We all know what makes something good. We’re equally clear on what makes something bad (hint- it’s the opposite of what makes something good). But what about that mysterious quality that makes something Good Bad? You know what I’m talking about. That movie/book/TV show/song that you love even though you know its total crap. What quality does the Good Bad work of art have that Bad Bad work of art lacks? What separates Good Bad from Bad Bad?
I guess I have to come clean now. I’ll just say it quick. It’s like pulling off a Band-Aid...
My wife and I watch Pan Am. We like it. Okay fine, we love it. We’re hooked. I admit it. Perhaps admission of guilt is the first step on the road to recovery.
It started so innocently. The ad looked fun, so we checked out the pilot (wink, wink). Though very pretty to look at, the show was jaw-droppingly bad. The situations were laughable, the acting wooden, and the writing amateurish. Certain plot points were mind-bogglingly improbable. We guffawed through the whole thing.
We had no intention of watching further, but a good friend of ours was in the second episode so we had to watch. Then one night the next week we were sitting there without anything else to watch. The DVR had already recorded it…
What can I tell you? It happened. We’re not proud of it, but there it is. The Pan Am monkey is on our back. Maybe there is some sort of bad TV methadone we can take.
It did get me to thinking, though, because guilty pleasures are unusual for me. I know many people enjoy campy awful shows, but I’m not one of them. I have very little free time. I am easily insulted by stupidity. How have I fallen under the spell of this ridiculous show?
Thinking of this reminded me of a day I spent with a writer friend of mine, who early in his career authored the screenplay for Road House II. Road House II is the straight-to-video sequel to Road House, the Patrick Swayze vehicle from 1989. It was a non-union job, done in a few weeks for a few grand (he has since gone onto much bigger and better things). The only thing it eally required of him was to become something of an expert in the original Road House, which he came to refer to as “the Citizen Kane of bad movies.”
One afternoon I watched it with him. When it was over, I knew exactly what he meant.
Road House is so epically stupid it could be one of the cinema’s great comedies if only it had intended to be so. It is so full of the ridiculous plots, baffling dialogue, and positively wretched acting one wonders how all the talents involved could ever have allowed it to be released.
But here’s the thing – it’s compulsively watchable. I was riveted, and I’m not the only one. More than 20 years after it was released, Road House still shows up on TV all the time. And I still watch it. Apparently many, many people get pleasure from this ludicrous movie. Why?
I have a theory. I think Road House is likable because it tries so damn hard. However awful it gets it’s still trying, with all its feeble might, to be good. I think my wife and I’s feeling about Pan Am is based on something similar. Pan Am tells is stupefyingly dumb stories, and it tells them very badly. But it tells them straight. For that reason, every phony moment is somehow pure. There’s a charm in that guilelessness that you can’t fake.
Stories that wink at me always leave me cold. Desperate Housewives tells me over and over again that nothing that happens there is real. For that reason, I’ve never been able to invest anything in the show, even on a camp level. Pan Am is different. Every ridiculous moment comes straight from the heart.
Give me artists who try honestly to move me, no matter what the level of talent. Even if they fail miserably, the effort had its own rewards. It may even earn some strange kind of respect.
Want to know what I mean? Turn on ABC this Sunday at 10 to find out.
