Take on TV will be The Funcooker’s weekly dose of television musings from TV Editor Andie Hutner and her TV-writin’ monkeys. Well, “weekly” doesn’t really describe it. Expect a post every Monday, then a post or two in between. Coming soon: television live-blogs.
By Andie Hutner
A few weeks ago, a terrible thing happened to network TV. The first series of the season was cancelled. The casualty was “Lone Star,” an engaging FOX show that centered on Bob, a Texas con man who lives a double life. It seemed like a really good show. Bob was an interesting leading character that we don’t normally see filling up our television screens. Sadly, the pilot got less than four and a half million viewers, and the second episode got even less. And so FOX cancelled “Lone Star.”
Why did the show fail? If this show had premiered on AMC, it would have been a huge success. “Mad Men,” their breadwinner, features Don Draper, an army deserter who took a dead man’s identity. He lied and cheated on his wife back when they were still married, and even cheated on his mistresses with some more mistresses. Though Don is in the legitimate business of advertising, he’s not much better of a man than Bob the con man was.
Is the only difference between “Lone Star” and “Mad Men” that the latter is on cable TV? Are basic network audiences not ready to accept a morally ambiguous leading man? There are only a few main characters on today’s shows that are not outright heroes or villains. Interestingly enough, “Lone Star” was given a seemingly perfect lead-in. It premiered right before “House,” a show whose main character is a Vicodin-addicted jerk who seems to only care about himself. In recent seasons, House has worked to beat his addiction and formed a genuine relationship with Cuddy. But for the first few years, House seemed to no have redeeming qualities, other than the fact that he was entertaining and a great doctor. Why were audiences able to watch House be who he was, when they couldn’t even stay with Bob for two hours? Does this suggest that drug addiction is a more forgivable crime than two-timing? Who knows.
“Bad” characters may only be able to find a home on cable TV. HBO opened this floodgate, with their early shows set in a prison (“Oz”) or about a mob family (“The Sopranos). Would these shows do well on network TV? Or is it just that in the post-Bernie Madoff era, Americans cannot deal with con men? I don’t have the answers to any of these questions, but I hope the cancellation of “Lone Star” does not mean that we will only be left with vanilla leading men and women on network TV for the rest of time.