TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091790/0917250.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 15KB | 330 lines

                                                                              VIDEO, Page 74

The Novelty Is Only Skin Deep


Despite singing cops and raunchy words, the new season offers
little that's new

By RICHARD ZOGLIN


    Like the wind that whistled through the Douglas firs in the
town of Twin Peaks, a fresh breeze seemed to be blowing across
the TV landscape last spring. The success of David Lynch's
wild-at-heart soap opera forced network executives to make a
fast reassessment. Twin Peaks defied some of TV's most basic
dramatic rules -- it was too murky, too slow moving, too coy
about solving its mystery -- yet it attracted a fanatically
devoted audience. Viewers, it seemed, were a lot more willing
to sample unusual, challenging fare than anyone had expected.
Just as All in the Family launched a trend toward
taboo-breaking, socially relevant sitcoms and Roots ushered in
the age of the mini-series, Twin Peaks was supposed to augur
a new era of more adventurous, risk-taking network fare.

    Sure enough, the new season has been trumpeted as the
boldest in years. Faced with growing competition from cable,
independent stations and the Fox network, programmers for the
Big Three say they want to take more chances, to strike out in
new directions. "Tried and true equals dead and buried," NBC
Entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff told a gathering of
advertisers last spring. A heady sentiment. But watching the
two dozen prime-time shows being unveiled by the networks this
fall is a deflating experience. The creative revolution is still
a long way off.

    Not that there aren't a few quirky ideas, offbeat shows and
modest gambles. The most unusual new entry by far comes from
Steven Bochco, the impudent impresario who created Hill Street
Blues, L.A. Law and Doogie Howser, M.D. This time, Bochco has
combined song-and-dance numbers with a gritty police drama to
create Cop Rock, TV's first musical cop show. The beat goes on
in NBC's Hull High, a comedy-drama set in a suburban high
school and spiced with MTV-style music interludes, and in the
same network's Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which brings rap star
Will Smith to prime time as a ghetto teenager who moves in with
his ritzy Los Angeles relatives.

    Another bold (or maybe suicidal) offering is NBC's
Lifestories, a downbeat, documentary-style series about people
going through medical crises. The show wedges bits of medical
advice in between the personal stories and pulls few punches.
In the opening program, a man survives a battle with colon
cancer -- or so we think, until the offscreen narrator informs
us at the end that his cancer reappeared one year later and he
died. For this, viewers are supposed to switch away from
America's Funniest Home Videos?

    The networks are pushing the boundaries of language and
subject matter more aggressively too. Uncle Buck, a CBS sitcom
based on the John Candy movie, has already drawn fire for
filling the mouths of its onscreen tykes with raunchy put-downs
like "you suck" and "freckle butt." In the first episode of Cop
Rock, the topic of urination is discussed no fewer than three
times. ("I gotta pee," pleads a reluctant witness during a
rough police interrogation.) CBS's The Trials of Rosie O'Neill,
starring Sharon Gless as an attorney with midlife problems,
features the season's most attention-grabbing opening line. In
a conversation with her analyst, Rosie announces, "I'm thinking
about maybe having my tits done."

    The creators of network shows are getting a bit more leeway
to toy with style as well. Characters on several series talk
directly to the camera or convey their thoughts as ironic
commentary on the action. Fantasy sequences and playfully
exaggerated camerawork abound. Even routine sitcoms are
striving for little stylistic flourishes. NBC's American
Dreamer, starring Robert Urich as a newspaper columnist raising
two kids, features Our Town-style narration. Working It Out,
another NBC sitcom, with Jane Curtin and Stephen Collins as
divorced people who meet cute at a cooking class, chronicles
the start of their relationship in flashbacks from both points
of view, as they confide in their best friends.

    But despite these gimmicks and gewgaws, the new season seems
dismayingly old hat. It's not just the proliferation of
overworked characters and formulas: idealistic lawyers,
precocious five-year-olds and family shows with interchangeably
generic titles (The Family Man, Married People and Sons and
Daughters -- try telling them apart). It is also the hollowness
of the supposedly innovative stuff. The game this season is to
grab the audience's attention, to make shows stand out from the
crowd in some way. But the swatches of fuchsia and bright
orange can't disguise the dingy old furniture underneath.

    This is hardly a new complaint. TV critics earn their spurs
by lamenting the lack of adventurous fare on network TV. Often
the plea reflects a petulant idealism. One cannot expect weekly
artistic innovations on a medium that churns out thousands of
hours of entertainment each year. The stress on new and
different, moreover, can lead to the hyping of bogus
breakthroughs. Fox's new sitcom True Colors, for example, is
the first to focus on a racially mixed family, while CBS's
E.A.R.T.H. Force pits a team of scientist-crime fighters against
a new foe: environmental villains. But no one should mistake
these shows for anything but warmed-over variations on All in
the Family and Mission: Impossible. The most audacious hits of
the past few seasons -- thirtysomething, The Wonder Years, The
Simpsons -- did not invent new genres, but at least they
invested them with a distinctive style or voice. Even Twin
Peaks did not depart radically from the conventions of TV soap
operas: what the audience responded to was Lynch's
idiosyncratic take on the format.

    Distinctive voices are hard to hear this fall amid the din
of the assembly line. Much of the new programming is slicker
than ever. NBC's The Fanelli Boys, for example, about a quartet
of Italian-American brothers who move back to their mother's
house in Brooklyn, is cleverly written and brightly acted. But
that doesn't compensate for its rancid rehashing of every
Italian stereotype known to Hollywood. (One brother is a
playboy; another a wheeler-dealer with a hint of Mob
connections; a third almost gives Mom a heart attack when he
brings home a Jewish girl . . .)

    High on the networks' agenda this fall is courting the
teenage audience, which has been wooed so successfully over the
past few years by the Fox network, MTV and other competitors.
NBC has come up with hip-hopping shows like Ferris Bueller and
Fresh Prince of Bel Air. CBS is trying to get the youngsters
who flocked to the theaters for comic-book extravaganzas like
Batman to tune in for a lavishly produced fantasy series, The
Flash. (Unfortunately, the show has been scheduled in the
Thursday-night death slot, opposite The Cosby Show and The
Simpsons.)

    But the networks seem more comfortable pandering to
baby-boomer parents than to their children. Yuppie characters
and issues are proliferating, as usual, but with a new strain
of self-criticism. The extended family that is the focus of
CBS's Sons and Daughters includes a twentysomething couple
trying to adjust to a new baby. Mom is exasperated at having to
breast-feed so often, while her callow husband is more excited
about his automatic tennis server. The same sort of problem
seems imminent for the expectant parents of Married People, an
ABC sitcom about couples in a New York City apartment house.
She's a lawyer disgusted by her swollen ankles; he's a writer
who seems happiest when he's listening to old records on his
stereo, to nostalgic '60s music. The yuppie backlash comes into
sharpest focus in CBS's sitcom Lenny. The head of this TV
family is a blue-collar worker (played by stand-up comic Lenny
Clarke) who grumbles like a 1990-model Ralph Kramden about
everything from money troubles to his wife's use of yuppie buzz
words. "Quality time?" he snaps. "You been watching
thirtysomething again?"

    Stars, of course, are one way of freshening up trite
formulas. But the task is getting tougher. James Earl Jones
brings his bearlike charisma to the role of an ex-con who
becomes an investigator for a defense attorney in Gabriel's
Fire. But the writers do him no service, with pretentious
narration ("Where am I? I look around and it feels like a
dream") and a predictable odd-couple relationship with the
yuppie lawyer he works for (Laila Robins). CBS's Evening Shade,
meanwhile, has recruited such veterans as Burt Reynolds, Hal
Holbrook and Elizabeth Ashley to breathe some life into an
overbaked Southern sitcom.

    There are a few rays of light on the fall schedule, but most
of them are reflected glory. NBC's Parenthood is funnier and
cuts closer to the bone than most family sitcoms, largely
because it does such a good job of duplicating the hit movie.
Ferris Bueller, based on the John Hughes teen flick, is a
fast-and-loose joyride, with Charlie Schlatter doing a good
Matthew Broderick impression as the high school big shot. And
in a season with an abnormally low population of crime
fighters, NBC's Law & Order has a no-nonsense, almost clinical
approach to the genre that makes it seem fresh again.

    For viewers still hung up on innovation, hope rests mainly
on those singing crime fighters in Bochco's Cop Rock. That's
a heavy burden for a quirky series that will probably alienate
as many people as it will attract. If the show catches on,
however, even wackier concoctions could be on the way. A
rap-music Western, perhaps? The Flash moves into Knots Landing?
An animated version of 60 Minutes? No telling what the networks
might try next season. Or how disappointed we might be once we
see it.


____________________________________________________________
    NEW SHOW SAMPLER


    PRECINCT-HOUSE PAVAROTTIS     Cop Rock, ABC, Wednesdays, 10
p.m. EDT

    For much of the hour, a viewer could mistake it for a rerun
of Hill Street Blues: a tough, raw, engrossing look at the
police in action. But when a jury, asked for its verdict on an
accused coke dealer, turns into a gospel choir and bursts into
song, we know we're not in Kansas anymore. Steven Bochco's
audacious series (with a bow toward Dennis Potter's The Singing
Detective) misfires as often as it hits the mark. Two emotional
ballads in the opener, for example, are wasted on characters
we care nothing about. (A drug-addicted mother serenades her
baby: "It's a great big dirty world . . . ") But the jury number
is smashing, and the whole enterprise has the excitement of
TV on the edge. Cop Rock might soar or plummet to earth. But
in either case, who can resist watching?


    THE RAPPER WHO CAME TO DINNER     Fresh Prince of Bel Air,
NBC, Mondays, 8 p.m. EDT

    Come 'n' listen to my story 'bout a man named Jed . . . "
This time, however, the Beverly Hillbilly is a rap-singing
teenager from Philadelphia who gets shipped to Los Angeles to
live with his rich relatives. They give black-tie dinners and
worry about things like the broken pool heater. He lounges
around the house in a baseball cap and sunglasses and has to
explain what def means. Get the idea? If not, there's a stuffy
butler with an English accent for good measure. (He's black
too; cliches don't respect race.) Rapper Will Smith is an
appealing star, but the rich-folks-get-their-comeuppance plot
should go back into Buddy Ebsen's closet.


    FIRST CRIME, THEN PUNISHMENT     Law & Order, NBC, Tuesdays,
10 p.m. EDT

    Each hour-long episode of this absorbing drama series is
divided into two parts. In the first half, we follow the
investigation of a crime (in the premiere episode, a death due
to medical malpractice) and the arrest of a suspect. In the
second half, the D.A.'s office picks up the case and puts the
accused on trial. The show is defiantly stark and
documentary-like, from the drab lighting and clipped, abruptly
shifting scenes to the low-key cast, headed by George Dzundza
and Michael Moriarty. Also unusual for prime time: a show that
really explores issues rather than exploiting them. Nice to
have it around.


    IF YOU LIKED THE MOVIE . . .     Parenthood, NBC, Saturdays,
8 p.m. EDT

    The 1989 movie was a sort of ideal TV sitcom: a comedy about
family relations that seemed rooted, for a change, in real
people's experiences. The TV version, at least in its hour-long
pilot, reproduces that spirit nicely. The kids are bratty in
recognizable ways (an eight-year-old runs around the house
talking to everyone through a loudspeaker), the problems hit
home, and the sentimentality is kept to a low roar. Ed Begley
Jr. cannot match Steve Martin's exquisite mix of irony and
warmth as the beleaguered father, but he'll do until someone
better comes along. That rare TV treat: a family comedy for
adults.


    CRUDENESS IN THE KITCHEN     Uncle Buck, CBS, Mondays, 8
p.m. EDT

    A coarse, cigar-chomping slob takes charge of his late
brother's rambunctious kids, then tries to teach them manners.
This sitcom, based on John Hughes' 1989 comedy starring John
Candy, aims to be rude and crude, and has already drawn howls
of protest from puritanical critics for the youngsters' raunchy
language. Actually, their schoolyard put-downs are less
offensive than the kids' overacting and the corny plot
contrivances in the premiere episode. On the other hand, the
show's in-your-face irreverence is refreshing, and star Kevin
Meaney, doing a mean John Candy impression, is a blustering,
sniveling delight.


    HIT IT, TEACH     Hull High, NBC, Sundays, 7 p.m. EDT

    The fall's other new musical series has some spunk, as well
as a couple of lively production numbers. (In one, a sexy
teacher is transformed, in the eyes of her class, into a
leather-clad dancer cavorting atop a giant volume of
Longfellow's works.) But mostly this is just a dippy high
school show with some MTV videos thrown in to keep the kids
from switching channels. Sample plot: the In crowd at school is
suspicious of a new transfer student because she won't let
anybody visit her house. Turns out she lives in a trailer park
with her mother -- recently abandoned by her father -- and is
too embarrassed to have guests. Gag me with a spoon.


    CALLING LOU GRANT     WIOU, CBS, Wednesdays, 10 p.m. EDT

    A lecherous anchorman paws a female colleague underneath the
desk while they're on camera. An ambitious young reporter
covering a fire sees a looter in action. "Well, hello, Emmy,"
he mutters while rushing his camerawoman into place. A station
manager refuses to consider one of his star reporters for a
just opened anchor job. "Fine reporter," he says. "Too bad she
skews old." Yep, it's another show in which TV pats itself on
the back for being bold enough to satirize itself. John Shea
and Helen Shaver head a good cast, but this comedy-drama about
a struggling TV station treads familiar ground with the subtlety
of a Mack truck.