A Look At Shameless and Episodes (Can Somebody Please Explain Showtime To Me?)0
Posted In Blog,Entertainment,TV
by Edward Kelly
I pride myself on knowing quite a bit about TV. Sure, the shows I have backed this season have been canceled (Lone Star and Terriers) and sometimes I tend to read far too much into the more trashy fare (Jersey Shore) but, hey, that’s part of being a fan of America’s most populist art form. Sometimes you just make some bad calls.
And that’s fine. I’m just someone on the internet who was lucky enough to stumble across a posting that said SuicideGirls’ blog needed some writers. And here I am. Perhaps it is because of my status as a guy on the outside looking in, I remain baffled by the business side of television. The art/business dichotomy makes TV a fascinating medium, but an ultimately confusing one.
Case in point: the cable network Showtime. Showtime has always been dwarfed by the shadow of the older, more prestigious HBO, which has cultivated a reputation as a place where art and commerce seemingly exist to support each other, rather than run contrary. Just look at HBO’s roster of shows, which practically doubles as a “Best Of” list for the last decade: The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sex And The City, Deadwood. And sure, the network has faltered a bit in recent years (here’s looking at you, Entourage), but reclaimed the throne with Boardwalk Empire at the forefront.
HBO was making original dramas before The Sopranos, but it’s safe to say that Tony and his crew made the network what it was. As a flagship show, The Sopranos is rivaled only by Mad Men in terms of heralding a network that will push the boundaries of television. In fact, AMC is clearly in HBO’s fighting division, given that it’s the home of Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead and impressive-if-uneven experiments like Rubicon.
But Showtime should be the one nipping at HBO’s heels and yet it clearly isn’t. Not that the network hasn’t had good shows. Dexter is quality entertainment. I haven’t seen much of Californication but it makes good use of David Duchovny’s laconic charm. Plus, the first season of The Big C kept me tuning in (although much of the credit for the show’s effectiveness goes to stocking the cast with brilliant actors like Laura Linney and Oliver Platt). But, still, the question stands: If The Sopranos made HBO, Mad Men made AMC, and The Shield made FX—where’s Showtime’s flagship?
Perhaps it lies in Showtime’s two newest shows: Shameless and Episodes. Both aired their first episodes last week and both were… good enough. Not huge praise, I recognize. Shameless, a British import, tells the story of a working class family in Chicago, held together through sheer grit and stolen toilet paper by de facto matriarch Emmy Rossum. Raising her brothers and sisters leaves little time for the young lady’s personal life, but she is suddenly visited by a seemingly perfect knight in shining armor (and, since this is a cable TV drama, he is revealed to be a charming anti-hero). Rounding out a solid cast is William H. Macy as fall-down-drunk and all-around louse Frank Gallagher, the absent father.
Episodes, meanwhile, is BBC/Showtime co-production that relies upon that most absurd of backdrops: show business. In the vein of Hollywood satires like The TV Set, Episodes tells the fish-out-of-water story of two successful Brits who are transplanted to the States in order to make an American version of their sitcom. The first-billed star and prominent feature on Episodes’ marketing materials: Matt Le Blanc.
Now, the really interesting thing about Shameless and Episodes is that the two biggest stars associated with both shows are barely in the respective pilots. Macy has maybe 20 minutes of screen time and for much of that he’s passed out. Le Blanc has about seven lines of dialogue in the first scene of Episodes and then vanishes while some back story is provided. I find this intriguing since it’s a clear case of the business side pushing The Actor and the artistic side pushing The Character. To me, this says that neither creative team wants their show to become a vehicle for the star, and are pushing for a more ensemble vibe. Nothing wrong with that, in fact I applaud the ambition. But, still, people are tuning in to see what Joey and the guy from Fargo are up to and are instead treated to stumbling Brits and Emmy Rossum having sex on a kitchen floor (not complaining about either here).
Like I said, Shameless and Episodes are not bad shows. Shameless has incredibly engaging characters (the relationship between the two teenage brothers, one gay and one straight, is very fertile ground) and whip-smart one-liners (almost too smart, given how much time the characters spend talking about how they ditch school). It will live and die based on how it can grow beyond the usual “gosh, aren’t they desperate?” shock antics.
Episodes has a rockier road ahead of it in my opinion, since it still needs to prove why a show about the crazy trials-and-tribulations of rich, creative people should matter to me. The promising opening scene is a wonderful character-based beat and hopefully the series will tend towards similar moments, rather than simply poking fun at Hollywood’s facades.
But is either of these shows the one that will put Showtime on the map? Probably not. It’s never fair to judge a TV show off the pilot alone, which is why I’ll be checking both out as they continue, but neither feels like it’s doing anything all that original. Which means, for the foreseeable future, it’s not quite time to crown a new cable network king.
