a latte and a Page 1 rewrite.

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A produced series starts out with just the writer. Maybe it’s an amazing idea that is finished into a brilliant piece of disposable journalism, maybe it’s only half-baked and needs to passed around the writer’s table like a drunk quarterback, with everyone getting their mitts on it. Even once the script is ready to shoot, the actor might argue about a line, the weather might scrub the shoot, or the money runs out before the big explosion. That perfect shows changes.

Development departments make deals and shove square stand-up comics into round characters that needed to be filled by an actor, not an act. Ideas get passed over by some bitter reader who only likes vampires and Tron and until he sees a giant robotic bloodsucker leap off the page to thrill him, he shoves script after script into the very hungry trash can.

It’s great to have ideas as strong as your ideals, but it’s also great to have a show on the air. A writer gets to dance with every character on the show, at least on paper, but there’s always a business side too. They have to dance with agents, directors, and sometimes really pretty actors. Don’t get drunk on their sparkly eyes—one needs a clear head to drive this vehicle. Actors might have to be pulled aside and have their scene acted out by the writer to ensure proper delivery. Sure it’s an acting no-no, but that line is their baby and he’ll do anything to protect it.

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I wrote on a sitcom set in a teenage boarding school. We avoided storylines that might catch sensitive viewers at vulnerable moments. We wouldn’t have a character break up with his girlfriend and then joke that he wanted to kill himself, because somewhere in TV land a lonely teen’s despondent light bulb would go off and he’d stand up mumbling, Good idea.

I wrote a joke that my executive producer on that show fought for. The under-sexed headmistress of the school was on a hot date and her date asked if she cared for dessert. Care to split a tart? she asked. The network threw a fit, demanding that we clean that smut up.  The producer pointed to the set and the full cart full of pastries near the actors. She repeated the line and asked what was dirty about it. Technically nothing. The line stayed. The actress nailed it, and it was delightfully filthy.

I had to actually work in television to find out that networks and audience demand don’t order the programs we watch. Shows might be shot in LA, but each year producers tuck their finished shows under their arms and fly to NYC where they are presented to ad executives. Madison Avenue decides which shows they will support with advertising space. Of course there are endless non-network shows, but those have criteria to meet before they get picked up for cable, too. If the product for sale is a certain car, the show has to find the audience that will buy that car.

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The show has to fit in technically, too. Time constraints edit out entire, emotional scenes and leave your neighbor’s acting debut on the cutting room floor. Weird trends drive fictitiously smart sitcoms crashing off the airwaves, and demand a stupid dose of reality in their place. Think of reality shows as broke, clueless people having sex. Sure it’s free, but the resulting babies they produce are less sophisticated and more likely to get a prison tattoo in Episode 12, than say, the offspring of two Harvard educated writers who get together and create a smart, funny, well-balanced child.

The show can also ruin itself. Salaries can get as impossibly high as some of the stars. If you see a show make it to the fourth season, and the characters go camping—you better get out of its way, it’s on its way out.  Hollywood is a cruel bitch. Either they use a child actor up by the time he’s twelve, spit him out and leave him to knock over a dry cleaners, or they beat a tired, old character until they are an overblown exaggeration. If you are known for having red hair, by the time your career ends you have really red hair.

While touring a producer’s really nice house, a friend commented on the décor, Too many tvs. I turned around to remind him that television built this house.

Before you call a TV show funny looking, remember, it’s not totally his fault. A lot of invisible fingers poked him into that state.

Image (main): dullhunk / flickr