Antiheroes on every channel
By Eric Deggans, Times TV / Media Critic
Published September 23, 2007
This fall, the broadcast TV networks have placed a tower of chips on a single bet: That you're secretly a nerd at heart. Forget about the glut of realistic dramas that clogged TV screens last fall. And don't dare mention any "serialized" dramas, where one storyline evolves over an entire season. The mantra of this crop of shows is escapism with a capital "E." Shaking off last season's dashed hopes, the networks press forward with the idea that we're all repressed, cool-challenged underachievers hoping to see a TV character excel in ways we only dream. Why else would we have such a Fantasyland of choices among these 30 new prime time shows?
Nerds make the grade as heroes or lovers in NBC's Chuck, the CW's Reaper, ABC's Pushing Daisies and CBS's Big Bang Theory. Superhero types kick behind in NBC's Bionic Woman remake and CBS' vampire private eye drama Moonlight. Funny-looking fantasy creatures take on modern stereotypes in ABC's Cavemen and kids go all Lord of the Flies without adult supervision in CBS's reality show Kid Nation.
There's even a little something for musical geeks in CBS's sing-along drama Viva Laughlin.
"People are kind of chasing the big ideas after Lost came on and kind of exploded," said Stephen McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment, back in July. "But I think, you know, we've got to be careful that just because a Heroes works in season one, that (we don't think) 10 shows like that can work."
As much as the success of nerd-tastic films and TV shows such as Heroes, Superbad and Lost may have fed this trend, there's another, sneakier dynamic at work:
Lots of TV writers and producers are nerds, too.
"I graduated at 5 feet 2 inches, orange afro, braces, dolphins and show skates," said Joseph McGinty Nichol, known as "McG" - an executive producer on NBC's Chuck, a series about a geek with government secrets downloaded into his brain.
"I never had one date, and you always dream about empowered women sort of giving you the time of day," he added, noting a plotline where the show's hero is romanced by a beautiful CIA agent. "There was always something we connected with: being outsiders looking in."
Whether it's Peter Parker scaling walls in Spider-Man or Neo transforming from house-bound computer hacker to world savior in the Matrix, pop culture is littered with franchises built on the geek who makes good.
So a better question might be, why did it take TV so long to dive into this end of the pool, sparked by the tsunami of fan devotion showered on characters from two of last year's most successful shows: Heroes' Hiro Nakamura and Ugly Betty's Betty Suarez?
Fall's list of straight-up geeks is already impressive: former Roseanne co-star Johnny Galecki is a genius-level nebbish in Big Bang Theory; grown-up geeks share a ride to work each day in ABC's Carpoolers; a nerd is imported all the way from Pakistan in the CW's Aliens in America; and a dweeb serves as the devil's bounty hunter in CW's Reaper.
Of course, some producers insist they're not putting geeks on the screen, while pushing the same wish-fulfillment buttons as everybody else.
"I started this out with the goal of writing about remarkable minds, you know, people that were spectacular in their vision and their ability to see things that we can't see," said Big Bang creator/producer Chuck Lorre, refusing to concede that his characters - intellectual 20-something scientists who fall for the same blondiful neighbor - are indeed geeks.
Riiiight. TV industry types who are a little more forthcoming will admit geeky fanboys can add up to $50-million to a movie's bottom line. So the transition to television was inevitable.
"A lot of people from my generation grew up with Star Wars and Star Trek - it's a huge touchstone," said Javier Grillo-Marxuach, a writer for comic books who has also won an Emmy writing for TV shows (Charmed, Lost and Medium). "You're definitely seeing the footprint of the geek generation."
Talk to the producers from shows such as Reaper and Chuck and you'll hear about something else: a quarter-life crisis in which some 20-something kids feel stuck in the transition from college to adulthood.
Often stuck in dead-end jobs living with parents in the rooms where they grew up, these folks are filled with anxiety because it takes longer to reach the traditional markers of adulthood, such as marriage, family and career.
Given that it's a crisis striking the advertiser-friendly 18 to 34 demographic, why wouldn't TV go after it with both barrels?
"We live in this big-box culture that I don't know how many of us really believe is progress," said McG, noting that Chuck's hero works for a technical troubleshooting company suspiciously similar to Best Buy's Geek Squad.
"Truth be told, there are just a lot (more) guys out there who look and feel and act like Chuck than there are guys out there who look like (NFL quarterback) Tom Brady. . . . It's just a way of connecting to a great many people and saying we understand and this is the voicing of the types of people who are going to watch the show."
The wish-fulfillment gig goes beyond superheroes and creature features.
There are the dysfunctional rich people featured in series such as ABC's Big Shots, Dirty Sexy Money and the midseason series Cashmere Mafia. Aspiring music stars appear in Fox's Nashville and Next Great American Band.
Even the producer behind CBS's heavily criticized reality show Kid Nation admitted that part of the show's appeal is fulfilling every kid's fantasy about an unsupervised life.
"We started talking about how you could make a show which had that unpredictable element of that first cycle of Survivor . . . when nobody knew what was going to happen," said Kid Nation executive producer Tom Forman.
There are still plenty of questions:
Will series featuring women kicking behinds like men really add up to empowered female characters?
Will a slate filled with unknown or barely known actors prove the adage that "stars don't make successful TV shows, but successful TV shows make stars"?
And will the biggest risks - the singing on Viva Laughlin and the TV commercial Cro-Magnons on Cavemen - make TV executives look visionary or hopelessly thickheaded six months from now?
"You have to be either stupid or resilient enough to sort of constantly slam your head into a brick wall," said Tim Daly, co-star on ABC's highly promoted and critically drubbed Grey's Anatomy spin-off, Private Practice.
"But it's better to have been on something that you believed in and have it die a miserable death than to be on something you really don't care about and know that it's going to kill your career and your soul."
Eric Deggans can be reached at (727) 893-8521 or deggans@sptimes.com