The Final Countdown

First Published: 17 January 2006

The public outcry following November's cancellation of Fox's Emmy-winning sitcom Arrested Development was certainly more than muted. Still, unlike the furor of tens of millions of voices that followed the end of Seinfeld, a show about nothing, the passing of Arrested, a show that's really something, seems to have made only critics and the dozens of fanatics irate. Strangely, Fox's move comes at a time when our present protagonist program is the top-rated comedy on TV.com, while the aforementioned immaterial show holds the seventh spot.

So why did FOX decide to scrap a program that garnered them six Emmys and has the unabashed admiration of America's top critics? According to some commentators, the show's self-referential humour and its upper-class characters make it difficult for audiences to relate. And the absence of a laugh track has been claimed to alienate viewers who are unable to make the decision to laugh on their own. But, it's precisely the show's quick pace and innumerable in-jokes that make it simultaneously ill-suited for a laugh track as well as brilliant.

The simple reason Fox is dropping the show is that while Arrested captured an average of only five-million viewers this season, another Fox show set in Orange County, The O.C., brought in more than double that amount. Considering that Fox is preeminently advertising-oriented, it is perhaps understandable that the network would desire to dissociate itself from any programming that would endanger its cash flow. But this decision leaves its programming a veritable Aztec tomb of weak plots, romantic melodramas and reality caricatures.

So Fox's motivations are economic, but that still begs the question: Why, if AD is so brilliant, did it fail in the ratings game? Therein lies the rub. According to Alia Shawkat, who plays Maeby Fünke, the show is too brilliant. In an interview, she relates an instance in which the show's creator, Mitch Hurwitz, fumed after a meeting during which he was told to make the show "simpler." Indeed, she says, Fox was so sure that their audience would not watch the show that they didn't even advertise it, effectively rendering it dead as a dove. While L.A. is littered with billboards for The O.C. and Prison Break, there are none for Arrested. Even the Fox lot bears no marker of this magic show.

Perhaps Fox is underestimating its audience. But, then again, perhaps it isn't. Considering the popularity of shows with unashamedly unrealistic plot lines, like CSI and sitcoms that thrive on strategically timed laughs and plotlines centred around misunderstood situations, maybe there is little space on network television for a program whose genius is its multi-layered complexity.

What this really speaks of is a society with a generally low level of tolerance for intelligence and a generally high level of physical and intellectual laziness. This malaise is perpetuated by a media that, instead of raising the proverbial bar, stifles room for intellectual growth by pandering to an unthinking couch culture. The upshot here is a society that becomes increasingly satisfied with uninspired thought and rehashed ideas, the result of which is stagnation. By cancelling programming that promotes the movement of neurons, the networks, and indeed, society at large, will find inevitably that they've made a huge mistake.

Obviously, television programming is not the prime mover of society's advancement, but considering the pervasiveness of television culture, its influence cannot be understated. Certainly, the motor of today's world is economics. But without the socially responsible investment in education by all sectors of society, including television networks, we as a society will find quickly that we don't have a banana to stand on.

http://media.www.mcgilltribune.com/media/storage/paper234/news/2006/01/17/Opinion/Subjects.And.Predicaments.The.Final.Countdown-1370063.shtml