With AD cold in the ground and The Wire into its last ever season, it seems as good a time as any to post this:
Not to throw a gigantic wet blanket on the state of television, but there's a decent chance that neither the best drama nor the best comedy on television will be back next year.
HBO's "The Wire" and Fox's "Arrested Development" couldn't be any different from each other, but they share one similar trait: relatively speaking, nobody's watching either of them.
(If you care, both shows are on Sundays -- "Arrested Development" at 8: 30 p.m., "The Wire" at 9 p.m.)
Actually, the two series do have shared elements. Both are serialized -- they have intricate, continuing stories. In short-attention-span America, that's a terrible fate, but not necessarily a death sentence -- unless it's combined with smarts.
Both shows are smart.
It's true -- you need to pay attention to both series in order to absorb them fully. In "The Wire," you've got multiple story lines, countless characters and a very complicated overall message. For example, in its second season, "The Wire" essentially became a completely different story, shifting from the drug-riddled Baltimore housing projects to the blue-collar shipping docks, where creator David Simon tackled "the death of the American working class."
Let's see them do that on "The O.C."
In "Arrested Development" there are so many verbal and visual puns it's almost essential to watch the show twice. Last Sunday's episode, which intricately weaved in elements of "A Charlie Brown Christmas," was of particular genius, and the series has, to date, been unmatched in its effort be hysterically smart.
Apparently that plays about as well as a nude "Golden Girls."
Ratings for both series are not good. At HBO, where ratings don't necessarily matter, "The Wire" has yet to be extended for a fourth season. But in the universe of people who actually get HBO, "The Wire" has not caught on. You could argue that the series hasn't been promoted the same way that "The Sopranos" or "Sex and the City" were. But HBO shoulders little blame here. The channel has let Simon, arguably the best writer in television, create his novelistic, dark and intense look at how Baltimore, and by extension, the country, is falling apart. That's just not a chance you're going to get at NBC.
For "Arrested Development," ratings are slightly better than they were last year, when nobody watched. But the series is still hemorrhaging viewers out of "The Simpsons" at an alarming rate. After winning three Emmys -- including the grand prize of outstanding comedy on television -- the payoff has apparently been nil.
And this is where Fox, at least, deserves some blame. You'd think that finally getting an Emmy for a sitcom would unleash the hounds of hype. But instead, it's as if "Arrested Development" has been banished to some dank promotional hole, as if it had slaughtered the cast of "North Shore" and Fox is protecting it from extradition. When "Arrested Development" does get promoted, it's usually the tail end of a big "Simpsons'' push, and the material used is, invariably and mysteriously, none of the funny jokes.
How hard can this be, people? You won an Emmy. For best comedy. You have a show that never fails to produce five or six painful belly laughs per 30 minutes. One of those might entice viewers.
Perhaps the promo department couldn't be pulled away from "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss" or "Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy." (How'd that work out, anyway?)
Now, in fairness, Fox does get credit for renewing this ratings- challenged series before it got the Emmy. But post-victory gloating right here about the Emmy buying "Arrested Development" a full order this year and probably a third season as well no longer applies. The series will make it through this year and, if there's sense left in the viewing public, ratings will rise. But a third season? Oh, that's rich.
Why does it always have to be this way? Why, in a television world where viewers are forever decrying a lack of quality choices (a mostly untrue assumption), do the innovative, risk-taking, aggressively brilliant shows go unwatched?
Oh, that's easy: The rest of the country has no taste. Forget this notion of red and blue states. That's not the country we live in. We live in a land mass divided into two groups -- those who watch "According to Jim" and those who watch "Arrested Development." That's infinitely more frightening than anything politicians could dream up.
There are two episodes left in the third season of "The Wire." If there's not a fourth season, the reason will be this: "CSI." Yes, the top-rated series on American television has many fine virtues. Enough, obviously, to spin off two series that have also landed, impressively, in the Nielsen Top 20. But the problem with "CSI" is the same problem with every other crime-and-punishment procedural series -- the case is closed in the 59th minute. In our world of instant gratification and failed multitasking, who has time to watch four or five complicated storylines play out over 13 or so weeks?
Apparently, not that many.
There's a crime, there's a perp, he's chased and caught, he's brought to justice. All in less than an hour. That's your standard network television show. In this world, "The Wire" cannot survive. Not even on HBO.
There's no end to the theories of why "The Wire" and "Arrested Development" aren't being embraced by the public. Strip them away and there's still this left: These are the two best shows on television. If you can't support them, you've got to live with a ninth "Law & Order" or a third billionaire's reality show. Your choice.
Now, it's also quite possible that viewers just don't like "The Wire" or "Arrested Development." People say the first is too dense, moves too slowly. You know, like a book. People say the comedy in "Arrested Development" is too self-referential or obscure, that it doesn't have a laugh track to help them and is too fast-paced verbally and too challenging visually (it's easy to miss those added-value puns). And if this is the case with you, well, let's just say reasonable people can disagree.
Except you're wrong.
Millions upon millions of people are wrong, evidently. Which is galling and sad and makes a certain someone prone to rage. But what does it say about our standards if "too challenging" is the death blow to quality? If intelligence isn't being rewarded on television, then it will go away.
And, yes, the knee-jerk response to that is, "It already has." But that's not true. Rent or buy the first-season DVDs of "The Wire" and "Arrested Development" for proof that people in the television business are still trying, that genius still sprouts in fields of stupidity.
If "The Wire" and "Arrested Development" don't come back next year, the optimist inside says there will be other exceptional series that will rise to take their places. There will always be great television series. But never enough to let two slip away without outrage.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/10/DDG1FA8O1P1.DTL