The Failed Pilot Project Case File #8: Heat Vision and Jack

When a failed pilot becomes famous, do we lose the ability to evaluate seriously?

I must admit I felt some trepidation when it came to covering the Heat Vision and Jack pilot for the Failed Pilot Project. Considering that it’s written by Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab (of Community/The Sarah Silverman Program/Channel 101 fame), directed by Ben Stiller, and stars Jack Black and Owen Wilson, there are a lot of big names attached to the pilot, so it would be far too easy to follow the “how could network exec not see the talent here?” rabbit hole. On top of that, HV&J has also made its way into one of Cracked’s many lists, and Noel Murray of the AV Club did a piece on the pilot over a year ago for his “A Very Special Episode” column. In short, between everybody who has seen the pilot on Youtube, and everybody who then decided to write about it, there’s been a lot said about HV&J already, and I didn’t want to end up hampered by trying to come up with something new to say about it.

But the aim of the Failed Pilot Project is to look at a wide swath of such pilots, and to not talk about such this particular pilot would make this entire discussion incomplete. Much like Nobody’s Watching after it, HV&J rose to prominence once it was leaked on the internet. However, while NW hit the net within a year of production, it would be a few years until Heat Vision was made public, and during that time Black and Wilson both broke into the starlight, and Stiller saw an equally large comeback to the comedy scene. Looking at the pilot today, it can be hard to leave those erstwhile accomplishments at the door. But it is important to note that nobody here is as on their game – acting or directing wise – as they would be later in their careers.

(Embedding has been disable for Part 2, so you'll have to click through on the link that will pop up after Part 1 is finished. Sorry.)

I don’t mean to put down the ability/work on display here, as it’s all in fine form. But between the way Black and Wilson deliver their lines, and the fairly straightforward way that Stiller directs the pilot, it comes across as three artists still trying to figure out the defining characteristics that they could bring to their craft. In a way, this is actually a boon to the project, as Black isn’t nearly as over-the-top as he would later be defined by/derided for. Wilson’s line reading isn’t nearly hippie-ish as it would later become, and Heat Vision actually feels like its own character, not just another iteration of his own persona. As for Stiller…well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad. 

What I can’t help but notice is that everyone here seems to have a much freer range than what years of success/market research would eventually limit them to, and I can’t help but wonder if this show would have evolved into an entirely different animal that what we believe it would have become based on years of anecdotal evidence. You may disagree, but what’s important is that we don’t just look at this pilot and imbue it with the characteristics of the players as we know them now; for all we know Black would have found the joys of playing subtle comedy, Wilson’s laid-back shtick would be much more subdued, and Stiller might have been tempted to become more artistic and avant-garde with this directing. (This series practically would have begged for it.)

For the record, I’m not sure if I would call the network’s decision to pass on Heat Vision and Jack “stupid” or “shortsighted”. I of course thoroughly enjoy the pilot and wish that there were more episodes like it, but from the 1999 perspective, I can see how adopting something so gleefully bugfuck crazy would be a risky move, and I highly doubt that America at large would have accepted the show. Mainstream comedy just didn’t work that way back then, and even if a pickup had meant 13 or so episodes (quite possibly even less), it still wouldn’t be enough to satisfy fans. (Remember, there were no cable channels that catered to niche audiences back in those days.) And much like Stiller was booted off six years earlier after The Ben Stiller Show failed to retain an audience, not to be seen on TV again, I highly doubt there was any possibility that HV&J’s presence on the air would have had any great influences on the state of television comedy.

Yet all of these concerns pale in comparison to the main debate that rages on about the pilot, one that in many ways mirrors the cultural conversation concerning Nobody’s Watching. In both instances, it is the unique tone and premise of the pilot that takes center stage, and since I spent so many words last week addressing why I think this is the wrong approach to take with pilots, I would instead like to address the main concerns expressed over the longevity of the show’s premise. For while it’s true that I think focusing too much on a pilot’s premise can devalue other important elements of a television show, premises are still paramount in whether or not a pilot is considered ‘good’. In many  ways this is still a question about the premised above all else, but if we can at least value the premise on basis of something other than originality, that at least points to a willingness to truly evaluate the pilot on its own terms, and not just on whether or not it’s something we’ve seen before.

As Noel Murray writes about the pilot in his piece, spoofs of this nature don’t really work over the long term; it’s better than they be done in short, easily digestible bits and then never returned to again. While I agree on this theory on principal, I think that Murray’s concerns about the longevity of HV&J as a series are unfounded. Admittedly, genre specific jokes such as the pilot episode being “episodes 14” or “We’ll be back after this” bumpers are jokes that would probably only be funny upon the first iteration, and I can see how doing a 30 minute Knight Rider style adventure week in and week out could get old.

But upon watching this pilot for a second time, I noticed that there are lot of non-genre specific jokes, mostly in the quips and repartee between the main characters. (It’s here that Wilson does his finest work, bringing just the right amount of dry sarcasm to Heat Vision’s lines.) In fact, I found that most of my laughs came from those lines as opposed to any sort of spoof material, and I take that as a strong indication that HV&J could have overcome any comedy limitations that the premise may have imposed. And as for those genre specific riffs, well I would like to think that they would have stayed, for even if they weren’t funny after the first time, they certainly give the pilot its own unique flavor, and without them the pilot’s ironic tone might have been lost on some people.

As for the story, there’s not much within the actual pilot that would suggest that anybody any ideas for a format that would be wildly different from this on a weekly basis. But is that such a bad thing? Paragon was a fairly funny villain, and if the show could have kept introducing characters like him, it probably could have clicked along for quite a while before anybody would have gotten bored, especially if all of the “normal” jokes remained at the high quality level that they were in the pilot.

And what about when people got bored? Well, if Dan Harmon’s track record on Community is any indication, then it’s quite possible that the show would have been able to shake things up every once in a while. There could have been an episode devoted entirely to Ron Silver. Or the show could have tried to spoof other genres that were popular in the 70s/80s. And remember how the pilot was “episode 14”? Well, I would have like to see the show tackle making “episode one” at some random point during the show’s run, where all of the pointless exposition becomes one long meta joke. (And on that note, I’m actually curious if the show would have continued with the purposely heady-handed exposition from week to week, turning it into some sort of running gag. Back in those days, networks were very insistent that each episode of a series retell the premise, and it would have been interesting to see HV&J incorporate that element into their spoofing.)

Again, I understand the worry that Heat Vision and Jack could only stay original for so long, but to dwell on this fact so much if only because some many other shows floundered in the past. For as much as we praise this pilot for being brilliantly ahead of its time, it’s sad that we don’t give the show runners the credit they deserve. If they were genius enough to come up with this pilot, surely they could have found a way to make it work going forward. And even if they couldn’t, it would have been an interesting television experiment that I would have liked to see play out.

Next Week: Arrested Development shows us the perils of network-specific editing.