Why Procedurals Will Never Do It For Me

I watched Cold Case last night. I sometimes, if infrequently, will get pulled into watching an episode of a procedural show due to the teaser, or a guest star I like, or a complete lack of anything else on television. Last night it was a combination of all three. Charles (aka Chip) Esten, lately of The Office but a familiar face to the legion of Whose Line Is It Anyway? fans, played a Wolfman Jack-esque DJ who apparently committed suicide during a broadcast in the mid-50s. It's discovered through modern technology that he didn't so much commit suicide as get murdered by an unknown assailant.

As with most shows of this type, the investigators have a number of suspects to go on. Was it his assistant who resented Hawk (the DJ) for not playing his music and whom Hawk had just discovered was taking payola? Was it his ex-wife who wanted to sell the house that he had co-signed on but had never paid money towards? Was it the obsessed fan who wouldn't leave him alone? Was it the fan's violent and criminal boyfriend? Was it the fan's father who claimed the Hawk knocked her up?

I won't spoil it for you - needless to say, it goes in circles but it was an interesting enough story. The one off-putting thing I find about Cold Case is that they're so willing to believe whichever suspect they've come up with next is the guilty party. So in one episode they say with conviction that about eight different people are murderers. Which just makes them look kinda dumb and quick to judge.

But will I be tuning in next week? Nah. There's a somewhat interesting back story with Nestor Carbonell which I wouldn't be opposed to seeing the outcome of, but it's nothing so intriguing that I'll be setting my VCR. And this is precisely why procedurals have never done it for me. I love arcs. I'm like an arc junkie. It's why Season 4 will never be in my top five favourite seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The arc was bad. Individual episodes were fantastic; horrible, horrible arc. It doesn't even have to be a story arc. Character arcs are just as fascinating to me. In fact, I much prefer a strong character arc to a strong story arc. Which is probably why I'll always love Buffy just a little more than Veronica Mars, even though I think there are few seasons of television with a better story arc than the first season of VM. BtVS's character growth was, for the most part, continual and logical. VM's is not so. Which isn't to say it's bad, it's just that I don't understand or see the motivation for a lot of the changes that the characters go through.

But I digress. I think procedurals are great for the summer when most of the good shows are on hiatus and you're not home every week. They're great for when you have an hour with nothing to do and you're looking for something just to occupy your time. And many of them have beautiful cinematography and direction - the original CSI comes to mind. But there's nothing there to keep bringing me back every week. And that's what I think good TV should be about. Wanting to come back to these characters every week and have them be a part of your lives. It's what TV can do that film can't.

I think maybe serials, like 24 and Lost, are relationships. They're like your best friend or your significant other. You see them regularly, you put actual time and effort into building something with them. And maybe procedurals are like your second cousins and that fun guy that you like to go clubbing with but aren't particularly close to. You get together once in awhile and have some fun, tell some stories, but you know that there isn't any pressure to hook up again any time soon. Both have their place, and you're fond of both, but you get more meaning out of one than the other and consequently have to put a lot more effort into it. I guess that's the difference.

And I've gone on way to long about this, so we're putting a cap on it.

Higher Education

*Spoilers for episodes 1-3 of Veronica Mars Season 3 below*

It's a problem faced on all high-school dramas eventually. Your students near the end of senior year and suddenly you wonder, what's going to happen? Do you create a college in town that they all can attend? Do you send them all off to the same college? Or do you find a way for them all to still interact despite being at different schools.

Of the possible situations, the one I like the least is when they all go to the same college outside of their hometown. That seems to stretch believability. I'm looking at Saved By the Bell, the College years here. How they all managed to get into the same school baffles me.

Also pretty hokey is the sudden creation of a university or college in their town. I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer more than is probably healthy, but when UC Sunnydale first got brought up, even I couldn't contain my groan. Although I do thank them for keeping Xander out and not having Giles get a job on campus. That would have been too easy. Much like the route that Veronica Mars has taken. Almost everyone got into Hearst College. Wallace is in on a scholarship, as is presumably, Veronica and Mac as neither one of them are wealthy. Logan somehow managed to scrape his way in, but they don't go into too much detail, and Dick's mother bought her son's entrance. And because they didn't want to leave him behind, Weevil got a job there. It seems a little silly to me. It would have been easy to keep Dick into the college mix simply by making him Logan's roommate. I mean, if memory serves he didn't even graduate high school. And Weevil could have continued to work for Keith. It was nice to see both of them interact with someone other than Veronica, anyway.

The other option, and I think this was done best on Dawson's Creek (and how often can you say that?), is that people go to different schools, but in the same center. In the case of Dawson's everyone went to Boston, but while Joey went to the Harvard substitute (I can't recall the name), Jen and Jack went to the state college, later to be joined by Dawson when he left USC to go to some no-name Film program (stupidest decision ever). And Pacey got a job at a restaurant in Boston. The key was, they all met new people and spent time on their own, but also would interact with each other, too. And this seems more realistic as Boston was the closest big center to Capeside and it just wouldn't make sense for them all to end up at Capeside Community College.

They could have easily done that on Veronica Mars. Have them move to San Diego and go to different schools within the city. Have Weevil get a job there. Maybe Keith needs to solve a mystery in San Diego, and uh... well, we'd find something for Lamb to do. But you get my drift.

Though, to be perfectly fair to the characters, if the leader of my college tour was George Michael Bluth, I'd probably end up going to that college, too.

New Series: The Nine

I knew next to nothing of this show going in. My knowledge extended to the awareness that Tim Daly, Scott Wolf, Kim Raver and the doctor from Enterprise had a series starting and it really ended about there. And while I like Tim Daly and Scott Wolf it wasn't something I even considered watching.

And then I saw a commercial during Lost, and I'll admit to being intrigued.

So, after Lost ended last week I decided not to change the channel and see what was going down. I saw a couple more faces that I recognised and enjoyed (Chi McBride, Lourdes Benedicto, and Greg's mother from Dharma and Greg) and within three minutes, easily, I was completely sucked into this show. Completely.

It sets up a mystery of what happened in the 52 hours that this group of people, both hostages and robbers, were trapped in the bank. It neatly mixes flashbacks with the present day and the problems that they're facing after coming out of the bank. How existing relationships have changed and how new relationships are being formed.

Despite all of the familiar faces, the character I'm most intrigued with is the bank manager's (McBride) daughter, Felicia. At sixteen, she the youngest of the hostages and has no memory of anything that happened outside of initally seeing her father being lead into the safe at gunpoint. It's through her getting her memories back that I believe we as an audience will get the story as it unfolds.

What I think makes this show so intriguing is a mixture of the mystery about the events of the 52 hours and the relatable characters. The hostages aren't all saints and the robbers aren't entirely evil. The situation got out of hand for everyone involved. It's not just the desire of wanting to know what happened during the robbery but also to see how they put their lives back together again.

I have a feeling that it's going to be good.

New Series: Ugly Betty

I love the end of September and beginning of October. The weather is lovely, the leaves turn glowing shades of crimson and gold, and television returns. Not that it's gone anywhere necessarily, but it's good to see your old friends back and make some new ones.

The girl whom I think will be a particularly good friend of mine this year goes by the name of Betty Suarez, the title character of Ugly Betty, the American remake of the Colombian telenovela, Yo Soy Betty la Fea. Make no mistake, while the character of Betty is indeed aesthetically unpleasing, the potential for cuteness lies beneath. Her portrayer, America Ferrera, is adorable, though not perhaps one of your cookie-cutter, tiny, blonde actresses. She's a little round, kinda short, but she's got spunk. And unlike Lou Grant, I like spunk, at least in healthy doses.

My biggest fear with this show, despite the promises of Ferrera and exec. producer Salma Hayek, is that they're going to pretty her up. That she'll lose the braces, hideous glasses, unibrow (actually they've already 86ed this) and that she'll lose weight to become a sort of Salma-esque sex bomb. Sort of like Sara Rue on Less than Perfect. Because once she became actress-y looking the show sort of lost it's theme, ya know? And also, if they go that route, you know that the "will they/won't they" dynamic between her and womanizing boss, Daniel, won't be far behind and I really like the sibling-esque relationship that they have. In fact, I think the quickest way they could kill the show would be to start hinting at a relationship between the two of them.

The other fear I have is that it will be week after week of Betty being humiliated. I understand that she's a fish out of water and that she really doesn't fit in with the high fashion world of "Mode" magazine, but it's really difficult watching someone that you love being hurt over and over again. It's actually the reason that I think the UK version of The Office worked: David Brent was someone we could despise quite easily and so watching him embarass himself week after week, while difficult, wasn't as excruciating as watching Michael Scott humiliate himself on the US version of The Office. Because Michael is more human of a character. And I've noticed in the back half of the second season they eased off on the assy antics. They're still there, but they're mixed in with compassion and pathos.

But back to Betty. Despite all of this, I think this is a show I could come to love and that it's a show that will fluorish. Because it has heart. Which may be nauseating in our increasingly cynical world, but Betty makes you believe that good will prevail and that hard work will be rewarded. She's a nice girl from a good family (I love her sister Hilda, and her nephew Justin) and the bitches at "Mode" won't break her spirit. Along with her trusty friend Christine in wardrobe and the mostly-supportive Daniel at her back, she'll be fine.

Well, until the next disaster, because it just wouldn't be Betty if there wasn't some disaster going on.