Thinking Outside the Box

 

As I write this column in mid-August, I haven't mustered much excitement for this fall's new shows. Here are four of many that seem to be covering familiar ground:

Chase (NBC, Mondays, 10:00PM ET, premiering September 20), from exec producer Jerry Bruckheimer ( CSI ) and Jennifer Johnson ( Cold Case ) is about a team of Houston-based U.S. marshals hunting fugitives.

Undercovers (NBC, Wednesdays, 8:00PM ET, premiering September 22), the new spy drama from J.J. Abrams, is about a married couple of spies who reconnect when they go undercover together.

The Whole Truth (ABC, Wednesdays, 10:00PM ET, premiering September 22), also produced by Bruckheimer, stars Rob Morrow and Maura Tierney as a defense lawyer and prosecutor respectively. While they compete for a jury's favor each week, the show will also reveal the "true" sequence of events.

Body of Proof ABC, Fridays, 9:00PM ET, premiere date TBA) stars Dana Delany as Meagan Hunt, who becomes a medical examiner after a crippling car accident and a patient's death end her career as a neurosurgeon.

If these or any other shows surprise me, I'll expound on them in my Winter column, a kind of midterm report card. Meanwhile, my present lack of enthusiasm has me thinking of this column's topic: the limitations of crime TV and how to get around them.

TV episodes are limited to about an hour, but they play out over 10 to 24 episode-seasons, so more intricate stories can be told. Series like 24 and Burn Notice use this time to develop a sense of continuity while others, like Law & Order , abandon traditional continuity to allow viewers to "jump in" anytime during the season. No matter which approach they use, all shows have to find a balance between complex stories and stories that reward viewers' attention relatively often.

Crime TV writers face an additional challenge in that crime show fans enjoy playing detective along with their favorite characters. In fact, built in to most mystery novels and shows is what novelist William G. Tapply called "fair play". That is, a mystery must present all the suspects and evidence necessary for the audience to solve the crime along with the protagonist. If anything pulls fans out of the story being told, they may simply try and guess the villain's identity ahead of the clues, or they may predict how many more twists will happen given the time remaining in an episode. Yes, viewers take the fun out of watching TV mysteries when they do this, but if the writers did a better job of storytelling, viewers wouldn't go astray.

The problem of typecast villains may be the easiest to solve: simply cast against type or leave prominent guest actors' names out of the opening credits. It's more difficult to get around the linear structure of procedural episodes. Flashbacks are one way to break linear structure, but use them in too many episodes and they become a show's procedure. FOX's action show Human Target and cop comedy The Good Guys overuse flashbacks, dropping their heroes into weekly predicaments and routinely filling in backstory, stalling forward momentum.

The problem of "too much plot, too little time" came up last season on NCIS . In the episode "Obsession," Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) became obsessed in his search for a missing TV journalist. It turned out the journalist and several of her friends were cleverly poisoned as part of a spy plot dating back to World War II. The culprit was caught in the end, but to me, it would have been more fitting had we never learned her identity.

This much said, it is possible for a series to get around typecasting, linear structure, and fair play. TNT's Leverage features characters who are thieves, not traditional investigators. Episodes unfold in mostly linear fashion, but anything the audience sees may be subverted later because it's the thieves' job, even their nature, to fool people. It's more difficult to predict what characters will do when they aren't committed to moral standards. In three seasons, Leverage has worked out how much to show the audience and when to show it, making for thoroughly enjoyable viewing.

FOX's new show Lone Star (Mondays, 9PM, premiering September 20), about a Texas con man leading three lives, has received the most positive advance buzz and will probably play on the same ambiguities Leverage does. Of course, not every show can be about thieves with sketchy motives, but subsequent series need to keep thinking of ways to twist what we've seen before. If they don't, they risk a show's worst fate: being forgotten.