The rise and decline of narrative power in television
By Evan Carter
Art is a big tent. It encompasses so many things that arouse the senses and stimulate the intellect: music, food, painting, film, and so on. And while many would roll their eyes at the mention of “the art world,” fine art seems to be doing better than ever—at least within its insulated world of academics and wealthy collectors. Is there an art for the people anymore? The answer is surely yes, and it can be found in a variety of places and forms. But what seems to be the most popular artform, by far, is television.
On occasion I have found myself looking for something to watch on television. I do not have cable, just streaming. I may turn on Netflix or start scouring my ReelGood app in search of something to match my mood, if not augment it in some way. As I scroll, I find myself reading synopses, watching looped clips, and adding any potentially interesting content to an ever-growing list of things to watch at a later date. Soon, enough time has passed in which I could have enjoyed an episode of a show or started a film. There is so much entertainment available that we now find ourselves laboring over it without even being entertained.
It would not be preposterous to say that we are living in a world where we have access to peak television or what some call the “new golden age of television.” This began in the late ’90s, at the cusp of the millennium, and was marked mostly by the episodic television series developed and aired by HBO during this time. Series such as Oz, The Sopranos, and Deadwood were groundbreaking, even controversial, given the maturity of the themes and juxtaposition of graphic sex and violence against complex plotting, intelligent drama, dark humor, and compelling performances by actors either well known, plucked from obscurity, or just beginning their star-making careers.
Other networks also got in on the action, despite still being subject to a ratings system that did not apply to HBO. One interesting specimen was 2003’s Battlestar Galactica, an early example of the “reimagined reboot.” This 21st-century adaptation of the campy 1978 classic stretched over 76 episodes and beat out its predecessor, which was cancelled after 24. It also featured a talented cast headed by respected actors like Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos. Its narrative dealt with complex themes ranging from artificial intelligence and posthumanism to classism, identity, cancer, trauma, and suicide. Some of the actors were even invited to the United Nations to discuss human rights.
Less serious but still interesting was the circumvention of censorship by replacing the “F” word with the word “frack.” Clever as this was, it also allowed the show to depict its characters as relatable, flawed adults existing in a world that, despite its fantastical futurism, is still much like ours. The writers were not only working within the show’s constraints but also adapting to them to tell as full a story as they possibly could.
Other critics writing about this new golden age of television debate its point of origin, suggesting it goes as far back as the ’80s or starts with ’90s shows like Friends or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Those examples pushed boundaries, depicting things like lesbian relationships, counter-normative familial structures, and young women grappling with internal and external struggles. But those shows still clung to familiar serial formats like the sitcom, even if they threaded stories around an overarching plotline.
Regardless of the starting point, a distinct moment in television history made clear that things would no longer be the same: the ushering in of the “mockumentary.” If you are reading this and have been living in the woods for the past 30 years, “mockumentary” refers to an entirely or mostly scripted and/or fictional story shot with a handheld camera and thereby gaining a sense of the credibility and realism often associated with documentaries. These shows often feature quick edits and swings of the camera with sudden jumps to “confessional” interviews in which characters actually comment on events depicted in the show.
This presented a complete upending of the traditional sitcom, typically shot in front of a live studio audience on an artificial set with limited camera angles and accompanied by a laugh track. This format, with origins in radio, had been a television staple since its deployment there in the 1950s. The mockumentary itself could also be traced back to radio with Orson Welles’s notorious 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast. It continued on in the music world with the Beatles A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and This is Spinal Tap (1984). But it would not be until 2001 that the television sitcom would be transformed for a global audience by The Office.
Created by Ricki Gervais and Steven Merchant, the British comedy launched Gervais to comedic stardom and elevated Merchant to a respectable career as a showrunner and actor (his dramatic performance in 2017’s Logan is worth noting) and was adapted for the United States in 2005. Though the UK version of the show was intentionally brief, spanning only 14 episodes, it was a hit abroad. American showrunner Greg Daniels was placed at the creative helm of what still seems to be the most successful show of all time. As of 2020, according to the “Hollywood Reporter,” the nine-season-long American version of The Office has been streamed for a whopping 57.13 billion minutes, putting it in first place for most viewed television show and dominating its runner-up, Grey’s Anatomy, which clocks in at 39.41 billion minutes.
There are many reasons this show is so rewatchable. I am one of many people who have lost count of how many times I have viewed the series in full. The wonder of the show is not just in the humor, which ranges from cute to cringe, or the well-defined characters and their variety of quirks, but also in how the narrative is driven by visuals as well as dialogue. The mockumentary format opens the door for so much possibility, not only freeing the cast and crew from the sound stage and live studio audience but also giving the actors free rein to deliver nuanced performances in which a quick flash of the camera to a split-second view of a facial expression can speak volumes. These tiny details are easy to miss, providing repeat viewers with a richly textured narrative in which to notice things they might have missed on initial viewings.
There is no denying that much of the viewing done today is also driven by nostalgia for this particular moment in television history. What happened that made this moment so special, and what does it tell us about our cultural moment then versus that of the present day?
When the US Office first aired in 2005, Netflix was still a service that mailed DVDs to your house. Only two years later would they launch their streaming platform, featuring mostly films and reruns of select television shows with completed seasons already available on DVD. In other words, the shared experience of watching television at a set date—a staple of American culture—was still intact. It was important to people to catch the latest episode of something so they could talk about it with coworkers, friends, or family the next day. Art does many things, but at its most basic level, it connects us to one another and, in giving us something to discuss, defines how we relate to one another. When it comes to the nostalgia factor that may be driving the lasting popularity of these recently bygone shows, perhaps this was a special era in which we not only shared in pop-culture experiences but shared in ones that felt innovative and new.
The Office was one part of a trifecta of early-2000s comedies often lovingly referred to as the Big Three, the other two being 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation. The former was the Tina Fey–led meta-absurdist comedy show on NBC about the inner workings of a—wait for it—comedy show on NBC. Though it did not follow the mockumentary format of The Office and Parks and Recreation, it shed itself of the live studio audience and laugh track, opting instead for narrative devices like rapid-fire flashbacks and familiar television tropes found in variety shows, music videos, news broadcasts, reality television, Spanish-language telenovelas, and more. In the way that mockumentary upended the sitcom, 30 Rock also defied norms by puncturing the fourth wall of television production and the various aesthetics that had come to define it. It also both captured and repelled audiences through its aggressive “no one is safe” approach to mockery, critiquing not only celebrity and corporate bureaucracy but also reductive feminism, racism, and heteronormativity. The show itself has since been deemed racist and had episodes pulled from streaming services for ironic depictions of blackface.
Parks and Recreation is a safer and cuter, albeit beloved, mockumentary about public service by the same showrunners as The Office, Greg Daniels and Michael Schur. While The Office is narratively grounded in reality (it’s set in the real city of Scranton, PA, and adheres to the laws of physics), Parks and Recreation takes a few cues from 30 Rock by flirting with the fantastical (it’s set in the fictional town of Pawnee, IN, and features occasional visual gags that defy reason).
An interesting marker of this moment in television is the political attitudes of the shows. The Office pretty much avoids politics altogether (perhaps that’s why it remains the most popular), whereas 30 Rock aims some of its mockery directly at the second Bush administration while clearly expressing more liberal attitudes. Parks and Recreation is by far though the most political of the three, in spite of never actually using the words Republican or Democrat. Instead, the story often focuses on the absurdity of local government and dishes out veiled critiques of the Republican Party by lambasting their policies and practices without overtly naming them. Notably, since the characters themselves are government employees, the show features several cameos by actual people in government playing themselves. This includes John McCain, Barbara Boxer, Olympia Snow, Orrin Hatch, Joe Biden, and Michelle Obama.
Perhaps some of our nostalgia is attached to this moment when politics was not the defining feature of every aspect of our cultural experience. It seems that so much of the art we interact with today is performing a kind of political posture across a spectrum of sincerity. These three shows are not exempt from this quality, but something has changed. Our political and cultural world has converged and become so contentious that all the media we consume, even many advertisements, can be tied to a political tribe. But there is so much more to this shift. It may even be considered a cultural dilemma given its fractious nature and bloated use of resources.
Narrative art is more popular than ever, so much so that it increasingly consumes our time and energy and ultimately shapes our identities. Children now argue in the classroom over which is the better anime while reciting popular catch phrases that have gone viral on TikTok and YouTube. Children born in the age of streaming do not have a frame of reference for the shared collective experience of knowing your friends are just a few streets or many miles away doing the same thing you are doing. Instead, an ever-expanding library of streaming content, often uncensored, is at their fingertips.
It is not news that television is a gold mine. And the serialized sitcom was a perfect model for generating revenue. Get the right talent both behind and in front of the cameras to make a 22-minute episode, broken up by ads in a 30-minute time slot, and you could rake in the dough for years to come. But as television shows started to look more and more like blockbuster or arthouse films and the buy-in to watch them moved from cable packages to streaming, our attention became a greater commodity than ever before. Competition in markets is a good thing overall, but is that true when it comes to art? Artists, filmmakers, and critics do not necessarily agree. Martin Scorsese famously articulated his lamentation for the decline of film as a bastion for artistry after backlash to his comment that Marvel movies are not cinema. Film critic Amy Nicholson often points to the fact that superhero films have prevented film studios from greenlighting big budgets for original scripts, preventing directors from taking big creative risks. Studios are more averse than ever to miss a return on investment.
We are now seeing an almost inverse effect in the world of television. The age of COVID-19 ushered in a practice of simultaneously releasing some films in theaters and on streaming platforms. Meanwhile, we have seen an overwhelming number of big-budget movie-like television shows reach narrative stagnation for the sake of prolonging viewership. Marvel movies are not the only thing to blame for the decline of cinema as art. It is streaming television that consumes our time and intellect with the repetitious and familiar. It seems everyone I talk to about the popular shows of the day share similar feelings of either giving up on a boring and repetitive show or staying committed only to realize at the end that nothing happened.
Some of these shows start off strong before going nowhere. Amazon’s The Boys, based on a notoriously exploitive comic of the same name written by Garth Ennis, presents a world filled with superheroes who abuse their power and do more harm to the world than good while generating massive amounts of money for the corporation that manages them. Despite gratuitous violence, the show still has an intelligible critique of the media industry, corporate control over politics, and their adverse effects on the lives of everyday people. But it does not take long for the story to fall into the trap of becoming the thing it seems to be against. While the show mocks the Marvel empire, it too becomes a superhero soap opera punctuated with nods to a liberal audience that wants to affirm a liberal worldview.
Everyone has their own shows that they either scrap or commit to, thus contributing to the fracturing of our once shared cultural experience. Up for debate is the degree to which we still need to be hanging on to such a thing, but, if we are not experiencing this level of shared cultural experience while also still trying to find meaning in this bloated world of content, what are we really doing here?
Hundreds of millions of dollars are now being pumped into single productions like Netflix’s film The Grey Man ($200 million) and Amazon’s series The Rings of Power ($462 million) to attempt to recreate phenomena like Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, which earned $2.7 billion internationally at the box office, or HBO’s Game of Thrones, which might have been the last series to get its audience in front of a television at the same time and place. This search for the next big thing by studios is perfectly aligned with the search for the next big thing by audiences. We long for opportunity to feel what we felt in 2005 with The Office or in 2011 with Game of Thrones. Both felt like reinventions of the narrative form; to watch a new episode was an electrifying thrill. The creators had captured lightning in a bottle, and now the major studios are trying to manufacture it.
Art is more a laboratory than a factory, a place for taking calculated risks and experimenting with the materials and resources that allow us to pursue a deeper understanding of the world and ourselves. This was the ethos of the 20th century’s great filmmakers, who operated at the scale of the Renaissance masters, overseeing teams and developing new technology to execute their visions. This quality is not lost in the fine art or film and television worlds, but it is quickly slipping away, drowned out by the immediate gratification of content designed to satisfy our most basic urges and affirm our predetermined beliefs. However, there is hope. As long as there are creators in the world who are willing to take risks and work outside the system, things can change, and the system will follow. It is up to us, the audience, to stop desperately searching for something we already have and step back out into the world to search for our own meaning. The people who want our attention so badly will eventually catch on and follow.