Searching for the state of the TV nation

By Darby Saxbe

Like it or not, the '90s are all about the demise of the show. MTV may credit its success to youthful energy and snappy visuals, but there's a simpler explanation for its appeal: it's low-commitment viewing. Sick of that artsy Spacehog video? Sit tight, because in two minutes Sir Mix-A-Lot will be waxing poetic about the female posterior. Watching MTV is like gluing your thumb to the channel-flipping button on a remote control. Even its half-hour shows, like The Real World and Road Rules, eschew coherent narrative in favor of an episodic feel, marked by rapid-fire cutting and camera angling. VH-1 adapts a similarly schizophrenic format, while making concessions to old-fogey viewers who don't like the gold teeth and baggy pants those scary rappers sport. Although both networks are currently moving away from video-oriented programming and refocusing on news, documentaries, and movies, the music-video mentality has penetrated the consciousness of the television-watching world.

These days, the experience of watching the telly is less about storylines, whether tear-jerking or laugh-getting, than about flipping the dial, ironic distance intact. And now, of course, with an ever-burgeoning array of cable channels (my house has 57; at this time last year, it had 42) the dial-flipper has plenty of distance to cover. We live in a world of niche markets and increasingly isolated demographic enclaves, and television operates as a microcosm of that world. Sitcoms, pageants, trash-talk shows, and psychic infocommercials all fit within its capacious borders. Any article purporting to analyze the State of Television must be as scattershot in structure as the experience of viewing itself.

If the TV landscape can be parceled into neighborhoods, then the major networks form its suburbs, full of inhabitants taking long salacious looks at the violence and sexuality of the big city while struggling to preserve the myths of the manicured lawn and the plotline. At the moment, loosely structured peer-oriented shows seem to have beaten conventional family drama to the top of the Nielson heap, with the recent pilot of Significant Others, a show about post-collegiate malaise, making a new addition to the pantheon of gabby ensemble shows. Dawson's Creek, another one of this season's hits, chronicles the loves and longings of a group of comely teens. A trio of new-ish shows unfold chiefly in the workplace: Working, a dastardly comedy featuring the unfortunate Fred Savage, Lateline, a so-so show about--you guessed it--the television business, and Ally McBeal, which wallows in whiny lawyerdom. One of the few family-minded shows to soar to popularity this season, Everybody Loves Raymond, takes a subversive look at the ties that bind; the likably hang-dog protagonist is nagged by his kooky parents, long-suffering wife, and embittered brother.

Raymond is funny, as TV sitcoms go. But script-driven television can't compete with precarious live broadcasts like CBS's Miss USA Pageant, which was nearly as fun as a barrel of monkeys wearing sashes emblazoned with the names of states. In between pathetic attempts to market Shreveport, Louis. as a hot vacation spot, the girls donned big hair and bigger dresses and strutted around the stage in ill-advised bikini-high heel ensembles. (Miss Utah, a Mormon contender, wore a one-piece bathing suit and did not make it to the top ten.) Tellingly, a number of them expressed a desire to educate the public about eating disorders. Run of Run D. M. C., Christóphe, and Nancy Kerrigan were all judges, and recorded oddly congruent votes.

Despite the bikini factor, there's something very puritanical about Miss USA; the pageant's '50s sensibility manages to quell the sexuality suggested by the girls' low-cut gowns and bare midriffs. The program's hosts try desperately to convince us viewers that, really, Miss USA is a scholarship competion; the girls are graded on poise. When the kitsch appeal wears thin, it's better to find titillation in the form of the rump-shaking brassiness of MTV. The channel, still trying desperately to find the public's pulse, has opted for vacillation--if we can't cater to one group's tastes, we'll please 'em all--which means that Puff Daddy alternates with pouty hair-rock bands and the film school pretense of Kevin Smith's self-indulgent promos. MTV's Spring Break programming blends all of those elements, with a healthy dose of frat-boy "show me your tits" attitude. The network's seem to have figured out that Jerry Springer is the South Park of 1999, so they let him host a beach-side version of his trash-heavy talk show. Candace Rand, BK '98, who voiced her opinions on the show, got to see the underbelly of Springerdom: "It was the most obviously fake thing I have ever seen but they managed to make it almost believable...It's also really funny what the presence of a camera can do to you...I, personally, was jumping up and down like an idiot and pretending to buy that load of BS when I made my comment--all to get on television."

Despite her misgivings, Rand acknowledged Springer's savvy. "Jerry Springer was a really witty and intelligent person. He's not a slime, he's just a good businessman," she said. Business skills were also evidenced by the lithesome Mariah Carey, who hosted the most self-aggrandizing Spring Break video countdown I have ever seen. She and a fawning Bill Bell-amy plugged her new, poorly selling record at least six times, and she had the nerve to end her countdown with her sucky new video, at which point I and several million viewers changed the channel to VH-1.

Although MTV's spring break coverage did its best to traffic in titillation, the programming was a little too tooth-brushed to convince. For true red-light district decadence, late late night TV, with its phone sex ads, hair-replacement infomercials, and psychic hotlines, is worth waiting up to watch. Last week Walter Mercado, the heavily acccented psychic who looks uncannily like a Republican first lady (blue blazer with shoulderpads and little gold buttons; honey-tinted helmet hair; make-up) hosted a 3 a.m. "inspirational seminar," accompanied by Vicki Lawrence of Mama's Family fame, that culminated in the unveiling of a new "free" 1-800 psychic number (which I called, only to be directed to the real, 1-900 number). Walter Mercado aside, the silliest show on TV has got to be Jenny Jones. Jenny's got a wacky off-the-cuff style that lends itself to plenty of on-air hijinks. My favorite episode: "Want a Scare? Take a Look at Her Hair." The girls featured had hair that was biologically, chemically weird; it rotted, hosted insects, and got things stuck in it. Jenny, who kept her cool throughout, maintains an anarchic tone. All sorts of inexplicable things happen on the show. Old ladies and little kids are plucked from the audience and asked to do impromptu raps; half-naked muscle men escort guests on and off the show, to the delighted hoots of the audience. Watching Jenny Jones is kind of like watching MTV--things don't happen in any particular order, or for any particular reason, but they're always surprising and a little lurid.

Jenny understands the show's demise, which is why her program is a kind of deranged Chatauqua. The lesson of Jenny Jones: TV is better when you don't really watch it. It makes more sense to absorb it, to let it filter through your eyes and ears and stay away from your brain. The dissolution of the traditional show fuels the semi-conscious haze that truly bad TV can produce. I read somewhere that MRI scans of the brain show more neural activity when a subject is looking at a blank wall than when watching TV. I believe it. Total mental shutdown: what better way to spend Spring Break?

Graphic by Matt Wiegle.

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