TV is awesome

TV is still something I feel the irrational need to apologize for. It’s not really taken seriously by many people, it’s ridiculously easy to exploit, and the best stuff is usually ignored. Why?

I think there’s the perception that TV is nothing more than mass entertainment. Alas, in the case of a great deal of television, that’s definitely true. I could list off a huge list of current television shows that don’t serve much of a purpose other than to keep us glued to our boob-tubes… However if I did that I would probably upset a great many people, including my inner softy self. (I’m notoriously hard to impress when it comes to television – not hard to please, but it’s certainly difficult for a series to earn my respect. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy them regardless!)

But the thing is, when TV is done right it’s truly remarkable. I feel silly for having to make comparisons in order to get my point across, but again, TV’s still a dirty word…

I’ve said a lot of times that “The Wire” is a novel in television form. Well, “Battlestar Galactica” is an opera. Part of the comparison lies in the music of the show itself – some of the best original scoring for TV I’ve ever come across (Bear McCreary is a god among men), and some of the most influential. We get love stories through these pieces – the destruction of civilizations and the discovery of gods. And all of it is made all the more powerful through music.

And then there’s the structure of the show and how it was written. Now the writing of “BSG” was impressive for many reasons, but one of the most shocking things I learned about it was that there was never an overarching story plan from the start. The writers would pile into the writing room at the beginning of a session with one intention and one intention only – to write themselves into a corner. They strove to place themselves where they would be pushed creatively, where they would be forced to improvise, forced to react in uncomfortable ways, forced to press the audience’s collective buttons.

Now while operas can push buttons, that’s not my point. My point is that making “BSG” was a process that was always alive. It’s something that Kierkegaard said about music – it’s always happening now, always active, always an overpowering force that can’t be overturned. That’s what the writers of “BSG” constantly strove for – an unstoppable force of a show.

Then we move onto the idea of acts. The slow development and progression of the opera from one major movement to another. (Destruction of the Colonies, Kobol, Searching for Earth, New Caprica, Civil War, etc.) Motifs (God there are too many to name – God being one of them.), arias (singular episodes that focused especially on particular characters), and so on. Also worthy of note is the way that the crew approached their characters in general. In an opera with an interesting progression, the conclusion is in a stylistically different place than when the opera started, even though you still have the clear, guiding echoes of the opening scenes, the important movements throughout the course of the presentation. Otherwise, it’s just not as riveting. And like good composers, the writers of “BSG” knew this coming in – no person in this series remains unchanged.

The point of all this rambling? Good TV isn’t mindless entertainment. It’s sophisticated, with methods worthy of note, analysis, and hopefully some appreciation.