How To Kill Your TV Show

Prison Break, the popular American TV series now in its 3rd season, has recently made a creative decision, based on behind-the-scenes problems, that will undoubtedly destroy the show's already-perilous hopes for any future life, or viewer loyalty. They have recently killed off the character of Dr. Sara Tancredi, the main love object of tattooed protagonist Michael Scofield.

Over the first two seasons, their painful, complex relationship (based on using, being used, and getting over that) was at first enigmatic, then deeply moving, becoming the centre of an otherwise often simply ludicrous and hyper-violent spectacle. Sara was the emotional anchor of the show. Unfortunately, the actor playing her character, Sarah Wayne Callies, pictured, became, in "real life", pregnant, wanted out of the show, and refused, it is claimed, to co-operate with a third season 13-episode arc that would have had her death (one imagines) more artfully engineered.

Instead, she was unceremoniously given the literal chop - her severed head appearing in a box. This grisly homage to David Fincher or indeed Psycho may have been a funny industry in-joke for a few suits, but it has also grossly insulted the fanbase (see the blogs) and ruined any sense of past or present continuity. As one fan put it, if this series is about hope, why should I care now? TV requires a comfort zone the cinema need not offer.

Was Dr. Tancredi a John The Baptist figure? Is the "Greatest Story Ever Told" spoiled by his death at the hands of Salome? Prison Break was good TV storytelling, but it was founded on characters that the audience rooted for, and loved. With Sara gone, it is a bunch of sadists locked in a Panamanian prison. I recommend some radical script doctoring, or resurrectionary work. Make it somehow a faked death. Bring her back. Religion is based on love, and hope, and TV's mass opiate requires the chance of a second life.

Comments

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Search This Blog