Here’s one that was a bit of a pickle: I knew going in that Chaos had been cancelled. Hell, the new episode that I recorded aired at 2:05am on a Friday night/Saturday morning. Clearly this one has no life left in it.
And yet I was still curious. CIA agents mixing it up with the brass? Kurtwood Smith following up his brilliant turn on Worst Week (which I just re-watched)? With the CBS brand behind it? How bad could it be?
It turns out … not quite as bad as I would have expected. The team is somewhat fun — well, okay, that’s mainly due to Eric Close and James Murray, but two for four ain’t all bad — and there definitely was humor to be found in this past week’s assignment: the team found their way to Russia, where half of them posed as men looking to return to the States with Russian brides. The other two members? Nuclear material shoppers.
But then … no, I didn’t just hop into a time machine and take us back to the 1990s, where all the bad guys hailed from behind the Iron Curtain. Somehow, in 2011, Chaos managed to find itself battling the enemies we vanquished twenty years ago.
I’m not saying that we don’t still fear Russia, or that rogue Russians selling nuclear materials aren’t a huge concern in the world right now, but anything and everything about this episode had me thinking that the writers weren’t quite up on what year it was. I suppose we’re probably still doing better than most, but given the state of the US economy, are people still clamoring quite as hard to get here over, say, parts of Europe?
It’s actually ironic, because just the other day I was talking about the Cold War-themed books of Nelson DeMille. My mind was already swirling with his tales of secret spy training facilities in the USSR and Russian dignitary summer homes on Long Island when I sat down to watch this, and the thought had occurred to me that even Nelson DeMille, a master of the Cold War tale, had moved past the old threat to newer, more current fears. So it was even weirder to be thrown right back in time with Chaos.
If the show had a future, maybe it would be worth discussing how it should be looking forward. The fact that it’s dead … let them have their fun, right?
Still, I wonder what’s left of the old CIA/KGB thrillers. Covert Affairs is about the CIA, but it’s got nothing going on quite like an old Jack Ryan book. Can stories no longer be told like the ones about spies being rushed over the border between East and West Germany? Does the terrorist cell not lend itself to the same tales of romance, intrigue, suspense, and adventure? Does that explain the throwback, at least on this week’s episode of Chaos?
Now Showtime’s Sleeper Cell … that might have been missing the romance, but the show did a pretty good job of puffing up a terrorist story to the level of the old Cold War yarns. Can network TV manage something like that? I wonder….
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jun 06, 2011 @ 15:00 EST5EDT
I find the show a light distraction and really wish CBS would keep it on as a summer series, but it seems the big broadcast nets still think nobody watches TV in the summertime. Shows like this could run this time of year with less of an expectation to perform. I guess there’s something I don’t understand about TV production that the nets do, hence their continued avoidance of new, *scripted* programming during the summer.
*POST AUTHOR*
MEN OF A CERTAIN AGE…. :)
A good show to be sure, but my point was that the broadcast networks avoid scripted summer fare. Cable got the hint long ago, but the “big guys” seem to all but ignore anything that’s not reality slop or sports. I always thought shows like Chaos and ones that didn’t quite make the cut for the new fall season could be placed on in the summer. It would be a perfect time to experiment and find those gems the execs are just too blind to see the first time around.
I’d prefer to have original programming on in the summer instead of the fall. In the fall we stay busy with school related activities and the weather is more conducive to going out. Where I live it’s so hot in the summer that people routinely plan vacations to hell just to cool off, so we’re usually inside avoiding the inevitable heat stroke. It’s really a combination of extremely high humidity, extremely high temperatures and about fifty million blood-sucking insects per person that conspires to keep us indoors where we would love to have more to watch on TV.
*POST AUTHOR*
I wonder if there isn’t a significant drop in viewership among key demographics in the summer. 18-34 are … traveling? Spending nights out with friends? While Alpha viewers — upper middle to lower upper class — are definitely away more with their kids out of school/at camp. We feel the pain, but if advertisers aren’t clamoring for spots which demand original programming….
I guess my family, both the one I grew up in and the one I’ve helped to make with my wife, runs counter to your assertions. While it has never seemed like it to me, my wife and I are upper middle class, at least according to the not-very-rigid definitions based on education, income and profession. Nonetheless, we have always preferred to remain home spending time with our family.
You can’t just say people are definitely away more with their kids out of school/at camp. Perhaps some people are, but many prefer to take advantage of that extra free time and less hectic schedule to further strengthen family bonds. Even now, with teenagers in high school and college we regularly spend time together at home where we love nothing more than to watch a favorite show or movie together, sit and talk for hours, or even occasionally play some hokey board game.
We could definitely afford to take more vacations, but we find a single week-long trip each year is more than enough. Sometimes those trips are somewhat extravagant and other times they’re simple road trips, but we prefer to focus our incomes on things like savings, good schools for our kids and just generally never being in debt for a single thing. That philosophy is why we own our home and cars outright and have zero credit card debt. Does this go against the grain when compared to others of similar socioeconomic standing? Perhaps, but amongst our family and friends our habits are not at all uncommon.
I would like to think most people are more family-focused and fiscally responsible rather than spending their time and income on frivolities like frequently dining out when cooking a meal as a family is more fun, rewarding, definitely cheaper and usually tastier. I reject the idea that a significant portion of our society doesn’t take the concept of family beyond the sharing of genetic material and a common roof. Were you to believe advertisers you might get the impression that people with “money to burn” are always on the go, always shopping and always eating out, but that’s not the reality it’s only what the advertisers want you to believe. It’s in their best interest to foster such an impression, but by and large I think their efforts fail.
Even back when my wife and I fit into the 18-34 age bracket we did very little traveling. Back then we did spend more time out with friends, but that was almost exclusively at someone’s home, not out at the local pub or eatery. Even then we knew what a waste of money that was. More often than not the gathering included watching a favorite movie or the local college football team and every guest contributed something to the gathering thereby spreading the cost and effort out among us all.
As I said before, advertisers desperately want the public to believe such a thing, but I don’t think it holds true for the majority. Viewership drops in the summer, but it’s not because people are out or simply doing other things at home. People are out and/or doing other things because the networks refuse to give them a reason to turn on their televisions. And that’s precisely why cable owns the summer, because at least the cable nets have realized “if you show it, they will watch.”
*POST AUTHOR*
Hey, I’m with you on this, and know plenty of people who are as well. But I can tell you that I grew up surrounded by people who spent all summer every summer at camp and/or on vacation, people who took a three day weekend as an opportunity to go to Florida or ski in Vail. While I don’t think that that population is large enough to dictate advertisers’ agendas, I do still think that the networks know when something’s a losing proposition for them. And whatever math they use, I guess summertime original programming on a no pay channel is a loss. Don’t know why, but I guess it is. Then again, when cable shows pulling in five million viewers is unprecedented, I think we can begin to understand how vastly different the network and cable scales are.
But I am impressed that your family manages to spend so much time together; my son’s still little, but when I was the teenager I definitely had a different experience — I went out every night in the summer to hang out with friends … there’s your difference: no homework or school nights throws off the natural order of things! :)
I do wonder about what you said, that “advertisers desperately want the public to believe” that people are always shopping, eating out, and on the go. Wouldn’t they only push an idea that’s profitable for them? How’s giving up on three months of viewer reaching profitable? What would they gain from pushing that false reality?
What I think is that the broadcast networks are still living in the past when it comes to decision making. There were a number of shows that got viewership under the 5-6 million mark in the fall and still were renewed. Taking into account some viewership will be down in the summer, if the nets were willing to give it a real try I believe they’d succeed in the summer as well. Judging by last season’s upfronts and the ones for this season it’s obvious that they’re even less inclined to take risks than ever before. Their cheap reality fare is doing fine in the summer which proves there is an audience for television this time of year.
I’m sure they’re seeing the success of cable and may not be willing to take the risk because they have to face stiffer competition, but that’s just giving up before they try. Not that I would be surprised by that.
Advertisers are constantly pushing the idea of people shopping, eating out and any other sort of methods of parting with their money. That *is* the idea that’s profitable to them because once they’ve convinced you to go out and spend your dough they don’t give a rat’s backside if you watch television. The only reason any of them want you to watch the TV in the first place is to convince you to stop watching and start spending, only coming back to the screen frequently enough to keep you indoctrinated into the mindset of continued spending.
The proof that an audience is out there during the summer has been obvious for a long time. The broadcast networks, with their higher profits during the fall season and greater competition during the summer, don’t feel the need to even bother, but there is definitely a large audience looking for something worthwhile to watch. Of course, when was the last time we saw executives from the big nets making any kind of sense? They’ve been playing it safe for years and that’s given the cable channels the opportunity to grow their viewership. The dinosaurs resist change and it’s hurting them.
*POST AUTHOR*
I definitely can’t disagree with your argument, and I also wish there was more to watch in the summer. I just wonder about instances like this sometimes, when all of us on this side of the table think the issue is as simple as you state it. While a part of me agrees that it might be a failure to evolve, I also wonder if maybe we don’t know what they’re seeing. Same thing when we can’t believe that shows get cancelled … “12 million people watch it every week!” But if it’s a money loser and not because it’s a loss leader, it doesn’t matter … I don’t know. :)
Absolutely there are things we don’t know. The conclusions we draw are obviously based on limited knowledge of how the industry works, but somehow, some way cable networks are managing to make a profit in the summer. While I’d suppose most of the major networks operate with higher budgets and maybe even better production values I fail to see why they couldn’t work within more modest means for original summer programming.
One tends to get the impression that the big guys just don’t really give a crap and I secretly (or not so secretly) wish the cable nets would start to make a serious dent in the business of the larger networks during the fall. It’s probably the only way to get the dinosaurs off their butts since as we all know it’s about the money, not the entertainment.
I wish I knew more about the whats and whys of the broadcast nets’ reluctance to program original, scripted programming in the summer. It’s frustrating being someone who’s ready to watch while nothing shows up.