Apologies for the delay in posting – this was meant for Monday, but work circumstances kept me from being able to complete it until today.
Sunday night I watched two shows that highlight for me the problems with audience expectation – in that the expectations directly affected my overall enjoyment of each show.
I generally try not to let expectations overwhelm me – after all, if something is good, it’s good, right? In the case of an hour of television (or half hour, or movie… you get the idea), it should be judged objectively, on its own merits.
Of course, that’s a nice little theory, but not how things work in actual reality. Here we compare and contrast. Here we judge you against yourself, against your potential and the bar you’ve set for yourself.
A simple explanation for why certain people win debates, and for why on Sunday I found myself enjoying The Walking Dead more than Homeland.
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Let’s begin here: The Walking Dead is not an amazing show.
It’s a good show. It’s an entertaining show. It fundamentally captures more or less everything that you’d want from a zombie show, has some talented actors within its cast, and all in all does what its supposed to.
But for most of its two year existence, I’ve judged it against the expectations within my brain. The expectations that a show with such a pedigree (with Frank Darabont and then, after he left, Glen Mazzara at the helm) and subject matter (who doesn’t love zombies?) could give us a show that could approach the greatness of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica (which I still rank among the greatest shows of the past twenty years, easily – and if you haven’t seen it, you don’t know).
Alas, The Walking Dead has never quite lived up to my expectations. Some odd characters who somehow never managed to be fully fleshed out despite two seasons of exposure to them (looking at you, T-Dog) and a rather large number of episodes focused on inaction left me often considering dropping the show from my rotation. Although to their credit, every time I felt that way, they’d somehow pick that moment to give us something like this:
I mean, that’s just unfair. I was all set to quit and then they did that to me.
But I have moved away from my initial point, which is that two seasons of feeling only loosely connected to the show means that I’ve come to expect only moderate enjoyment from the show, and when they returned this Sunday with, overall, a pretty enjoyable episode with the requisite jump-scares and modest victories followed by bad luck/tragedy, I found myself getting pulled in. And so my modest expectations were surpassed.
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Homeland, on the other hand, gave me an episode that I was mildly disappointed in.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s still easily one of the best shows on television right now (although how high a bar that is can be debated), but this show is, in a lot of ways, a victim of its own success. The first season of the show was so entertaining, so tense, so nerve-wracking, that it is almost impossible for the show to top – and now, because the show has evolved from its first season question (is Brody a sleeper agent/can Carrie prove it) to its second season conspiracy (how does Brody manage to keep his position in government and keep doing wildly illogical things for abu Nazir/can Carrie prove it), the show is putting itself in a situation that:
1. Is taking the show from its hyper-real (but believable) first season to a land of 24 logic (Brody being able to see the imminent attack on abu Nazir and text him in the last episode, Carrie being allowed to wander around the CIA unaccompanied in this one).
2. Is exposing the flaws in the Brody/Jessica storyline – mostly in the sense that because Jessica is becoming a larger part of the second season, it’s becoming clear that they haven’t fully figured her out yet (her “we need to think if we’re going to stay married” rant to Brody was pretty much like every other “we need to think if we’re going to stay married” rant in television history).
Is this unfair? Absolutely. I’m picking at nits here. But that’s the point. Because I’ve come to expect a certain level of entertainment/sophistication from the show, I end up disappointed (rather than still enjoying a good hour of television overall) because of my belief that they can do better.
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So taking us back to Sunday night, two shows, one with modest expectations at best, one which I have impossibly high hopes for. And while the latter was still probably better in most regards, the other was flashier, more visceral, and most importantly, surprised in its effectiveness.
And that’s how Mitt Romney won the first Presidential debate of 2012.
