Thoughts on the State of Network Television At the End of the 2018-2019 Season

Around the time I first began blogging on Mark My Words back in 2006, I mused that we were in the golden era of television.  This was a bit naive, and an overcorrection on my part based on the general improvement of the network primetime schedule since the dreary 1990s.  In retrospect, the mid-2000s had some decent television fare, especially fast-paced action serials "Prison Break" and "24" which really defined the era for me, but I generally don't look back at the era's television with the same gusto that I did then.  Alas, the television landscape has seen a whirlwind of change in the dozen years since, with the viewing habits of most people drastically changing.  With the availability of streaming services and substantially different business models the funding of television production and viewers' consumption of it, we're now at a place where the majority of what's made for television is not even watched live anymore.  Furthermore, almost all of the most highly watched and celebrated shows are available either on cable or on the aforementioned streaming services, most featuring a caliber of storytelling that's dramatically elevated from the shows I grew up on.

While the television industry and the viewing habits of the majority may have experienced a huge change in the last decade, my own viewing habits have not changed much.  A number of the celebrated cable and streaming shows available today appeal to me ("Breaking Bad" and "The Wire" being top examples), some of the most celebrated series do not ("Walking Dead" and "Game of Thrones").  And when I look at the ever expanding selection of shows available for consumption, I feel overwhelmed.  How deep do I really want to dig in this bountiful harvest?  And if I start excavating, will I be able to stop myself?  Maybe it's irrational, but it's an intimidating prospect, and it's led me to be among the shrinking ranks of viewers circling the wagons around network television fare.

How's that working out for me?  It's a mixed bag but trending downward.  The networks realized that their older and more conservative audience would be less likely to go for the same sorts of series popularized on cable and streaming services, and their business model wouldn't support it anyway, so they decided to take an even more conservative approach than they have in the past.  All too often, the networks are simply rebooting and rebranding older series with high name recognition among older viewers, and not necessarily rebooting them particularly well.  Any risk-taking the networks may have experimented with in the past is almost all gone now, and their lineups play it safer than ever with shows that take the center lane from Point A to Point B, some more capably than others. I'm actually impressed their business model has been as sustainable as it has, with viewership a fraction what it was a generation ago, but budgets for series have clearly gone up while repeat broadcasts (where the networks double-dipped the revenue from a product as a means to pay for itself) greatly diminished.  And advertising rates haven't expanded much in the last two or three decades either.  So how do the less-popular-by-the-day networks pay the bills?  Hell if I know.

 I've consumed an outsized number of the networks' offerings in recent years with my path of least resistance viewership habits.  Despite my vows to cut back on the number of hours I volunteer to the dinosaur TV networks, I nonetheless keep coming back to their offerings rather than expand my palate.  It's been a while since I've examined my consumption and evaluated the multiple hours I've invested, but at the end of the 2018-2019 season, now seems like a good time for some reflection on what I've been watching this year.


9-1-1--One of the most pleasant surprises of the TV shows I've checked out in the last couple of years is Fox's "9-1-1", featuring an ensemble cast of capable actors playing the part of Los Angeles first responders.  It's nothing that hasn't been done several times before, but the execution is impressive, with clever plots, interesting characters, dramatic and intense rescues, and the budget necessary to make everything come together.  Sure, there's some cringey CGI moments but that goes with the territory these days, and this series does better work than most in the FX department.  "9-1-1" bounces back and forth between more edge-of-your-seat rescue-based episodes set in the present and backstory episodes that profile the histories of the expansive characters.  There's an appropriate level of humor and enough surprises to keep most episodes interesting.  It's an updated and significantly improved version of "Third Watch".  Grade:  B+

Magnum P.I.--Producer Peter Lenkov made a name for himself with his successful reboot of "Hawaii Five-O" and has been expanding his empire since, and not in a good way.  The new "Magnum" reboot is a mostly generic and uninspired procedural action hour that produced very few memorable moments in its inaugural season.  I like actor Jay Hernandez, but he was miscast as Thomas Magnum.  His supporting team isn't entirely without appeal but lacks the chemistry with Magnum that the original cast had with Tom Selleck.  The original "Magnum" wasn't one of my favorites of the 80s action show canon but it was undeniably well-made, in contrast to the hammy CGI work all too common in the reboot's frenetic action scenes which are clearly too ambitious for the show's budget.  I was surprised that it got an easy renewal as ratings were middling at best all season-long.  I can remember a time when this show would have been a welcome helping of old-school action on the primetime schedule but as of 2019 it looks and feels trite.  Grade:  C

Manifest--It's been 15 years since "Lost" premiered and TV producers have been trying to find a worthy soft-core sci-fi replacement for it ever since, to little avail.  The streak continues with this low-voltage NBC effort which at least started with an interesting premise....a planeload of passengers that disappeared five years earlier suddenly arrives at its destination with nobody having aged or having any idea where they spent the last five and a half years.  For the first couple of episodes, this made for some interesting reunions, including the female protagonist whose former fiancee ended up marrying her best friend and an 11-year-old boy who returns home to find his twin sister, who has aged in his absence, is now 16.  Unfortunately, things got really boring really quickly and I almost dropped the sleepy show by midseason.  Things perked up mildly towards season's end with the introduction of a new character whose loyalties were unclear.  "Manifest" was renewed for a second season but I'm not expecting a long life unless the pace picks up quite a bet.  A clear and compelling villain would be helpful in injecting some energy into the series.  Grade:  C

The Enemy Within--I had modest expectations for this FBI thriller going in, centered around a standout female agent who sold out her country to an international terrorist to save her daughter's life, and the show has been about even with my expectations.  The spy exposition can be a little murky, leading the viewer's eyes to gloss over even amidst the revelation of key plot development, but the series has had a couple of compelling recurring themes keeping it occasionally interesting.  We still don't know the loyalties of a few major characters, including top protagonist Erica Shephard, and it's possible it could all come together in a satisfying season climax.  The series is on the bubble for a second season, and I'm not sure it deserves it, but like the Peacock network's "Taken" series the previous season, there's potential for it to improve in a second season.  I'm not gonna lose any sleep if it gets canceled though.  Grade:  C+

The Conners--I always had a soft spot for "Roseanne" back in the 90s because it offered a unique and devastatingly real depiction of life for the Midwestern working class at a pivotal time in its history when families of the Conners' pedigree were in the middle stages of endemic decline.  While the series sometimes strayed from this humble template, it never strayed too far and was at its best when its characters and stories stayed grounded in the narrative of working-class struggle.  When the series came back in 2018, I was skeptical that it would merely be a vehicle for the recently radicalized Roseanne Barr to normalize Trump.  To an extent it was, until Ms. Barr blew everything up with a racist tweet and ABC fired her.  There were reasons to be doubtful that the show could carry on when ABC announced it would pick the series up as a rebranded "The Conners" focusing on the rest of the family after the fictional Roseanne Conner character died, but the reality was that the show improved, holding firm in its gritty blue-collar narrative where, if you're lucky, one's progression through life was merely one step forward and one step back...and no less than that.  The means by which Roseanne's character was killed off was also compelling, with the family discovering after her death that she was addicted to opiods.  "The Conners" was the best of both worlds....the same great cultural depiction of a beleaguered working-class Midwestern family in a struggling town, but without the distracting ravings of the character the show was built upon.  I'm looking forward to where it picks up next season.  Grade:  B+

Lethal Weapon--I began watching the TV reboot of "Lethal Weapon" in its first season just to see how bad it would be, but was taken aback when I discovered it was extremely entertaining, with just the right mix of humor and action and a cast with genuine chemistry.  The second season wasn't as consistently satisfying as the first but still had its moments.  And then all hell broke loose when Clayne Crawford, the actor who played Riggs and the most charismatic presence of the series, was fired because of the behind-the-scenes drama.  At the onset of season 3, replacement actor Sean William Scott was decent but the vibe still felt off, and more drama ensued offscreen with Damon Wayans threatening to leave midseason.  Particularly since his Murtaugh character's subplots with his family were growing increasingly tiresome, there seems to be little motivation to keep the show alive for a season 4.  The show still had well-crafted moments this season, including the season finale, but it definitely feels like  Fox should pull the plug on the series before it squanders what's left of its legacy.  It seems very likely that they will do just that.  Grade:  B-

FBI--My Tuesday night TV viewing schedule was pretty wide open last fall which is why I decided to start watching the latest Dick Wolf procedural.  It could have just as well have been branded Law and Order 5 with as closely as it hews to Wolf's formula.  That's not a bad thing as the stories were usually interesting and capably executed, but the lead actors are wooden and unmemorable, giving viewers little reason to care about their slow-motion backstory revelations.  Scheduled in the plum timeslot following "NCIS", "FBI" was a ratings hit and will be coming back for a second season.  I'm sure it'll continue to be mildly entertaining, but if it's scheduled against another show that I find intriguing next fall, I won't feel too badly about dropping "FBI".  Grade:  C+

The Rookie--When "The Rookie" premiered last October, I was on the fence about whether it would be a lighthearted star vehicle for Nathan Fillion comparable to his long-running "Castle", or something more impactful.  The verdict was highly favorable and "The Rookie" became my favorite new series of the year, finding the right balance between a fast pace of action and quality exposition and character development with a diverse and charismatic cast.  I've been particularly impressed by how action-packed the show is, which probably undermines some of its credibility for audience members looking for a more realistic portrayal of life as an LA beat cop but satisfies my preferences for entertainment value.  But "The Rookie" should never be mistaken simply as an old-school popcorn cop show of the "TJ Hooker" ilk.  It regularly comes up with smart and outside-the-box scenarios of rookie initiation, in one episode memorably exploring a beat cop's expansive logistical challenges in dealing with Secret Service for a Presidential visit.  "The Rookie" really produced some excellent episodes in the first half of the season.  The second half of the season was still entertaining but didn't operate at quite the same level as those early episodes.  "The Rookie's" ratings were okay but not spectacular.  It's no shoo-in for renewal but is seen as more likely than not to get a lifeline from lowly ABC, and certainly deserves it....even if the new cops will no longer be "rookies" in the sophomore season.  Grade:  A-

Whiskey Cavalier--Despite my general warm and fuzzy feelings toward spy shows, something felt off from the outset when I started tuning into the new Scott Foley-Lauren Cohen international adventure series "Whiskey Cavalier" last February.  My fear was that the lighthearted tone and large cast would turn it into a mutant hybrid of "Moonlighting" and "Scorpion".  After a moderately impressive first couple of episodes, my fears were soon vindicated in the worst possible way as every annoying trope in the universe of lighthearted spy shows rears its head in this hot mess of a series.  There's a "team" full of immature chuckleheads who never seem to take any imminent danger seriously, musing about some petty personality clash with other members of the "team" even while taking on heavy gunfire.  The "will they or won't they" sexual tension between the leads is in your face constantly and came to a head unreasonably early for a series expecting to keep an audience beyond a handful of episodes.  And most weeks, the incessant silliness leaves little time for any actual story to come together at all.  The only thing the series has going for it is its ambitious production values, filmed on location all over Europe with far less CGI than you get with most modern spy shows.  Unfortunately, you get the feeling that the producers were scouting out these international locales with little familiarity and a compressed timeline for making the action scenes work as, by and large, they're not very memorable.  It's a damn shame that such an ambitious and expensive series turned out to be as dumb as the final season of "Scorpion", but the expense should at least help make ABC's choice easy to put it out of its misery when it ends its 13-episode run.  Grade:  D+

Gotham--I was never much of a fan of "Batman", or of the now wildly overexposed superhero genre generally, but back in the fall of 2014 I was still intrigued by the ambitious "Gotham" and its ensemble cast.  Given that the series was poised to profile the pre-Batman culture of the brutally violent city that spawned him, I figured there was a better chance of it being up my alley than a more conventional superhero narrative.  And it was.  In its first couple of seasons, "Gotham" was consistently entertaining and edgy, often venturing into some territory I couldn't believe I was seeing on network television, particularly at 7:00!  But each subsequent season seemed to be more obviously grasping for material, and simultaneously got more superhero-centered and fantasy-driven.  I had hoped Fox would put it to sleep at the end of season 4 and let it die with a little bit of dignity.  Unfortunately, they revived the series with an abysmal 12-episode final season that offered nothing new and ended with an almost unimaginable thud for a series that in its prime was so unapologetically over the top.  I can't think of too many other shows in TV history that fell from grace as hard and as comprehensively as "Gotham".  Grade:  D

Superstore--It's not a surprise that consistently hilarious "Superstore" is formatted as the retail version of "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation", but it has an additional dimension of depth with its emphasis of the hardships of low-income workers in Middle America (the series is set in Missouri) and the vicious cycle at which it self-perpetuates.  The ensemble cast is a bevy of colorful characters and their interaction is mostly believable with only a few lapses into cartoonishness.  Some of the series' funniest moments are the brief snippets of inappropriate customer behavior in the aisles, all set to a variety of piped-in music from the 80s and 90s.  I don't watch many comedies but this is one I've been hooked on since my first sampling, and luckily for me it's already renewed for a fifth season next fall.  Grade:  B+

Brooklyn Nine-Nine--The other sitcom I make a point of watching airs only an hour after "Superstore" on the same network.  After five seasons on Fox, the irreverent "Brooklyn Nine Nine" was picked up by NBC and has seen its ratings increase enough to have been picked up for a seventh season.  While the core of the show's format still usually works, it occasionally shows its age and/or crosses the line into slapstick.  In most cases though, the fast-paced humor works, particularly the central relationship between quirky detective Jake Parralta, played by Andy Samberg, and uptight Captain Raymond Hult, played by Andre Braugher, who play off each other with a chemistry worthy of the best comedy teams.  I'm not sure how much longer the show should proceed before calling it a wrap, but it still seems as though another season is doable without considerable risk of burning out.  Grade:  B

SWAT--Having lasted two full seasons, the Shemar Moore-starring remake of the action procedural "SWAT" has already lasted longer than the 1970s original that sired it, which is kind of remarkable.  From the outset the series has been hit or miss.  The action plots swing wildly from week to week, with very tight and intense stories one episode and generic, instantly forgettable pulp the next.  When it's on its game it leaves a mark though.  The January school shooting episode was one of the best hours of network television this season.  And some of the character-centered subplots have been above-average too, including the racial profiling incident faced by team leader Hondo when vacationing with his girlfriend, as even more so the escalating financial disaster that fell upon Deacon leading to his getting in bed with loan sharks and faced with the dilemma of having to give out confidential police information to his lenders.  Most "SWAT" episodes offer at least something worth watching, whether it comes from the primary action plot of the character-related subplots, but they miss the mark far more often than "The Rookie" does and it's not that uncommon to walk away from an episode of "SWAT" wondering why you wasted the hour.  Grade:  B-

Blindspot--My far how the mighty have fallen.  The veteran action show "Blindspot" had its moments in its debut season but by its sophomore season had solidified into the most consistently satisfying action show on television.  Sadly the ratings plummeted after a time slot move and it was unclear whether the series would even return for a third season.  I was elated that it did, even though it was receiving another scheduling downgrade and heading to the Friday night ghetto.  Unfortunately it lost some of its edge after the move and had an uneven third season.  Still, it did just well enough on Friday night to return for a fourth season in the same slot, only by this point the series was far past its prime and desperately searching for a new direction worthy of the show's heyday.  This season, in addition to suffering through the "evil Jane" misfire, the obviously shrinking budgets have led to some nearly action-free episodes that never leave the FBI headquarters, with the characters handling some international threat from the comfort of their easy chairs and pretending the action is all going on offscreen.  The formula is tiring generally, with near-weekly nuclear annihilation threats and goofy puzzles that lead the characters to deus ex machina outcomes in the most convenient possible ways, with exposition relayed amongst the characters at lightning speed so that the viewers don't have time to mentally process what pure BS they're spouting.  The final three episodes of "Blindspot" have been delayed till the end of May sweeps, a rather jarring display of no confidence from NBC and a clear indication that they don't intend to bring the season back for a fifth season.  It's time for the show to go away so I support it being put to sleep, but NBC's pulling it from the schedule with only three episodes left seems unnecessarily cold.  Grade:  C-

MacGyver--It was always a long shot that I'd go for a formulaic CBS reboot of my favorite boyhood show "MacGyver", but I never would have imagined it could be this bad at this point three years ago when I was first made aware of it.  The unique concept of the original has been turned into wallpaper with all of the pratfalls of the "crimefighting team" template, complete with cartoonish secondary players always bantering about personal issues even when they're facing an imminent threat of death.  The special effects are cheap and the action scenes are played out at a frenetic pace that puts to waste entirely the science element of "MacGyver".  If "Blindspot's" unnecessarily fast pace of dialogue and action is meant to paper over incoherent plot points and puzzle-solving, "MacGyver's" is even more egregious since the key conceit of the "MacGyver" franchise is to show the audience the details of whatever creative means of crisis resolution the hero devises. Once in a while, maybe twice a season, the series will put together an episode that's praise-worthy, and makes me wonder if they may have finally found their creative footing, but then it inevitably recedes to its traditional level of insipidness the following week.  And even though I wasn't a fan at all of George Eads' bull-in-a-china-shop portrayal of a moronic Jack Dalton, Eads has now left the show and has been replaced by a tattooed, 20-something female replacement who's already being groomed as a love interest for MacGyver, even though it's impossible to believe the MacGyver character I grew up would be attracted to her.  The show is a hot mess, yet is already poised for a fourth-season renewal this fall.  With each new season this lackluster reboot gets, the more likely it will be that it overshadows the legacy of the original.  And that makes this otherwise harmless clunker much more threatening than it felt like it would be back in 2016.  Grade:  D

Hawaii Five-O--When I read in 2016 that the showrunner for the "MacGyver" reboot would be Peter Lenkov, who capably rebooted "Hawaii Five-O" six years earlier, it gave me a ray of hope that the "MacGyver" reboot would be well made.  For years, "Hawaii Five-O" was consistently entertaining and on occasion would put out a really exceptional hour of action TV pulp.  I was particularly impressed that the show maintained its above-average quality into its sixth and seventh seasons, years after I figured it would burn out.  It became my Old Reliable on Friday nights.  But right around the time the "MacGyver" reboot came out, I noticed "Hawaii Five-O" started to miss a step as well.  And by season 9, it's a weary shell of the show it was a few seasons back, with increasingly generic action plots, goofy comedic subplots occupying a larger portion of nearly episode, less ambitious action sequences and CGI effects, and a completely detached cast where Scott Caan's "Dan-o" appears in only about half of the episodes, often leaving McGarrett flying solo or teaming up with one of his colleagues.  "Hawaii Five-O" is still capable of making some interesting episodes, but even the best of season 9's episodes seem thinner and less inspired than what we regularly saw in season 1 or season 3 or season 5.  Ratings continue to be strong though and "Hawaii Five-O" will return for season 10 next fall, approaching the 12-season tenure of the original series.  They really should wrap things up as the weariness is clear from everybody involved in the series.  Grade:  C

The Blacklist--From one long-running action procedural to another, the James Spader vehicle "The Blacklist" has held up much better than time slot challenger "Hawaii Five-O" at this stage of its run, and that would not have been so predictable a few years back.  "The Blacklist" was hit or miss in its early seasons, always getting high points for creative plots and memorable villains, but often getting overly mired in its own mythology.  At one point in the third and fourth seasons, the show was starting to lose me with the direction of its story arcs, but it found its way back into my good graces late in season 4 and has largely stayed there through the end of season 6.  The series can still get bogged down in some murky exposition but Spader remains a scene-stealer and the creative team still cranks out some intense and memorably screwball plotlines that stand out in a primetime network lineup largely neck-deep in conventional tropes.  NBC keeps pushing its luck and renewing "The Blacklist", and has already picked it up for a seventh season next fall.  At some point I expect it to jump the shark, but to my surprise, it hasn't happened yet.  Grade:  B

"Good Girls"--I was intrigued last spring at the advertisements for "Good Girls", which appeared to be a lighthearted variation of "Thelma and Louise" with otherwise normal suburban housewives getting themselves entangled in a crime spree.  The series exceeded my expectations with clever plotting, a large cast full of amusing and three-dimensional supporting characters, and an unpredictable narrative style that ably walks the tightrope balancing humor, drama, and suspense.  The viewer can be laughing out loud one minute and then taken aback by the darkness the next.  It's still working at the end of season 2, but I'm a bit concerned knowing that season 3 is on the way as it's the kind of series that could easily exist beyond its natural expiration date the way that "Prison Break" did.  For now though, I'll just keep tuning in Sunday nights and enjoying the fun.  Grade:  B+


While the expansion of series content available today is generally a good thing as heightened competition in a marketplace usually is, I'm not convinced the widespread fragmentation of viewership is leading our culture in a good direction.  For most of television's history, it's been a bonding experience for the broader population, uniting the nation for shared cultural experiences.  As recently as the summer of 2000, 52 million people gathered in front of their televisions for the finale episode of the inaugural season of "Survivor".  A few years later, as many as 30 million people tuned in for "American Idol" every winter.  Whether we could have found better uses for our time is beside the point.  It gave people something in common that they could talk about the next day...at work, at school, or in line at the DMV.  We have no such shared cultural experiences today on the small screen as everybody is watching their own thing on their own timeline.  The highest-rated show on television today is "NCIS", averaging about 9 million viewers (most of them undoubtedly senior citizens).  A generation ago, most network shows would have been canceled by the third episode if they were pulling in only 9 million viewers.  That's how much things have changed.

So now what do we talk about at work, school, and in line at the DMV?  Either nothing at all....or we gouge each others' eyes out over our political and cultural differences, stratifying society even more.  Would this still be the case if millions of people were talking about what happened on the previous night's episode of "The Rookie" as they would have done in the 70s and 80s?  It couldn't hurt!  Perhaps this partly explains the inadvertent psychological hold that network TV continues to hold on me....and my reluctance to delve into the more fragmented world of streaming series.  Perhaps I'm unconsciously watching network television mediocrity as my way of trying to bring a divided country back together again!