More Than Dirty Words

Things are desperate in broadcasting. It's more than just the usual slump in the business. It's that no one even talks about our regular shows. Do you think people talk about Alias or Law and Order? When people talk about TV shows they watch regularly, three come up, and all of them are on cable. The Osbournes, The Sopranos and The Shield.

The average person, seeing this, will say, "It's because they don't censor HBO, and the cable channels are looser about what they air than the TV networks." That's easy to assume, when you have a character named Big Pussy on Sopranos, and when the obvious censor bleeps on The Osbournes are about half of the audio track. But it's more complex than that.

Back to the Future

About ten years ago - God, was it that long ago? - the cast of Good Morning America did a week of shows in Hollywood. Their Friday show was done from the sets of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was then in its last year of production. It was a goofy show. Spencer Christian, their weatherman, dressed in a Star Trek uniform. He was the only person on the show who dressed that way; it was supposed to be a "behind the scenes" thing, and they wanted to take it easy. Christian's stunt made Patrick Stewart walk off the broadcast, since he considered it a personal insult. (Maybe it was star ego, but if I were Stewart, I'd walk off too. The idea that a TV show's weatherman has to be "goofy and cute" has been worn to shreads.)

However, in the tradition of the Enterprise negotiating treaties between warring parties, the conference room set had an astonishing collection of individuals. Seated there was Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney (and ABC), and the heads of NBC, CBS and the Fox network. They were there to discuss a statement made by producer Steven Bochco.

Bochco was famous for shows like Hill Street Blues and Saint Elsewhere. He stated that American broadcast television was losing viewers to channels like HBO, because cable allowed more artistic freedom. He proposed a new police show (that would eventually become NYPD Blue) that would include moments of nudity and adult language.

Every one of the network heads, Eisner included, denied that this kind of material was needed or desired by the American public. Broadcasting was the "big tent" of television, and that included families with kids, and they wanted to keep things that way. They also implied that the government wouldn't let them broadcast such material.

Well, NYPD Blue made it to the air. And while its moments of nudity were brief, and its language wasn't much different from everyday speech, it was a sensation. But not because of the words and nudity. It was the solid and honest drama of the series that made it work.

That being said, what about these new cable shows? Thinking about it, I realized that these shows went further than old TV shows, and in more than language. See if you can spot the similarities and the differences.

Meet the new capo, different from the old capo

The Sopranos resembles the prime-time soap opera shows of the 80's. Remember Dynasty, Dallas, and the rest? All of them were about rich families whose members did dirty things to each other. They backstabbed, betrayed and undermined each other. However, the soaps restrained themselves in two sneaky ways. They said that these betrayals were only the rich betraying the rich; they didn't affect the larger world. And they limited their violence to small moments, usually the big climactic season-enders.

The Sopranos is more honest on both counts. Their violence goes far beyond their own families. People die, and regularly. In the dream-like opening of Dynasty, there were swooping helicopter shots of sprawling estates and huge mansions. That showed the strange, alien world of rich people the show portrayed. Tony Soprano, on the other hand, drives through the blighted, dirty, lower-middle-class streets of New Jersey. His family is involved in meat packing, pizza restaurants and topless clubs, the grind of daily life. We may not live in Tony Soprano's circles, but what he does directly impinges on our world..

Italian groups protest the show, as they've done in TV since The Untouchables, and movies since Little Caesar. No one of any intelligence believes all Italians are criminals. But no one of any intelligence would deny that some Italians are, or claim the Mafia doesn't exist. The show's real daring is standing up and saying, "This kind of family does exist."

Father Is An Idiot - and he cusses.

Since TV started, one group of sitcoms could receive the blanket title Father is an Idiot. One of the first sitcoms established the pattern. Charles Farrell was the constant dupe of his daughter Gale Storm in My Little Margie. The cute, perkygirl was boyish and active; she wasn't accused of being gay, despite boyishly short hair, since America didn't admit the existence of lesbians until the late 60's. She mischeviously worked schemes to get her dad married, or to get money for a fur stole, or whatever. America loved this mischevious little scamp, and they laughed as poor old passive dad wound up chagrinned at the end of each show. This old sitcom ran for decades in reruns, and gave Gale Storm a career that lasted through early TV. This became the standard procedure for sitcoms like Dennis the Menace, Bewitched, Blondie, Married...With Children and dozens of others.

None of these families were real. The Osbourne family is. The real genius of the program, so far un-duplicated by any other "reality" show, is recognizing that the Osbournes duplicate perfectly the classic sitcom family. Their father is an idiot; decades of drugs and "road ladies" has frazzled his brains. The kids are mischevious, playing with props from Ozzy's stage shows. Their wife suffers long and hard to keep her hubby sane and conscious for her gigs. Kelly loses a credit card, and turns the house upside-down to find it. That could be a Margie episode.

Despite their problems and plot complications, they love each other and they survive. The classic sitcom always conclude with the understanding that, despite their conflicts and plot complications, families love one another.

The only sitcom that approached the outrageousness of The Osbournes was Fox's Married...With Children, and their only concern was sleazy sex. That show broke the sitcom basic rule; the characters despised each other. Worse, the show was patently dishonest with its characters and its actors. One of the cast members was an open, out-of-the-closet lesbian, but her on-screen character had to lust after her three husbands. The show's one tip to reality involved the pregnancy of the female lead, Katie Sagal. The pregnancy was written into the show. When Sagal suffered a miscarriage and lost the baby, it could have been a challenge to the writers (beyond finding half-naked women for the show). Instead, the show pretended that the pregnancy never happened. They called it "handling the situation with taste," a concern they had proudly never had before.

When Sharon Osbourne discovered she had cancer, that became part of the show. They didn't deny or hide it. When Ozzy became brain-blasted, they showed that years of drug abuse and road tours do hurt you. The show admits that once-famous rockers are not rich. They are comfortable, but they can't afford to be stupid about money.

Other former big stars like Liza Minelli, and non-stars like Anna Nicole Smith, believed their lives would be as interesting as the Osbornes and mounted "reality shows" that covered their daily lives. Nobody cared. Their lives were not built around the sitcom fundamental of famly love despite hardships. The Osbornes are.

Shield for Murder

The latest hot cable show to develop a regular viewership is The Shield. It's successfully competed against Smallville and other shows by showing a "dirty cop" in greater detail than ever before. The closest TV ever came to a "dirty cop" was the sad parody of Dirty Harry, when David Raschle destroyed his career playing the stumbling, gun-happy Sledge Hammer!.

Some people believe the "dirty cop" first appeared with Dirty Harry. The real origin was Orson Welles's ill-fated crime film Touch of Evil. Even when it was hideously edited, the story of Welles's Lieutenant Quinlan was something shocking. A fat, ponderous, filthy man, Quinlan was judge, jury and executioner for the border town of Las Robles. He framed suspects, bullied witnesses, shot up a woman with heroin to implcate her husband and beat men to within an inch of their lives. And not even for money. He did it to keep control of his town.

Dirty Harry Callahan was reasonably honorable about his "dirty" tactics.He was clearly different from the criminals he fought. Aside from the disdain of "liberal" officials, he was an old-time sheriff. Not so Vic Mackey of The Badge. He deals heroin out of the evidence room to control street gangs. He locks two competing drug dealers in a crate and lets them fight until one of them dies. He then takes the survivor to breakfast.

There's a neat irony in casting Michael Chiklis as Mackie. Previously, he played the honest, friendly police commissioner on ABC's The Commish. He was a family man with a young daughter, and he was utterly decent all the way through. it would be easy to play Mackie as a villain, but The Shield is too clever for that. The police commissioner who wants to nail Mackie for corruption isn't a sterling hero; he wants to promote his own political career.

The Shield admits what no city council and no police department would ever say out loud; that corruption is universal, and that lawbreakers can only be stopped by breaking the law. It also shows a mixed ethnic community (based on Los Angeles's Ramparts district), where the races don't respect each other - or even their own members.

I do know a little about this. My uncle Marty was the sheriff of St. Louis in the 1960's. He never told me he did anything bad - but he told my Dad about things other cops had done, and Dad told me. That may not be much compared to what poor nonwhite people regularly know about cops, but it's something.

Censoring the Wrong Things

So what's the difference? These shows are often raw in their depictions of sex and language - the things broadcast TV usually censors. But that's not the biggest difference. They show human activity that the broadcast networks won't show.

Political correctness means that you don't show the real existence of racism. But there's also sponsorship correctness. No police department would put its stamp of approval on The Shield. Tipper Gore would never accept the personal life of the Osbourne family. We know what Italian organizations think of The Sopranos. Before any of these organizations could get their word in, broadcast executives would start censoring the ideas.

Executives - especially in big companies, like the ones that own all the networks - are afraid of controversy, rocking the boat, standing out, looking different. When the networks were small concerns, on their own, they were willing to take chances. For instance, did you know that I Love Lucy was controversial, because a white woman was married to a Hispanic man? But CBS took the chance and programmed it anyway. That wouldn't happen at AOL Time Warner, Disney or GE, the real owners of the networks.

The three shows I mention treat their subjects fairly. The Sopranos are valid characters, not stereotypes. The Osbournes is not an exposé of a corrupt family. The Shield doesn't blast police as evil - it shows one complex man dealing with a complex situation. But the network suits wouldn't give these shows a chance to prove they were fair. Simply talking about these subjects in a pitch meeting would get their creators kicked out of the office.

 It isn't comforting to hear that ABC, in the middle of ratings trouble, is learning exactly the wrong lessons from these shows. It was just announced that this spring, ABC will produce a new round of  "reality shows." One show is based on Extreme Makeover, showing breast augmentation and other plastic surgery. Another will have a weekly beauty contest. (Does anyone else remember the embarassing Chuck Barris show, The $1.98 Beauty Pageant?)  What was most amazing was that a network spokesperson, announcing these series, said "Reality shows are like crack cocaine for networks."

And like any other addiction, crack cocaine - or reality shows - pre-empts other interesting things in life. Which is why people are turning away from the networks, shaking from withdrawal of audiences, and turning to the cable networks. It might help if the networks went cold turkey - or, perhaps, went cold on the turkeys they've been programming.