Twin Peaks was a critical innovator in bringing unprecedented artistry and style to television. Following that was The X-Files, which effectively shows the world of TV in transition. On the one hand, it's a standalone procedural series; you can tune into most episodes and get everything you need to know from the hour. However, with the mythology arc, the show ran an extended, long form story that took roughly 60 episodes to complete, many dependent on your knowledge of what happened in earlier seasons to understand.
And at the end of the '90s, two shows emerged that forever changed television: The Sopranos and 24. The Sopranos was notable for many reasons. For one, it started the pay cable original series trend. This was a show that fully exploited its freedom from network censorship, with all kinds of violence and sex.
However, a bigger impact was the fact that the show was just so good that even people who usually dismissed TV had to take notice of it. The Sopranos completely raised the bar on what was possible to do on TV, and other shows struggled to catch up. It was also one of the first shows to consistently present a morally ambiguous universe. Our hero made a lot of bad decisions, and you don't like him — it's more that you're fascinated by him. If previous TV shows used their characters as an idealized alternate family for the viewer, The Sopranos was one where you loved to watch Tony, but had no desire to run into him in real life.
24 brought a lot of what The Sopranos did to network TV, and thus democratized it. HBO's whole slogan was "It's not TV. It's HBO," which appealed to those people who considered themselves above television. 24 showed that a network show could do extreme serialization and still be successful. This is a show where you don't miss an episode — you're either watching the whole day or you're not watching, and that was a new way for network shows to work.
The other change was to bring the morally ambiguous hero to network TV. I think TV changed forever with the second season premiere, when Jack asked for a hacksaw to cut the head off a man he'd just killed. Jack was a guy who didn't care if you didn't like him, he was going to do whatever it took to achieve his goals. And as part of the stories, you frequently saw problems with no easy solution, where Jack would make a huge sacrifice to get something done. Witness the killing of Chapelle in year three, or the Paul Raines vs. terrorist emergency room scene in year four.
Article comments
1 - Howard Dratch
Patrick. Your article on TV vs Movies (the line begins to blur more when both can go on a vcd, dvd, iPod, or Swiss Army Knife) is so well-written, considered and backed up that it is extremely hard to disagree.
In spite of liking the article and your extensive, personal blog, I have to disagree with the basic premise. TV is not the same as movies and normally fails to compete. There seems to be some basic lack that - not the screen size anymore - TV and TV series cannot overcome.
"The Sopranos" I find totally unwatchable although I have tried. The Godfather was an epic work with some great actors (Marlon Brando on the other end of his career from On The Waterfront) and acting, excitement and enough violence to please the most battle-hardened 12 year old boy. I saw it. I realized it was a fine work. I didn't like it.
The Sopranos is similar. Lighting has gotten more depth than soap operas had, the acting is, perhaps, more effective than some old TV series but the basic lack of creativity, vision and excellence that is, sometimes, seen in a real movie is still missing. Only the chase scenes remain with a layer of purely prurient, often violent sex added. An expectation of our times.
I write from the viewpoint of living mostly on the southern frontier of Mexico and unwilling to pay for satellite service, I have missed most of the last decade's shows. It was not a great loss. During the past few weeks living in Florida I had cable with 70 channels or so and a lot of work finding something worth seeing. I always ended up with a movie after some news.
Magnolia is a film I just saw and am digesting. The jury is out. The things that annoyed me in it were TV flaws -- violence, grittiness, lack of motivation and plot twists a la David Lynch that were merely odes to Lynch rather than useful devices.
It still leaves me admiring your article whether or not I agree with it.
2 - foolkiller
"The Sopranos does everything The Godfather does and goes way beyond it; doesn't that mean that The Sopranos is better than any movie ever made?"
You completely fail to take into account the time factor. How many hours of experience are in the Godfather, compared to how many hours of the Sopranos?
The TV pieces you lavish deserved praise upon are all huge pieces of work, and to attempt comparison is like trying to compare a comic strip to Lord of the Rings (the books). One has much more time and words to expand and fill the imaginative world out.
I will say, it is a thoughtful and well written article, the only flaw is as I have pointed out, one should refrain from attempting to compare different things as if they were more than superficially similar.
3 - Lisa McKay
Thoughtful piece, Patrick, and while I haven't seen The Sopranos, I do have to say that both Buffy and Battlestar Galactica are huge favorites of mine.
Having said that, I think that comparing these two mediums (media?) is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. One of the reasons that television is so compelling is that the characters are people we build up a long-term relationship with -- we invite them into our homes on a weekly basis, sometimes for years at a time. A movie is a different animal altogether.
If The Sopranos goes far beyond what The Godfather did -- and what does that mean, anyway? -- is it necessarily better? No, it just means it's a different type of storytelling designed for a completely different venue.
We do need to get rid of our "TV is inferior" mindset, though -- many of the shows you've mentioned are certainly as good in their way as a good film. Some of it is utter crap, but then so are a lot of movies.
4 - foolkiller
Oh yes, simple correction. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was indeed a movie, long before the TV series, starring Kristy Swanson and Donald Sutherland.
5 - Angus
Totally agree.
6 - Chris
The only problem I have with TV shows is they almost never have a decent ending. The drive to keep a successful show on the air is so strong that a solid ending frequently fails to materialize (X-files). If it is doing poorly in the ratings, the show just ends (Twin Peaks). Neither of those is a good idea.
Shows that have a tendency to end seasons on a cliff-hanger (Battlestar Galactica) make me nervous because you never know when it will just disappear. Buffy had it right; make each season ender a satisfying potential end to the series.
With a movie, at least you always get an ending, and even if they overstay their welcome with a long run time, it is never more than an hour, and rarely ruins the movie, whereas a weak last season or two can really kill the memory of a show (X-Files again, Smallville jumped a couple of seasons ago, and I'm afraid Lost is next)
7 - Mike
WORD. I've preferred TV to film for a couple of years now, and own more seasons of TV shows (Buffy, Angel, Wonderfalls, Firefly, West Wing, BSG, Dead Like Me, Rome, et. al.) than I do movies.
8 - Patrick
"TV is not the same as movies and normally fails to compete." - Howard
Thanks for the compliments on the article, if I hadn't seen the last decade of shows, I'd agree with you, up until recently, TV was missing something that the movies had, but it's changed recently. I would agree that film generally has higher production values, but even that's changing. Battlestar Galactica is as consistently visually inventive as any film you're likely to see in the theater.
In general, I'd agree that the disparity in time makes it difficult to compare, but I'm more interested in redefining the terms of the argument, which up until recently had said that movies are by default better than TV.
That said, endings are still an issue. I'm hoping we'll see more shows like Babylon 5 and Buffy that had a clear creative direction, and chose to end at a logical point in the story, rather than something like The X-Files whihc just kept going and killed the good work of the previous seasons.