Wading through the new television season, a peculiar trend has become apparent. This fall TV characters love talking to the audience, and in record numbers. Producers ran to the cupboard, fetched the cookbook, and turned to the recipe for The Wonder Years. What was even more surprising, though, was that no one noticed it until USA Today wrote about it (Sept. 28). How could TV Guide and its penetrating Cheers & Jeers section miss such an obvious "jeer?
First came Fox's atrocious Get Real. Almost from the beginning we were greeted by the nitwit daughter telling us .... Oh, I forget what the hell she was saying. It was so excruciatingly lame, I can't muster the effort to remember it. I do recall her assuring us this wouldn't be a show where the kids talk to the camera, and so forth, which of course was essentially a lie. Most critics didn't focus in on the collapsed fourth wall, probably because there was so much more to dislike about the program.
Along with Get Real, Fox's even more abysmal Malcolm in the Middle uses the device. Characters from NBC's The Mike O'Malley Show, ABC's Once and Again, UPN's Shasta McNasty and the WB's Jack & Jill all want to bend our ears.
Unlike a lot of TV trends, there's no recent success story to hang this one on. Wonder Years ended ages ago. The WB's "demographically" successful Felicity puts a twist on the idea, having the main character send tapes to an out-of-town friend. This doesn't seem to be enough to suddenly ignite a brush fire of character-narrated shows.
In the past, this has been an effective way for some shows to develop their characters, and the programs as a whole. M*A*S*H used the similar "letter home" in about a half-dozen episodes across its 11 seasons. It's Gary Shandling's Show brilliantly and cynically poked into our living rooms in the late '80s.
The move lately has not only been having characters narrate, but also having them speak directly into the camera, somewhat like Moonlighting did from time to time. This creates an interesting dilemma. It has the advantage of quickly establishing characters and plots, but it assumes we like the person narrating. In many cases we don't, further accelerating our distaste for the series in question.
The temptation is fairly strong to have one or more characters start chattering at the viewer. If a show doesn't make a big splash, or at least establish some sort of beachhead in its first few airings, impatient network brass will pull the plug. Most of the time this is great news, but sometimes a show isn't given a chance to get on its feet.
A narrating character who invites the viewer to be a confidant seems like a natural solution. They will become our friend, someone we care about. You'll tune in to see what your friends are up to, right? No one wants to see a friend get canceled.
The cynical view suggests that Hollywood has merely reached new depths in desperation, or perhaps they think we're too dumb to follow a plot or the subtleties of characters' particular traits.
With Felicity and the characters on M*A*S*H, we got to know them a little first. They just didn't suddenly stick their voices in our ears and have at it. And at that, no one looked into the camera and said, "Hey, let me tell you something about my inane life and even more inane TV show ..."
The only thing more irritating than unwanted or unsolicited narration is the ever-popular flashback episode. There are two approaches, of course. One uses scenes not seen before, often taking place before the show began. The other splices together material from previous episodes. "Remember the time we ...?"
This obviously leads us to wonder if anyone in the narrative camp is going to last long enough to assemble such a flashback episode: "You remember the time I stuck my face in the camera and started talking to you guys?"
Yeah, and we thought how nice it would be if you'd just shut up.
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