As our 3rd Critic on the Spot, we welcome Matthew Gilbert, television critic for the Boston Globe. Among the shrines at which he has worshipped during his tenure: The Sopranos, Freaks and Geeks, Six Feet Under, Scrubs, Lost and The Office. He has written celebrity and author interviews for the Globe, served as literary and managing editor at Boston Review, clerked at a number of local bookstores, and gotten his MA in Literature. He has had other jobs and assignments, too, but he can no longer remember them because TV has destroyed his brain. Today's question comes from Robert David Sullivan.
Q:
I found it amusing that David Chase, the producer of "The Sopranos," patted himself on the back for ending that series without changing any of the main characters in any significant way. That is, none of the characters learned from their mistakes or underwent any kind of epiphany. But you could say the same about almost every series in television history (excluding miniseries)! Do you think that's a fundamental flaw with the TV series format? And do you have examples of TV protagonists who fundamentally, but believably, changed over the course of a series?
I can think of two: "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," in which Mary Richards gradually became more confident and assertive over the seven-year run; and "Deadwood," in which "good" Seth Bullock and "evil" Al Swearingen took on characteristics of each other as they reluctantly became allies.
A:
One of the virtues of TV is that characters don’t need to change unreasonably fast, they can evolve incrementally over seasons. Some TV creators ignore this, especially those from “the old days” and those who make sitcoms. For them, TV is meant to give us the same unchanging situation and people from week to week, like a kind of comfort food. But more and more TV writers are taking advantage of the opportunity to give their characters life arcs.
I agree, Mary Richards, but I would add a whole lot of other characters, including Hawkeye Pierce, a number of the “Six Feet Under” folks, the “Sex and the City” gals EXCEPT Carrie, the people on some of the Zwick-Herskovitz dramas, Andy Sipowicz. These characters may not have changed completely, or learned the error of their ways, or turned their lives around; but, more realistically, something about them altered over the course of the show.
I prefer this kind of storytelling, that starts and ends in a different place. But I do think that the more static approach can have a place on TV, in genre shows that are more like mystery-book series and in comedies that are exactly about the fact that people don’t change (“Seinfeld“).
And unchanging characters also do have a place on dramas. Alas, some people really don’t ever grow -- and I think that was David Chase’s point at the end of “The Sopranos.” Dr. Melfi changed; she reached the end of her naivete and realized that Tony would never change, that her work with him was hopeless. Dramatically, it’s deflating to see a character on the verge of growth and then never succeeding; it’s easy to watch repetition in comedic settings. But I think Chase opted for reality, and for an audience mindfuck along the lines of “All along, you believed there was a good person buried in Tony Soprano, just like Melfi believed; and you were wrong. Some people are hopeless.” I think you had Chase’s desired reaction, Robert.
In “The Wire,” David Simon, too, was making a point about the unchanging nature of social institutions. It’s a sometimes nihilistic and frustrating -- but often powerful -- approach to storytelling.
