HE'S EVIL TRACY? OH, HE'S EVIL COMMA TRACY. GO ON: Some people have called this a down year for 30 Rock, though I question whether it's a down year or we're just becoming overly accustomed to the show's pace, cadences, and characters.* However you feel about the season as a whole, though, I certainly hope you were looking forward to this year's installment of Everything Tracy Jordan Said, from Unlikely Words, because it's as good as I remember it.
*We've now had the show for four years, and I think the maximum ideal lifespan for a show is five seasons. Go ahead and think of a show other than The Wire or maybe BSG that ran five or more seasons and never had a creative drop-off or an extended period of mediocrity (and The Wire benefited creatively from both the short cable season and at least one extended hiatus). True excellence in a television show depends to some degree on a show's ability either to present us with something new or to present something in a new way. Comedy in particular requires an element of surprise, which must be extraordinarily difficult to maintain for 100-plus episodes without wholesale cast changes.
Admittedly, there were substantial cast changes/additions along the way, but Cheers comes to mind as something that worked for an extraordinarily long time very well--I don't recall there being a "bad" season (a similar argument could be made for Frasier). M*A*S*H might fall into the same category, though it certainly had its down moments.
ReplyDeleteI can see the argument for both of those. I thought that late-era M*A*S*H (basically, everything after Jamie Farr took off his dress) and Kirstie Alley-era Cheers represented significant dropoffs from earlier periods, but I know people who don't share my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI can see the argument for both of those. I thought that late-era M*A*S*H (basically, everything after Jamie Farr took off his dress) and Kirstie Alley-era Cheers represented significant dropoffs from earlier periods, but I know people who don't share my opinion.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, that doesn't mean that they were bad. I don't know that people think that the Office or 30 Rock are terrible shows now either. I just mean that it's hard to sustain a period where a significant number of people are calling a show the best comedy or best drama on television.
ReplyDeleteAgreed--also, this has been an uncommonly strong year for new comedy in particular--Cougar Town, Modern Family, Community, and Glee are all offering dfferent (if not always entirely effecitve) views of where comedy is and where it can be going. Add to that Parks and Rec figuring out what it wanted to be over the summer, and that's a justifiable group of 5 Emmy nominees.
ReplyDeleteTechnically, BSG only has four seasons (but they were spread out over five years). Supernatural just finished a stellar fifth season (and seasons-long narrative arc), and I doubt the superlative writing will drop off next year. But I don't think the problem is how many seasons a show runs; I think the problem lies in 18-22 episodes per season. Shows benefit narratively from fewer episodes. Consider British shows like The Office or The IT Crowd, or the Canadian brilliance that is Slings and Arrows. Consider Mad Men.
ReplyDeleteI'd say ER had a good 9+ years before it truly turned to shit (the helicopter), but I'd respect anyone who said that once Clooney left (5 seasons) it dropped by a step. And Law & Order, but its structure makes it a special case.
ReplyDeleteFor comedies? Seinfeld had seven pretty great seasons in the middle bookended by mediocre ones on either end. And, of course, The Simpsons -- whenever you think its dropoff started, it was at least a decade into its run.
I'm not going to agree with you on either ER or Seinfeld sustaining the peak, but I'm also not going to argue. I was never as high on either of those shows as you were, so we'd be fighting about first principles in some way. I will say that I phrased the question differently on purpose -- my question was really "how many shows have never had an extended creative lull?" rather than "how many had a run of at least five good years at some point?"
ReplyDeleteI've never seen Supernatural. I watched BSG in its entirety on DVD, and it sure felt like longer than four seasons. I think that it's that there was a miniseries, then one or more bifurcated seasons, plus a movie that felt like part of one of the seasons (The Plan didn't feel that way to me, so I'm not counting it). I never really understood how it ran, actually. Felt like longer than five years. I guess it was only 80 episodes, which I suppose supports my point.
The Larry Sanders Show never had a lull, but it's "six seasons" constituted four seasons in terms of network orders.
ReplyDeleteI caught up on Supernatural DVRing TNT earlier this year. Really, really good show, and I think a lot of people on this site would really like it. The way they just nail pop culture tropes - the Bank Hostage Situation episode, the Blair Witch camera episode, the Prison Break episode - and mix them with little bits of urban legend and old school mythology is just consistently great. Sneaky good writing.
ReplyDeleteSouth Park, Mary Tyler Moore, and The Andy Griffith Show, all sustained or have sustained strong and long runs.
ReplyDeleteThe weakest link in BSG was that - because of the writers strike - they had to do the mid-Season 4 ending on the nuked Earth and then write themselves back off of that Earth and then onto another one to get to the end. I would have loved to have seen the Season 4 that didn't have that detour in it.
ReplyDeleteThe Simpsons was terrific through 8 seasons. (Season 8 admittedly has some low points, but it also has some of the series' absolute best episodes).
ReplyDeleteYou're wrong on South Park. It's erratic.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I tend to think of the period after the nuked Earth as an extended creative lull for BSG, right up until Gaeta's mutiny, which, of course, was about as good as TV gets. It's funny that BSG had such an incredible beginning (especially "33"), such an incredible arc in the middle (New Caprica and the repercussions after, marred only by Fat Apollo), and such an incredible arc at the end (Gaeta's mutiny).
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't even know how to evaluate whether Andy Griffith was unmarred by any creative downturns -- it's from such a different era that it almost doesn't seem like TV.
ReplyDeleteThe Shield? Admittedly, some of the first parts of S7 and a good lot of the Glenn Close season (4?) were weakish, but overall, that maintained it's level of top-notch entertainment through the entire run, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with the love for Supernatural. Great writing not just on the pop culture/urban legend/mythology front, but on a characterization level as well. The show goes to some pretty dark places in that regard. Also on a humor front- there are very few episodes that don't contain at least one chuckle, and often laugh out loud funny moments. In a show that deals with demons, monsters, the apocalypse- pretty impressive.
ReplyDeleteI'm confused. There's only one episode between "Sometimes a Great Nation" (nuked Earth) and "The Oath" (the first of the two mutiny episodes). What am I missing?
ReplyDelete(For me, the BSG lull was in the second half of the third season, leading up to Crossroads.)
ReplyDeleteI think the magic thing is less number of seasons than number of episodes--going much past the 100 episode mark without a decline in quality is what's hard. (That doesn't mean it's not possible for the quality of the show to ebb and flow--for instance, Ally McBeal probably had about 50-60 really good episodes of its 112, but those were spread around--good first season, OK second season, bad third season, really good fourth season (with RDJ), and awful fifth season.)
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