The Payoff

The new season of Television has finished up their November sweeps, and is settlling in for their holiday hiatus, after having aired about a third of their episodes for the season.

So why is it that I feel so unsatisfied with so much of what I’ve seen thus far? After an exciting September full of the promise of new seasons and new shows, my interest has dwindled and waned on various fronts. For one thing (though its probably a foregone conclusion to everyone else) Surface is officially off my list. After investing seven hours of my life attempting to force myself into liking the show, I finally threw my hands in the air under the duress of extreme boredom, there was simply nothing redeeming about to peek my interest week after week. Invasion which actually had a decent episode a couple of weeks ago plummeted back to its par for the course unbearablue uneventfulness this past Wedensday. The problem with Invasion, is one which I find plauges many shows these days.

In Invasion, that characters we follow are trying to make sense of the mysterious happenings in their town after a major hurricane has hit. Certain townspeople have had “experiences,” in which they became unconscious during the storm and were found the morning after disoriented and without a recollection of what happened to them. The obvious allusion is that these people are somehow different, that they have been influenced and/or abducted by some alien life form. The episode “The Cradle” which aired two weeks ago exactly, was compelling because at long last, some real details about what might have happened to these folk was finally revealed. One of the main characters who had an experience, Mariel, goes into the pond where she was found after the hurricane and sees her own body decomposing under the water. In the meantime her husband, the bizarre shifty Sheriff Underlay, has an intriguing conversation with a disturbed young woman who also had an “experience.” The young woman, who had just killed her mother in law and denied her baby, implied that even Underlay (a suspected pod person himself) couldn’t fathom what was happening to the town, or to his wife, and that “everyone was different”. At last I felt we were getting somewhere. People had been abducted, and their bodies replaced with new ones, and there were things that the ringleader sheriff could not control himself. It seemed that at long last the show was giving us a payoff. Sadly last week’s installment was another lackluster edition, failing to truly capitalize and give any movement to the ideas spawned by the previous episode.

But Invasion isn’t the only show out there which has yet to give any real payoffs this season, even the beloved Lost, has been a little lacking. There have been some big reveals, but each answer consistently brings on more and more new questions and mysteries. I have yet to feel like a single storyline (including those from last season) has come to a satisfying and complete climax. I’m all for mystery and fun and games, but after a while it feels tiresome. As much as I like the fact that they’ve introduced a new set of characters on the island, --the tail section survivors, I can’t help but feel like its a diversion from the main plot of the island that’s already been established. I’m glad that last week’s episode finally reunited all the remaining survivors; I want to see what the heck they’re going to do now. In the first season, we got to know the main characters, as they got to know each other. They explored the island, got a the lay of the land, and strategized how to get off the island. In some ways this season has cheated because they’ve started all over again with a new set of characters that needed their own exposition. (I actually think it would have been really interesting if they had devoted a lot more time to the tail section survivors, so we could have learned about their struggles over the course of a few episodes, rather than what was smashed together into one). But whether or not one finds the new survivors interesting, we still know so little about some of the major elements on the island. Where the hell has the monster been? The Polar Bears? Why the Quaraintine and what of the references by the French Woman of the “infection” and getting sick. Speaking of the French Lady, where has she been? Where’s Desmond? What will happen if the button isn’t pushed? Who are The Others? Where is Walt? Where do the numbers come from?

Questions abound and while I understand that these “secrets” can’t or shouldn’t all be answered at once, everything still seems incredibly foggy to me. The bizarre video by the Dharma Collective shed some light on what the island might be about, but even the particulars of the film are hard to make sense of in the context of everything else. I think the episodes still exhibit solid writing, directing and acting, but the storyline is dragging, enough of Rose hanging her laundry and Charlie having a sing-a-long, I want some action!

I still watch ER, and for the most part, each episode has its own little encapsulated storylines. West Wing is at least building to a presidential election, creating suspense as to who will be the winning candidate. I still keep Threshold on the TiVo, though it only occasionally skims the territory of good solid TV, wavering on decent most of the time. The problem with that show is that they’ve spilled all their beans at once. We already know there’s an alien invasion, and we know the government has a separate secret agency to fight it. Due to the intensive nature of their work, none of the Threshold team really has anytime for a personal life, so there ins’t really much drama to be had in that arena either.

How difficult can it be to set up a situation or an issue, that will eventually come to bear with drastic consequences or results?

Ironically enough, the one TV show out there right now that I find is able to successfully execute payoffs within its story structure is Deperate Housewives. This is a show that I mocked incessantly last season, because of its ridiculous characters and materialistic attitudes; in many ways it is an extented commercial for the life of a suburban housewife. There are still things about it that drive me crazy, --I think its characters can be more cartoonish then well rounded, and I can not abide Terri Hatcher; but objectively speaking, the show is actually cleverly crafted. It is able to consistently give the audience plot payoffs, without taking an obscenely long amount of time to do it and without revealing all of its secrets and mysteries. Like any soap opera, it sets plot points into motion that may carry on for episode after episode, but unlike certan daytime soaps which drag things out to an abysmal extent (parallel universe/island on Days of Our Lives anyone?) the writers/producers on Housewives have a good sense of timing. They know how long they can keep a mystery or cliffhanger going before interest wanes, and it looses its relavence. Time and time again they’ve provided closure and “answers” to different plot lines.

Which brings me to my nex thought. Am I just another stupid American glutton who needs to be spoon fed at every turn? Can I not enjoy a mystery for mystery’s sake and come up with my own answers and interpretations? It’s possible there is some truth to that, though I enjoy debating and discussing the meaning of film’s ambiguous ending or open ended conclusion. But this is television, and with television, if you watch a show regularly, you are really devoting a lot of time to it. You are investing yourself in the characters and the storylines, and I think its only fair that every now and again the creators reward their loyal fans with a payoff now and again. Because the casual viewer who’s flipping through the channel won’t necessarily care if they see Scully and Mulder kiss, or if an alien on Star Trek from two seasons ago reappears, but the fans will. Payoffs are what create enthusiasm for a show, what garners fervor. Fans like to know they are being appreciated. I find TV is a funny give and take that way, much more so than film. I think it’s more personal.

****NOTE******
I wrote the bulk of this blog yesterday before seeing last night’s episode of LOST. I thought last night’s episode was quite strong, --creepy, great writing, and good acting (I love the new character, Echo). Finally I felt like we were starting to get somewhere with LOST, Jack and Kate making out in the jungle was a long time coming, and at long last we learned of Kate’s “secret”. There was more revealed about the film, though it did just create a whole other set of questions. Another incident? What were they talking about? And where the heck was Walt typing from? (If it was actually Walt.) Still, great episode.