Looping back to something that happened earlier. On 24 September, a couple of days after the 2019 Emmy Awards show aired on the 22nd. A friend of mine shared on Facebook a post from “an old friend who is a Hollywood agent.” This agent had written:
“Most of the new network shows start tonight through the week. I’m going to give every one of them a shot. Why? Because I’d rather see 24 episodes of people working on television getting paid and getting residuals on a television contract than 10 episodes on streaming without residuals and being told that it’s more prestigious to do the latter. It’s always easier to produce 10 episodes in a year than 24 in 9 months. A shout out to all of my friends who work in network television. The Emmys need to change their definitions of series and limited series.”
My response was swift and, admittedly, a little more testy than I normally am on Facebook:
Let me explain.
“Are you serious?”
I really couldn’t believe anyone was advocating this sort of circle-the-wagons mentality in this day and age. One of the most insidious form of discrimination in entertainment, used against young people, people who aren’t ‘connected’ and who don’t know the right people or didn’t go to school with the right people, people who are the wrong color or ethnic background, people without sufficient money to break into closed and expensive circles, in other words any people who aren’t like Mr. Agent there, is how artificial and arbitrary ‘rules’ are established that serve as huge barriers to entry. The reason people aren’t able to break into traditional broadcast television isn’t because they don’t have talent or great ideas, it is because they don’t have access to capital and they aren’t part of the right social and professional circles.
The same is true for feature filmmaking, and especially true if you want your feature film to be distributed through the powerful theatre chains in America. Which is why Steven Spielberg’s similar comments about streaming platforms and the Oscars was [just as][worse than] what Mr. Agent said.
“Yeah, let’s keep churning out trite, lazy drivel at 2-3 times the season length it should be, without genuine resolution or character growth, and put that superficial bullshit on TV for multiple years so we can sell people crap they don’t need and LA hacks can keep filling their swimming pools with water California can barely afford to waste.”
On TV they can’t even claim the established season model is the best way, because it results in mostly drivel produced to fill time to sell commercials to your eyeballs. It is the rare TV show that has genuine character development or compelling story arcs, and hardly anything ever gets truly resolved. Even when characters are killed, they can always be resurrected if an actor crawls back or the show needs a ratings boost (“Oh hey, look, Ziva’s back“).
“‘So here’s the idea: he’s an FBI agent and a doctor, with autism but he compensates for that because he has magical powers!’ ‘We love it! But can you make him an attorney haunted by the death of his sister who he doesn’t know is secretly still alive?’ ‘Sure we can totally do that.'”
One of the best shows available right now is Killing Eve from BBC America. It was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, and for Lead Actress for Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh (Comer won). Not only would this show never, ever happen on American traditional broadcast TV because it is entirely female-led, with the three leads being female. It would never be able to retain what makes it great, since it is about a British intelligence agent and a globe-hopping assassin, territory where some of the worst cliche-ridden tropes dwell, and completely deflects every expectation. There are no slutty outfits as the assassin seduces a victim, no explosions, no car chases, nothing trite at all, American producers wouldn’t know what to do with it. And at eight episodes the show takes care to do it right.
“Tell your agent friend to hold off on the complaining for when he works in a field where quality actually matters.”
Mr. Agent should look at the Emmy’s as a wake up call. Consider Outstanding Comedy Series. Gee, network hotshots and long-time creatives must be better at comedy than just about anyone else, right? Barry is an HBO series of 8 30-minute episodes each season, about a mob hitman who finds himself in LA and joins an acting workshop. Fleabag, the winner, is a BBC series of 6 episodes of less than 30 minutes each season, about a pretty screwed up, often amoral woman whose name we never even learn. Russian Doll is a Netflix series of 8 30-minute episodes, about a game developer who is caught in a time loop where she repeatedly dies the night of her birthday party. Schitt’s Creek is from Pop TV, with 13 episodes of varying length each season, about an wealthy family that loses everything and moves into a motel in a one-horse town they forgot they owned. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, from Amazon’s Prime Video, with 8-10 episodes of varying length each season, about a woman in the late 1950s bucking tradition to become a stand-up comedian. Veep is an HBO series of 7-10 half-hour episodes each season, about a US vice president. It is hard to imagine any of these landing on broadcast TV, and if they did the pressure to produce 24 episodes in 9 months would destroy what makes these shows special. The only network show nominated this year is The Good Place, on NBC, of 13 half-hour episodes each season, about mildly bad people who may or may not be in heaven, a show unlike any other on broadcast TV and the exception that proves the rule.
So instead of putting up additional rules and requirements to ‘protect’ the traditional TV business model, as industry old guard hacks like Mr. Agent want, maybe they should learn some lessons about leaving past assumptions behind and considering what is possible and exciting about the medium.