Just Because A Television Show Airs, Should We Watch It?
Some shows seem to feed violence and mental health problems as they purport to illuminate them.
I seldom watch network television, and I only watched Fox’s new show Accused last night because it was on after the San Francisco 49ers/Dallas Cowboys’ NFL playoff game.
This new anthology show, based on a 2010 UK series, was heavily advertised during the game. I saw that it starred good performers, so when the game ended, the marketers got their wish: I started watching.
I could make fun of Michael Chiklis’ portrayal, as was my first inclination, because he plays an accused father, Scott Corbett, in such a repressed way that the only moving parts in a closeup are his eyes and thin, pale lips. But Chiklis clearly delivered a performance to the best of his ability and is a great actor. And: he didn’t write the script. However, I have just seen: he is one of the credited directors, so dude … seriously …
I don’t want to talk badly about Hollywood screenwriters because I walked in the Writers’ Strike in 2007 and I know they’re far from all oatmeal-brained racist, misogynistic, hamfisted assholes. And I think the writers on Accused, whom I do not know and have not looked up, probably think they are very well-meaning present-day versions of socially-aware 50s screenwriters like Rod Serling, Billy Wilder, and Paddy Chayevsky.
Their feelings may be “well-meaning” but the result they achieved is anything but well-meaning for those with mental illness, families struggling with oppositional teens, and — most of all — for anyone who has been affected by the never-ending, ever-escalating school and workplace shootings. While this show was being aired, a 72-year-old man entered a dance hall in Monterey Park, CA and shot ten people dead, wounding ten others.
The marketing for Accused says “Ripped from today’s headlines!” They used to say that when I was a kid. This has been a common marketing phrase for this type of entertainment for years. It seems to signify more slow-paced unrealism, as opposed to fast-paced, nonstop unrealism. Accused’s ads alternated with ones for a Texas firefighting show starring Rob Lowe. This show’s upcoming episode seemed to be about the attack of a giant Texas twister at an amusement park. One of the highlights (or lowlights) is a wind-tossed porta-potty with a dude inside of it, which seemingly flies at least fifty feet in the air. The commercial lingers on the exciting “special moments” of this hapless victim being wind-tossed inside a flying Spot-A-Pot …
There are several reasons I don’t watch network TV much, and the main one is, current shows are not only all remakes or sequels, most of the events these shows depict are so idiotic that it’s impossible to watch more than a few minutes no matter how enthusiastic I might be starting out —
But mindless entertainment isn’t supposed to influence anyone for good or ill and the only problems it causes are lack of sleep or wasted time. Entertainment that isn’t mindless, but rather misguided or misdirected? That’s Accused.
There’s a big difference between a show like Accused — which tells the story of a father who is apparently accused of murdering his own son, a really nasty high school student who is sociopathic and extremely violent — and a show like the Rob Lowe show, which shows firefighters rescuing dummies in distress amid absurd circumstances.
It Does Make a Difference Who Writes It
I think one of the biggest losses in our society is the loss of stories that emphasized honor and genuine sacrifice for a good cause, along with the loss of relatable heroes and heroines that we could look up to. Marvel superheroes are no substitute for the kind of heroes that used to appear on 50s, 60s, and even 70s television. Everyday heroes — or even just interesting and quirky characters like Columbo.
Today’s network television is being continuously redigested and excreted now, from an updated Night Court to the new Hawaii 5–0, the new Quantum Leap, and of course, the endless NCIS, Criminal Minds, Star Wars, and Star Trek sequels, prequels, spinoffs, reboots … on and on … f off you idiots I’m going for a run.
The television we grew up with influenced most, if not all of us, in my generation. Our prior generation was the “radio generation,” and I remember Ray Bradbury speaking eloquently about how listening to a story over the radio activated your imagination so much more richly than seeing any television show. Many of my youthful favorite shows are difficult to watch now. Shows of the 60s and 70s tend to be fast-paced, very broadly acted, and not very sophisticated in storytelling or visual elements.
I sat through this incredibly long-seeming 40-minute show last night: by the end, I felt like I was forcing myself to watch. Was it just wanting to see “What happened next?” Sure. Another part was “Will Michael Chiklis move more than his eyes this time?”
Here is the plot of the first episode of Accused:
A very “nice” neurosurgeon, Scott Corbett, is accused of — you think for most of the show — murdering his son Devin. Devin is a heinously nasty, awful teen who keeps a journal exactly like the Columbine shooters. There’s nothing sympathetic about this kid. He’s a cruel, vicious, nasty piece of shit who tried to kill his brother starting at an early age. Scott’s wife Lynn, Devin’s mother, thinks this kid just needs a little counseling or therapy or a boost from his dad. No one could handle this kid because …
The entire story is told via flashback, and in a confusing way, so you can see the “plot twists” as they come along.
So, I can tell you what is wrong with this show without giving any “plot spoilers.”
Early-on, I realized, “This show is about a father realizing that he might need to … kill … his son.”
Gee whiz, I have told a similar story, but when the situations are compared, Denny in “Perfect Stranger” isn’t like Devin in Accused. Denny hasn’t hurt anyone and doesn’t plan to. Devin is 100% malevolent: and that’s before his dad finds his Columbine-like “I will KILL THEM ALL!” illustrated journal. It should go without saying that part of the “shell-shocked” condition of Scott Corbett at the beginning of the show is realistic for someone who is accused (it’s never quite clear what Scott Corbett was charged with) of causing the death of their child: I did also write about this experience, but it was a first-person narrative. Yes, part of the reason I watched Accused is that I personally know what it’s like to be called into a courtroom and charged with causing the death of my child: something I did not do. I never watched the original British television series this show is based on, but the underlying concept of someone being falsely accused of a crime, with a story told from their perspective, is an excellent one.
It’s the execution and narrative choices made by these screenwriters in these incredibly fraught multiple subjects that’s the problem.
I hope I won’t spoil the show too much by saying, most of the show deals with the kind of suspense I wrote in “Perfect Stranger.” A father gradually realizes that he not only has no decent relationship with his own son, the son seems like a stranger or alien in his own home. I think most parents would have taken much stronger action upon discovering the horrific journal that Devin hid in his room.
Both of the parents, Scott and Lynn, seem at a loss as to how to deal with their vastly unpleasant, irredeemably awful and dangerous son. Accused gets part of the story right: normal parents struggle to deal with severely disturbed children. Public and private resources and organizations also struggle: I have written books (professionally) about terrorist attacks, bomb threats, and school shootings for school classrooms and libraries for years.
Devin does end up following through with his plans to become a school shooter. That’s not exactly a plot spoiler.
So, this show is created by rich Hollywood multi-millionaires who don’t understand that you can’t shoehorn “Dad’s a decent man who is thinking maybe he should kill his extremely troubled son” and “This kid shot up his whole school” into 40 minutes.
Yeah, this story is “Ripped from today’s headlines!”
They also forgot that hardly anyone is sympathetic to the Columbine parents despite the fact they’ve given TED talks and have gone around for decades trying to redeem themselves. Nobody wants to hear the story of a dad who sort of realized maybe his son was planning to murder everyone at his school (and had put it in writing, with pictures) and … how do we say this?
Screwed the pooch: he did not see to it the kid was therapeutically incarcerated or … as the character was considering and most of the show covers … didn’t physically put a stop to the violent threat.
I know after writing Coping With Terrorism (2004) that there have been at least half a dozen FBI and DOJ reports about how different families and school systems have prevented school shootings. There are resiliency factors and there are many therapeutic interventions and protocols throughout these systems that, believe it or not, have prevented hundreds of violent school or workplace incidents. One of the most moving things I have ever seen is a video of a potential school shooter, a young man and his mother, in which the young man cries and says how grateful he was his mother insisted that he be committed to a behavioral medicine program and receive medication: after 30 days, he realized how completely twisted his thinking had become due to his severe mental illness.
The reality of the story that the Accused writers and producers chose to tell is that neurosurgeon Scott Corbett is obviously a wealthy man, lacking no financial resources to help or — stop — his son’s violent tendencies. Scott and his wife Lynn don’t just have Devin’s nasty, vicious demeanor and explicit threats to indicate he is dangerous, he also kills a neighbor’s dog (in the extremely wealthy mansion neighborhood), and then they find the very explicit, Columbine-inspired journal. The show says glibly that Corbett showed pictures of the journal to the authorities, who declined to take action.
We just saw an incident in Uvalde, Texas where “authorities” stood in the hall and laughed while a shooter slaughtered dozens of innocent children so … it’s possible that any parent, whether a high-profile, respected neurosurgeon who lives in a mansion, or a single mom like Nicole Schubert … could be ignored by authorities when they find a Columbine-type journal in their child’s room.
But that’s not the protocol. And Nicole Schubert was not ignored: the attack was stopped and her son’s life and future were also saved.
So, it’s one thing to have a gigantic, insane Texas cyclone that picks up porta-potties and hurls them around an amusement park. Everyone knows that’s unrealistic escapism.
And it’s another thing to have a whole show that, unintentionally, ignores everything every law enforcement agency and decent school district has tried to do to prevent the ever-escalating problem of school shootings. For every school shooting that occurs, it is estimated that at least 20 to 30 are prevented by authorities and parents taking action. You would never know that from watching Accused.
In the show, it is unclear what crime, exactly, Scott Corbett was charged with, and what he ended up being released from — the school shooting occurred and his son … ok, it’s a spoiler … he shot himself, again, Columbine-style.
The show seems to make it clear that Corbett showed the journal images to the authorities who declined to detain his son in any way: and that is not the protocol. And it isn’t so much that the authorities “ignored” what they were supposed to do, it is that Corbett was charged, apparently with causing his son’s death, possibly with causing the school shooting incident.
We live in a violent world. We live in a world where institutions we believe that we can count on, cannot be counted on. But at the same time: most of them try. Even the criminal Uvalde, Texas sheriffs likely weren’t eager for a school shooting, and even if they were unwilling to risk a scratch on their fat bodies to save a child, probably would have done at least something to stop the shooter before he attacked the school. If you asked them now, they’d probably say if they’d had the chance, they would have sent him to juvenile mental health detention.
The peculiar unrealism of the Accused show didn’t end up serving the many grieving parents who have lost a child due to ever-escalating school shootings: or anyone else who has lost a loved one in a mass shooting or other mass violent attack, from the Boston Marathon bombing to the Oklahoma City bombing. And, it didn’t serve parents of potentially violent, anti-social children, either.
It’s just one show. Of course I shouldn’t have wasted my time watching network TV. But the terrifying morass of remakes, sequels, reboots, and tie-ins that make up network TV doesn’t seem much like the creative product of a vibrant and healthy culture.
It seems like the last exhalation of a dying world, even making products as bizarre and unrealistic as 60s shows like F-Troop [Ha-Ha! “Indian” Wars!) or Hogan’s Heroes [Ho-Ho! Funny Nazis!] seem acceptable.
Yeah. Those sucked too.
I wonder if people will ever learn.
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