8 Simple Rules on Tuesday

As predicted everywhere, the numbers for the transition episode of the now Ritter-less sitcom were enough to win Tuesday night for ABC. While people (critics) are being awfully kind to the actual episode itself – describing it as tasteful and fitting – it had all the hallmarks of those embarrassing “very special” episodes long dear to sitcoms. American situation comedies, especially the family kind, are slaves more to comedic rhythm than actual content, i.e. if it’s not actually funny, at least it feels like it is, the laughs coming at the appropriate time with the appropriate sitcom physicality. Take that comic construction and intent away, and what you’ve basically got left is…well, it’s not drama exactly. It’s a weird awkward middle ground, and that’s where Tuesday’s episode of 8 Simple Rules found itself.

I guess we’re supposed to be impressed because they were fairly respectful in dealing with the actual demise – heart attack at the market – but in the minutes before the fateful phone call, it was clear that without Ritter, this sitcom just isn’t very funny. The girl teenage children are annoying and always were, but Ritter’s sunny self showed them up as harridans. Now his death is evidently supposed gives their bitchiness a pass, but the characters aren’t any more appealing now than before.

The curiosity factor understandably propelled this particular episode to a win, but watching a show to scrutinize the cast for signs of genuine grief or emotion is a pretty lousy excuse for a sitcom to continue its existence. What we’ve got here is an iffy comedy, stripped of its heart and its raison d’etre, half-sentimentally and half-crassly choosing to keep going forward. You can’t argue with either motivation, and in television, the end result is obviously the same – high ratings. Tuesday’s 8 Simple Rules took a mediocre (save for one performance) family comedy and turned it into something resembling a lame high school play. Without the balm of a laugh track – or laughs – the simplistic nature of the average sitcom is pretty basic indeed, not even close to approaching even the semblance of sophistication necessary to tackle life’s darker moments. Unfortunately, there’s no way this show can bounce back to just plain yucks; this isn’t just another ill-advised experiment in comedy/drama that can be thankfully forgotten next week.

While the temporary addition of TV veterans James Garner and Suzanne Pleshette was probably a good move, credibility-wise, do we really need to see a sitcom-level cast trying to create something sublime? Do we even want to? Watching this new incarnation of 8 Simple Rules won’t bring John Ritter back to life, and that’s really what everybody wants. This is a heck of a time to have to realize that Art really does imitate Life after all, isn't it?

 
What's On Tonight, Tuesday

Tonight is your chance to see how well ABC has managed in its attempt to keep 8 Simple Rules going without its star, the late John Ritter. While the with-Ritter episodes aired to over-achieving (per the series’ history) numbers at the start of this season -- viewer interest stemming from a combination of curiosity, sentimentality, morbid interest, and respect, not to mention the simple quest for entertainment -- and no doubt tonight’s special hour will get monster tune-in, the future is less sure.

At least this will provide America a chance to voyeuristically if not completely authentically experience a death in the family, and it sure beats the real thing. Realizing that the warm presence has been yanked from the show, ABC is easing the transition with the temporary addition of James Garner to the cast. Will his built-in audience acceptance help co-star Katey Sagal move into her new role as head of the household? Or might it just make 8 Simple Rules, sans Ritter, and then san Garner, simply seem like a really bad idea?

Successful move or not, it’s got to be better than NBC’s special Tuesday night elongated edition of Fear Factor. I’ve got nothing against the concept of people eating cow brains for fun and profit, but I do wish TV would call a geek a geek and get it over with. And I don’t mean the kind who plays with computers, I’m talking about the old carny kind who used to bite the heads off chickens, much to the amusement of the public whose capacity for observing debasement is obviously alive and well. At least there was something intimate and forbidden about watching a geek show in a small sideshow tent, a semblance of a performing relationship between the geek and the watchers. Turning it into a hit TV show watched by millions removes any lingering mystique, replacing it with unimaginable crassness, and turning something unusual into mundane vulgarity. Can’t be good.

Also to note: If you missed the first episode of 24, you’ll have another chance on Fox tonight at 8pm before the second hour unfolds at 9pm.

And now that there's no The Mullets over on UPN, I'm outta there. Next week's TV Guide cheers the network's decision to drop the show with some exceedingly nasty comments about the series. As I wrote here several times, I liked the show a lot. I'm sure the producers saw the backlash coming a mile away when their show hit the air, but wow, the vitriol spewed out onto this sweet and silly romp was way out of proportion. What's the matter, wasn't it "important" enough, or were the actors not urban, child-bearing, or gay enough? In a year when folks are chowing down on bovine medulla during the first hour of primetime, you've got to have quite an overdeveloped and inappropriate sense of outrage to be bothered by a goofball comedy like The Mullets.

 
Catching Up With Carnivale

I’ve been intending to discuss HBO’s newest drama series Carnivale ever since it premiered back in September. My procrastination has something to do with the way I feel about the series – I like it, but I don’t love it in the way I thought I would, and should. Believe me, Carnivale looks like it was made for me. I’ve been a student of carnivals, midways, sideshows, human oddities and the like for many, many years and have an extensive library of books on the subject, so this series looked like a dream come true. And the talent they amassed – the always amazing and seemingly allergic-to-fame Clancy Brown, a slightly shopworn (but in a really good way) Adrienne Barbeau, and the rest of the cast who, though not household names (thank goodness) are outstanding…you couldn’t ask for more. So why is it the show not grabbing me like it ought to?

I’m watching it faithfully, and am constantly impressed by the stunningly evocative look of the production, an authenticity of surroundings that perfectly captures the early 1930’s in all its weathered and weary glory. There’s nothing on TV that looks like this, or ever has; even the ‘30s-set movie Bonnie and Clyde’s Depression Texas looks like a Technicolor musical compared to Carnivale’s relentlessly sandblasted visual wash. It’s perfect, and the run-down tents, creaky wagons and the rest of the props and settings that define the carnival are equally dead-on. They’ve got a time-warp lock on the milieu, no question about it.

And like I said, the performances are captivating. From the smallest bit role to the inscrutable and completely fascinating Nick Stahl as Ben Hawkins -- the strangely-gifted and close-to-the-vest young stranger who joins up with the carnival, thus setting the series in motion -- this cast is incredible. From actors you’ve heard of to those you haven’t, each one truly has the look of the era, and you’ll want to see what they’re up to, you really will, but herein lies the main problem with Carnivale. I realize the series is supposed to be mysterious and unknowable, characters fraught with secret miraculous powers and the plot convoluted and controlled by dark forces, but things are just taking a bit too long to unfold. The pace is slow, and I do get that they’re trying to create a mood here, but we’re forced to stew in the inscrutable a little too long each week. This languor, the leisurely reveal…it’s not building up the kind of forward motion that would help to make Carnivale a truly compelling, can’t-wait-for-the-next-episode kind of experience.

Weird events are being thrust upon weird people with weird abilities, who are living in a weird environment, doing weird jobs – leading to a weird overload. Almost everything in this show is unusual, and it may just be too much. I find myself being most impressed with the scenes (which there have been several) of Ben washing off the dustbowl grime from his hands, or fashioning a makeshift bed underneath one of the wagons; as a tiny bit of ordinariness in this sea of strange they’re a welcome relief, and they, as must as anything else, effectively delineate the sense of struggle and desperation that defines Carnivale. By now it’s an accepted dramatic stereotype that carnival people and carnivals are bizarre; we expect that going in, and already have a pretty well fleshed-out frame of reference -- thanks to years of conditioning from movies, books, jokes, and yearly visits to state fairs, perhaps -- to be completely at home with the arcane minutia of sideshow life.

Or at least viewers who would be attracted to a show like Carnivale are familiar with the conventions; as someone who spent a lot of years anticipating what viewers in large numbers gravitate towards, trust me when I say that the sideshow-amenable audience segment isn’t large enough to create any hits. That’s the basic problem of making a show like Carnivale, business-wise, in the first place, and adding to the challenge is the whole weird-upon-weird situation. It’s just too much; ask the producers of movies like Something Wicked This Way Comes, or Carny, or Freaks, to go back 70 years. The extent to which most viewers want to see something like this is, well…maybe an episode where The Incredible Hulk becomes a carnival worker, or a sideshow dwarf visits the Ponderosa, or Richard Kimble hides out as a midway barker, or maybe Charlie’s Angels go undecover as cootch dancers (if only!). Steady diet…it’s never happened, despite the tantalizing prospects.

It’s totally understandable why dramatists are attracted to this setting and the possibilities; it’s a world unto itself, where the abnormal is normal and regular society isn’t welcome. What a great canvas to fill up with craziness, but it’s obviously just too easy to get carried away and pile it on. What keeps Carnivale from being the next Sopranos is that it’s lacking a relatable hook for the audience-at-large. The Sopranos is a mafia soap opera –- two proven genres -- made ultra-titillating with liberal doses of language, naked women, and sudden, vivid violence. It’s perfect -- what’s not to like? –- but Carnivale hasn’t the advantage of entertainment precedent to assure its reception. Even Six Feet Under -- a mortuary-set super-smart soap opera -- figured out how to take an outré setting and make it comfortable (yet still intriguing) enough to attract a decent following. Bucking the odds going in, Carnivale, every week, pushes itself a little further away from the audience’s reach, and certainly from any audience who hasn’t been devouring the show from the earliest moments. Hats off to HBO for replaying the entire series a couple of times since it started -- including this afternoon -- to help entice would-be converts who’ve lacked an opportunity to jump in, but even a faithful viewer, at least this one, could be forgiven for getting a mite antsy to have the pace pick up.

Carnivale, for all its beauty, authentic mise-en-scene, fascinating characters, and impeccable dramatic construction, comes off as one long mood piece, a mood piece dealing with the barely-graspable, yet certainly compelling, main plotline of the struggle between good and evil, as personified by Clancy Brown’s misguided preacher and Nick Stahl as the young man with the power to heal (at the very least). It’s great stuff, but there are only so many ambiguous flashbacks, mysterious portents and tantalizing whispers you can swallow at one time. Viewers without the necessary stamina or interest will give up, and though you could say good riddance to those that can’t handle it, nobody, surely, wants to make something this good and not have it get an audience. If we’re going to be able to see more than thirteen adventures of Carnivale, somebody needs to be watching. It would be a hollow artistic triumph indeed, if something this special and worthy perished, but in the TV world’s version of the struggle of good vs. evil, the good -- and the potentially great -- very often don’t even get a fair fight.


A new episode of Carnivale premieres on HBO Sunday evenings at 9pm, with frequent encores throughout the week on the various HBO channels, including a complete season repeat this afternoon from 2p – 9pm on HBO2 and HBO2 West.

Check out HBO’s well-developed Carnivale website for complete show information, including schedules, episode synopses (very helpful!), behind-the-scenes material, and discussion boards where you and fellow fans can try to figure out what the heck is going on in the show.