NBC Stands for “No Bleeping Clue”?: The Struggling Network’s Identity Crisis (From Last Year’s Success with Revolution to This Year’s Sitcom Debuts)

NBC, a once powerful primetime force, has lately become everyone’s favorite punching bag.  The past few years has found the network hemorrhaging viewers at an unprecedented rate and so television critics have been quick to poke fun of its programming attempts and missteps.   I myself have said that NBC is the place where good programming ideas go to die.

As we prepare to head into the new primetime season I find myself reflecting on their recent identity crisis.  The past few years has found them trying to draw in viewers with hyped up dramas – most of which have failed splendidly upon arrival, or soon after.  One of the first of these was The Event (2010-2011), the show that was marketed to be the next Lost.  It lasted just one season.  In 2012, inspired perhaps by Fox’s Glee, it launched Smash (2012-2013), a novel addition to the primetime scene – an hour-long musical/drama hybrid.  It was one of its most successful programs of the year but then flopped in its sophomore year (after NBC did not bring the show back until the winter season) and was canceled after only a two-year run.  It most recent big-ticket drama is Revolution (2012-present).  And while I like the show quite a bit and can see great potential, I worry with NBC’s track record that this year will soon see the program falling to pieces and landing in the televisual graveyard which houses all too many other potentially great shows that met their early demise. But, while it is alive and well, I’ll take some time to discuss it here.

Revolution is yet another dystopian tale of the United States post-national disaster.  However, this story offers some unique variations on this common plot.  Viewers are first led to believe that a scientific experiment gone wrong has left the country (and world) without electricity.  As the first season stretches on this slightly unfathomable premise becomes (while not scientifically sound) more believable.  An invention which utilizes nanotechnology to deplete electricity within a specific parameter has been adopted by the U.S. Department of Defense and, apparently, a rogue official has decided to mutate this technology so that its effect is wide reaching and disastrous.  Or so we thought until the season finale.  While this disaster serves as the backdrop for the series, like most post-apocalyptic narratives, at the heart of the story is a community simply trying to survive.   It is not basic survival (such as shelter and food) that they seek, as it is 15 years after the blackout and communities have formed across the States fashioned after the American Revolution-era, they are trying to survive assassination and capture.  The family is being hunted down by various powers because it is believed that in their midst is the knowledge (and technology) to restart the electricity.  And so the long game of cat and mouse begins.   

What I like best about the show is the way that it imagines the not-so-futuristic post-disaster United States.  The blackout has caused the country to divide itself into various warring territories, which the show often reveals in quick glances at a map of the country.  

 For the majority of the first season we are only privy to the happenings within the Monroe District – a military state run by a tyrannical general headquartered in Philadelphia and his wide-reaching, violent militia forces.  However, as the first season drew to a close, the characters travel into the neighboring territories and we learn that it is not as bleak in other sections of the country.  For example, the Georgia Federation is led by a female President, who rules with the safety of her citizens, not her personal glory, in mind. 

Aesthetically I find the show to be well constructed.  The set decoration is most impressive when viewers are show scenes of familiar national monuments or famous locales in their ruined state. 

 While some have found the frequent Samurai-like fight sequences to be unrealistic, I am able to suspend my disbelief and appreciate the role they play in making this drama blend into the action genre. 

And while the acting is uneven (I found the teen characters that we were supposed to invest in early on so annoying I was half hoping for their deaths), the main character, Miles Matheson(Billy Burke), a reluctant hero (bad guy turned bad) is terrific.  As is his former best friend, Sebastian Monroe (David Lyons), the evil villain that we slowly gain sympathy toward (hinting at the fact that in the coming season he won’t be our principle bad guy).  Rachel Matheson (Elizabeth Mitchell, formerly of Lost and V), plays her typical stony, strong female role well.  And a cast of minor characters have led to plot moments where I have teared up at the deaths (or potential deaths) of the supplementary community members. 

Finally, the show did what any debut show needs to do:  it built up to a cliffhanger climax that makes viewers eager to return for season two.  [Spoiler Alert].  In the final episodes the bad guys achieve their goal of turning the power back on – an accomplishment that will give them the power to bomb their enemies off the map; before killing himself, the same rogue official who started this all in motion, Randall, detonates a series of atomic bombs aimed at major U.S. cities; and our main characters (and the world) are left in peril.  But it doesn’t end there.  The final scene reveals a presidential bunker in Guantanamo Bay where the President of the United States has apparently been hiding since the blackout.  He receives word that Randall has successful accomplished his goal and viewers are left understanding that the pending destruction of much of the country has actually been ordered by its commander in chief.

This is the type of drama that could revitalize NBC’s flailing Neilson Ratings.  And while NBC is launching a few new dramas that could run beside it (The Blacklist looks interesting this year), it is boasting of its new lineup of sitcoms).  It seems to this viewer like the network just can’t figure out what direction it wants to go in or who it wants to be.  I’m not saying the focus on sitcoms is a bad thing, the genre definitely is slowly returning to prominence on primetime and such shows do make more money in syndication than dramas.  And maybe it’s a good idea to try to return to its glory days of “Must See TV” where NBC made money hand-over-fist with shows like Friends, Seinfeld, and Fraiser.  But will this generation of viewers relate to a show like Welcome to the Family, Sean Saves the World, or The Michael J. Fox Show like those of us in the 90s did to the fun-loving, coffee shop-dwelling gang of Friends?  I’m betting not.

So, as a television scholar who primarily studies network television, I’ll be cheering for this behemoth to return to its former network glory days.  But I won’t be holding my breath or investing too much time (or DVR space) to their shows as I’m not quite convinced that this will be their comeback year!