The Bonanza Way

Numb3rs is online.  Two other shows I got hooked on recently are also online.  Leverage and Psych.   I haven’t been getting much sleep the last few nights.  I was better off when you could only watch network TV at set times and HBO and Showtime if you had HBO and Showtime.  If a show wasn’t on when I was home to watch it, too bad for me—or lucky for me.  I missed all of The Larry Sanders Show and NYPD Blue, Buffy and Firefly.  But Felicity passed me right by too.  Now I’m up at two in the morning, watching Psych.

Psych’s fun.  It’s mostly about its own goofiness.  I don’t know if it started out that way.  I’ve been watching shows from the second half of the third season.  But even if it took itself seriously at first, there’s no way that could have lasted.  Why does a brilliant, natural-born detective, with observational and deductive powers that rival Sherlock Holmes’ have to pretend to be a psychic?  Why are the cops he works for as a consultant apparently the only people who fall for his act?  The goofiness and constant stream of allusions to movies and other television shows hide the fact that there isn’t any real reason for Shawn’s fake psychic charade as the not particularly original or complicated plots roll along and the not all that mysterious mysteries get solved.

I probably wouldn’t have stuck with the show very long, in any case.  It’s definitely a seen three or four episodes you’ve seen them all kind of show.  But there’s something developing that I’m pretty sure’s going to drive me back to late night viewings of another show I probably never would have watched if it wasn’t online, Saving Grace. Save me.  Maybe I’ll finally get around to starting The Closer instead.  At any rate, the disturbing development on Psych is that Detective Juliet O’Hara is finally beginning to admit she has feelings for Shawn.

It’s completely understandable why Shawn would have feelings for O’Hara.  She’s pretty, she’s smart, she’s very good at her job, and like all women cops on TV these days, except for Dexter’s sister Deb, she dresses for police work in inappropriately tight tops with deep necklines in order to show perps and victims that spectacular cleavage is not incompatible with effective law enforcement.

But why on earth O’Hara would be attracted to a fake, a flake, and a fraud like Shawn is incomprehensible.  Maybe she suspects that he’s conning everybody and is attracted by his brilliance, despite the fact that’s he’s, well, a con man.  Maybe she has a thing for smart-mouthed arrested adolescents in their mid-thirties with serious issues about being a grown-up who dress, act, and flirt by showing off and teasing exactly as if they were still sophomores in college.

By the way, who told James Roday he was charming?  I mean it.  Whoever did probably ruined him.  I have no doubt that once upon a time, before somebody pointed it out, he was charming, but now that he knows it, he is “charming,” the way a little girl who’s been told she’s pretty is suddenly “pretty” or another one who’s been told she’s smart is suddenly “smart.”

At any rate, unless O’Hara has plumbed hidden depths the writers of the episodes I’ve watched so far haven’t bothered to plumb themselves, there’s no reason for a bright, responsible, professional grown-up like O’Hara to fall for Shawn except that she has to obey the rule.

The rule is that on just about any TV series these days, whatever the genre, no matter if it's a comedy or a drama, every unattached main character must at some point become attached.  There must be a love interest.

If that love interest can be another member of the cast, so much the better.  It saves on salaries.  You don't have to hire two new actors.  The writers are spared the trouble thinking up two new characters who must be likable, a requirement that makes it highly probable that they won't be in the least---they'll be "likable."

Don't worry if the characters pairing up are unsuited for each other.  Don't worry if there's no chemistry between the actors playing the newly coupled couple.  Don't even worry if there's another character one of the lovers would be a better match for.  Apparently audiences need to be assured that their favorites aren't sleeping alone.

Love is always a good thing.  Hence, the rule.

Both Leverage and Numb3rs respect the rule, although so far Leverage isn't adhering to it.  But the potential is built into its premise.  Nathan and Sophie have a past, like Batman and Catwoman have a past, and Hardison is carrying a torch for Parker and according to the rule every good-hearted character who carries a torch must be given his or her heart's desire eventually.  I sure hope the writers disregard the rule in this case.  Part of what makes Parker such a great character is that she is pathologically anti-social.  She is so completely alienated from normal human company that she might as well be an alien from another planet.  She doesn't have ordinary feelings and she doesn't even begin to understand them in other people.  Romantic and sexual encounters aren't at all appealing to her, at least not as appealing as extreme physical danger and reckless disregard for her personal safety in the pursuit of the ultimate turn on, a bit of very grand larceny.  An erotic encounter between her and some poor, unprepared guest star could be funny, at least up until the point where she got him hospitalized or killed.  But a love affair between her and Hardison would turn the series into Splash, with Hardison trying to teach the mermaid, who in this case is more shark than dolphin, how to be a real live human girl. 

On Numb3rs, Charlie and Amita make sense as a couple, although it would have been nice if Navi Rawat had been allowed to look as much like the geek she plays as David Krumholtz is allowed to look like the one he stars as.  And so far as I know---I haven't watched every episode yet---Don's love life is confined to reunions with ex-girlfriends who don't stick around.  But it was the rule and only the rule that brought sensible, and gorgeous, FBI Agent Megan Reeves and goofy, and goofy-looking, physicist Larry Fleinhardt together, a match made only in the imaginations of nerdy male writers.

Speaking of Agent Reeves, or actually the actress who plays her, Diane Farr, who also played Firefighter Laura Miles on Rescue Me.  One of the things I like about Rescue Me is the many ways the writers find to pervert the rule.  It was easy to understand why Farr's character and Daniel Sunjata's Franco Rivera wound up in bed together, despite their initial resistance.  But they never liked liking each other that way and their romance didn't make either of them particularly happy.  Which is about how you'd expect things to go between an arrogant borderline narcissist who enjoys the company of other human beings only up to the point where actual feelings become an issue and a level-headed young careerist struggling to be taken seriously in a very male-dominated profession who's insecure enough about her own ability to handle the job without having to deal with the men's doubt and contempt.  Franco hates it that he's allowed himself to become vulnerable.  Laura feels sheepish and guilty because she can't help suspecting that by sleeping with Franco she's using sex as a way into the fraternity.

Most of the other characters are even unhappier in love than Laura and Franco.  On most shows, love is a reward or a comfort or a happy adventure.  On Rescue Me it's practically a punishment from God.  Tommy and Sheila's relationship is an emotional demolition derby and whatever it is he has with his ex-wife Janet is only marginally less destructive, if only because the two of them enjoy the torture they inflict on each other.

Psych is too lighthearted and emotionally shallow a show for a developing romance between Shawn and O'Hara to turn into the disaster it could only turn into if anything like real life were to be written into the scripts. 

When did this rule kick in anyway?  It wasn't in effect when I was a kid.   There was no rule that regular characters had to pair off like swans and turtle doves.  None of my favorite shows had a love interest.   Captain Kirk didn't have a love interest.  Jim Rockford didn't have a love interest.  Hawkeye Pierce didn't have a love interest.  They had love interests, plural.  Even into the 'Eighties, main characters on TV shows were unabashedly and cheerfully serially monagomous.  MacGyver didn't have a love interest.  Magnum didn't have one.

When the writers felt like writing a mushy story they invented a character that a guest star was brought in to play for one or at most two episodes before she or he got killed, betrayed the hero or heroine, or decided for the hero or heroine's own good that they had to part forever.

That's how they handled in on the Ponderosa.  How many wives did the Cartwright boys go through.  Little Joe alone filled whole cemeteries with the women he loved and lost to illness, bullets, or an Indian's arrow.  That was the Bonanza Way and if it was good enough for Ben, Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe, it's good enough for Shawn Spencer...

Although I hope Maggie Lawson's agent got a No Cartwright Wife clause written into her contract.

Comments

[Claire]

What *is* it with shows having to pair people off? It's a very good question. Gossip rags are obsessed with pairing off too. Pretty young actresses are always supposedly grasping for dates. It's rather obnoxious.

[Jaquandor]

Two thoughts on "Why romance": first, it's probably a logical outcome of shows observing that they have internal continuity; most shows nowadays, if not actually being serialistic in nature, will at least structure things so that characters grow over time, and previous exploits/adventures/cases/whatever can be reference on occasion. Thus, a viewer who tunes into a sporadic episode of, say, CSI can follow along, while a viewer who is a big fan and never misses an episode is kept going by whatever serialistic storylines the show has going on. Second, the focus on romance could come from the media's ongoing obsession with demographics. Maybe they just figure that romances that don't always end with a death or a plane ticket at the end of the hour will keep the women tuning in more often?

[nothstine]

My theory is that the rule kicked in very shortly after the last of the counterexamples you mentioned, somewhere in the mid-80s. That's when the lone male lead got replaced by pairing strong male and female leads, and part of their definition was that they weren't "in" a "relationship."

Early Usenet discussion groups used to call it "UST"--unresolved sexual tension. The approach-avoidance thrill of UST was popular with fans. And it made for some good TV--until, in each case, it got resolved.

UST helped make "Remington Steele" great fun--until a story arc sent Steele and Laura to the UK where they discovered Steele's true identity [another fun driver of the series] and got married. It was a double-dose of the "Very Special Episode" whammy: filmiing in England, and getting married. Mr. Steele, meet the shark. The series ended at that point, although it's not clear which was cause and which was effect.

UST was at the heart of the slick, stylish "Moonlighting." David Addison and Maddie Hayes loathed each other, but needed each other to keep their detective agency afloat. Like "Remington Steele," it's hard to say which did more to drive the show into oblivion in its last season: David and Maddy finally "doing it" or the writers' strike.

And UST made Scully and Mulder the hottest non-couple on television for five or six seasons--after which the resolution of the unresolved sexual tension [they had a baby, although the details are fittingly obscure] replaced their wonderful friction with exchanges of mushy love declarations. Oddly, the departure of Duchovny as Mulder in the last two seasons only managed to make this worse.

There was a moment early on in the X-Files--just a moment, only a few seconds, much less time than it will take to read my description, I'm afraid--that captured the excitement of UST perfectly. Loyal X-Philes will know this scene as soon as I start describing it: Scully believes that Mulder is dead at the hands of the Cigarette Smoking Man. Mourning her partner's death, fearing for her own life, and convinced that their boss, A.D. Skinner, could no longer be trusted, Scully confronts Skinner and an episode ends with the two of them squared off, guns leveled point-blank in each other's face. [This scene had a sphincter factor of about 9.5.] The next episode begins as Mulder, apparently returned from the grave, bursts in, gun drawn, forcing Skinner to back down. Scully is speechless, gobsmacked. Seeing the split-second look that raced over her face--and watching her force it away again just as quickly--when she realized he was alive, was electric, It spoke volumes about their enigmatic relationship, its joys, its pains, and its complexities and trade-offs. No night of sweaty passion between the sheets for Sweeps Month could have told more.

It's probably not a coincidence that this is about the time that strong female leading characters were becoming more numerous on television. It's tempting to suppose that writers just had--have--a difficult time imagining them, and their male opposites, as being anything *but* attached. What that says about the writers, or about TV characters as a lagging indicator of both the success and failures of feminism, I'll leave to others.

bn

[Ken Houghton]

Amy DeLuca from Roswell is still getting shows? And becoming even more of a sexpot?

Cool.

Now I feel even better about not being able to access most of those shows on the Internet--much more fun to read your reviews.

[Rana]

nothstine said it much more elegantly than I will - my reaction was that what changed was that there was pressure to have female characters, but without equal pressure to make them independent ones in the way that the male ones were.

A man married to his job, even now, is acceptable in a way that a woman who loves her career isn't; we idealize the bachelor, but scorn the spinster; and then there's that irritating trope that all women secretly want adolescent bad boys to tempt them and to reform. The idea that a woman might hold out for an equal partner - or, horrors, not want or need a partner at all - remains threatening, and these shows reflect that. A man who doesn't need women isn't a threat in nearly the same way.

So if you pair off the female characters, it both defuses that threat and reinforces the idea that for women any (heterosexual) relationship - no matter how immature or unsuitable the other person is - is better than being independent. It also reassures the men threatened by powerful, smart, attractive women that they can "win" one, even if they don't bother to make an effort to improve themselves to meet those women's standards.

Shorter version: these shows include female characters in part to appeal to a female audience and to look "diverse" - but really, they're aimed at men for men. It's just that women viewers have learned to cope with that imbalance in a way that men would not be, if the genders were reversed.

[Drake]

I hope you're watching Burn Notice, Lance. It's much more entertaining than those other shows.

[diav]

Lance, don't be sexist. You forgot Mary Tyler Moore. Everyone was perfectly happy thinking Lou was the guy for her and didn't really care about any of her "dates". None of us believed that Ted Bessell was the one for her at the end of the series.

[Lance]

Drake,

Burn Notice has been steadily making its way upwards in my Netflix queue. I'm looking forward to it.

Diav, Sorry about that. I didn't mean to leave Mary Richards out. I had a whole paragraph planned about her. But I was in too much of a hurry to post. The last season was ruined for me by Bessell's presence. I kept thinking Why did they give her Anne Marie's boyfriend? He wasn't even good enough for That Girl.

[Kevin Wolf]

Haven't seen Leaverage, so don't know who Parker is, but I wonder after reading your description if you ever seen Bones?

Turns out they also have the lead guy and gal, the UST, but they don't play it up too much -- mainly because Temperance (aka Bones) is much like you describe Parker. She's got no social skills at all and doesn't seem inclined to learn them. It's a generally enjoyable show, if you can stomach some of the surprisingly graphic scenes of murder victims who have had all manner of violence inflicted on them.

[Gary Farber]

"Jim Rockford didn't have a love interest."

Beth Davenport; 27 episodes.

True, it's only a fraction of the 122 episodes and 8 tv movies, but it's substantial.

"MacGyver didn't have a love interest."

MacGyver had duct tape.

"Even into the 'Eighties, main characters on TV shows were unabashedly and cheerfully serially monagomous."

Two words: Remington Steele.

Ah, I see the point has already been made. I was also thinking Moonlighting, as well.

"What that says about the writers, or about TV characters as a lagging indicator of both the success and failures of feminism, I'll leave to others."

Bechdel's Rule.

I second that Burn Notice is quite fun, although I wouldn't judge either it or Leverage as necessarily better than the other. Although if I were in this situation, Burn Notice would probably be the survivor. Probably.

I really do hope you eventually caught up to NYPD Blue, Buffy and Firefly. Particularly the last two.