Analyzing the Audience of Erectile Dysfunction Ads, or, Just Poking Fun at Viagra & Cialis Commercials

My first year as a college professor I had a bright pre-med student in my Freshman Composition class who picked an interesting topic for his media analysis essay.  (Interesting topics are not always abundant in Freshman Comp classes so I still remember this essay years later).  This young man spent a semester researching Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertisements.   I was really surprised by much of what he reported and so I thought I’d share it here.  (Yes, taking the content of a student’s essay as the ultimate truth is a bit risky so don’t worry, I fact checked it on Wikipedia to make sure he was absolutely correct).

The United States is one of only two Western countries that allow Direct-to-Consumer (i.e. public) advertisements for pharmaceutical products.  Most countries have banned these for over half a century and allow pharmaceutical companies to only advertise directly to health providers.  This surprised me although perhaps it shouldn’t have.  What really got me thinking, though, were the effects of these advertisements.  I’ve often thought that we are a country of hypochondriacs.  The plethora of information online, sites like WebMD, certainly contribute to this national state but, arguably, so do the endless commercials we see for prescription drugs. 

We’ve all seen these commercials:  picturesque and often emotional scenes (usually completely unrelated to the product they are selling); a sincere voice over listing symptoms for the medical ailment and assuring viewers that the drug will relieve these; a rushed mention (either in quick speech or small print) listing the possible side effects of the drugs; and a blurb about how to afford this medical wonder (“AstraZeneca can help!”).  When you really study these commercials it is shocking that they could ever be effective, but they are.  (I fully admit that one particular Cymbalta commercial was so effective that the repeated viewing of it almost gave me the depression it promised to cure.  It was one of the “depression hurts” ad sequences the company ran).   But, on second thought, maybe it is not surprising that these ads work.  The symptoms they list are often universal, applying to a plethora of conditions, and for the impressionable or the actually ill, they offer the temptation of hope:  cure in a magical pill. 

The consequences of these ads are many.  Besides for inducing medical paranoia or trying to capitalize on the real suffering of the sick, I imagine these advertisements change the doctor-patient relationship.  Instead of going to a doctor to explain symptoms and await a diagnosis, many people today not only go in with their list of symptoms ready but with conclusions as to which medical disorder these point to and which prescription drug they would like to relieve them.  (Doctors who have been practicing for 20-30 years must find this shift in the Internet information age to be quite unsettling).  Another consequence of these ads is one that might not be apparent at first thought:  they cost money (duh).  And since they cost money, that cost must be covered.  And how is it covered?  By raising the cost of the drugs, which impacts the cost of health insurance, and so on and so on.

Since these ads are just that – ads – it is interesting to analyze them just like you would any other advertisement.  When watching these I ask myself:  what is the product (this is easy), who is the intended audience (this is often interesting), and what persuasive strategies are at work to try to win over the viewer (e.g. logos, pathos, ethos).  While this hobby of mine does not always lead to laughs, it did when I started contemplating the intended audience of the recent Viagra and Cialis ads.

Viagra and Cialis are both prescription drugs used to correct erectile dysfunction.  Despite doing the exact same thing, it seems the companies have decided to market to different audiences – Viagra to men and Cialis to women. 

The last year has seen Viagra commercials featuring a lone manly man off doing some rugged activity.  Two examples include the “sailor” and the “cowboy” commercials.  In the first a man sits on his sailboat enjoying the great outdoors while constantly surrounded by an array of phallic symbols.  (Just glance at the mast below or view the entire commercial if you want to catch the rest). 

 

In the second, a man splashes through the mud riding in his pick-up truck which is being pulled by horses.  (Need I spell out the symbolism of the truck or stallions?)  At the end of both of these commercials the man comes home at the end of his long day to an idyllic white house where someone has left the light on.  The implication is obvious:  this manly mad is about to get his groove on and Viagra is going to help. 

So, if my reading is at all correct, these ads are directed at men.  They stress masculinity, virility, and strength and, perhaps, boost the self-esteem of the intended male user through its message of correlation:  the man in this video is a stud and he uses Viagra, therefore, I can still be a stud and need Viagra too.

The Cialis commercials are quite different.  These typically feature a couple, or couples, instead of a lone man, often focusing more on the woman of the duo.  They are usually composed of a variety of scenarios in which romance spontaneously sparks between a man and a woman:  a quick glance between a couple sitting on the front porch ignites the flame, a casual touch in the kitchen brings about the mood (and maybe even a super sexy tango dance).                                                             

 Other scenes often focus on couples madly in love doing romantic (out of the norm) date-like things:  watching a sunset after hiking over a rocky ravine, sitting face to face while canoeing through a beautiful meadow, relaxing outside in a hammock made for one, etc.  And still other scenes include a bit of magical realism where the everyday world literally falls away when the time is right.  For example, if a couple’s eyes meet in that way that says “it’s time” while standing in their kitchen, then the walls of said kitchen will soon melt away into a romantic outdoor scene.  Although I’m drawing upon some gender stereotypes here (a big no-no for a feminist media scholar), I would guess that women are the target audience of these ads not only because of their focus on romance rather than sex, but also because it is the woman in these scenarios whose everyday beauty triggers the (midday) sexual encounter.

So what’s the problem with these ads?  Perhaps nothing really (besides for the fact that they are a bit silly when studied closely).  But, perhaps they do some damage in portraying unrealistic situations that promise a whole lot more than just an induced erection (that should not last more than four hours).   Some may say that I’m just being a bit hard on Viagra and Cialis here.  (Yes, yes I did just write that.  I couldn’t restrain myself any longer.  The possible puns are just too plentiful).  And, in truth, I probably am.  These commercials are just easy targets.  (And if I wanted to continue to critique them I could mention the lack of racial diversity in the Viagra ads or the heteronormativity present in both).  Regardless, the genre they are a part of (public prescription drug ads) do deserve to be criticized.  So I will continue turning a critical eye toward these when they romp across my television screen… and I’ll also keep giggling like a school girl when the Viagra and Cialis commercials come on because we all need things that amuse us for absolutely no good reason.

Are We "The Walking Dead"?: Reading the Zombie Craze as a Product of a Post-9/11 Climate

 

 

Anyone who follows my work knows that I read just about every contemporary popular culture phenomenon through the lens of 9/11.  (It’s convenient for my research and, well, it almost always seems to work).  So, it’s not shocking that I sat in front of my television set watching the latest season of AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010-present) seeing subtle allusions to the national tragedy.  But, I’m sure I’m not alone, and I certainly am not the first to tie the resurrected popularity of zombie narratives (of which this show contributed to greatly) to 9/11.

In some ways the zombie craze simply falls into a larger wave of narrative trends that can be viewed as decade-specific products.  Studying the renewed popularity of horror films in the years following 9/11, Mark Alexander Soloff discusses how filmmakers express “post-9/11 anxieties through metaphor” allowing cinema to become a “therapeutic catharsis for the nation’s newfound fears.”  I have made the same argument for various television programs of the past decade (e.g. Lost, Heroes, 24, Alias, Fringe, etc.)  and still others have made similar claims about the abundance of post-apocalyptic narratives (be they in the form of print fiction, film, television or video games) flooding the market today.  (A key example would be young adult dystopian novels like Susan Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy).

Zombie narratives have often been read as acting as a metaphor for various cultural concerns, so the genre almost insists that its current manifestation be read in connection to 9/11.  One example would be Will Nixon’s article, “Are Zombies the Guilty Conscience of Post-9/11 America,” which suggests “that the zombie renaissance” represents America’s reaction “to 9/11 and the mess” the government made of global relations ever since the attacks.  Others argue that the recent zombie narrative (much like their sister narrative, vampire tales) highlight an “us versus them” binary – a fear of a dangerous “other” lurking in the shadows.  Zombie storylines have also been read as alluding to cultural fears concerning biological warfare, epidemics, global warming, consumerism, and over dependence on technology.  And although they likely tap into all of these fears, I’m (of course) partial to the 9/11 reading. 

After all, to claim that the national tragedy of 9/11 has been a defining moment in the first decade of the 21^st century for the United States is not profound, nor is the idea that it directly and indirectly influenced the cultural production within American society throughout these years.  It is my firm belief that in the decade following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, cultural products have been sites for interrogating and remediating the trauma that 9/11 caused for the citizens of a country that believed itself to be untouchable.   (We are the unsuspecting survivors that never saw the zombie apocalypse coming). 

Many consider 9/11 to be a cultural trauma and anyone familiar with trauma recovery knows that it requires a move from repetition to “working through.”  My habitual claim is that the apocalyptic narratives that proliferate after 9/11 help viewers make this move; through their repeated mediation of fictionalized scenarios these narratives present trauma in order to do away with it, hence becoming a sort of emotional security blanket for individuals existing in an unstable post-9/11 world.  In terms of zombie tales in particular, the fact that we are eagerly consuming these stories suggests that we are seeking a safe space to wrestle with, and perhaps displace, the fears they play upon.

 So what fear does Walking Dead tap into?  Too many to list but I’ll focus on one issue it highlights well:  the concern about “where to do we go from here?”  Zombie narratives often highlight two possible ways to deal with the post-apocalyptic world:   survive or rebuild.  Storylines that focus on surviving often showcase central characters on the run doing anything possible to survive on a daily basis – even if it means a lone existence.  Storylines that focus on rebuilding highlight the importance of community, structure, and group cohesiveness; they include central characters who (sometimes) place limits on what they are willing to do to survive, which include not being willing to exist alone.  What is interesting about the third season of Walking Dead is that these two mindsets are portrayed through the parallel storylines unfolding with the core group held up at the prison and the inhabitants of the gated community of Woodbury.     While the group viewers have come to know and love (Rick’s crew) hold a bit of both mindsets – they are a community of sorts, a surrogate family system – they primarily find themselves on the run playing the role of “survivor.”  They keep attempting momentary respites which could be viewed as community building (e.g. life on the farm in season two; life at the prison now in season three), but these are always abandoned when their main goal must again be to simply survive.  They do have limits as to what they will do to achieve this goal, but viewers have seen these get stretched thin over time.

The Woodbury community (led by the Governor) exists as a faux utopia showing how there is a chance for “normalcy” and life after tragedy.  At least that’s what it seems like at first glance.  The setting is a seemingly normal town (quaint even, a throwback to the yesteryears), the residents seem safe and happy – no one is on the run and prior to recent events there had not been a death among them in quite some time.  But viewers quickly learn (if they didn’t guess immediately) that things aren’t quite what they seem in this happy town.  The Governor is willing to go to great extremes to ensure their safety (including murder).   But his motivation is not purely altruistic:  his scientific projects are in place because he longs to cure his infected daughter (who he had kept locked away in his living quarters) and all of his actions, arguably, really seem to be to ensure his place as a leader and a father figure to this new generation of survivors. 

Now usually those existing on the “community” side of the community/survivor continuum are portrayed as the more morally sound, after all, they have the betterment of society on their side.  It is interesting that Walking Dead flips this notion on its head.  Is it too much of a stretch to read the Governor, who gives his charismatic speeches about community and the future of humanity, as an allegory for George W. Bush?  Is the hypocrisy of the Woodbury leadership a metaphor for the Bush administration politics?  Can we read the staged fight scenes (with zombies whose teeth had been removed) as alluding to the smoke and mirror media spectacles of the post-9/11 era?  Or am I stretching here?

Regardless, the show definitely poses fundamental questions about humanity and forces viewers to wonder how they would react in post-apocalyptic scenarios.  And, arguably, these questions are more important today than they were twelve years ago back when we still felt like an untouchable people.  So are we the walking dead?  Are we still wandering around in a haze after the shock of 9/11?  And, if so, do watching these narrative do anything to lessen it?  I’m not sure but I’ll keep watching just in case they might.

We are the 99%... But We Sure Do Like Watching the Other 1% on TV: How Televisual History Could Have Predicted the Popularity of ABC's "Revenge" & NBC's "Deception"

 As a television historian of sorts, I’m prone to watching for patterns and I’m obsessed with reading all programming as a way to understand the time period from which it stems.  I find genre trends interesting (e.g. the popularity of sitcoms in the 80s and 90s and their near extinction in the early 00s… thanks to the competing presence of reality television).  But more fascinating to me are the narrative trends evident in television shows because they often reveal the values and/or concerns of a certain era (e.g. the role-reversal sitcoms like Who’s the Boss, Charles in Charge, My Two Dads, & Full House certainly contained messages that aligned with the conservative, feminist-backlash time that was the 1980s).  So when NBC launched its new drama, Deception, last month, it conjured up thoughts I had already had about the timely popularity of ABC’s Revenge (2011-present).  I read these programs, which demonize the rich in delightfully delicious ways, as tapping into contemporary socio-political concerns (i.e. the “We are the 99%”/Occupy Wall Street movement).    Looking at similar programming from past eras indicates that this genre, the primetime soap opera, is often primed to reveal cultural concerns about the economic climate. (One possible example from the past, which I’ll expand on later, would be the popularity of shows like Dallas, Dynasty, Knots Landing, & Falcon Crest during and after the economic recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s).

 

For those unfamiliar with these new melodramas, here is a brief for each synopsis:

 

 Revenge (which at first glance seems like a very traditional story of, duh, revenge – the tale of a young woman who seeks to avenge her father’s death by destroying all who contributed to it) subtly taps into some post-9/11 concerns.  The main character’s father, David Clarke, was wrongly sentenced to prison for treason after being accused of funneling funds to a terrorist group responsible for blowing up a commercial flight.  While the motifs of terrorism and plane hijacking certainly point to the events of 9/11, the show’s overarching focus on the corrupt nature of the corporate world and social elite also tap into contemporary concerns about the economic climate and finance industry. 

 

 

Deception (2013-present) also portrays the upper class in an unfavorable light.  While its critique is often more grounded in the celebrity status of undeserving elites, the business corruption is highlighted in one of the show’s major plots:  a corporation’s willingness to launch an unsafe pharmaceutical substitute for chemo therapy. The show starts off with the death of Vivian Bowers, the eldest daughter of the rich and famous Bowers family (think of this family as the fictional equivalent of, say, the Kardashians).  As the police suspect one of her family members was responsible for her death, Vivian’s childhood best friend, Joanna Locasto, is brought in as an undercover detective to solve the crime.  She quickly uncovers (in just the first two episodes alone) much more:  secret pregnancies, mistaken parental identity, business corruption, blackmail, etc. 

 

Both programs showcase main characters who are determined to bring down the central family (Revenge’s Grayson family and Deception’s Bowers family), but they both seemingly get sidetracked from time-to-time by their own emotions.  (These shows are, after all, melodramas).  Revenge’s Emily Thorne/Amanda Clarke (Emily VanCamp) spends the first season in a strategic love affair with Daniel Grayson – one that occasionally appeared to be the real deal and left viewers wondering if she would be able to fulfill her mission.  Deception’s Joanna (Meagan Good) seems to run the risk of being seduced not only by a man (the youngest son of the Bowers family, a childhood love interest), but also by the lifestyle of the rich and famous. 

 

That these programs are being pitched and produced (and seem to be popular) at this cultural moment is interesting being that it is a time when much of America holds the upper class in contempt.  So do we viewers watch these shows because we want to see the rich depicted in despicable ways? 

 

The argument could be made that we have always had a fascination with the rich and famous… and this would be true.  (There are a great many more escapist televisual depictions of upper, or at least upper-middle, class families on television than there are of those focused on lower class ones).  And if we want to look at melodrama in particular, or soaps more specifically, this seems to be even more the case.  But while soaps (daytime and primetime alike) have long included tangential storylines that feature shady upper class families and unethical corporate maneuverings, Revenge and Deception place these at the center of their narratives.  So it’s hard not to these shows as being “products of their times.”

 

But, as stated earlier, this is not necessarily new and perhaps the primetime soap opera is an ideal site to carry out critiques linked to the economic landscape.  Like Revenge and Deception, Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and Knots Landing were all launched during an economic recession, products of an economic climate that favored the upper class over the middle class.  It could be argued that these shows reflect their cultural time periods and possibly act as a sort of “wish fulfillment” for the middle class viewers watching them.  However, the shows of the 80s hit peak popularity once the recession was over.  Because of this it becomes a bit harder to read them as shows that allow the “have-nots” of the real world to hate on the “haves” of the fictional telescape.

 

In terms of the programs from the 1980s, their narrative excess could be seen as symbolizing the temporary economic excess that the middle of that decade provided before the proverbial bubble burst.  Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and Knots Landing were quite popular during most of Reagan’s tenure.  Reagan’s trickle-down economics, his tax cuts favoring the upper class, during this time period are now often accused of pushing the federal budget into a deficit and leading the nation into a spending spree of their own.  During this time debt tripled from 900 billion dollars to 2.8 trillion dollars.   However, during his actual presidency, most Americans experienced temporary economic prosperity (or the illusion of it):  real median family income grew by $4,000 during the Reagan period after experiencing no growth in the pre-Reagan years and a loss of $1500 per year in the post-Reagan years, interest rates, inflation, and unemployment fell faster under Reagan than they did immediately before or after his presidency, and the productivity rate was higher during his years in office.  However, all of this positive momentum leading away from the 1982 recession came to a halt on Monday, October 19^th, 1987 – a day often referred to in financial circles as Black Monday – when stock markets around the world crashed.  The result in the United States was that the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 508 points.  The effects of this market turn would be felt for the remainder of Reagan’s time in office and for most of his successor, George H. Bush’s, presidential reign.

 

Although it would be a bit presumptuous to claim that this economic turn prompted changes in the television industry, the economic shift certainly seemed to manifest itself in these primetime melodramas centered around glamour and glitz as the ratings on many of these programs began to steadily decline in the years following the trouble on Wall Street.  Dynasty, the most extravagant of all, met its demise in 1989 with each of the other night time soaps following nearly a year apart:  Falcon Crest in 1990, Dallas in 1991 and Knots Landing in 1993.

 

So what does this mean for the future of Revenge and Deception?  Can we still love them when we’re not the angry 99%?  The history of the genre says:  sure we can… but only if the economic tides don’t turn yet again.  And, of course, it could be I’m reading too much into these shows.  (Surprise, surprise).  Maybe Revenge and Deception are going to cement their place in the primetime network lineups because America loves female avengers and detectives, glimpses into the worlds of the fictional elite, and complex melodramatic plotlines.  But maybe, just maybe, these programs will stick around because they do help audiences work through (and displace) emotions lingering the decade after 9/11 and the country’s subsequent economic collapse.  If this is the case then these programs are continuing the soap’s history of social critique but with a quite different focus.  And for that reason (and because, let’s be honest, I love to loathe the fictional rich), I’ll continue tuning in. 

The Long Goodbye: ABC's "Private Practice" Reaches a Close

As a follower of the ABC medical melodramas I felt they helped create a particularly bleak start to the fall television season this year.  In fact, after watching the first few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice I was quite depressed.  As anyone who follows the shows know, Grey’s Anatomy picked up after one of their infamous cliffhangers – an airplane crash that ultimately killed two of the central characters and severely injured another – and Private Practice started off with the unexpected death of one of its original cast members.  While I had known enough to expect Eric Dane’s (Mark Sloan) departure on Grey’s, I had not gotten the memo about Tim Daly (Pete Wilder) leaving Private Practice.  While viewers at least had the opportunity to watch Sloan’s exit (a very emotional episode where his friends and family had to follow his wishes and remove him from life support), Pete died off screen, his death-by-heart-attack only reported through his wife, Violet, who received word over the phone.  A bit anticlimactic for a melodrama. Although both programs started out with tragedy and loss, for some reason I felt that Grey’s was able to return to normal more quickly than Private Practice which I felt suffered from a rather slow and somber start to its sixth (and final) season.

 

I’m a rather poor popular culture scholar at times as I’m often the last to know when shows are going off the air, so I didn’t know that Private Practice was drawing to a close.  If I had I may have watched the series a bit differently.  Because I had met the first few episodes of the season with little enthusiasm I let the rest stockpile in my DVR queue for quite some time.  When I returned to the show, I was actually pleasantly surprised:  it had seemed to have undergone a transformation.  This, of course, was not the first time I felt this way about the program as throughout the years I often felt it struggled to find its angle and had to reinvent itself.  As a spin-off of Grey’s the show originally tried to present itself as a similar show with an ensemble cast although it was often focused on the life of its central character, Addison Montgomery Sheppard (Kate Walsh).  Recognizing this, the show eventually started using the voice-over framework (borrowed from Grey’s), drawing upon material from Sheppard’s extended monologues at her therapist’s office.  The last few episodes of the series deviated from this focus on Addison and used other characters to frame the episode and, although I love Walsh, I loved this approach even better.   Moreover, it wasn’t just a normal framework it had a bit of magical realism and (dare I say) artistry mixed in. 

 

Here are a few examples.  In the 7^th episode, “Life According to Jake,” unsurprising considering the title, the focus was on Jake.  The show was broken into the normal commercial-driven segments and featured lead-ins to the episode content where Jake was seen communicating with his dead wife, struggling to accept that he was ready to move on and fully commit to Addison.  In the 9^th episode, “I’m Fine,” the focus was on Sheldon (which is rare) and the repeated motif involved his radiation treatments and waiting room interactions which ultimately find him peace and companionship.  In the 10^th episode, “Georgia on my Mind,” the focus is on Charlotte’s bed rest after having delivered the first of her triplets prematurely.  The framework for this episode was a variety of dance numbers (featuring her and her husband Cooper) mirroring her emotional state.   In episode 11, “Good Fries are Hard to Come By,” Amelia gets the spotlight and the show’s various narrative segments are preempted by still image snapshots detailing her relationship with newcomer James. 

 

I loved the new approach to the show, the artistry in the framework, and I was enjoying the plot also:  the budding relationships between Amelia and James and Sheldon and Miranda were holding my interest; it was great to see Addison finally finding happiness both as a mother and a romantic partner; and Cooper and Charlotte’s expanded family brought about equally touching and amusing narrative potentials.  So just when the show sucked me back in I found out (with a week to spare) that it was ending.  Sigh.

 

The series ended with a wedding (as ninety percent do it seems), but not the one viewers expected.  Addison and Jake did get married, but so did the estranged couple Sam and Naomi.  (This was perhaps the one plot misstep in my opinion.  To have Naomi and Sam have a one night stand which not only lands her pregnant, but also makes them both realize they were meant to be seemed a bit too convenient.  I also had a hard time coming to terms with Sam telling Naomi she was “the only woman [he] ever loved” after two seasons involving his romantic relationship with Addison.  Equally unconvincing was his immediate excitement at learning he was to be a father again, after having been very clear on the fact that he was done with that part of his life).  But, despite this hasty rush to a resolution that involved all original cast members (i.e. Naomi), it was a nice moment when the camera panned across the faces in the crowd at Naomi and Sam’s wedding and found everyone happy.  The one character left without a love interest at the series’ finish, Violet, actually draws the show to a close by announcing that she has written another book – a book about their friendships and experiences as doctors… a book (predictably) called:  Private Practice.  (To avoid this being too cheesy of an ending the camera pulls away from the doctors debating the title, of which many are critical.  A funny final moment for the group of sparring friends).

 

So there ends another medical drama.  It was not always perfect but it was at times edgy (covering controversial issues in unflinching ways) and often heartfelt (you haven’t really cried over a medical storyline until you watch the delivery of Amelia’s brainless baby) and it will be missed by this sometimes-reluctant fan. 

Following Fox's "The Following": Serial Killers Break into the Network Lineup

 

 

Fox did a great job of promoting its new series, The Following, and the first episode (aired January 21^st) did not disappoint.  Although at first I thought that this show was just capitalizing on the fact that Showtime’s Dexter is drawing to a close (after all we have to get our serial killer fix somewhere, right?), I think the concept is a bit more intelligent than I first gave it credit for. 

 

The idea behind the program is this:  a serial killer, Joe Carroll (James Purefoy), escapes death row to initiate a chain of copycat killings done in his honor (his “following”).   The first episode starts with his escape and then quickly shifts focus to that of the law enforcers tasked with apprehending him once again.  The most important of this group, of course, is the main character, Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon).  I fully admit it was Bacon landing this leading role that sold me on watching the show.  It was an excellent casting choice as Bacon plays the reluctant/troubled hero quite well:  a former FBI agent who, having previously cracked the case on Carroll, is drawn back into the fray.  But, as always, it’s more complicated than that.  Hardy is haunted by this former case – how long it took him to solve it (18 months) and how much it cost him (he was severely injured during the initial arrest of Carroll).  The injury lands him on disability from the agency and his act of publishing a book about the case (as well as his reputation as an alcoholic) further estranges him from his former colleagues.  [Spoiler Alert] And the things that he has been able to take comfort in – that he was able to prevent Carroll from killing his last victim, Sarah Fuller (Maggie Grace), and ensure that Carroll’s wife and child would be safe with him in custody – dissolve in this first episode when Carroll recaptures and kills Sarah and starts a plan in motion that includes the kidnapping of his child. 

 

The program is fast paced and quickly launches into the storyline without much exposition and not with the predictability I might have expected.  In fact, I found many things surprising in the first episode.  I was sad to see Fuller die (as I like Maggie Grace), but it just proves the show is not going to shy away from killing characters that viewers quickly grow invested in; I was impressed by just how much gore Fox was able to get away with showing on network television; I enjoyed the revelation that Hardy had had an affair with Carroll’s ex-wife (a romantic storyline being a mandatory component of any drama); and I was surprised to find that Carroll was actually back behind bars by the episode’s end and that all of the death to follow would not be directly at his hands (the scenes with him in the jail remind me of some from Silence of the Lambs – despite Carroll’s imprisonment, it is obvious who holds the power in this scenario). 

 

So:  so far so good.  I like the way this show is starting and I look forward to watching it play out.  (Although admittedly I might be a bit biased.  I’m drawn to the twist the show provides on the makeup of the serial killer. As an English professor myself, I find the thought of a former literature professor killing victims in tribute to Edgar Allan Poe to be intriguing.)  In my opinion, watching this new series will do more than just give viewers a leg up in games of “The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”

Farewell to Fox’s Fringe (2008-2013): One More “Smart” Television Show Goes Off the Air

 [Spoiler Alert]

 

 After five seasons, Fox’s Fringe went off the air this January.  Although I enjoyed the season finale (despite having had a love/hate relationship with most of the season itself), I found the final episode to be a bit anticlimactic.  It might be that, unaccustomed to change, I still am unsettled by winter finales (seasons and series that break or end in December, January, or February only to be replaced by mid-season replacements that networks are testing out).  Or it could be that the emotional musical score meant to pull at the heart strings and accompany the admittedly heartfelt final storyline was obscured by the blaring music of an infant swing operating within feet of the television set.  Regardless, having faithfully watched the show through its many transformations I felt it was due some reflection here.

For those unfamiliar with the program, in 2008 Fox (the network that gave us 24) launched what seemed to be yet another narrative to exploring the concerns of a nation battling an invisible enemy called “terror.”  Created by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orc, Fringe focuses its plot around the FBI “Fringe Division,” agents operating under the supervision of Homeland Security.  At the heart of this show lies an eclectic team headed by Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), an FBI agent with enhanced supernatural skills leftover from being part of a childhood experiment; Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), a mad scientist figure and former government researcher who understands of the capabilities existing on the periphery of science; and his son, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), the eventual love interest to Olivia and investigative side kick to them both.  (Admittedly, as a former Dawson’s Creek fan, it was Joshua Jackson’s impeccable delivery of sarcastic one liners and his ability to perfectly play the romantic underdog that originally drew me to the show).

Originally the program was concerned with investigating “the pattern” – a series of unexplainable, and often catastrophic, events caused by fringe science attacks.  Throughout the first few seasons the show was rather episodic – each episode was focused largely on a single mystery stemming from science-gone-wrong.  However, as the series progressed, the overarching narrative lessened this episodic focus and larger storylines connecting these events and characters became more of the focus.

The perils from which the characters saved society in these early episodes hinted at mass concerns about the possible use of biological warfare and new technology.  It seemed at the time like an obvious product of the post-9/11 moment.  Fringe ended its first season with a moment that I have elsewhere described as a sort of wish fulfillment.  It presented viewers with a parallel universe in which the Twin Towers had not been destroyed on 9/11.   In the final moments of this episode Olivia searches out the mysterious William Bell (played by none other than Leonard Nimoy) and finds herself in an office building in New York City.  As the camera pans away from her looking out over the skyscape viewers realize the office she is standing in is inside the Twin Towers.  Not many moments leave me speechless staring at the screen, but this was one of them.  (It ranks up there with these three shocking screen moments:  Jack’s Bauer’s wife’s death in the season one finale of 24, Rita’s death in the season four finale of Dexter, and – of course – the end of the movie Seven… after all, who hasn’t been traumatized by watching Brad Pitt scream “What’s in the box?” in that film before the credits roll backwards?).  There was just something about seeing that imagery – the towers – that froze me in place on the couch.  After the attacks those buildings were all but erased from narratives set in New York.  (They were even physically erased from shows and films that were shot pre-9/11 as to not upset viewers).  So seeing them was, in a way, taboo.  And see them we would, often times in the coming seasons as a visual indicator of which parallel universe we were being launched into. 

Despite this allusion to post-9/11 concerns, as the program continued on the storylines slowly moved away from the concerns of reality and became more fantastical.  Eventually the program found the agents traveling through universes, and time, to save the world from destruction.   And, for the most part, I enjoyed the ride.  (After Lost went off the air in 2010 I felt Fringe was one of the smartest television shows left on the air; it forced viewers – especially in the final two seasons – to put in some cognitive work to keep up with the narrative leaps and bounds).  But, sadly, this season sat oddly for me.

Perhaps the problem was that the show really could have ended last year at the end of season four.  The team of agents had saved the destruction of two universes, the estranged lovers had been reunited both physically and emotionally, and all could have been right with the world.  But the show had a fifth season to fill.  I say this a bit in jest as I believe writers when they say they have an ultimate plan and if season five was always in the cards then so be it.  (And to be fair, in retrospect there are moments of foreshadowing that do lead logically to this end).  But, as one friend noted, this season had the feeling of an epilogue (much like those tacked onto Dollhouse before it drew to a close).  Although the writers wrapped up most loose ends, this season still seemed a bit forced.  Temporally speaking, the show began its first episode of season five a few years in the future, in 2015, quickly introducing Peter and Olivia’s three-year-old daughter, Etta, just as a wave of Observers arrived to take over earth.  (For most of the season this made no sense to me and usually I can suspend my disbelief and patiently wait for the narrative to fill me in.  It takes quite a while for this act of war to be explained and it seems out of character being that the Observers – future evolved humans from the year 2609 – were originally depicted as unobtrusive and often benevolent visitors, far from how they would be depicted in this final season.  The explanation for this ends up being that the twelve observers that the Fringe team encounter throughout the first four seasons were anomalies of sorts; they had changed due to their exposure to this era, eventually growing attached to it and its inhabitants and gaining the ability to emote to some degree.  This is an ability their counterparts from the future do not have because advanced evolution – prompted by science – has chosen to develop intellect at the expense of emotion).  The narrative then jumps to the year 2036 where Etta (as an adult) saves her parents who have been frozen in time (and, well, amber) and enlists their help to rid the future world of the Observers who are wiping out normal humanity. 

This part of the storyline was difficult for me too.  Watching 30-something year-olds have parent-child encounters with their grown 20-something-old daughter was just odd.  They all looked as they could have been siblings so the dynamic often played oddly on the screen.  And while they cast Etta well – she looked and behaved much like her mother – this had a detrimental side effect.   Like the character Olivia, Etta came off as a bit restrained, guarded, even cool.  While viewers had five seasons to warm up to Olivia, they only four episodes to do so with Etta as that is exactly how long she lasted before she was killed off.  Sigh.  At a time when all parent-child storylines (especially mother-daughter storylines) make me tear up due to the excessive hormones surging through my system, I had a hard time shedding tears over this loss.  I think I might have dropped one or two but mostly I was mad.  Mad at the writers for introducing this character only to kill her and mad that they didn’t do a better job with her because I should have felt crushed by her loss.  But her death would be the motivation for her parents to go on – to avenge her death and later attempt to reset time so that they could be reunited with her.

The final season then is simply one of their quest – the lone Fringe team assisted by one rogue former Observer, September, and his son (a “child” observer capable of both advanced intellect and emotion) – to rid the world of the Observers (who have invaded this time period because in the future they have ruined the Earth for themselves).  The plan the characters come up with is to take the child Observer, Michael, into the future to the year 2167 where human genetic experiments began sacrificing emotion for intelligence (ultimately leading to the creation of the Observers).  Their hope is that if scientists could see that this is not necessary (that advanced intellect can be gained without the elimination of emotion), that these experiments will not begin and the future dystopia can be prevented.  Ultimately they are successful but in order for the timeline to be reset a sacrifice must be made:  Walter must travel into the future with the child, forgoing his future with his own son and grandchild.

While I enjoyed the show’s thematic concerns with fate and destiny (giving me my fix on that theme after Lost was no longer around to play it out), I did not buy the logic in this end sacrifice.  In my mind, if the mission was accomplished and the scientific experiments halted the moment they saw the boy and realized what he was capable of, in theory all Observers – including the boy – would cease to exist and the timeline would be reset hence making Walter disappear from that future.  (But according to the explanation given in the show this would not be the case, Walter and the boy would live out their lives in the future – somehow existing there as space-time anomalies trapped in that future unable to return to the past).  While I admit that I simply don’t have the scientific background to debate who has the correct logic, I understand that the writers provide the more heartfelt ending:  a scene where Walter walks into the light and Peter mouths “I love you, Dad.”  So assuming I can get past this aspect, one other plot hole nagged at me.  Peter only exists as an adult because September saved Walter and him when they fell through the ice at Reiden lake when Peter was just a boy.  So, again, if my reasoning is sound, if the timeline was reset and the Observers never existed, then Peter would have drowned as a child in 1985 and would have never grown up, met Olivia, and had Etta.  Yet during the last few minutes of the show, the timeline is reset and Peter still exists.  Viewers are returned to the opening scene of the season where Peter and Olivia are playing with their three year old daughter in a field. 

The series does not end on that scene.  It actually ends with Peter opening a letter from his father (who, unknown to him, he will never see again).  In this envelope is a drawing of a white tulip.   I probably enjoyed this end more so than any other viewer because I had the accidental luck of having written an essay on the Fringe episode from season two that it alludes to.  (In this episode a man travels back in time over and over trying to prevent the death of fiancé.  Through these attempts he encounters a distraught Walter who is struggling with the choices he has made in life.  Walter tells this man he keeps looking for a sign from God that he is forgiven – that sign being a white tulip.  Before his last time jump, and death, the man sends a drawing of a white tulip to Walter.  Walter eventually receives this, and since he has no recollection of meeting the man as he has been erased from the timeline after dying alongside of his fiancé, he interprets it as a sign from God).  While I did enjoy this callback to this episode, I wondered about it also.  Would the white tulip mean anything to Peter?  What did it mean that the show ended on the image of something that was originally meant to represent forgiveness and, perhaps, even faith?

Perhaps I’m being a bit too hard on Fringe.  After all, the more complex the television show, the more difficult it is to wrap up.  (I’m doing here what I criticized fans for doing after Lost’s final season and episode).  I enjoyed the intelligent plot Fringe wove throughout the years and I think to fully appreciate it I will have to watch it again from the beginning.  All in all, I am sad that the show is over and that there is now one less “smart” television program existing in the network line-ups. 

 

Writing to Justify the Countless Hours I Spend in Front of the TV Set

I am pretty sure that the world doesn’t need another blog and I know that there are countless other ones that will have more insightful stuff to say about television than I will… but I’m on a mission.  A mission to, yes, as the title to this opening entry jokes, justify my television consumption, but also a mission to write again.  After a year and a half of writer’s block (which I blame largely on having two children within a 17 month period), I thought forcing myself to write regularly might be a good thing. 

Of course it’s a bit hypocritical of me to start a blog when I read so few myself.  Most of the ones I frequent are written by my co-workers and students (although I do have a soft spot for one comedic mommy blog that helps me laugh my way through raising a just-turned-toddler:  The Honest Toddler).  The majority of my experience with blogs has actually come from my work as an academic – a popular culture scholar hiding out in an English Department in the middle of central Illinois).  More and more these days when I am seeking out research on contemporary television the most interesting (and up to date) pieces I find are not published in scholarly journals or obscure collections housed only on the shelves of university libraries, rather they exist online in personal websites and public blogs.  Thankfully such sources are now (usually) accepted in academe and I can draw upon this smart commentary stemming from a range of individuals – most of whom are not scholars in the traditional sense but are just really intelligent consumer of mass media and/or enthusiastic fans.   This is the audience I want to write to.    (Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate writing for peer reviewed presses also but I’ve grown disheartened by the slow speed of print publishing.  I have a journal article on ABC’s Lost coming out in The Journal of Popular Culture in 2014… a full four years after the series went off the air.  How relevant will my work be when it finally hits those pages?  Not very).

The title of this blog not only reveals its focus, television (and an embarrassing appreciation for alliteration), but it also alludes to my own self perception as a scholar.  Sometimes I feel rather “small screen” in a world of bigger and better and flashier “big screen” thinkers.  I suppose I suffer from the “fake professor” syndrome that I heard many Ph.D. holders do.  I often do not feel as smart as those little letters might imply I should feel.  When surrounded by fellow English professors I never feel that I know enough, that I have read as much, and I am certain that at times my vocabulary and grammar give me away as a “poser” of sorts.  (Case in point:  I had to look up the word “ennui” just this past week even though I once knew its definition; at a conference last year I mispronounced both “ephemeral” and “zeitgeist” in my own talk; and I am pretty sure that I make up words on a daily basis.  The latter was less of a problem when I taught high school and could jokingly tell my students that since Shakespeare got away with it I could too.  This joke doesn’t go over as well up in the good ole ivory tower).  But despite feeling this way from time to time, I know that I do occasionally have some “smart” things to say about television and popular culture and so I start this blog in the hopes that I will capture a few of those fleeting moments… because it would be a shame if they only lingered between me, my couch, and my faithful DVR remote.

With that said, I write this mostly for myself.  If anyone is reading, that’s a plus.  And if anyone is reading, I apologize in advance for subjecting you to my meandering thoughts on an eclectic set of television programs.