The Show Must Go On (…and On)

I have been watching Game of Thrones, partly at the urging of a friend, partly for the purposes of social observation, and partly out of morbid curiosity, trying to understand why this show is so popular—the same reasons I watched The Sopranos on DVD a couple of years after it ended, for the same reasons, and even prompted by the same friend.

I’m not sure I understand the popularity of Game of Thrones. I used to dismiss it as a porn version of Lord of the Rings but that is inaccurate; the show is less concerned with sex (and even less  with mythic legend) and more focused on being offensive: rape, beheading, incest, torture, betrayal and death are the main outcomes of its storylines. It’s essentially a carnival of sadism and I’m not sure I have the stomach for it. (Burning a child to death? Really?)  George R. R. Martin, who created the books that the show is based on, blandly explains away that the Middle Ages were a time of great cruelty and thus the horrific nature of his work. But the show is not a depiction of a historical time, it is a sick fantasy that picks and chooses at an endless buffet of horror; it doesn’t illuminate anything unless it is the boundless human appetite for story and entertainment based on others’ suffering.

Maybe it’s me. I never understood the appeal of The Sopranos, either. And I say this as a fan of both The Godfather trilogy and Goodfellas. I understood the appeal of James Gandolfini and Edie Falco just fine.  They were both great, charismatic actors in breakout roles. But I never understood the appeal of the show that depicted the casual, mindless cruelty of a New Jersey crime boss and his dim-witted cohorts on a weekly basis. There was nothing new to learn about the Mafia  or redeeming quality in viewing it—unless learning that a Mafioso might have a fondness for ducks or that he enjoyed eating cold cereal while watching the History Channel seems sufficiently stimulating and rewarding to you to overlook the countless beatings and murders that were part and parcel of the weekly episodes.

Hey, I wouldn’t want to watch Michael Corleone or Henry Hill on a regular basis, either. And why not?  you might ask. To portray someone on film or television, especially for an extended period of time is to inevitably mark that person and their activities as being worthy of interest and fascination, a stamp of approval, if you will. And herein lies the dilemma for cable and television series: the better a job you do telling a story, the more people want to see it. The more they want to see it, the longer the show goes on, whether or not it continues to have dramatic value. And depending on what you’re portraying, there can be moral issues as well.

There could never really be a television series about a concentration camp during the Holocaust that would justify its existence. There is no way to fully portray the scope of the horror and the human tragedy; and certainly no way to make it entertaining. To portray it in any realistic way would be cruel and disgusting beyond belief.

For David Simon, the creator of The Wire (and even for some of the actors) the moral question of depicting the trauma and suffering created by the drug war in inner city Baltimore for the purposes of entertainment became too heavy a burden. The show had great value in educating its viewers as to the human cost of of the drug war—on the cops, the dealers, and the people (especially the children) in inner city neighborhoods. It was unlike any cop series that had come before it, created as it was by David Simon, a Baltimore crime reporter, and Edward Burns, a Baltimore cop, detective and schoolteacher. The writing was sharp and pointed, the show was by turns, funny and tragic, dramatic and suspenseful. It was inevitable that people would be seduced by the entertainment value of it.  And that was the moral dilemma: and what point do you cross the line into exploitation of others’ pain and suffering? You can’t claim to be appalled by something if you milk it year after year for profit. It’s like the joke about the housewife who tells her husband she received an obscene phone call: “It went on for hours.” For the audience, the question is at what point does one change from viewer to voyeur?

I used to also like Justified, a Elmore Leonard-inspired show about a Federal marshal named Raylon Givens who is forced to return home to Kentucky and face his demons, not the least of which is his criminally inclined father, Arlo as well as his sometime friend and nemesis, Boyd Crowder. The show was witty if violent; Marshal Givens was a crack shot with a penchant for shooting people. The first season was episodic while exploring Raylon’s gradual plunge into all the old entanglements of family and feuds in his native Harlan County. The second season took the show to another level as it portrayed the clash between a local criminal clan, the Bennets, led by its powerful matriarch, Maggs and an outside coal-mining corporation. It was damn near operatic.  But after that second season, the show collapsed—under the unrealistic weight of having its lead character shoot people so regularly—and by the need to justify his extreme actions by pitting him against increasingly vile criminals with a proclivity for torture. The show became nothing more than a pretext for extreme violence in the name of justice.

Another show I like a great deal is Nurse Jackie, a cable drama about a drug-addicted ER nurse. Edie Falco is fantastic in the lead role and so are her supporting actors. As it draws to a close, I realize that even though I will miss it, the show’s got to end. How long can you portray a drug addict without appearing to endorse or excuse their actions? It’s  simply not sustainable.

This is how cable series get into trouble. While they have the advantage of extended time to develop characters and plot-lines in a way unimaginable in a two-hour Hollywood movie, they also are condemned by their own success—to prolong their narratives well past their natural conclusion or narrative value. So…Detective Jimmy McNulty fakes being a serial killer to loosen up city funds for police work,  timid Walter White transforms into a violent crime lord, everyone in Mad Men gets a happy ending just because—reducing a classic drama into a seventy hour-plus advertisement for Coke, Raylon Givens just keeps shooting people, and Nurse Jackie Peyton keeps sobering up, only to get high again. We’re addicted to story.