News > The Biggest Changes the Best Shows on TV Need to Make
April 23, 2007
Written by Anthony Burch
I don’t watch that much TV, so when I say “best,” you can take that phrase as subjectively as possible. I don’t get Showtime, I’m not an American Idol guy, and to this day I haven’t seen a single episode of The Sopranos.
But when I do actually watch and follow a show, that show has to be as good as it can be: no matter how great a show may seem, there’s always room for improvement. And in the case of these shows, we’re talking about a hell of a lot of room.
And so without any further ado, here are the absolutely, positively necessary changes that my favorite TV shows need to make.
30 Rock – Kill Tracy Morgan
Firstly: Don’t give me shit for enjoying 30 Rock. I know it’s frequently juvenile and it’s got a lot of clichéd characters, but Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, and the dude who plays Kenneth the Page are reason enough to watch the show.
And secondly: no, I’m not referring to Tracy Jordan, the fictional character Tracy Morgan plays on the show. And I’m not saying that the producers should fire Tracy Morgan, or replace him, or write him out of the show. I'm saying need to bring Tracy Morgan out on live television, in front of the entire country, and publicly execute him.
Now, this isn’t to suggest that 30 Rock is a masterpiece whose only weak link is Morgan’s humor (the show probably wouldn’t be as entertaining as it is were it not for the fact that most audience members would cut off at least two fingers for the opportunity to sleep with either Tina Fey or Alec Baldwin, or, in my case, either of them), but the Tracy scenes are definitely the low point of any given episode.
While the show manages to be decently charming and witty when it focuses on any and all things Tina-Fey-related, it careens into dangerous lowbrow territory every time Tracy Morgan and his enormous bling show up onscreen. Yeah, we get it: he’s black, and he’s stupid. Har effing har.
House MD – Stop focusing on medical BS
Greg House is probably the single coolest character on television today. Without him, House MD is nothing: the three members of his team exist only to give him different types of people to make fun of (as many recent episodes have shown, neither Cameron, Chase, or Foreman – I had to use IMDB to remember Foreman’s name, which should tell you something – can function on their own as characters), and the best scenes in any given episode usually revolve around one of two things: House visiting the free clinic and making fun of people’s illnesses, or House bantering/insulting his “friends,” Cuddy and Wilson.
So why even bother with the medical mystery stuff anymore? The cases are almost never suspenseful (House has saved all but, like, two of his patients), House is never wrong, and the medical cases make each episode interchangeable with every other episode. In a way, House has an identical story structure with Scooby Doo: the gang finds a patient, the gang thinks it’s one thing but it’s actually another, House draws on a white board and makes fun of the black guy, House saves the patient. It’s a reliable structure. A dependable structure. An utterly boring structure. House is at his best when he expresses his social and political opinions in a way that offends the viewer even if you agree with him: whether he’s disproving God or making pseudo-racist jokes, House is most fun when he isn’t even involved with medical mysteries. Just give me forty-five minutes of Hugh Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard arguing about everyday stuff, and the show will be almost immeasurably better.
Lost – Insert your own complaint here
Seriously, take your pick: plot twists, unanswered questions, new characters, too many flashbacks – whatever you’ve got, I’ll probably agree with.
24 – Change everything
Seriously. Everything. Last year’s season finale was cool because it potentially paved the way for a totally unorthodox sixth season: instead of having to Stop a Terrorist Threat, we’d spend 24 hours in Jack’s life as he tried to escape from a Chinese prison. It would have been a great and unexpected change in plot and location – the exact shot in the arm the series needed.
But alas, this season is turning out just like every other season of 24: nuke threats, potential moles, duplicitous White House staff members, Chloe being a mousy bitch, and Jack Bauer going renegade. While it’s pretty cool that the writers decided to end the nuke plot early this season (“Say hello to your brother”), they not only pulled the exact same switcheroo before (in season two, where a nuke threat was replaced with keeping the US out of a false war), but this time replaced it with yet another Jack’s Loved One is In Danger and He Has to Go Renegade To Save Them Because The Government Doesn’t Understand plot – literally the exact plot that jump-started the first season.
I’ll end up watching 24 no matter what the writers do, but the show seriously needs to make drastic changes if it wants to remain even remotely relevant. Make the terrorists win one season, and force Jack to spend the entirety of the following season searching for survivors. Move Jack to another country. Relegate Jack to a secondary role. Do anything to change the plot from its formulaic “LA is under attack and Jack has personal problems” origins.
Doctor Who – Find a companion for The Doctor who has an actual personality arc
Last year, the show lost Billie Piper, whose performance as Rose may have made her one of the single best companions The Doctor ever traveled with. She was intelligent, independent, romantic, and a woman of action.
After two years of her, who did Russell T. Davies decide to replace her with? Martha Jones: an intelligent, independent, romantic woman of action. Honestly, what’s the point? Losing Rose, while sad (my sister cried like a little bitch), represented a chance to reinvigorate the series. Since David Tennant hopefully won’t be leaving the show anytime soon (knock on wood), why not give him a drastically different new companion, instead of just supplying him with Rose 2.0? Why couldn’t The Doctor find a person who, instead of already serving as a capable and adventurous companion, had to ease into the situation? Someone who has the actual capacity to change as a character over the course of the series, in the same way that Rose did? As it stands now, Martha Jones is a fully formed character – she’s as capable as capable gets, her occasional jealousy of Rose notwithstanding. Unless Davies is planning something enormous (which, given last year’s finale, is a definite possibility), Martha’s existence seems a rather wasted opportunity to refresh the tone of the series.
Heroes – Stop letting Jeph Loeb write dialogue
I know he’s a decent comic writer, but there’s one thing that Loeb seems unable to grasp: comic book dialogue does not work when spoken by real actors. Take the following scene as an example: a mechanic with super-hearing is about to be killed by Sylar, the main villain of the series.
“Your heart…what’s that sound?”, she asks.
Sylar steps into frame, his face slowly coming into focus.
“Murder.”
Now, that may sound cool written down, and it is – lines like that are something you write in a comic book when you need a quick and punchy way of transitioning from scene to scene. But when real actors are forced to speak Jeph Loeb’s dialogue, it doesn’t come off as cool or comic-bookish: it just sounds fucking awkward. I, and everyone I watch Heroes with, positively cringed at the above dialogue exchange. Nobody on the planet speaks in Jeph Loeb dialogue because if they did, they’d probably get mocked and/or beaten up.
Defend Jeph Loeb’s track record as a comic writer all you want, but the dude has no idea how to write for real actors. Real people aren’t as overdramatic as Jeph Loeb seems to think they are. Considering Heroes is a show that benefits from its down-to-Earth characters, Loeb’s cheesy comic book dialogue is probably the single weakest aspect of the show.
The Office – Create a character whose sole purpose on the show is to punch Pam Beesley in the throat every other episode
I’m dead serious. Pam was absolutely adorable in the first and second seasons: her shy, understated glances at the camera frequently worked as the perfect punchline to Michael Scott’s ridiculously offensive ramblings, and her blossoming quasi-romance with Jim was cute enough to make even a grown man interested in how it turned out.
Season three, however, has taught us that Pam’s really just a hugely indecisive bitch.
I want Roy! No, wait, I want Jim! No, wait, I want Roy, and I’m going to go through with the marriage! No, wait, I’m going to break off the marriage! But not pursue Jim! And act indecisive and pitiful for a few episodes! Wait, I’m going to get back together with Roy! No, now I want to break up with him! And I only now decide that I actually like Jim despite the fact that he’s already found a much cooler, much hotter, much more compatible girlfriend! I’m Pam Beesley!
Honestly, what the fuck is Pam’s deal? A choice between Roy and Jim is no sort of choice at all, and she had, oh, about a half-dozen frigging chances to realize that. Since there’s no real way to solve this love triangle without giving Pam more chances to bitch and moan about her situation, I propose an alternative solution: create a character whose sole purpose is to punch Pam in the throat whenever she considers opening her meek little mouth. I’d also like to suggest that I play this character. Financially, it’d be in NBC’s interest: I’d play the part for free, and they could technically downplay Jenna Fischer’s pay grade to that an extra because of her lack of spoken lines. Win-win.
Scrubs – Stop being ridiculous
Comedies have a habit of becoming less and less realistic the longer they last. Arrested Development added a bizarre subplot involving a potentially retarded British spy, The Simpsons really has to stretch to cover plotlines they haven’t already done before, and South Park abandoned any semblance of continuity years ago. But what sets these comedies apart from the recent season of Scrubs is one very, very, important fact: even after they got weird, these comedies were still funny.
Scrubs,on the other hand, has gotten much less funny as a result of its ridiculousness. By way of example, just look at this year’s season premiere. It included:
-JD getting kidnapped by a group of gay senior citizens
-Said senior citizens taking JD to Vegas in an attempt to marry him
-JD inadvertently appearing alongside the Blue Man Group
-The entire hospital randomly breaking out into dance when Turk’s catchy ringtone goes off
-Doctor Cox dumping a bowl of spaghetti on his sleeping son
-JD getting ambushed by three people, spray painted the color of the American flag, and getting physically hoisted onto the flagpole where Turk orders him to flap in the breeze, which he does.
Some comedies can be weird like this without being distancing – Scrubs is not one of these comedies. Most of the bizarre humor of the first few seasons was derived from the fact that, no matter how kooky or weird things got, the audience could take solace in the fact that everything out-of-the-ordinary was just a figment of JD’s imagination. Not so, in the new season. When JD is kidnapped by gay old people and thrown onstage with the Blue Man Group, he really gets kidnapped by gay old people and thrown onstage with the Blue Man Group. When JD can’t get through to the hospital because the entire staff is dancing to Turk’s ringtone, the audience is supposed to accept the fact that this is happening in the real world, and not just in JD’s subconscious.
This decision essentially removes one of the most important elements of any good comedy: the straight man. When JD acted kooky in the old seasons, his relatively normal friends made fun of him. When JD acts kooky during this season, his friends act kooky in kind and the entire show turns into one long Looney Tunes affair. The events may be kind of funny taken out of context, but, when worked into a half-hour show, the gags are distancing and awkward.
Entourage – Make the show twice as long
After making us wait roughly eight years for the season to recommence (give or take seven years and six months), a given weekly episode of Entourage still remains short as hell, with nothing ever getting done plot-wise. The thirty minute format worked really well in the first and second seasons when there was almost no plot to speak of, but now that the show has a real narrative thrust (Ari’s attempts to get back in with Vinnie Chase), a half hour per week just doesn’t cut it.
It’s not like the show is particularly hard to film: all of the actors are basically playing variations of their real personalities, all the filming locations are real places, and all the plots are (however loosely) based on real events. Entourage’s charm comes from the fact that its characters are oddly realistic and likeable despite the fact that they’re generally douchebags, so why not give us an extra 30 minutes with Vinnie Chase and his crew? Doubling the average episode length would give us more plot, more comedy, and more time with the characters we like.
Oh, finally – and this is just a minor request – please kill off every character except for Ari Gold, Lloyd, and Johnny Drama. Just a small suggestion. When I say that the douchebag characters are oddly likeable, I’m only referring to Ari and Johnny. Turtle and Vinnie can get hit by a bus. Just putting that out there.
