Time after time: TV shows mix it up

Posted by Dan May 22nd, 2008 at 11:14am In General

I’ve never liked change. It’s awful.

You know what I like? I like doing the same thing at the same time every day. Taking my coffee the same way (a ton of cream and no less than three Splendas — disgusting, I know), going to the same restaurants and ordering the same thing (Alero, chicken burrito) and going to the same bars to get the same drinks (Jack and coke or a nice wheat beer). I really see myself as a retiree who has to go to work.

More to the point, it’s a good thing that my life isn’t televised because it’d be boring as all hell (”I know he’s not going to buy that cute shirt — he’s going to put it down to see if it’ll go on sale even more and then it’ll sell out”). But the same thing goes for television. Formats get stale and old trappings become more and more obvious. As of late, though, some show have taken to some drastic measures to keep things fresh — completely discarding old formats and taking giant leaps in time and location.

This has been in the news a bit. The San Francisco Chronicle mentions Lost’s flash-forward trick while The Boston Globe bemoans Desperate Housewives five-year jump in time. Sometimes the change can be good, but it can also be risky. Let’s examine all of these. Or at least put them in a bulleted list.

• Lost - The flash-forward in the season three finale was the best thing that could have happened to the series. It was the pinnacle of a strong second half of a season (Nikki and Paolo! Holla!) and, most importantly, added a completely new dimension to the series. No more redundant flashbacks of Jack being mad at his Dad or Kate being on the run or Hurley being crazy and unlucky.
• Desperate Housewives - There’s no telling whether this will be a mistake or welcome change of pace. You see the last minute or two of Sunday’s was a five-year leap into the future. It hasn’t really been a secret (the cast and creators were pretty cavalier in discussing it in the press), but some of the events that took place in the finale were. Gaby has babies, Bree is a Martha Stewart-style homemaking star, Susan starts making out with Gale Harold (although, mark my words, I’m putting my money on this being a fake-out. She’s going to be an actress or conducting a sting operation or something). It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, but I’m guessing the general tone will stay the same since the cast is.
• Battlestar Galactica - This sort of counts because of the one-year flash-forward to New Caprica. It was really only a few episode-long arc and things kind of ended up back to normal after the rescue operation. Not a whole lot of risk here, more like an interesting experiment and change of scenery.
• Weeds - Last season ended with a massive fire taking out the entire city of Agrestic. Recent reports say that they are relocating the show entirely and taking out some key players: namely Heylia and Conrad. I have to admit, I love this show so much that I’m nervous — but they must know what they’re doing.

In sum, I think that huge changes like these can’t really hurt. As long as the writers are the same and the cast doesn’t change too much, the general feel of the show will be inescapable. That said, if you have a show about a high school don’t expect people to follow them to college (see Veronica Mars).