By Paul Tharp
The Daily Record Newswire
Writing reality is hard to do. We do it. TV writers try to do it.
The intersection of crime, punishment, the law and the constricting strain of capturing viewers’ interest leads to absurd plotlines.
Observe: “Law & Order”-titled shows (not to mention about 2 trillion copycat shows) have been running for 20 years.
Combined, the shows have broadcast more than 900 unique episodes, some “ripped from the headlines” and others clearly figments of the imaginations of teams of writers (the 2009 “Zebras” season finale of “SVU” sits on top of the heap in terms of utter implausibility).
“Law & Order” writers have used and imagined probably every plausible and implausible criminal plotline imaginable. Georgia Garvey wrote in the Chicago Tribune in March that, “It can’t be easy inventing storylines for ‘Law & Order’ court procedurals over the long slog of 20 years on the air, for innumerable spinoffs and with casts that seem to change more often than a Twitter feed.”
That leaves newer shows such as TNT’s “Rizzoli & Isles” to continue to stretch the limits of plausibility in order to be original.
In the Monday, Aug. 23 episode of “Rizzoli & Isles,” “A shooter targets runners at The Boston Marathon. Jane and Maura must conduct their investigation in secret to avoid a panic and catch the killer before another shooting,” according to a press release.
Can you imagine the horror? Well, for most of us — including me — no, we can’t imagine the horror. First of all, I can’t imagine being a potential victim of the killer because I can’t imagine running the Boston Marathon.
In order to qualify for the Boston Marathon, a man in my age group must successfully complete a marathon in 3 hours and 10 minutes — a sub-7:30-per-mile pace for 26.2 consecutive miles. Only 62 male runners out of 975 beat that time in the marathon I ran last year.
Furthermore, “[r]egardless of qualifying performance, selection and entry into the elite field is subject to review, and acceptances will be made on a limited basis,” according to registration information on the Boston Marathon website.
My certifiably non-scientific estimate is that 99.8 percent of people in the world have not and will not compete in the Boston Marathon. I am one of them.
But the writers of “Rizzoli & Isles” thought a killer mowing down elite marathon runners in the 10 o’clock time slot on TNT on a Monday evening in late August was juicy.
According to Nielsen cable summer TV ratings released by the Hollywood Reporter, “Rizzoli & Isles’” summer viewership was in the range of 7 million. Based on my certifiably unscientific analysis above, the audience had to be comprised mostly of people who had not run (and will never run) the Boston Marathon.
It couldn’t have been Angie Harmon’s star power.
It’s because stuff that happens to other people is interesting.
How does a show balance new ways of horrifying viewers to the point of arousing their interest while at the same time staying within the realm of plausibility?
Jack Bauer had some seriously long 24-hour days over the course of eight “24” seasons. He was shot more times than Tupac and survived, was electrocuted, stabbed, strangled, suffered a tree branch through the leg (who hasn’t suffered a tree branch through the leg?), was subject to various forms of torture, suffered numerous concussive blows to the head that rendered him unconscious and was exposed to a bio-weapon in season seven that viewers were repeatedly told was 100 percent certain to kill him within days — only to return the following season miraculously healed (and don’t forget about that heroin addiction).
And Jack wasn’t even the least believable. The least believable were supporting characters like Jack’s daughter, Kim. In season one she was kidnapped three different times and arrested once — all in one day. She was almost eaten by a cougar in season two.
In “24’s” eighth season, which ended in the spring of 2010, Jack’s romantic interest, Renee, cut off some Russian dude’s thumb in the fourth hour, was raped in hour six and beaten in hour seven. In the same hour she stabbed her assailant to death and stabbed Jack when he tried to stop her. During hours eight and nine, Renee was loopy and out-of-her mind while recovering at CTU and getting blamed for murdering the only lead into finding who had weapons-grade nuke material in New York City. By hours 14 and 15 a refreshed Renee was back on the scene escorting some Middle Eastern country’s president’s wife and daughter to an air force base and then doubling back to CTU before meeting Jack at his apartment to make love. Then she was sniped by a rooftop sniper/voyeur, who watched the coupling and then took a fatal neck shot at her.
I saw Jack defuse a nuclear dirty bomb, fly and land airplanes and helicopters, slay entire troupes of military and paramilitary units dispatched to kill him — but apparently he never saw “The Godfather: Part II,” or else he would have known as a marked man he must always ensure that his blinds are closed.
What a boneheaded mistake, and Renee paid with her life for it.
At that point in the season, Jack had already killed 21 dudes, according to “On-screen kills by Jack Bauer.” After Renee is killed, bent partly on revenge and partly out of his continuing altruistic sense of patriotism (you never know which is driving him, which is a contradiction in Jack’s character clearly designed to hold your interest, as a series of scenarios are set up to test whether he is acting out of vengeance or patriotism), Jack kills an additional 14 men and 2 women, for a total of 37 killings in the span of 24 hours — all in and around New York City, with the complete knowledge and to some degree ambivalence of various state and federal law enforcement agencies. And he still manages to prevent the detonation of a dirty bomb by dissidents from some Middle Eastern country working under the direction and supervision of agents within the Russian government.
The writers of “24” attempted to do what any writer or artist does: make you care. There was the suitcase nuke detonated in suburban Los Angeles that was said to have killed 12,000 people. That was topped only by a hostile takeover of the controls to the nation’s nuclear power plants and the purposeful partial meltdown of six plants — causing an untold number of deaths and (a henceforth rarely-to-never mentioned) nuclear fallout.
The stakes couldn’t get any higher, so in the last season writers tried to bootstrap a by-now familiar threat to the promise of a lasting peace (the U.S. joined by some Middle Eastern country’s best partner in the world — Russia — all signing a joint peace pact). Yawn.
“24” was cancelled. Good ideas only go so far.
TV writers struggle to imagine and anticipate new realities in order to go where no show has gone.
I have the luxury of being able to report on real events, and so often the bizarre, the unintended and unanticipated result is reality.
A perusal of the facts section of any set of appellate court opinions proves that.
