Freshman achievers
IN A television season that largely saw shows with unlikely premises (“Knights of Prosperity,” “The Nine”) fail to deliver on their promise of originality, that saw Aaron Sorkin’s highly touted “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” turn out to be a big buzz kill, a few gleaming gems emerged.
This handful of shows excited and inspired audiences; they dared to be different and succeeded on some level -- some became instant fodder for Internet chatter, while others are perhaps ratings challenged but have a loyal and slowly growing fan base. Will any of it be enough for an Emmy nod?
ABC’s “Ugly Betty” proved that comedy can handle an hourlong format even when the heroine is only an emotional swan. “Heroes” showed us what the future of the prime-time serial might look like -- no lingering unsolved mysteries, just a bunch of good cliffhangers.
“Dexter” did the unthinkable by giving us a serial killer to root for and “Brothers & Sisters” updated the “thirtysomething” model for the new century.
And finally, the tragic dignity of “Friday Night Lights” showed us that HBO isn’t the only home for critically acclaimed televised storytelling, even if viewers aren’t yet swarming to it.
Here’s what the creators of these outstanding freshman shows of the 2006-07 season had to say about how they stood out, and what they need to do to keep their audiences interested and moving forward.
“Ugly Betty”
The wonderful crazy whirlwind
SILVIO HORTA is the creator of “Ugly Betty,” easily one of the most buzzed-about new shows of last season, but you wouldn’t know it from talking to him.
“It honestly didn’t hit me until after the Golden Globes that people were really loving the show,” he said. “You work so incredibly hard and live in this bubble. You see the numbers but it doesn’t really impact your reality until something big happens. I felt like Sally Field at the Oscars. It was shocking to me.”
But who wouldn’t fall in love with this bouncy show about a hard-working ugly duckling who enters the world of fashion magazines and, one full season in, still hasn’t had a swanlike transformation?
“She’s a fashion disaster,” said “Ugly Betty” star America Ferrera of her character, “but she has the heart and intelligence to really succeed in business. And instead of the people around her changing her, she changes them.”
“There is something so simple about it,” Horta said. “Betty is the core. You can’t help but root for her and everything else is like a souffle -- this gay, wonderful world that’s fun to write for.”
Horta created this particular “Ugly Betty,” but he did not create the concept. The show is a remake of the Colombian telenovela “Yo Soy Betty la Fea” (which Horta watched with his mother while growing up in Miami). NBC actually started developing an American version of the show five years ago -- originally as a sitcom. Then ABC got hold of it, Salma Hayek got involved and it was re-imagined as an hourlong comedy-drama.
Horta has some concerns as “Ugly Betty” moves into its second season though. “It’s scary,” he said. “Season 2 is sort of make or break time of whether a show has legs.” And for a show with so many twists and turns, “Ugly Betty” has the potential to be twisted out of its successful shape.
“It challenges us,” said Horta. “How do you move the show forward and step this thing out in a way that doesn’t feel like a different show but is still progressing the show?”
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“Friday Night Lights”
The free spirit
“FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS” is a show ostensibly about football but not really at all. “I think we’ve been able to do a show that talks about so many basic important things -- family, faith, marriage, adolescence,” show runner Jason Kadims said. “The subject matter is the town. It’s never been about football.”
Peter Berg, who created “Friday Night Lights” just two years after directing a film of the same name, said he never had a master plan for the show, except to allow for a loose structure both on set and in the finished product. “We were interested in making a show that is not as producer- or writer-dominated as television often is,” he said. “David Milch, David Kelly and Aaron Sorkin have done great jobs, but we don’t have anybody on board with that much singular talent so we have to divvy it up.”
On the set of “Friday Night Lights,” actors are encouraged to improvise. Directors are not treated as hired hands and writers are told to focus less on climactic events and more on smaller human moments. Everybody has a stake in the outcome and a sense of creative freedom prevails.
That freedom extends to exploring some very sad stuff in the lives of the ever-expanding cast of characters who live in a small Texas town. “I think we’ve done a very good job of capturing the emotional brutality we experience in life,” Berg said. “It’s something we try to move away from but we keep coming back to it.”
Berg is aware that darkness in the show can sometimes seem overwhelming. “I’ve seen a couple of episodes in rough cut and commented that we’ve really outdone ourselves in terms of depression this week,” he said. “But life is tough.”
And he doesn’t think that’s what’s stopping viewers from tuning in. “I think the biggest thing we need is a new time slot,” he said. “I would say almost anything but 8 o’clock against a Top 3 show.”
(Berg’s wish has since been fulfilled. During the television upfronts presentations, NBC announced that “Friday Night Lights” would get a new time slot: Friday nights at 10.)
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“Dexter”
Smooth ride
for a serial killer
PRODUCING partners John Goldwyn and Sara Colleton have a history of successfully developing books into films, but “Dexter” was their first venture into television. Happily for them they encountered a classic case of beginner’s luck.
Colleton found the book “Darkly Dreaming Dexter” by John Lindsay and immediately saw potential to do a detective-cop genre piece with a dark and unexpected twist: The hero is a serial killer who doles out vigilante justice.
She and Goldwyn developed a script and sent it to Bob Greenblatt, an executive at Showtime who had wanted to work with them. He loved it and suggested Michael C. Hall for the part of Dexter. The casting worked, the pilot got made and picked up. The show quickly garnered critical acclaim and those all-important Nielson ratings improved over every episode.
“As we got deeper into the world of television, we realized how lucky we were,” said Goldwyn.
But the success of “Dexter” has less to do with luck and more to do with Hall. “He is so appealing and so captured by the role that he captures the audience,” said “Dexter” show runner Clyde Phillips. “You can’t take your eyes off him.”
“He walks such a tight-wire act every week in terms of getting the character so pitch perfectly,” said Colleton. “I’ve never seen a false move from him in all the dailies we’ve watched.”
Last season the show explored questions of character -- who is Dexter, where did he come from? In its second season, the producers say Dexter will have time to ponder the big questions of life. (They were purposefully vague. “There will be a big issue but we are under lock and key!” said Colleton).
And now it is time for the writers and creators to mimic Hall’s dazzling tightrope act.
“ ‘Dexter’ set the bar very high for the audience, and the audience expects a lot from the show,” said Goodwyn. “As long as they remain fascinated and engaged in his pursuits, our audience will remain loyal.”
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“Heroes”
Serial television 2.0
THANKS to the success of such shows as “Alias,” “Lost” and “Smallville,” serialized television programs became all the rage last year. Many were made; few survived. And only one -- “Heroes” -- conquered.
So how did it prevail? It was the mix of a good premise -- a wish fulfillment fantasy of average Joes who discover superhero powers -- and a creator obsessively devoted to studying and tackling the myriad challenges that have plagued serialized TV in the past.
“I think most writers, if given the choice, have a real interest in telling continuous stories,” said Tim Kring, explaining why he wanted to work in the serial genre. “I was interested in doing a very long saga.”
But he also saw the problems inherent in that. Audiences need to feel that the stories they watch have a beginning, middle and end. If they stretch on into eternity with no end in sight, the viewers lose faith in the writers and stop tuning in. It happened with “Lost” and “Alias.” Kring was determined to keep it from happening on “Heroes.”
To solve the problem, he decided to follow a comic book structure. Comic book stories are told in volumes made up of several books (episodes) but with one overriding story arc. He called the first season “Volume 1” and thought of each episode as a chapter, thereby letting audiences know that a resolution will be forthcoming. “When J.K. Rowling told the world there would only be seven Harry Potter books you knew where you were,” he said. “It allowed people to wrap their minds around the story instead of getting lost in a big lumbering thing.”
The one season-one volume formula is not a lock, however. “The audience can look for Volume 2 to end in the middle of Season 2,” he said.
Kring has been diligently working through other problems as well. “One of the things we committed to early on was there are no secrets too precious that we can’t give them the answer,” he said, addressing the “Lost” issue in which mystery piled on top of unsolved mystery leaves viewers frustrated. “If you have kept a secret for too long no answer can be satisfying.”
He is also committed to not pulling the rug out from under the viewer -- no it-was-all-a-dream or that-was-an-alternate-future tricks.
Moving forward, Kring is already anticipating more difficulties. “This show is succeeding partly because it defies expectations every week about where it is going,” he said. “If Season 2 is just a rehash of Season 1, that will be the death of a show like this.”
If that sounds bleak, it shouldn’t. It means he’s working on a solution.
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“Brothers & Sisters”
A playwright goes
to Hollywood
PULITZER PRIZE-nominated playwright Jon Robin Baitz flirted with television for years before creating “Brothers & Sisters” last season. He wrote episodes of “The West Wing” and “Alias” but, in general, played hard to get. But when ABC decided to develop a family drama, Batiz’s longtime friend, producer Ken Olin, recommended the playwright for the job. “It was a long shot for all of us,” Baitz said.
After 20 years of writing plays, Baitz found the work of making a television show to be tremendously challenging. “It was really hard to keep going and navigate the notes and the changing agendas and the changing needs,” he said. “I wanted to do something other than be a playwright in my life so I persisted and persisted well past the point when it would have not been considered churlish to give up.”
He knew nothing of the six-part structure that keeps television shows moving at a smart clip, or how to keep dialogue from getting too talky, but what he did bring to the table was a particular view of the human heart and, as he put it, “the nature of human business.”
He fought to keep the show, a sprawling family drama, from becoming a parody of itself. “I insisted the show be adult,” he said. “That it not present an artificial world of Botox and gleaming suburban falsity.”
He also learned to stop apologizing for what he didn’t know. “It was a struggle for me to learn the structure of these stories. My natural inclination is to get in the way of that,” he said. “But I’ve learned not to apologize. They did not ask me to do this because I’m an adept TV writer. They asked me because I’m a particular playwright with a particular voice.”
And after writing 15 episodes of the show last season, Baitz will now take a step back. He will continue to advise but will only write scripts for stories that especially appeal to him.
So has he already lost interest in television? Just the opposite. He’s already planning on developing other shows.
