I recently raved about Alan Sepinwall's The Revolution was Televised here at the EWN, and after reading some more from his website, asked if he'd be willing to answer a few questions. He was kind enough to say yes and do so.
Dan:
I know you spent some time re-watching episodes (or maybe even entire series) as you wrote the various chapters of this book--did any of the shows seem maybe a little more dated than the others? Are there some within the group you wrote about that you feel have very little chance of ever feeling dated?
Alan:
Formally, Oz feels a little more dated than some of the others, simply because
it was the first of its kind and you can tell that the show is aware of itself
and its uniqueness in a way that the later shows weren't. And 24 feels much
more a property of its time than most of the others.
And technology is always an issue. The Buffy episode about the demon who's on
the Internet ("I Robot, You Jane") is pretty horrible, for instance,
and what we know now about cell phone culture makes Stringer Bell look like a
much worse businessman than he did at the time after he says he's dumping all
his telecomm stocks because the market is maxed out.
But all of these shows will eventually feel dated in some way. So many of them
are about millennial angst, post-9/11 angst, and other things we were going
through as a country at the time.
Dan:
It was interesting reading about the various creators of the shows and seeing how there's a bit of a family tree effect running through the shows that you wrote about. Are there any writers on some of the more recent of the shows focused on in your book that you see as creating, or the type that might create, the next wave of shows that you might see writing a book about in another decade or so?
Alan:
Probably. There's a writer on Boardwalk Empire, for instance, named Howard Korder who seems to be to that show what Terence Winter was to The Sopranos, and you can see a clear uptick in quality whenever his name is on the script. I'm looking forward to Meredith Stiehm's new FX show because of how good her Homeland episodes have been, but of course she's already created a show (Cold Case). And I imagine someone whose name I'm not even paying attention to who will be responsible for a great new show.
Dan:
As you took the time to talk to those behind the scenes of the shows you wrote of, especially creators and writers, as well as network executives, if you had to name one creator that no matter the topic or tagline of their next show, you'd give it a shot, who would that be?
Alan:
Probably David Simon, but only because he has a long track record of creative success in this era, between The Wire, Treme and his two HBO miniseries. Most of the others only created one show during that time (though Winter and Matt Weiner both worked on Sopranos, Howard Gordon was on 24 the whole time, and Milch did two other shows — one which was a mess, one which was becoming great as it was canceled). But I'd be excited to hear about any of these people working on a new show.
Dan:
One thing that seemed to happen over and over, there was a creator with a show that was ready to push some sort of a boundary, and it happened to be finding a network with an executive ready to push the boundaries a bit and willing to sit back, for the most part, and let the creators do their thing? Do you believe this is the only way we'll see more great, revolutionary shows like those you write of? Or do you believe that there's still room for one to sneak in through with established stations and established executives?
Alan:
It's certainly the easiest way for one of these shows to get on the air, but not every show of this kind got on the air this way. 24 and Friday Night Lights were developed under a relatively normal process, at networks with stable leadership (Kevin Reilly had no idea Zucker was going to replace him with Ben Silverman a year later), and Homeland, Justified and the recent HBO shows were all developed at networks that have been doing this a while and have an entrenched system for it. But I'm definitely looking to some new outlet — whether it's a cable channel, or Netflix with their new shows — to kick off the next phase of things.
Dan:
What do you see as the next network ready to explode the way HBO, FX, and AMC have?
Alan:
As I said above, Netflix seems the most likely, though I have yet to see House of Cards. But that's going to reinvent "TV" in a whole lot of ways, including the idea that they'll make every episode of their shows available at the same time.
Dan:
I typically end with a question asking if the author were a character in Fahrenheit 451, what book(s) would they memorize for posterity? I'm going to tweak that and ask if you could memorize one episode of one television show, what would it be?
Alan:
The thing of it is, what made most of these dramas great was the cumulative power of them. If I pick, say, "Long-Term Parking" from The Sopranos, it doesn't mean as much if I haven't seen the whole Adriana arc leading up to it. So I'll go with a Simpsons episode instead, and pick my favorite: "Homer the Heretic."
Dan:
Thanks, Alan, it was a great pleasure reading your book and getting you to answer some questions.
Again if you're a fan of tv, or want to consider being a critic of any art form, I highly recommend the book that led to this interview.
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