'The Jeff Probst Show' Has Been Canceled
'Grey's' Isn't Going Anywhere
TV 101: TV Creators Need to Stop Listening to the Internet
by Jay Black, posted May 20th 2010 11:22AM
The Internet very rarely rallies around a single cause (and even when it does, that cause is usually "famous woman in sex tape that I want to see but not pay for"). The last time that I can remember a time when the Internet was truly unified about something that didn't involve nudity was in October of 2006. That was the month that every single person on planet earth decided that they absolutely hated Nikki and Paulo on 'Lost.'The Internet didn't just spew vitriol about Nikki and Paulo, it fire hosed it like Lardass Hogan at the pie-eating contest. 'Lost' writers couldn't help but notice and in short order something that was supposed to be a multi-episode arc for two new major supporting characters very quickly morphed into one rushed episode and two very gruesome deaths.
As 'Lost' speeds along to the finish line, Nikki and Paulo have been showing up in a lot of retrospectives as one of the show's few mistakes. I agree that Nikki and Paolo incident was a mistake: The writers of 'Lost' should have never listened to the fans on the Internet.
Let's start with some irony: I've been dancing around this column all day because I know that if I don't word it quite right, I'm going to get gutted alive in the comments (like when I said the 'Chuck' flash mobs were dumb). So, to sum: I'm worried about how the Internet will react to my writing about how TV writers shouldn't be worried about how the Internet will react to their writing. Yeah, I'm a d-bag.
But I can't help it. Every single one of your comments gets e-mailed to me and even though each week I promise I won't read them. Of course, when my iPhone buzzes I'm dashing after that feedback like I was Renton diving down the toilet for his drugs. When I'm writing something I know will piss some people off, I brace for an avalanche of negativity.
(Quick side note to illustrate this point: When my article about the 'Jersey Shore' appeared on the AOL front page for eight glorious hours, I was told to "please die" a dozen times. At least they were politely wishing for my death.)
The problem with this is that when you start anticipating negativity, it's hard not to try to avoid getting it in the first place. You start qualifying your opinions, toning down your language, trying to see the other side of things -- all great things if you're building a bipartisan committee or trying to avoid a lecture from Atticus Finch, but terribly boring if you want to entertain people.
If you don't believe me, try listening to the Pat Boone cover of Little Richard's 'Tutti Frutti' and see if you don't start bleeding from one ear. The former was safe and boring and forgettable, the latter will still melt your eyeballs.
TV producers are people, just like TV bloggers (ahem). That means they're just as susceptible to this aversion to negative feedback as the rest of us.
Before the Internet, the only real interaction a TV producer had with his fans were letters. Fan letters are easy to ignore because of how time consuming it is to write one. Once you factor how hard it is to write something on paper, find the right address, pay for a stamp and then actually mail the thing, you realize that whoever took the time to do all that is obviously insane.
Blogs like this one have made things made fan interaction both easier and more complicated. Instead of the odd Unabomber types writing angry letters, you now have the whole world writing about TV. Consider this: There are literally hundreds of thousands of words being generated each and every week just about our national karaoke contest! But it doesn't stop there -- every show gets written about. You have people who refused to write a 500-word essay about 'Hamlet' in high school immersed in a 12,000-word debate about whether Ellen is as good as Paula or if House's romance with Cuddy makes sense for either character.
For the most part this is a great thing. Fans have a place to congregate and TV producers can't take a week off because even a single sub-par episode will unleash the "Jump the Shark" Kraken all over the Internet.
This feedback becomes a problem, however, when it changes the direction of a show's creative vision. This brings us back to the mistake of Nikki and Paulo.
Nikki and Paulo came into existence because the producers of the show noticed a lot of online complaining about how the other survivors were left out when the main cast was off having its adventures. Then, when the two were introduced in the third season as an answer to that question, the same people who were complaining about the lack of a Nikki and Paulo immediately started complaining about the existence of Nikki and Paulo. Then, when the producers gave the people what they wanted by killing off Nikki and Paulo, the episode was met with scathing reviews.
Here's what we learn from this: People don't know what they want.
So that's why as sites like TV Squad find new and better ways to infinitely slice the pop culture pie, I sincerely hope that not a single TV creator reads or reacts to what we're writing. I want them to follow their vision whether I like that vision or not. As 'Wire' creator David Simon once said: "Forgive me, but the audience is like a small child. If given what they wanted every day, it would be ice cream and cake and seven hours of daytime television."
TV creators should be like our parents: doing their best to provide for us, but not bending to our every need.
Now, having said that, I realize that you, the reader, will all but demand for me to do the logical thing and end on some kind of strained Christina Hendricks breast-feeding analogy. But giving in to that would be kind of missing the point, wouldn't it?
(Jay Black is a writer and comedian who really hopes you enjoy this column. To find out more about Jay or to check out one of his live shows, visit his website at www.jayblackcomedy.net.)
[Follow @jayblackcomedy on Twitter]
13 Comments