While watching the first season of Friday Night Lights I was struck by how similar it was to Mad Men and felt the need to do a comparison piece between them. For those who are unaware, Friday Night Lights is a show based on a movie which is based on a book which is turn based on a fictional high school football team in west Texas. The show focuses on the everyday lives of those closely associated with the team, which turns out to be pretty much everyone in the small football crazed town.
The first season starts out with one of the best pilots that I have ever seen, it has a pretty spoilerific incident at it's conclusion that I won't ruin, but really it's not necessarily that plot line that makes it fantastic. The pacing and energy of the pilot really capture the excitement leading up to the first game of an especially promising season for the Dillon Panthers, and the camerawork (as it is throughout the whole show) is especially beautiful. The show is shot in the familiar cinema verite (the shaky hand held camera technique used in Blair Witch, The Office and Battlestar Galactica) and although I guess it's true of any film or show that use this technique, it really ads a sense of voyeurism making it feel like you're watching real people experience real events.
As I pointed out in a previous post, it is often told that Mad Men is really just a well written period soap opera. I'm not the first person to come up with this description, pretty much every casual viewer and critic has pointed this out. However when I described Mad Men as such at the time I was unaware that this would become somewhat of a criticism of the show. People who have not watched it and are skeptical of its greatness just end up quoting what they've heard by asking 'isn't it just like a soap opera?' Fairly or not, because 'soap operas' are often portrayed as trashy low brow entertainment, this ends up turning some people off to Mad Men who may otherwise find the show completely engrossing.
I much prefer the way Mad Men is described by Chuck Klosterman in his new book Eating the Dinosaur.
As a piece of entertainment, Mad Men has done everything right. It's perfectly cast and brilliantly paced, and it uses symmetrical symbolism in a way rarely attempted on television-every plot point is mirrored by a minor, less overt story line in the same allegorical vein. No Character is drawn without flaws.By Placing it in the 'secret' 1960s that everyone now accepts as normative (i.e. the subversive and damaged masquerading as suburban bliss), its white-collar characters are able to get away with living archaic, un-PC lives that (a) feel completely authentic but (b) would be impossible to depict in the present.
Here he points out all the things that are great about Mad Men without having to resort to talking about their sex lives. But this begs the question, what is wrong exactly with having plot lines driven by characters' personal lives? Almost every serial requires this sort of plotting, and what is special about Mad Men that makes people describe it in this way? Really what makes this show anymore of a soap opera than Battlestar Galactica? I don't think it is (actually I think BSG is much 'worse' in this way), and just because Mad Men smartly focuses its slow moving stories around peoples jobs and important incidents in their realistic lives rather than focusing on explosions and robots, doesn't make it any more melodramatic.
The reason I thought of Mad Men while watching FNL is that the later is pretty much the best nighttime soap opera that I have ever watched. Whereas Mad Men parcels out its events and well thought out plot lines, FNL tries to introduce as many different threads as possible. Put it this way: the writers of Mad Men could have used the plot lines from 2 FNL episodes to fill an entire season, and there were 22 episodes in the first season of FNL. This is great whenever the show introduced a lame plot (did Tyra having a one night stand with the oil speculator from LA do anything for anyone?) seeing that the audience was pretty sure that it would go away as fast as it came. However this also results in plot lines that have enough promise to be strung out over the majority of the season getting dropped just as quickly as they came (the introduction of Voodoo Taylor or Smash's steroid problems). FNL isn't as good as it could be because of this (the subsequent seasons are only 12 episodes so it's possible that they fix this problem) but boy is it watchable and entertaining.
Besides both being 'nighttime soap operas' both Mad Men and FNL rely on a strong sense of 'place' to ground the show. Now when I was doing literary analysis for novels in high school, I was one to kind of ignore issues such as place or setting and focus more on character analysis. Although I think sometimes the importance of 'place' is a little overstated, it is wildly essential to both Mad Men and FNL. Whereas Mad Men tries to place its characters in the context of the changing 60s, FNL attempts to chronicle the inter workings of the aforementioned football obsessed town. Although most people are familiar with the important events of the 60s, I have a suspicion that most people who might watch FNL know very little about these type of towns, or really even Texas in general. FNL attempts to show why those who grow up in towns like Dillon are so obsessed with high school football, and to show that they are not all just 'dumb jocks'. I think people who are still bitter from being picked on by the football players in high school might have some problems with this show (the AV Club message board tells me so) but the portrayal of the athletes is especially important and even handed, and might make some people rethink the 'jerky dumb jock' stereotype.
If forced to choose which show I liked more, I think I would still be pressed to find a show currently airing better than Mad Men. I loved watching the first season of FNL, and the first couple of episodes were some of the most emotionally affecting hours of television I have ever seen (really, me and Lindsay were almost to the point of tears for each of the first 6 or so episodes).The show also portrays sports in the way you wish they were, every game coming down to the final play and almost always in the favor of your rooting interest. However because of the way the show constantly brings up and drops new plot lines the show gets a little shaggy towards the end of the first season. Through thee seasons Mad Men has been absolutely superlative. The way the show is rooted in its well developed characters makes viewers more invested the more they watch it. The seasons are not distinct as they are in a show like The Wire, but I think there is something to be said for being consistently spectacular.
The reason I thought of Mad Men while watching FNL is that the later is pretty much the best nighttime soap opera that I have ever watched. Whereas Mad Men parcels out its events and well thought out plot lines, FNL tries to introduce as many different threads as possible. Put it this way: the writers of Mad Men could have used the plot lines from 2 FNL episodes to fill an entire season, and there were 22 episodes in the first season of FNL. This is great whenever the show introduced a lame plot (did Tyra having a one night stand with the oil speculator from LA do anything for anyone?) seeing that the audience was pretty sure that it would go away as fast as it came. However this also results in plot lines that have enough promise to be strung out over the majority of the season getting dropped just as quickly as they came (the introduction of Voodoo Taylor or Smash's steroid problems). FNL isn't as good as it could be because of this (the subsequent seasons are only 12 episodes so it's possible that they fix this problem) but boy is it watchable and entertaining.
Besides both being 'nighttime soap operas' both Mad Men and FNL rely on a strong sense of 'place' to ground the show. Now when I was doing literary analysis for novels in high school, I was one to kind of ignore issues such as place or setting and focus more on character analysis. Although I think sometimes the importance of 'place' is a little overstated, it is wildly essential to both Mad Men and FNL. Whereas Mad Men tries to place its characters in the context of the changing 60s, FNL attempts to chronicle the inter workings of the aforementioned football obsessed town. Although most people are familiar with the important events of the 60s, I have a suspicion that most people who might watch FNL know very little about these type of towns, or really even Texas in general. FNL attempts to show why those who grow up in towns like Dillon are so obsessed with high school football, and to show that they are not all just 'dumb jocks'. I think people who are still bitter from being picked on by the football players in high school might have some problems with this show (the AV Club message board tells me so) but the portrayal of the athletes is especially important and even handed, and might make some people rethink the 'jerky dumb jock' stereotype.
If forced to choose which show I liked more, I think I would still be pressed to find a show currently airing better than Mad Men. I loved watching the first season of FNL, and the first couple of episodes were some of the most emotionally affecting hours of television I have ever seen (really, me and Lindsay were almost to the point of tears for each of the first 6 or so episodes).The show also portrays sports in the way you wish they were, every game coming down to the final play and almost always in the favor of your rooting interest. However because of the way the show constantly brings up and drops new plot lines the show gets a little shaggy towards the end of the first season. Through thee seasons Mad Men has been absolutely superlative. The way the show is rooted in its well developed characters makes viewers more invested the more they watch it. The seasons are not distinct as they are in a show like The Wire, but I think there is something to be said for being consistently spectacular.
Great post. I don't watch FNL (even though a lot of people in my dept at UT were pretty obsessed with it). It's on my to-do list, which is fast becoming unmanageable. I like your discussion of the importance of place. More and more shows seem to be focusing on time/location as a vital part of the show (thinking about LOST and The Wire).
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think the Mad Men as soap opera is very interesting, but i'm not sure if I agree. Normally, when I think of genre, I think in narrative and aesthetic terms. While Mad Man employs a complicated series of narrative arcs, often (but, importantly, not always) checking in with its large ensemble cast, its visual style is very different from soap opera. I think this is most evident on the level of the soundtrack, where the extra-diegetic music used by melodrama to indicate intense emotional moments is almost entirely absent in Mad Men. While dressed up in period finery, I still think the complexity of Mad Men is more akin to The Wire, Dickensian TV serial, than LOST, a late-night melodrama par excellence.
GRETEL! (Does anyone else actually call you that?)
ReplyDeleteI think what I was trying to get at was that my previous analysis of Mad Men being a soap opera was kind of wrong headed (for all the reasons you ponit out). It's mostly that sometimes very little 'happens' on the show, and people end up describing what sounds like a soap opera to some degree (in terms of plot). And LOST is a great example of a show that is essentially a soap opera, but no one calls it out because there are smoke monsters and pirates and hatches.
yes! You are totally right. I'm rewatching LOST with Evan (he's never seen it and wants to watch the last season live) and we just watched the episode where the Others take Walt. I still think that might be one of the most disturbing moments in the show, since it manages to hesitate for an excruciatingly long time between "we're saved!" and "why do our rescuers look like gypsy pirates..."
ReplyDelete(no one calls me gretel, but they do call me kit, which is kind of the same if you consider it's equally made up - Happy Thanksgiving/Origin of Species?)