Traditional Audience Perceptions and the Failure of Open Letters

Or why cancelling Men of a Certain Age is harmful to television as a whole

Yesterday during my daily stroll through my the usual websites, I came across two open letters – one from Alan Sepinwall, the other from Mo Ryan – both extolling the virtues of Men of a Certain Age and reasoning/pleading with TNT to give the show a third season, and another chance to gain a substantial audience. As a fan of the show, my heart leapt while reading these two well-formed, intellectual, and heart-felt pleas for a fantastic show that for various reasons has never had a chance to connect with people. Though I finished these letters filled with a sense of elation, soon cold logic began to set in. I have seen this tactic used with shows in the past – most notably Terriers last fall – and never to my recollection have open letters saved a show. (Subway sandwiches and bags of peanuts are another story.)

This is not to say that the critics stumping for the shows are doing anything wrong, or that they are wasting their time trying to rope in new viewers through something other than advertising. As a fellow TV lover, I understand the compulsion to do whatever it takes to save a flailing show, and I respect these critics for taking these steps for a show that deserves it. This, then, is not a piece meant to decry those critics for their work. Rather, it is the failure of these open letters to make an impact, and the nature of the shows that tend to have such letters written, that reveal important trends in the viewing habits of the Average Viewer, the understanding of which is key to Men’s renewal.

Sepinwall and Ryan’s arguments essentially boil down to “Men of a Certain Age should be renewed because it’s a fantastic program, and loyal viewers deserve more, and new potential viewers deserve the chance to see it.” They back up this shared assertion with evidence, and it’s here where their arguments run into the basic problem of defining just what they mean by ‘fantastic’. MOACA certainly is fantastic, no one (here) is denying that fact, but it’s fantastic in these incredibly subtle ways, ways that most people are yet used to recognizing as quality work.

What’s also working against them is that television shows that excel in terms of subtlety and tone become hard to express in the written word (or even in the spoken word, for that matter) because A) we as a society are not yet used to discussing/hearing such things and B) once you begin to discuss subtleties, they tend to come off as overt, and thus lose their dramatic and creative punch. Men of a Certain Age, which asks us to identify with characters with which 75% of the audience doesn’t match up demographically (and entirely succeeds in that endeavor), tends to prove its quality based on the strong emotional connection with the audience, as opposed to any easy to identify, high-minded concepts.

Compare Men’s state with those of two other low-rated but twice-renewed shows, Arrested Development and Veronica Mars. Arrested was seen as the pinnacle of single camera comedies, deftly mixing word-play, satire, crude jokes, and slapstick all in one seamless package. (Its slew of Emmy nominations, especially in its first season, helped to cement its claim to quality.) Veronica Mars, meanwhile, was loudly applauded for its ability to mix serialized and standalone plot elements, it insightful portrayals of American’s views on class and race through the lens of the high school social hierarchy, and the terrific (yet unfortunately Emmy-snubbed) performance of Kristen Bell in the lead role. These were concrete details that critics and the networks could point to as proof of the shows’ quality, and though they stilled failed to attract adequate viewership, the networks at least had solid proof of why they renewed these shows, even if stating that proof was in fact a bid for more viewers.

Men, meanwhile has practically no traditional proof of quality, and thus it greatly lessen TNT’s incentive to grant the show a third season. What’s funny is that Men does have proof of quality – it won a Peabody in between the two halves of this past season, something which warranted a mention in just about every review when the show came back last month – but it doesn’t seem to be the kind of proof that TNT is looking for. All of the promos for the back half of the second season referred to the show as “award winning” without ever referring to which award the show supposedly won. Though this is just speculation, I can’t help but think that TNT remained vague on this front because either A) only a select portion of televisions viewers actually know why the Peabody Award is given and/or B) for those aware of the award’s open, vague requirements for ‘winning’, they might think that achieving such an award isn’t all that great of an accomplishment.

So then what does TNT consider be the bar of quality, exactly? As Myles McNutt adroitly points out, TNT is used to defining/defending its level of quality based on the more widely recognized (i.e. televised) awards ceremonies that carry certain name recognition. As McNutt’s argument goes, though The Closer, TNT’s flagship show, is mostly treated by critics with ambivalence at best and derision at worst, the network tends to gloss over the lack of critical support by pointing to the multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and wins for Kyra Sedgwick in the lead role, and (to a much lesser extent) the multiple SAG nominations for its ensemble, using them to ride a wave to the show’s claims of ‘legitimacy’. (Never mind the fact that the series has never had any nominations.)

I don’t disagree with McNutt’s theory that awards (some of which are unrelated to a show’s quality) can be used to overcome critical derision (at least for this network; I’ve yet to see USA pimp Sharon Glass’ nomination in its promos for Burn Notice). But I would argue that the reliance on Emmy Awards as the bar for excellence isn’t just harmful to TNT’s bottom line in terms of quality, but also general cultural perception of what ‘quality’ actually means.

If Hollywood has taught us nothing else, it’s that repeating the same formats and premises of movies and shows will eventually cause most people to acclimate to them, to the extent that they accept these offerings as ‘good’ and ‘normal’ programming. This creates a standardized norm, a template if you will, of what all shows are/should be, and this means that the shows that succeeded creatively within this framework are the ones more likely to be nominated and win the big awards that the masses hold in such high regards. This by extension means that for the audience at large, the only real ‘critical’ seal of approval for a show that they will respect in the Emmys, even if most critics spend every Emmy season bemoaning the fact that Academy of Television Arts and Sciences doesn’t actually understand what constitutes quality television.

To wit: Imagine the Emmys as the Oscars of television. Actually considering that they are the biggest (i.e. most well regarded by general consensus) television award, you probably already think of them in such terms, so I want you to imagine the criticism of the Oscars transplanted on the Emmys. Much like you can practically count on best actor awards going to those heart-on-your-sleeve performances, or the best picture award going to that period drama/biography/family struggles piece, so too can one predict who will get an Emmy. The best performances, as according to ATAS, are those that an actor can really sink his/her teeth into, while the best shows, either drama or comedy, rarely shake up the traditional idea of what a television show does. (See: Modern Family.)

I realize that there are exceptions to this rule, and that the recent wins of say Bryan Cranston for best actor or Mad Men for best drama, but these unofficial criteria (along with some other, far more nonsensical nominating traditions) still lay at the heart of the Emmy process. Back in the 70s and 80s, when all televisions shows followed the same format by default, the current Emmy standards were set, and the ATAS has a hard time leaving those standards in the past. Hugh Laurie keeps getting nominated for being Dr. House, even though the role as long ceased to be challenging, and Dexter keeps getting nominated for best drama even though it stopped being good after its second season, and it wasn’t exactly ground-breaking television at the start.

So then what does all this have to do with the (possible) cancellation of Men of a Certain Age? Well, most critics seem to think that TNT is waiting for the Emmy nominations on Thursday to see if the show or anybody in the cast gets honored. (Andre Braugher was actually received a nod last year, and it’s interesting that TNT has never used that piece of information in their promos.) This would seem to indicate that TNT does is fact place great importance on its Emmy nominations, and if a failure to grab any nominations is quickly followed by the show’s cancellation, that would merely clinch this theory. This means that Men exists in a very weird stasis, where audiences don’t see the need to turn in since it doesn’t have that Emmy seal of approval, and it gets no Emmy love because it doesn’t fit into one of the predefined formats to which audiences flock in the first place. The show is stuck in some sort of weird cycle it can’t get out of, and it would be up TNT to break this cycle, to indicate to viewers that Emmys and quality can be mutually exclusive – something that’s it’s obviously not intent on doing.

I don’t want this argument to be seen as the end all be all of “Why is MOACA in danger of getting cancelled?” debate. I certainly agree with other critics when they say that Men doesn’t fully fit the TNT brand, that the promos don’t do the show justice, that the presence of Ray Romano causes people to take the show less seriously, or that the weird bifurcation of this season may have kept it under most people’s radar. All of those are certainly true, but none of them alone would explain TNT’s decision to cancel the show, and we must factor in the sway that the broken Emmy system has over the network, if only because TNT is helping to hold up that dilapidated machine in the first place. And by perpetuating this system, TNT only further reinforces viewer’s belief that Emmy awards are all that really matters, thus causing them to double down on their traditional viewing habits, and stray away from anything remotely format breaking.

(The only exception to this “networks only care about Emmys” rule seems to by FX, who is almost consistently shunned by ATAS – excluding Damages – but that channel taps into such a niche market anyways that they can afford to play by their own rules in such matters. Or, to look at it another way, TNT’s business models relies on traditional television formats which are meant to appeal to a broad audience, and traditional television’s ‘quality’ lives and dies by Emmys, and thus by extension so does TNT.)

It is this almost unbreakable machine that causes open letters like Sepinwall’s and Ryan’s to have a negligible effect on audiences or networks, the two ostensible targets of such pieces. Without Emmy nominations, networks don’t care, and audiences, who are used to identifying quality by big performances and high-concept premises, can’t seem to grasp why they should believe the show is good.  Not only does society not seem ready to watch a show like MOACA, it hasn’t even been trained in how to think and discuss such a show. In fact, if it wasn’t for the Emmys, if people were allowed to be more open minded about what constitutes a good show, and thus were more willingly to try something outside the box, then there might not even be a need for open letters in the first place. In order for this to be any different, TNT would have to decided to break the chain, to just renew Men because it’s good (and because, as Sepinwall points out, they probably have enough left over revenue from their actual hit shows that they could afford the financial blow), but there’s no real reason to do so, so the network probably won’t.

I realize that this argument seems to boil down to a simple “well, nobody – including the Emmys – gets this show because it’s different” kind of argument. In fact, I probably could have waited a few days and come up with a very similar argument centered on Terriers’ failure to pick up an Emmy nod for best drama. (Sure, it should be nominated, but the truth is, it won’t be.) But MOACA is now, it’s happening, it’s on a lot of people’s minds, and it helps us understand the current television landscape and just why it is that nobody seems willing to give this show a shot. Men of a Certain Age isn’t the first show to break with the traditional format, and it won’t be the last, but if continue to hold up an value systems that doesn’t reward shows such as this one, soon all such shows just might become a thing of the past.