Writers' Revelatory Strike

Two friends -- one from college and one from high school -- responded to my Facebook suggestion that, after seeing lists of shows delayed or even canceled by the current Writers Guild of America strike, I was not exactly unhappy with the strike's fallout.

The suggestion arose that TV show reruns from the past. My female high school friend suggested M*A*S*H* and I added China Beach, and my male college friend seemed OK with both. He's also the one that noted networks are likely to respond with rafts of "unscripted" reality shows, so I cast evil spirits out of him and he's resting comfortably.

One part of the fallout was that I learned China Beach is not streamed anywhere. So I bought a boxed set of DVDs that has a sexualized box cover that kind of goes against what the show tried to do with TV nurses. No problem, I won't need the box and there's recycling in the next town over.

Another part of the fallout was that some other people in the discussion in real life disagreed with the idea that shows from earlier eras might stack up as well or even higher than today's "Prestige TV." This is an idea that TV today -- or perhaps just a few years ago -- is the best television ever in terms of writing, acting and concepts.

The exhibits are usually listed thusly: The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, The Wire, Mad Men and several others, depending on the lister's preferences. Qualities they are said to share are morally complex protagonists, great acting, questionable behavior on the part of the protagonists and such.

They sometimes play fast and loose with the truth. Arizona school teacher Walter White would have had some pretty good insurance when he was diagnosed with cancer, meaning he did not need to sell a chemical that ruins hundreds of thousands of lives ands ends thousands of others. And his willingness to do so indicates he did not "break bad" so much as "continue to be bad and actually get worse."

Organized crime is not dominated by colorful and conflicted people like Tony Soprano, Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri or the latest entry, Sylvester Stallone's Dwight "The General" Manfredi. Stallone's character is the lead of Tulsa King, a show shot almost exclusively in Oklahoma City. Organized crime is filled with people who will addict people, prostitute people (mostly women), kill people and do whatever else needs to be done to make money legally and otherwise.

Ranchers do not brand their workers and murder and beat people up before breakfast. Ask a real rancher to take someone "to the train station" and you'll likely hear, "Can't. That closed down years ago."

Anyone who wants to like any of these shows should do so, of course. Almost every one of them have some fascinating characters, situations, or scenes. Ray McKinnon, Timothy Olyphant and John Hawkes create a marvelous three-minute vision of the meaning of friendship in the episode "Mr. Wu" of Deadwood.

But there's almost always a flip side. The same Deadwood  features a scene in which Powers Boothe's character brutally beats two swindling children on camera. They suffer permanent brain damage before he kills them.

As I ramble to a point, I guess I'm stuck with the idea that making villains into protagonists produces ugly entertainment. Best to elect them to public office in state and national capitals. Reality is all too often ugly enough, and they fit in just fine.