Prestige Television: Cultural and Artistic Value in Twenty-First-Century America 9781978818309

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Prestige Tele­vi­sion

Prestige Tele­vi­sion Cultural and Artistic Value in Twenty-­First-­Century Amer­i­ca

EDITED BY SETH FRIEDMAN AND AMANDA KEELER

Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

 978-1-9788-1827-9 (cloth) 978-1-9788-1826-2 (paper) 978-1-9788-1828-6 (epub) Cataloging-in-publication data is available from the Library of Congress. LCCN 2022009341 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. This collection copyright © 2023 by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Individual chapters copyright © 2023 in the names of their authors All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. References to internet websites (URLs) w ­ ere accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­r utgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

Contents Introduction

1

SE T H F RIEDM A N A ND A M A NDA K EEL ER

Part I The Fringes of Prestige TV: Genre and Markers of Distinction 1

Spies Like Us: Genre Mixing, Brand Building, and Reagan’s 1980s in The Americans 21 DAV ID R . C OON

2

Disrupting the Pattern of Prestige TV: Fringe 38 A M A NDA K EEL ER

3

“But Is It Star Trek?”: Prestige, Fandom, and the Return of Star Trek to Tele­vi­sion

55

MURR AY L EEDER

4

Negotiating Prestige on The CW: Is Ros­well, New Mexico “Another Show about Teen­agers Getting F-cked Up and Having Sex” or a Sophisticated Exploration of Racial and Gender Politics?

74

C AT HERINE M AR T IN

Part II How Con­temporary Programming Met Prestige TV: Unconventional Depictions of Cultural and Televisual Norms 5

Prestige Adaptation by Design: The Commercial Appeal of Latinx Tropes in Queen of the South 95 JAV IER R A MIRE Z

v

vi • Contents

6

“Tell Them We Are Gone”: Imperial Narratives, Indigenous Perspectives, and Prestige in The Terror 113 JUS T IN O. R AWL INS

7

Prestige Comedy: Con­temporary Sitcom Narrative and Complexity in How I Met Your ­Mother 131 A NDRE W J. BOT TOML E Y

Part III Top of the Media Hierarchy: Cinematization and Tele­vi­sion’s Elevation 8 ­Running The Knick Show: Transfusing Steven Soderbergh’s

Authorial Persona into the Prestige Medical Series

153

SE T H F RIEDM AN

9 Legitimating Top of the Lake: Jane Campion, the Film Fest,

and the Miniseries

170

W. D. PHIL L IP S

10

Specters of Serling: Authorship, Tele­vi­sion History, and Inherited Prestige in The Twilight Zone (2019–2020)

189

JOSIE TORRE S B A R T H

Acknowl­edgments 207 Selected Bibliography 209 Notes on Contributors 217 Index 219

Prestige Tele­vi­sion

Introduction SETH FRIEDMAN AND AMANDA KEELER

­ ere may be no consensus about the artistic or cultural merits of the recent Th influx of tele­vi­sion programming often deemed superior to alternatives, or which term best describes the trend. However, ­there is l­ ittle doubt about what kind of series is now most likely to be elevated above the competition. Since at least the release of The Sopranos (1999–2007) and HBO’s concurrent “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO.” branding campaign, a spate of copycat dramas primarily available on subscription venues have become critical darlings and dominated award shows. GQ’s Eric Thurm epitomizes the ambivalence tied to this development by noting that although “ ‘Prestige TV’ as a label is meant to denote quality” and “accrue critical acclaim,” its properties “become both set in stone and increasingly easy to imitate—­and the art becomes stale.”1 Four years ­earlier, Vulture’s Logan Hill proved the point by sketching ­these attributes in his aptly titled “The 13 Rules for Creating a Prestige TV Drama,” which include focusing on a flawed White, male protagonist in a profession that is “a microcosm of the American Dream,” prominent displays of lurid content inappropriate for the networks, and pervasive literary allusions.2 Vulture repeated the exercise years ­later, as Kathryn VanArendonk, who claimed to be “tired of prestige getting in the way of good TV,” published her thirteen rules, such as exceedingly dark cinematography, unnecessarily convoluted narratives, as well as the inclusion of Hollywood film stars and auteurs.3 Many scholars echo ­these reviewers. In his analy­sis of HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011–2019), for example, Dan Hassler-­Forest contends that “the term ‘Quality’ ” is not “an ­actual qualitative distinction”

2 • Seth Friedman and Amanda Keeler

b­ ecause it instead refers to how the repetition of conventions has made such programs generic.4 Despite the lack of una­nim­i­ty about what to call constituent shows or how to account for their worth, critics clearly cluster them together as a discrete unit.

Naming M ­ atters: The Prestige TV Genre and the Discourses of Distinction ­ ese utterances highlight why we argue that such programs comprise the presTh tige TV genre. The approach that we and our contributing authors implement is thus underscored by Rick Altman’s semantic/syntactic/pragmatic theory of film genre. Specifically, Altman examines how genres are characterized by recurrent textual ele­ments (semantics), the way that the repeated deployment of ­those core attributes renders them culturally meaningful (syntax), and how they are constructed by “the multiple groups who, by helping to define the genre, may be said to ‘speak’ the genre” (pragmatics).5 Jason Mittell influentially built on this foundation by stressing pragmatics to a greater degree than Altman to foster his notion of tele­vi­sion genres as “cultural products, constituted by media practices and subject to ongoing change and redefinition.”6 In a telling example of pragmatics in action, for instance, Mittell maps how the same animated short films that w ­ ere once part of Hollywood’s theatrical exhibition program for all ages transformed into c­ hildren’s cartoons ­after being repurposed accordingly for tele­vi­sion.7 For proponents of this discursive approach to genre, a tele­vi­sion show’s potential classifications are always in flux. This is the case b­ ecause a program’s conceivable groupings are contingent on shifting contexts that range from technological innovations that result in novel production and reception possibilities to the creation of new labels that can lead to enduring recategorizations. Although the aforementioned anecdotes about the prestige TV genre reveal how critics still rely on semantics (e.g., dark cinematography) and syntax (e.g., protagonist arcs expressing the American dream) to identify its textual properties, the monikers they employ pragmatically to sort shows (e.g., prestige TV, Quality TV, ­etc.) can influence how they are differentiated from other tele­vi­sion fare. A focus on pragmatics accentuates the potential power that t­ hose not officially inside the media industries can have on the inception and per­sis­tence of genres. Film noir is a prime historical example of this phenomenon, as it is a category that was initially coined and pop­u­lar­ized by French film critics rather than by U.S. creatives or producers. ­These cinephiles noticed distinct and previously unidentified patterns in Hollywood output from the World War II period largely ­because they uncharacteristically watched so many films that had been banned during the German occupation belatedly and in succession. Although no one in Hollywood formally set out to make a film noir in the 1940s since the term was not yet familiar to Americans, t­ hese French critics ultimately had significant influence on the genre’s subsequent growth in Hollywood and beyond.

Introduction • 3

In fact, by the 1970s, neo-­noirs, such as The Long Goodbye (1973) and Chinatown (1974), ­were explic­itly evoking what had become well-­established semantic and syntactic ele­ments of the genre thanks to ­those original critical interventions. Such historical developments inspired James Naremore to conceive of film noir as “a loose, evolving system of arguments and readings that helps to shape commercial strategies and aesthetic ideologies.”8 Naremore’s definition is thus driven by pragmatics and underlines how groups of ­people not often readily perceived as having agency to determine ­actual production decisions can construct and reformat generic classifications. This anthology also has the potential to change prevailing understandings of prestige tele­vi­sion by expanding and nuancing often narrow journalistic and industrial comprehensions of the category, which is a key reason why we embrace the discursive approach to genre now backed by many media scholars. Pragmatics is also valuable b­ ecause it reveals the considerable rhetorical impact that a chosen name may have on a genre’s cultural and artistic status. Although prestige TV has recently entered the lexicon as a favored term to describe revered programming, Quality TV has long been the dominant label for constituent series. Quality TV began to calcify ­after Robert Thompson used it in 1996 in his Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER. Coincidentally, that is the same year that HBO launched its “Not TV” promotional gambit to describe shows that Thompson similarly claimed are “not ‘regular’ TV.”9 As the subtitle of Thompson’s book implies, Quality TV was first linked to select network dramas from the 1980s and early 1990s at a time when their supremacy was not yet seriously threatened by original, scripted programming on cable or the web.10 A central impetus driving the increasing employment of the term prestige TV of late by critics and in the industry itself, then, might be that Quality TV anachronistically references an ­earlier period in the medium’s history. Quality TV is also troublesome b­ ecause, as Thompson’s contrast with “ ‘regular’ TV” exemplifies, the term itself bespeaks a random value judgment that segregates shows into groupings considered worthy of or unfit for the capricious distinction. Although the same critiques about subjectivity and arbitrariness can apply to prestige TV, that alternative label has other historically relevant connotations that make it appropriate. As Geoff King recaps, “the notion of prestige” in the studio era signified what Hollywood invested “in a par­tic­u­lar production—in terms of bud­get, profile and spending on promotions—­either as well as, or instead of, prestige in the sense of aspirations to a higher cultural status.”11 Consequently, prestige TV captures how producers and creatives align select shows with familiar cultural and artistic traditions (e.g., literary allusions) to enhance their pedigree and infuse them with textual (e.g., high production values) and extratextual (e.g., costly marketing campaigns) facets to establish their vaunted standing. The growing ubiquity of the term prestige TV and the varied programming that has become associated with it further showcase why it is now often a preferred label. As Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey write in support of

4 • Seth Friedman and Amanda Keeler

including CBS’s The Good Wife (TGW; 2009–2016) in elite categorizations, “Discourses of quality delimit a specific definition of quality TV that continues to legitimate only certain corners of the medium.”12 In par­tic­u­lar, they argue that TGW and network shows like it are unjustly marginalized from Quality TV classifications ­because the term is now synonymous with “HBO and the fictional dramatic programming it has influenced: heavi­ly serialized, high production value programs with narratively complex stories, most often centered on a male anti-­hero and targeting niche audiences.”13 The inaccurate conflation of Quality TV with a ­limited brand of masculinist shows that cater to affluent, White viewers has two major drawbacks. First, it has prompted disproportionate attention on HBO and its new streaming rivals, especially Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, in accounts that chart tele­vi­sion’s changing cultural and artistic value. Uncritical adoptions of this approach thus risk taking industrial constructions of prestige TV at face value. Indeed, even “Netflix execs h ­ aven’t been shy about declaring their intent to follow the prestige playbook HBO has used” in their efforts to compete for genre market share.14 The case studies in ensuing chapters offset this tendency by analyzing series only on other channels to illuminate how tactics to imbue programs with prestige have become widespread across U.S. tele­ vi­sion. Second, by decentering HBO and its top competitors, we emphasize prestige TV’s increasing affiliation with more diverse shows and audiences. In short, Prestige Tele­vi­sion aligns with Nygaard and Lagerwey’s challenge to notions of Quality TV that reiterate broader cultural stratifications, including “hierarchies that suggest ­women, their interests, and their stories lack importance.”15 HBO’s original, scripted series that feature troubled White, male protagonists and are juxtaposed with purportedly ordinary tele­vi­sion have become the gold standard in most assessments of Quality TV partly b­ ecause such programming explic­itly ­counters the medium’s per­sis­tent affiliations with ­women. For Amanda Lotz, the proliferation over the past ­couple of de­cades of cable “programs about complicated male characters was part of a strategy to increase male viewership—­which always has been less substantial than that of female counter­ parts and showed signs of further losses at the time.”16 Michael Newman and Elana Levine concur in Legitimating Tele­vi­sion by documenting how “tele­vi­sion has been classified as feminine, and thereby as a less worthy, significant, and serious medium” throughout “its history.”17 They also note, however, that recent “strategies to fragment the mass audience, new tele­vi­sion technologies promising viewers greater interactivity and mastery, and new modes of textuality and experience” represent “as much a masculinization as” they do “a refinement of the medium’s class status.”18 Many of the markers of legitimation that Newman and Levine identify, such as the augmentation of the showrunner’s standing to a level akin to that of the film auteur and the associated transfer of renowned Hollywood directors into that position of creative authority, are entangled with hegemonic masculinity. ­A fter all, Hollywood directors ­were almost exclusively male during the studio era, and w ­ omen only fill a distressingly small percentage

Introduction • 5

of director’s chairs to this day. Even though recent conceptions of prestige programming embody how “TV becomes respectable through the elevation of one concept of the medium at the expense of another,” like Newman and Levine, we interrogate such legitimation efforts by enlarging the bound­aries of the genre itself beyond the channels, series, and homogeneously White, privileged audiences typically tied to it.19 Despite our intention to expand comprehensions of what can be considered prestige TV, we ultimately restrict our objects of study in crucial ways to amplify our focus on a certain type of programing that has become most linked to the genre. For starters, we actually ignore most of the rest of tele­vi­sion by concentrating only on original, scripted series. Newman and Levine correctly observe that it is not incidental that the recent upcropping of prestige TV coincides with the explosion of real­ity TV b­ ecause it has been positioned as antithetical to that supposedly low cultural genre.20 Of course, irrespective of its debased reputation, some real­ity TV series, such as Queer Eye (2003–2007; 2018–), Survivor (2000–), and Tidying Up with Marie Kondo (2019), are occasionally hailed as culturally or artistically innovative. The same is true of other unscripted content. Travis Vogan demonstrates, for instance, how producers of 30 for 30 (2009–) leverage “documentary’s relative symbolic capital” to “drive a shrewd effort to distinguish ESPN from other sports media outlets, compete for market share, expand its demographic reach, promote its content, and even cut costs.”21 In addition to exploring only scripted, original programming ­because of its inextricable links to the prestige TV genre, we solely examine series initially distributed at least partly on platforms for U.S. audiences. Digital technologies and multinational corporate consolidation have helped transform tele­vi­sion from its local origins into a transnational medium, which helps explain some generic trends, such as an uptick of graphic content once difficult to monetize on U.S. syndication that now garners global aftermarket revenues. However, analyses of how prestige TV is manifest in national contexts outside of the United States or on how constituent U.S. shows impact or are influenced by the genre elsewhere are beyond our purview. Fi­nally, although some of the following case studies grapple with streaming platforms, especially in relation to narrative complexity and fan engagement, we mainly emphasize legacy venues to reveal how the broader medium shapes and has been s­ haped by recent prestige programming. Prestige TV’s growing penetration into network and basic cable programming illustrates that some of the genre’s traditional elitist attributes have shifted. This development complicates the positioning of t­ hose shows in the genre, though, ­because it is still predicated on exclusivity. Although narrowly distributed premium cable series, like The Sopranos, ­were cultural sensations that became virtually inescapable when they w ­ ere hits, prestige TV is not always interchangeable with popularity. In par­tic­u­lar, many of the programs that win coveted prizes at premier U.S. award shows are chastised for being too esoteric or

6 • Seth Friedman and Amanda Keeler

obscure. Brian Lowry pithily exclaims, for example, that when HBO’s 108 Emmy nominations more than doubled that of its closest competitor in 2013, the channel’s Enlightened (2011–2013) “earned two noms” even though it was “one of ­those shows almost nobody beyond TV critics made time to watch” and was canceled that year in spite of the accolades.22 As King and o­ thers speculate by mobilizing Pierre Bourdieu’s seminal work on taste, certain genres, like prestige TV, are situated in a middlebrow milieu b­ ecause they are at once exclusive and accessible. According to Bourdieu, the middlebrow opposes “intellectual art” by garnering “investment profitability” that arises from popu­lar culture appropriations of ostensibly high art innovations.23 King posits that the middlebrow’s consequent collapse of high and low cultures threatens the status quo by unsettling “a clear sense of ideological distinction between the popu­lar and the artistic, and of all the broader social distinctions that follow.”24 Rather than reinforce the kind of cultural policing that buttresses Bourdieu’s claim that “taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier” ­because it is interwoven with socioeconomic stratifications stemming from aspects of identity like race, gender, and class that underscore an individual’s “cultural capital,” this anthology’s case studies embrace the porous boundary between the popu­lar and the elite by focusing on programs and venues typically elided in most descriptions of prestige TV.25 ­There is no denying, however, that the cultural and artistic elevation of certain tele­vi­sion series of late is rooted to some degree in the discourses of exclusivity. The recent upgrading of the medium’s general standing intersects with broader industry trends that have raised the reputations of some of its programming. Such a rise resembles a shift in Hollywood’s status that began in earnest in the 1960s, which Shyon Baumann chronicles in Hollywood Highbrow. For Baumann, three crucial ­factors coalesced to buoy Hollywood’s transformation into a more venerated cultural form: the devalued position of tele­vi­sion as a comparatively lowbrow medium as it usurped film’s popularity; the legitimation of film as art that was tied to disruptions to the industry’s dominant business model, including the replacement of the producer-­centered studio system with the director-­driven package unit and the growth of alternative distribution networks, like film festivals and art cinema theaters; and the strengthening of discursive formations devoted to bolstering Hollywood’s reputation, such as the codifications of auteurist criticism and the Cinema Studies academic discipline.26 A similar amalgamation of circumstances has likewise reshaped tele­vi­sion since around the turn of the millennium. To wit, new media, particularly the web and video games, have rivaled tele­vi­sion’s place at the bottom of the respectability hierarchy. In addition, digital technologies accelerated media convergence and consolidation to create production and distribution possibilities that upended the tele­vi­sion industry. Fi­nally, tele­vi­sion criticism is now a staple of university curricula and popu­lar journalism, especially as the web has demo­ cratized tele­vi­sion reviews and scholarship. In sum, an increasingly wide

Introduction • 7

space has opened across tele­vi­sion for prestige programming ­because of the medium’s transformation.

Tele­vi­sion in the Post-­network Era: Con­temporary Prestige Programming in Its Industrial and Technological Contexts The emergence of con­temporary prestige TV is primarily the result of industrial and technological changes that have tran­spired over several de­cades.27 Much of what is considered prestigious in the current “golden age” of tele­vi­sion stems from disruptions to the programming tactics of the U.S. network era, which lasted from the early 1950s to the 1980s.28 NBC, CBS, and ABC flourished in the “classic network system” by accumulating affiliate tele­vi­sion stations and maximizing advertising revenues.29 This financial and programming system “enabled networks to afford ‘network quality’ programming with which in­de­pen­dent and educational stations could not compete.”30 The three national networks thus fought mainly with each other for viewers, and programming was generally more uniform in spite of the reputations of individual shows occasionally being granted elite standing. As Lotz writes, in an era in which most h ­ ouse­holds owned one tele­vi­sion, “network programmers knew that the ­whole f­ amily commonly viewed tele­vi­sion together, and they consequently selected programs and designed a schedule likely to be acceptable to, although perhaps not most favored by, the widest range of viewers.”31 ­These effective practices did not generate much programming variety at the time b­ ecause the networks had no incentive to adapt. A series of technological and legislative developments in the late 1960s and 1970s had the potential to inspire sweeping changes to the tele­vi­sion industry.32 The Prime Time Access Rule and the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, both passed in 1970, w ­ ere designed to break up the oligopoly’s stranglehold on the production, distribution, transmission, and owner­ship of programs by creating opportunities for in­de­pen­dent producers to compete. It would take ensuing regulatory initiatives, such as the 1972 Cable Tele­vi­sion Report and Order, and the advent of satellite tele­vi­sion program distribution to create ­viable alternatives to the networks.33 Despite the appearance of new spaces for tele­vi­sion programming, subsequent deregulation, exemplified by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, led to escalating corporate consolidation that created a few vertically and horizontally integrated media companies that still form an oligopoly. ­These shifts moved U.S. tele­vi­sion into what Lotz calls the “multi-­channel transition” phase, which lasted from the “mid-1980s through the mid2000s.”34 This era was marked by new technologies, such as the VCR, that gave viewers the abilities to time-­shift by recording tele­vi­sion programming and to watch it ­later on their own schedules. During this period and into the “post-­network era,” which Lotz contends began “in the early 2000s,” the

8 • Seth Friedman and Amanda Keeler

number of cable channels expanded further, and new technologies changed many aspects of the tele­vi­sion industry.35 Specifically, the advent of digital signals and high-­definition picture quality bolstered critical assessments of tele­vi­ sion aesthetics by rendering it closer to conceptions of cinema. DVD players also replaced the VCR. This technological change was transformational for viewers and producers alike ­because the smaller size and greater storage capacity of the DVD enabled it to thrive as a commodity, in comparison to VHS tapes that ­were instead mainly used for tele­vi­sion time-­shifting and Hollywood film rentals. In fact, the introduction of the DVD box set in 2000 allowed viewers to purchase entire seasons of tele­vi­sion, freeing them from commercial interruptions and programming schedules.36 Additionally, as Derek Kompare notes, DVDs provided much higher “audiovisual quality” than was pos­si­ble with the VCR.37 The tele­vi­sion industry thus fi­nally found a reliable way to profit directly off of niche audiences with the DVD box set, alleviating some dependence on advertising revenue for the networks and basic cable channels. In addition to providing a way for producers to sell new movies and tele­vi­sion shows in the aftermarket, DVDs gave the industry the chance to monetize their extensive libraries. This opportunity represented a break from the per­sis­tent conception of tele­vi­sion as “ephemeral,” regardless of the industry’s history of profiting from reruns and syndication.38 Such technological and business changes began to shift the cultural perception of tele­vi­sion favorably, which was soon amplified by an eruption of original, scripted series. In addition to the new technologies that partly characterized the “multi-­ channel transition,” the emergence of three new networks, Fox (1986) as well as The WB and UPN (both 1995), also played a part in challenging old network practices and dominance. Rather than compete for mass market share, ­these new networks worked to create “programming that might be most satisfying to specific audience members.”39 As Catherine Johnson documents, for example, Fox was able to cultivate a pre-­constituted, fan-­consumer audience with The X-­Files (1993–2002; 2016–2018) through the show’s “generic hybridity” and other textual properties characteristic of “quality tele­vi­sion” as identified by Thompson.40 This was a profitable strategy, and Fox further parlayed the broadcast success of The X-­Files into the 2000 release of the show’s first season in DVD box set form, which set a standard that was quickly copied across the industry. Much like Fox, The WB also focused its programming on underserved audiences with hit programs, such as Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003), that w ­ ere tailored to the youth market. Similarly, UPN targeted African American viewers with shows like Moesha (1996–2001). At the same time, on the heels of critically acclaimed Quality TV shows of the 1980s, the traditional broadcast networks doubled down on attempts to continue capitalizing on the trend with similar programs, including Hom­i­cide: Life on the Street (1993–1999), NYPD Blue (1993–2005), and ER (1994–2009). ­These series “pushed the well-­worn forms of

Introduction • 9

medical and detective series in new creative directions,” which is the formula that governs many con­temporary prestige TV shows.41 Cable channels also si­mul­ta­neously discovered ways to shed the perception that they constituted “an inferior form” of tele­vi­sion.42 Although cable channels catered to niche audiences from the start, most of their programming was not original b­ ecause they ­were instead often repositories of repurposed content, such as second-­r un, primetime network series. Initial attempts to create original, scripted, cable produced series, such as USA’s La Femme Nikita (1997–2001), demonstrated that such shows on basic cable could draw a niche audience and be profitable.43 Premium subscription cable channels like HBO also increased their scripted, original programming efforts during the same period. Although HBO had been producing a few original shows since the 1970s, the premieres of Oz (1997–2003) and The Sopranos marked, for many scholars and critics, a significant moment of change in tele­vi­sion production ­toward prestige programming.44 Thanks to the success of The Sopranos and several similar HBO series that followed, “cable channels initiated a reimagining of tele­vi­sion programming by continuing to pursue distinction as a strategy.”45 This competition only intensified when other cable channels mimicked HBO’s model by creating their own original, scripted programming.46 With Mad Men (2007–2015), for example, AMC executives w ­ ere “aiming for an exceptional show that would bring prestige.”47 From this point on, the incentive to produce original, scripted shows that stood out became imperative for garnering critical acclaim and coveted award show accolades. Even if t­ hese prestige TV programs did not always net large profits directly, their elevated standing raised the channel’s brand value, often resulting in increased advertising dollars, subscription fees, and cable subscriber revenues. This growth in programming emerged into an inexorably saturated and competitive marketplace in the post-­network era. The subsequent addition of video on demand ser­vices to an already crowded network and cable tele­vi­sion landscape as well as Netflix’s shift from a DVD delivery business to a subscription streaming platform in 2007 have greatly amplified the audience fragmentation, time-­shifting, and media convergence developments that characterize twenty-­first-­century U.S. tele­vi­sion. Th ­ ose new market players w ­ ere also joined by Amazon (2006), Hulu (2007), and other streaming ser­vices that initially served primarily as clearing­houses for existing movies and tele­vi­sion programs. ­These streaming ser­vices, however, soon began to produce their own scripted, original series, such as Netflix’s House of Cards (2013–2018), Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale (2017–), and Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs.  Maisel (2017–), to maximize profits through program owner­ship rather than licensing deals with other production companies. In turn, this move to original programming also ensured that Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu would continue to have films and tele­vi­sion shows to maintain and attract subscribers when media conglomerates inevitably pulled their libraries to create their own streaming ser­vices.

10 • Seth Friedman and Amanda Keeler

Whereas this so-­called peak TV moment appears to have opened the floodgates for original, scripted programming across all sectors of the tele­vi­sion industry, most of the consequent revenues are actually filtered back to a handful of corporate conglomerates with extensive horizontally and vertically integrated media holdings. ­These efforts to keep profits in ­house speak to a larger trend in the media industries during an era of massive corporate consolidation. Although ­there are drastically dif­fer­ent revenue streams in the post-­network era than ­there ­were in previous periods of tele­vi­sion history, some key business practices persist. Growing pressure on media conglomerates to derive profit from their diverse media holdings has indeed amplified the economic incentives to converge u­ nder one corporate umbrella. For example, AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010–2022) highlights how AMC Networks constructs in-­house programming through AMC Productions to control its properties financially. Such a tendency, Lotz notes, illustrates how many cable channels of late have “created their own studios to maintain owner­ship so that they could profit from the revenue that came from licensing t­ hese shows internationally and to internet distributors” rather than outsource t­ hose tasks to other media companies.48 ­These strategies defy the practices that the regulations of the 1970s sought to end and instead are driven by further deregulation in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Although it would appear from the deluge of original, scripted programming over approximately the last two de­cades that ­there are now boundless options for viewers, they are actually almost all coming from only a handful of corporate entities. As Lotz summarizes, “Despite increased quantity and distinction, ­there w ­ ere still many stories not being told by tele­vi­sion.”49 That said, recent prestige programming is more varied than is generally identified in most industrial, journalistic, and scholarly accounts of the genre. This anthology fills that gap by exploring how tele­vi­sion shows ­housed on venues other than HBO, Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, including the broadcast networks as well as basic and devalued premium cable channels, are also infused with familiar markers of prestige and have been received accordingly by many audiences. While the celebrated network Quality TV programs aired in a dif­fer­ent moment in tele­vi­ sion history, we focus on how the networks and other cable channels continue to produce acclaimed programs that garner positive reviews, win prized awards, and are beloved by millions of viewers in the post-­network era.

Chapter Organ­ization and Summaries The following case studies each examine how prestige TV is mobilized in response to the changing industrial and technological conditions that have recently reshaped the medium. Tele­vi­sion executives increasingly use prestige as a distinction tactic b­ ecause they are aware of how difficult it is to differentiate programming in a saturated market. FX CEO John Landgraf, who is arguably more closely tied to the genre than anyone ­else, articulated ­these concerns when he

Introduction • 11

reflected on his famous quip in 2015 that ­there is “too much TV” by noting that it has now reached a point where every­thing “feels vaguely familiar” to an audience flooded with prestige TV.50 Paradoxically, t­ here are so many markers of prestige cited in the vast utterances constructing the genre that it can seem like any original, scripted show can be a constituent. ­These circumstances muddy the genre’s par­ameters, but they also reveal prestige TV’s pervasiveness ­because efforts to package series as elite permeate the industry. Each contributor to this anthology thus wrestles with how their objects of study relate to shifting conceptions of the genre. Overlaps between the chapters also accentuate prestige TV’s unstable bound­aries and the textual properties that have become its familiar signifiers, highlighting why the discursive approach to genre explic­itly frames this introduction and implicitly undergirds what follows it. As a result, our chapter organ­ization is not driven by rigid distinctions between the dividing parts ­because all of the case studies touch on the central themes that distinguish each section. Largely due to the amorphousness of the category, we begin with part one, “The Fringes of Prestige TV,” which focuses on genre and the grouping’s diverse attributes. Out of all of the series in this anthology, The Americans (2013–2018) is perhaps most securely positioned in the genre ­because it is one of the FX shows that situated Landgraf as a foremost progenitor of prestige TV. As David R. Coon’s analy­sis of the series in chapter 1 demonstrates, it reinforced the aura that FX cultivated as a prestige TV pioneer on basic cable ­after its breakthrough with The Shield (2002–2008). The elevated standing of The Americans similarly benefited from the channel’s established elite image. Such mutually reinforcing branding initiatives are central to most other case studies, particularly to t­ hose shows that also appeared on cable. As with many basic cable prestige programs, The Americans never performed especially well in the Nielsen ratings. However, as Anthony Smith documents, “the brand boost” that it offers “renders the institution more attractive to basic cable providers,” allowing a channel to justify its “carriage fee rises” and “increasing the value of its entire schedule to advertisers.”51 In addition to revealing how The Americans buttresses “the long-­ term profits of” FX and its “parent companies by enhancing brand image and feeding revenue streams beyond first-­run ad sales,” Coon also illustrates how prototypical aspects of prestige TV lift its status. He ultimately claims that its reputation was heightened by an “innovative blend of genres, careful attention to historical and cultural details, and a nuanced revisiting of the era’s po­liti­cal rhe­toric.” Genre hybridity, high production values that enable meticulous period recreations, and historical depictions that challenge dominant accounts are indeed hallmarks of prestige TV, as is evident in other chapters that cite ­these signifiers. Whereas The Americans is often referenced as a quin­tes­sen­tial constituent of the genre, Amanda Keeler’s recounting of the initially lukewarm response to Fringe (2008–2013) in chapter 2 showcases how assessments of prestige TV are

12 • Seth Friedman and Amanda Keeler

unpredictable, fungible, and contingent on their contexts. Although the show contained substantial prestige credentials, ­those aspects of its pedigree w ­ ere not initially sufficient to place it unequivocally in the category. For Keeler, this original reception was driven by a “narrow conception of celebrated programs,” which marginalized “a science fiction program that featured several prominent female characters and aired on Fox.” The network tele­vi­sion science fiction series thus did not jibe with dominant notions of prestige TV, which privileged cable shows in allegedly more serious genres that focus on male protagonists. Yet by charting the delayed appreciation of antecedent science fiction series in other colloquial genres, such as cult and Quality TV, Keeler contends that programs like Fringe “have the potential to expand their audience long ­after their initial run, especially in the post-­network era proliferation of viewing platforms.” Perhaps no show better demonstrates the possibility of its standing being drastically reevaluated than Star Trek (1966–1969), which became gradually revered ­because of ardent fandom. Murray Leeder continues to probe the tenuous links between prestige TV and science fiction by mapping the reception of Star Trek: Discovery (2017–) in chapter 3. Discovery’s ties to prestige TV are fraught, he theorizes, b­ ecause Star Trek “fans are often hostile or indifferent to the concept,” as they “prioritize their own competing narratives of what the franchise is and should be rather than comport to broader categories of cultural taste.” The incompatibility of creators’ prestige TV aspirations with audience demands was amplified by Discovery being the first franchise installment available in the United States only on a streaming platform: CBS All Access (now Paramount+). This distribution tactic rankled fans also displeased with Discovery’s prestige TV–­driven departures from the franchise’s optimistic conventions. “Clearly, producers have heard fan criticisms,” Leeder argues, about the prestige TV turn “being too serialized, dark, and pessimistic” b­ ecause they reverted to familiar Star Trek terrain in seasons two and three of Discovery. Additionally, producers instead used subsequent franchise iterations, especially Star Trek: Picard (2020–), to test ­these and other innovations. Both founding and newer networks alike have developed strategies to contend with the increase of prestige programming and streaming platforms. In the final chapter of part 1, Catherine Martin chronicles how Ros­well, New Mexico (2019–) exhibits the ways in which The CW approaches viewers “by adopting cable-­style niche strategies” that cater to select market segments “underserved on other networks,” especially “young audiences with an active online presence.” By reporting on The CW’s execution of this agenda, she details how Ros­well, New Mexico “embodies multifaceted challenges deriving from efforts to extend an existing franchise beyond the confines of a network’s established brand by attempting to transform it into prestige tele­vi­sion.” The show’s devalued status as a reboot of The WB’s Ros­well (1999–2002), another science fiction series with a reputation that has slowly grown, is indeed one of the main f­actors that  complicated The CW’s aspirations. Whereas this section opens with a

Introduction • 13

virtually uncontested example of prestige TV, it ends with a case study that has a highly strained relationship to the genre. Martin asserts, however, that a casting initiative that replaced the original’s White performers with Latinx actors and correspondingly incorporated sophisticated mediations of race and gender issues was designed to c­ ounter the show’s depreciation that stemmed from its debased links to The CW and status as a reboot. This type of unfamiliar portrayal of cultural and generic content is a common prestige tele­vi­sion signifier. Part 2, “How Con­temporary Programming Met Prestige TV,” centers on the way that the genre’s middlebrow ethos is underscored by ostensibly unconventional depictions of both televisual norms and dominant American ideologies. The medium’s profound cultural impact has been a per­sis­ tent scholarly focus. However, Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch’s foundational notion of “tele­vi­sion as a cultural forum,” which is tied to the medium’s enormous ideological influence in the network era when only three stations had reliable national reach, has been eroded by accelerating audience fragmentation.52 Prestige TV helps alleviate this trend by diverting disproportionate attention to shows with allegedly nuanced takes on controversial issues. Conceptions of prestige TV, Michael Kackman recaps, “depend on a basic formulation that goes something like this: narrative complexity generates repre­sen­ta­tional complexity; repre­sen­ta­tional complexity offers the possibility of po­liti­cal and cultural complexity.”53 Javier Ramirez’s analy­sis of aty­pi­cal Latinx identities and themes in Queen of the South (2016–2021) opens part 2 by pursuing similar lines of inquiry as Martin. He likewise discusses adaptation challenges creators faced to transform a drug-­themed Telemundo telenovela into a show targeted at desired U.S. viewers on a channel, USA, not often associated with prestige TV. Yet he explains how creators’ “strategic reliance on a range of unconventional Latinx representations—­from power­ful Latina w ­ omen to redeemable sicarios (drug cartel hitmen)—­that challenge some of the very generic traditions that the show also supports” appealed to both Latinx and wider U.S. audiences. Despite ­those reputation-­boosting aims, Ramirez exposes a critical bias by revealing how the show is devalued by the proclivity of reviewers to tie prestige TV only to series with White, male protagonists. In his examination of season one of AMC’s anthology series, The Terror (2018–2019), in chapter 6, Justin O. Rawlins also grapples with how the coalescing of textual and extratextual discourses influence a program’s standing. He interrogates “the notion of prestige as it arises at the intersection of extrinsic markers of value ascribed to the show, and as it manifests internally in the caste and imperial dynamics expressed by the show’s main characters.” According to Rawlins, the choice to center the masculinist historical narrative about the brutal ramifications of misguided British Arctic exploration on an outsider Irishman conveys how the series critiques colonialism’s effect on indigenous ­peoples. The outcast protagonist eventually “sides with the Inuit” characters in the show, Rawlins opines, which “crafts a counternarrative of the expedition

14 • Seth Friedman and Amanda Keeler

meant to dissuade f­ uture British imperial designs on the Arctic.” This irregular condemnation of Western conquest and other signifiers of prestige TV activated to amplify the show’s repute, including its convoluted flashback narrative structure, ultimately expose the ways that a tele­vi­sion production can offer “an enticing model for alternative mediations of the Arctic—­and of indigenous communities” while also inviting “crucial attention to prestige tele­vi­sion’s role in codifying other­wise contentious cultural narratives.” As Mittell persuasively argues, such narrative complexity is now often a reliable marker of prestige TV. It usually becomes manifest, he asserts, in a “shifting balance” of “episodic forms ­under the influence of serial narration” that ­favors “cumulative narrative that builds over time, rather than resetting back to a steady-­ state equilibrium at the end of e­ very episode.”54 Andrew J. Bottomley marshals this theory in chapter 7 to show that CBS’s How I Met Your ­Mother (2005–2014) exemplifies how narrative complexity allays critiques of the sitcom. As he notes, the sitcom “tends to be doubly marginalized since it is characterized by repetition and as lacking the artistry and social value of ‘serious’ programming formats.” Thanks to the show’s serial and episodic mix, though, Bottomley declares that casual viewers are not alienated and “dedicated fans are encouraged to view the show in a manner more commonly ascribed to prestige dramas” ­because they “must pay close attention, retain details, parse the multiple story threads, and search for clues and form hypotheses that fill in narrative gaps.” The growing combination of tele­vi­sion’s storytelling modes is linked to media convergence precipitated by corporate consolidation and digital technologies that allow for new forms of distribution and reception. Part 3 of this anthology, “Top of the Media Hierarchy,” concentrates on the consequent diminishing of medium specificity by exploring the increasingly permeable membrane between film and tele­vi­sion. Newman and Levine postulate that ­these developments have raised tele­vi­sion’s artistic profile ­because the “ubiquitous legitimating strategy is cinematization” to connect “tele­vi­sion with that which has already been legitimated and aestheticized.”55 Seth Friedman begins this section in chapter 8 by investigating The Knick (2014–2015) and how film directors and tele­vi­sion executives are forming what are intended to be mutually beneficial partnerships. Although the show was constructed partly to give director Steven Soderbergh the creative freedom that he believed had become more ­limited in Hollywood film and to revive Cinemax’s fledgling status as a home for original, scripted programming, neither development materialized. Irrespective of t­ hese failures, the gambit “highlights shifting notions of the artistic possibilities in the entertainment industries,” which suggest that obstacles auteurs encounter “in Hollywood film are now considered by some to be easier to surmount in tele­vi­sion.” In the end, Soderbergh leveraged the show more to enhance the “mainstream indie” image he had already crafted as a Hollywood director than he did to experiment with the possibilities of the medium. Although the director’s prominent involvement

Introduction • 15

in the series augmented its reputation, his reversion to familiar authorial tendencies “epitomizes how dominant notions of artistry persist across media in the post-­network era.” W. D. Phillips continues to investigate the strategic alliances between established filmmakers and tele­vi­sion producers in chapter 9 on Top of the Lake (2013; 2017). The miniseries, which debuted on tele­vi­sion on the Sundance Channel (now Sundance TV) in the United States and on other Anglophone channels globally in 2013, was previously legitimated by uninterrupted, marathon “premieres at elite global film festivals” ­earlier that year, including Berlin and Sundance. He charts, then, how the distribution of the miniseries aligns with a recent trend to include prestige TV in film festival programs. In addition to the reputational boost that the show received from t­hose illustrious screenings, its status was heightened by other markers of exclusivity, especially Jane “Campion’s auteur persona” and “aesthetic and narrative signifiers associated with international art cinema.” The attachment of a decorated international art filmmaker and the numerous other legitimating ­factors Phillips identifies in Top of the Lake provided it with “a multinational affiliation” that “helped to connote prestige in vari­ous tele­vi­sion markets.” In the final chapter of Prestige Tele­vi­sion, Josie Torres Barth discusses another largely imprudent scheme to transport a recognizable auteur’s persona to tele­vi­ sion. She analyzes how creators of the most recent reboot of The Twilight Zone (2019–2020), which was made for CBS All Access, unsuccessfully attempted to position Jordan Peele as the heir apparent showrunner to the original version’s legendary creator and host, Rod Serling. Barth also builds on Henry Jenkins’s seminal notion of “transmedia storytelling” in which audiences “assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels” to reveal how the most recent streaming reboot encourages fans to mine the property’s e­ arlier iterations in tele­vi­sion and film nostalgically to discover trivial details that further trou­ble its conflicted authorship.56 ­These self-­conscious references to its canonical forerunner ­were designed partly to offset its potentially low-­culture status as a streaming reboot as well as the lack of consistent star and authorial presence linked to its anthology format. Barth claims, however, that such allusions typify how “the reboot’s creators employ quin­tes­sen­tial markers of prestige that they also interrogate, rendering t­ hose very signifiers incoherent.” She ultimately contends that the program’s failure exposes anx­i­eties about “authorship, prestige, nostalgia, and tele­vi­sion heritage through its reflexive attempts to answer questions about what it means to make The Twilight Zone in the pre­sent industrial and cultural landscape.” Her chapter is thus an especially fitting conclusion to this anthology. It encapsulates many core concerns in the case studies that follow this introduction, ranging from how efforts to imbue a show with familiar signifiers of prestige TV, such as Hollywood authorship and narrative complexity, must sometimes strike a balance with genre and

16 • Seth Friedman and Amanda Keeler

fandom, as well as legacy formats and properties, effectively making a program incompatible with the category.

Notes 1 ​Eric Thurm, “It’s Not Prestige, It’s Just TV,” Esquire, April 27, 2017, https://­w ww​ .­esquire​.c­ om​/e­ ntertainment​/­t v​/­a54762​/­the​-­flaws​-­of​-p­ restige​-­t v​/­. 2 ​Logan Hill, “The 13 Rules for Creating a Prestige TV Drama,” Vulture, May 15, 2013, https://­w ww​.­v ulture​.c­ om​/­2013​/­05​/1­ 3​-­r ules​-­for​- ­creating​-­a​-­prestige​-­t v​ -­d rama ​. ­html. 3 ​Kathryn VanArendonk, “13 Signs Y ­ ou’re Watching a ‘Prestige’ TV Show,” Vulture, March 28, 2017, https://­w ww​.­vulture​.­com​/­2017​/­03​/­prestige​-­t v​-s­ igns​-­youre​ -­watching​.­html. 4 ​Dan Hassler-­Forest, “Game of Thrones: Quality Tele­vi­sion and the Cultural Logic of Gentrification,” TV/Series 6 (December 2014). 5 ​Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: BFI, 1999), 208. 6 ​Jason Mittell, Genre and Tele­vi­sion: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture (New York: Routledge, 2004), 1. 7 ​Mittell, Genre and Tele­vi­sion, 60–79. 8 ​James Naremore, More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 11. 9 ​Robert J. Thompson, Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 13. Although Thompson’s book is the most influential in relation to the Quality TV label gaining significant traction in academic discourses, the concept was deployed e­ arlier by other scholars, especially in MTM ‘Quality Tele­vi­sion,’ edited by Jane Feuer, Paul Kerr, and Tise Vahimagi (London: BFI, 1985). 10 ​For more on the Quality TV phenomenon and its subsequently strained association with HBO’s original, scripted programming, see Quality TV: Con­temporary American Tele­vi­sion and Beyond, edited by Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007); It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-­Television Era, edited by Marc Leverette, Brian L. Ott, and Cara Louise Buckley (New York: Routledge, 2008); and The Essential HBO Reader, edited by Gary R. Edgerton and Jeffrey P. Jones (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008). 11 ​Geoff King, Quality Hollywood: Markers of Distinction in Con­temporary Studio Film (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), 13. 12 ​Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey, “Broadcasting Quality: Re-­centering Feminist Discourse with The Good Wife,” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 18, no. 2 (2017): 106. 13 ​Nygaard and Lagerwey, “Broadcasting Quality,” 107. 14 ​Brian Lowry, “Netflix Takes a Page from HBO’s Prestige Playbook,” Variety, July 23, 2013, https://­variety​.c­ om​/2­ 013​/b­ iz​/n ­ ews​/­netflix​-­takes​-p­ age​-­from​-­hbos​ -­prestige​-­playbook​-­1200566647​/­. 15 ​Nygaard and Lagerwey, “Broadcasting Quality,” 106. 16 ​Amanda D. Lotz, Cable Guys: Tele­vi­sion and Masculinities in the 21st ­Century (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 33. 17 ​Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2012), 10. 18 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 10.

Introduction • 17

19 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 13. 20 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 13. 21 ​Travis Vogan, ESPN: The Making of a Sports Media Empire (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 4. 22 ​Lowry, “Netflix Takes a Page.” 23 ​Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Lit­er­a­ture, ed. Randal Johnson (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1993), 125–131. 24 ​King, Quality Hollywood, 31. 25 ​Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 6. 26 ​Shyon Baumann, Hollywood Highbrow: From Entertainment to Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 14–18. 27 ​Amanda D. Lotz describes programming positioned to stand out from the competition as “distinctive” in We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Tele­vi­sion and the Internet Revolutionized It All (London: MIT Press, 2018), 29. 28 ​Amanda D. Lotz, The Tele­vi­sion ­Will Be Revolutionized, 2nd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 8. 29 ​Jason Mittell, “The ‘Classic Network System’ in the US,” in The Tele­vi­sion History Book, ed. Michele Hilmes and Jason Jacobs (London: BFI, 2003), 44–45. 3 0 ​Lotz, The Tele­vi­sion ­Will Be Revolutionized, 23. 31 ​Lotz, The Tele­vi­sion ­Will Be Revolutionized, 24. 32 ​President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act, setting aside federal funds for the formation and ongoing funding of noncommercial tele­vi­sion and radio, which created Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) as noncommercial alternatives to the big three networks. This emergence highlights a dif­fer­ent story of prestige TV that is beyond the scope of this anthology. See Laurie Ouellette, Viewers Like You? How Public TV Failed the ­People (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). 3 3 ​For more information, see Karen Petruska, “Tele­vi­sion Beyond the Networks: First-­Run Syndication of Original Content in the 1970s,” The Velvet Light Trap 75 (Spring 2015): 38–57; and Mittell, “The ‘Classic Network System’ in the US.” 3 4 ​Lotz, The Tele­vi­sion ­Will Be Revolutionized, 8. 3 5 ​Lotz, The Tele­vi­sion ­Will Be Revolutionized, 8. 36 ​Derek Kompare, “Publishing Flow: DVD Box Sets and the Reconception of Tele­vi­sion,” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 7, no. 4 (December 2006): 346. 37 ​Kompare, “Publishing Flow,” 346. 3 8 ​Kompare, “Publishing Flow,” 338. 39 ​Lotz, The Tele­vi­sion ­Will Be Revolutionized, 27. 4 0 ​Catherine Johnson, “Quality/Cult Tele­vi­sion: The X-­Files and Tele­vi­sion History,” in The Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion Series, ed. Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 61. 41 ​Lotz, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, 34. 42 ​Lotz, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, 23. 4 3 ​Lotz, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, 39–45. 4 4 ​Avi Santo writes, for instance, that t­ here “was a 1972 Pennsylvania polka special that clearly was targeted at the Wilkes-­Barre community” on HBO. See Santo, “Para-­television and Discourses of Distinction: The Culture of Production at HBO,” in It’s Not TV, 21. 45 ​Lotz, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, 51.

18 • Seth Friedman and Amanda Keeler

4 6 ​Lotz, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, 12. 47 ​Lotz, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, 84. Pages 81–86 give an overview of the changes at AMC that led to t­ hese programming decisions. 4 8 ​Lotz, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, 88. 49 ​Lotz, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, 105. 50 ​Quoted in Daniel Holloway, “FX Boss John Landgraf Talks ‘Narrative Exhaustion’ in TV’s ‘Gilded Age,’ ” Variety, August 3, 2018, https://­variety​.­com​/2­ 018​/­t v​/­news​/­f x​ -­boss​-­john​-­landgraf​-­tca​-­netflix​-­1202894641​/­. 51 ​Anthony N. Smith, “Putting the Premium into Basic: Slow-­Burn Narratives and the Loss-­Leader Function of AMC’s Original Drama Series,” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 14, no. 2 (October 2011): 161. 52 ​Horace M. Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsch, “Tele­vi­sion as a Cultural Forum: Implications for Research,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 8, no. 3 (1983): 45–55. 53 ​Michael Kackman, “Quality Tele­vi­sion, Melodrama, and Cultural Complexity,” Flow TV: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture, October 31, 2008, https://­w ww​ .­flowjournal​.o­ rg​/­2008​/­10​/­quality​-­television​-­melodrama​-a­ nd​-­cultural​-­complexity​ %C2%A0michael​-­kackman%C2%A0%C2%A0university​-o­ f​-­texas​ -­austin%C2%A0%C2%A0​/­. 5 4 ​Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 18. 55 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 5. 56 ​Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 21.

Part 1

The Fringes of Prestige TV Genre and Markers of Distinction

1

Spies Like Us Genre Mixing, Brand Building, and Reagan’s 1980s in The Americans DAVID R. COON In the fifth season premiere of NBC’s workplace comedy Superstore (2015–2021), store man­ag­er Amy (Amer­i­ca Ferrera) tells a district supervisor that u­ nionization efforts in her store have ceased, even though she is secretly supporting the endeavor. A ­ fter Amy hangs up the phone, her co-­worker/boyfriend Jonah (Ben Feldman) says, “Well played with the anti-­union stuff. Y ­ ou’re like a double agent—my own Elizabeth Jennings.” Amy responds disdainfully by asking “Is that . . . ​from The Americans?” Eagerly, Jonah replies, “Yeah—­it’s so good! You should just—” before Amy cuts him off with a curt, “I’m not gonna watch it!” In many ways this exchange replicates ­actual discussions of The Americans (2013–2018), the 1980s-­set FX drama about Soviet Union (USSR) spies living ­under cover in the suburbs outside Washington, DC. The show follows KGB agents Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys), who conceal their work stealing U.S. military and po­liti­cal secrets by presenting themselves as a married c­ ouple ­running a travel agency and raising two kids. Throughout the series’ run, critics (much like Jonah) praised the show and implored viewers to watch it. However, the majority of tele­vi­sion viewers (like Amy) disregarded that advice. Despite generally weak ratings, The Americans ran for six seasons 21

22 • David R. Coon

on FX, buoyed by acclaim from critics, who characterized the show as a prestigious serial drama that stood out from much of the tele­vi­sion landscape.1 In this chapter I examine the ­factors that led to The Americans being elevated to prestige status and consider how this affected the show’s longevity. I argue that the perceived prestige of The Americans is rooted in the aesthetic and ideological choices made by its creators, including an innovative blend of genres, careful attention to historical and cultural details, and a nuanced revisiting of the era’s po­liti­cal rhe­toric. Th ­ ese characteristics ­were amplified by reviews and other press coverage and enhanced by the show’s connection to FX, which executives had positioned as a home for novel dramas. All of this bolstered the cultural cachet of The Americans, which further strengthened the FX brand, thus generating economic value not solely dependent on ratings.

Suburban Spies: Espionage Thriller Meets Domestic Melodrama In a discussion of the poetics of con­temporary tele­vi­sion, Jason Mittell argues, “Complex tele­vi­sion is a site of tremendous genre mixing, where conventions and assumptions from a range of programming categories come together and are interwoven, merged, and reformed.”2 Elsewhere, he notes that the “combination of generic assumptions makes each genre’s norms richer and more vibrant through clever practices of fusion.”3 Similarly, Trisha Dunleavy points to The Sopranos (1999–2007), widely considered to be one of the first con­temporary prestige dramas, as an example of effective genre mixing. She argues that the show’s novelty and a key source of critical acclaim was its blending of domestic melodrama and crime drama “in ways that increase the pressure on its conflicted central character.”4 Following the lead of The Sopranos, many prestige dramas contain ele­ments from multiple genres that create innovative narrative conflicts for their protagonists. This trend is vis­i­ble in programs such as Lost (2004–2010), Friday Night Lights (2006–2011), Mad Men (2007–2015), Breaking Bad (2008–2013), and The Good Wife (2009–2016). The Americans continues this pattern by merging two popu­lar genres: the espionage thriller and the domestic melodrama, both of which have a history of being dismissed as unserious by creators, critics, and audiences. The show’s producers offer a hybrid approach that offsets that generic devaluation, raising the emotional and po­liti­cal stakes for each and linking The Americans to other prestige dramas. Espionage narratives feature spies and other government intelligence agents uncovering the po­liti­cal and industrial secrets of rival nations while forwarding the interests of their own country. The history of spy stories in film, tele­vi­sion, and lit­er­a­ture includes a few all-­out comedies, such as Get Smart (1965–1970), but most adopt a more dramatic approach. With some notable exceptions, including John le Carré’s novels and the films and series based on them, even the dramatic espionage stories tend to incorporate lighthearted ele­ments to provide

Spies Like Us • 23

levity. Many of the James Bond films, for example, include prominent use of clever (and often ridicu­lous) gadgets as impor­tant ele­ments of spycraft, while regularly incorporating commitment-­free romantic interludes to demonstrate the hero’s playboy persona and make spy work seem fun and sexy.5 TV shows like The Avengers (1961–1969), I Spy (1965–1968), and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964–1968) also foreground unique gadgetry while relying heavi­ly on playful, witty, and (in some cases) romantic banter between the main characters to propel the narrative. More recent shows, like Alias (2001–2006) and Killing Eve (2018–2022), emphasize a slick and flashy production style to inject a sense of fun into even their most dramatic moments. Domestic melodramas, in contrast, are often written off largely ­because of their subject ­matter. The genre’s focus on the interpersonal dynamics of home and ­family has led some critics and viewers to dismiss domestic melodramas as trivial, overly concerned with emotions, and primarily associated with w ­ omen. This feminization has contributed to its historical devaluing, particularly for the so-­called w ­ oman’s films of the 1930s and 1940s as well as radio and tele­vi­sion daytime dramas (commonly referred to as soap operas).6 More recently, with the rise of complex serial dramas on tele­vi­sion, domestic melodrama has become a common ele­ment used to augment storylines set in professional environments by providing depth and nuance to the characters portrayed. As with many con­temporary serial dramas, hybridity in The Americans raises the stakes and intensifies the appeals of its constituent genres. B ­ ecause Elizabeth and Philip must always maintain their cover, they never get to discard their aliases to have a personal life distinct from their ongoing spy mission. The two parts of their life, and the two genres associated with ­those, are thus fused into one. This is highlighted in the first season episode “In Control,” when Elizabeth and Philip argue about what to do with intelligence they uncovered about the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Elizabeth wants to send the information home to Moscow. However, Philip believes that it might be misinterpreted, which could escalate tensions and lead to military action between the USSR and the United States. The argument quickly turns personal, with Elizabeth accusing Philip of embracing his American cover life too eagerly, saying, “I fit in just fine, but I remember where I came from, not having all ­these ­things, it being about something bigger than just myself.” Their conversation could have global po­liti­ cal consequences, but it plays out as a familiar marital argument, a staple of any domestic melodrama. This is emphasized by the mise-­en-­scène, as the ­couple is surrounded by laundry baskets and detergent ­bottles in the h ­ ouse­hold space of the laundry room. The combination of professional or po­liti­cal discussions and the domestic sphere is common in The Americans, as Elizabeth and Philip regularly debate their missions while washing dishes in the kitchen, folding clothing in the laundry room, or getting dressed in the bedroom. The complex intertwining of professional and personal concerns in The Americans goes beyond the unusual juxtaposition of conversations and settings. The

24 • David R. Coon

show regularly depicts the c­ ouple’s marriage being complicated by their spy work and vice versa. An ongoing source of tension is Philip’s relationship with Martha (Alison Wright), a secretary at the FBI. As his alter ego Clark, Philip romances Martha in order to access information that she can collect from her office. During the second season, Elizabeth (posing as Clark’s s­ ister Jennifer) also gets close to Martha, who reveals unexpected details about her sex life with Clark/Philip. In the episode “­Behind the Red Door,” Elizabeth shares this conversation with Philip, indicating that she was intrigued that Martha said Clark was “a wild animal in bed.” Philip ­later returns home still disguised as Clark, and as he begins to remove his wig and glasses, Elizabeth says that she wants “Clark” to make love to her. Philip initially resists, but when Elizabeth angrily insists, Philip turns from gentle and sensitive to aggressive and rough. A ­ fter a few seconds of angry, passionless thrusting, Philip asks “Is that what you want?” before storming off to the bathroom as Elizabeth begins to cry. The final two shots of the scene are a handheld long take of Philip pulling off his wig and staring at himself in the mirror in disgust followed by an overhead shot of Elizabeth crumpled on the bed and weeping into the covers. Elizabeth and Philip both understand that having sex with other ­people to earn trust and get information is part of their job, but this scene highlights the strain it places on their marriage. While espionage narratives consistently feature characters using sex to get information, The Americans atypically explores the emotional implications of such activities and the impact they have on personal lives. In addition to tensions created by the intersection of marriage and espionage, Elizabeth and Philip also strug­gle to balance their spy work with parental responsibilities. Through most of season one, Elizabeth and Philip’s primary concern is hiding their spy work from their c­ hildren, Paige (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Sellati), but they soon realize that this work might actually endanger their ­daughter and son, as enemies could harm them to hurt Elizabeth and Philip. Much of season two revolves around the spies-­as-­parents trying to protect their ­children while carry­ing out assigned KGB missions. This comes to a head in the second season finale, “Echo.” Early in the episode, Elizabeth and Philip are on a mission to get information about the U.S. stealth bomber program, and Paige is attending a rally to protest the U.S. military’s use of nuclear weapons. A cross-­ cut montage sequence alternates between shots of Elizabeth and Philip’s mission and Paige’s protest, visually intertwining Paige with the work of her spy parents. ­Later in the episode, Elizabeth and Philip learn that the KGB wants to recruit and train Paige as part of their “second generation illegals” program. Philip opposes this idea, but Elizabeth thinks it might help Paige find a purpose. Standing in the kitchen with the kids in the next room, Philip and Elizabeth quietly debate the issue, with Philip arguing that bringing Paige into the ­family business “would destroy her.” Elizabeth responds “. . . ​to be like us?” before shifting gears and cheerfully calling out “Paige! Henry! Dinner time!” The episode ends with a shot of the f­ amily sitting down to dinner, the c­ hildren caught in the m ­ iddle,

Spies Like Us • 25

Elizabeth and Philip Jennings have dinner with their kids ­a fter arguing about their ­daughter’s spy potential in The Americans.

as Elizabeth and Philip face each other from opposite ends of the ­table with a life-­altering decision hanging in the air. This storyline continues over the remaining seasons, with Elizabeth and Philip at odds about how to balance being good parents with being loyal to ­Mother Rus­sia. It is an ongoing parenting disagreement with potentially global po­liti­cal consequences, combining ele­ments from the series’ primary genres to provide a new take on each of them. The creators of The Americans, including writers, producers, and actors, frequently reference the show’s intersecting genres in interviews, highlighting it as a strength and a marker of distinction. As noted by an early reviewer, although the spy ele­ments are prominent, “It’s the meta­phorical tension of the show’s domestic conceit . . . ​that the show’s creators hope ­will elevate it into something more than a pulpy diversion.”7 FX president John Landgraf cites this hybridity as the main reason he greenlit the show, claiming that “what interested [him] was the interplay in narrative tension inherent in an espionage franchise and the thematic and emotional tensions that come with the very unique ­family dynamic.”8 Similarly, Russell references it as a key draw for her as a performer. She says, “Look, I actually love spy stuff, but the in­ter­est­ing t­ hing to me and the reason I said yes to the show was that marriage . . . ​I was just drawn to this idea of a relationship that’s tested by extreme circumstances.”9 Rhys highlights the acting challenges presented by the scenario, contending, “The dual aspect of being a spy and a parent seems to me like a fine juggle of ­doing peanut butter and jelly and then talking about assassinations. D ­ oing both in a real place—­ that, to me, is one of the greater strug­gles.”10 Executive producer Joel Fields uses the hybridity to draw a comparison with one of tele­vi­sion’s most revered prestige programs, The Sopranos, by noting, “You w ­ ere drawn into this intense f­amily

26 • David R. Coon

drama that happened to be set in a very challenging world, and the same is the case ­here, we hope.”11 Building on comments from the creators, critics and reviewers also point to The Americans’ blend of genres as a strength. As one critic noted when the show premiered, “The balance between the domestic drama and the requisite trappings of espionage make the show the must-­watch new midseason series.”12 Similarly, a roundup of the best shows of 2013 in The Wall Street Journal notes that the blend “adds irresistible h ­ uman dimension to this spy saga.”13 The announcement of the program’s first Peabody Award also highlighted its hybridity, exclaiming that while the covert missions are “tense and nail-­biting,” it is the ­couple’s double life that allows the show “to contemplate duty, honor, parental responsibility, fidelity, both nationalistic and marital, and what it means to be an American.”14 Overall, the response from critics reinforces the creators’ assertion that genre mixing raises the show’s perceived quality, as the domestic melodrama grounds the ongoing spy mission in h ­ uman emotions and the espionage storyline turns f­ amily conflicts into life-­and-­death po­liti­cal situations. The genre hybridity that defines The Americans is closely tied to its physical setting in suburban Washington, DC. While Elizabeth and Philip’s spy missions play out in vari­ous locations around the city, a suburban neighborhood is the home base for their cover as a seemingly typical American f­ amily. This setting is significant enough that it gets referenced in most reviews of the series, which often describe the Jennings ­family using phrases such as “regular folks in the suburbs,” “an ordinary suburban c­ ouple,” or “regular Americans at home in suburbia.”15 The suburban setting, which is a fixture of domestic melodramas, is a key component of Elizabeth and Philip’s disguise and the overall narrative. As I discuss in Look Closer, narratives that foreground their suburban settings frequently explore tensions between an external façade of averageness and the more complicated truth beneath the surface. Characters in ­these stories often lead double lives to hide secrets about affairs, desires, or parts of their identities that they cannot share with neighbors or society.16 The Americans continues this trend, though the secret is bigger than that of most suburban narratives, given its connections to national security and international conflicts. As one reviewer notes, “The Jenningses’ ability to fulfill their responsibilities to the motherland hinges on their blending in seamlessly with their neighbors.”17 Most suburban characters hide secrets from nosy neighbors, and the revelation of their secrets is most likely to result in shame or embarrassment. Elizabeth and Philip, however, must keep their secret from Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), the FBI agent who lives across the street. Preserving the veneer of suburban normalcy becomes even more impor­tant to Elizabeth and Philip, knowing that failure could result in arrest, deportation, or even death. While domestic melodramas typically unfold in suburban settings, espionage thrillers are less likely to do so. As such, the daily interactions and conflicts the Jennings ­family encounter feel appropriate in this space, but their spy work seems

Spies Like Us • 27

The Jennings ­family at the center of The Americans befriends new neighbors as part of an effort to blend into the community.

out of place. This contrast has been explored in other media texts, but it is usually played for laughs. For example, films like True Lies (1994), The Incredibles (2004), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), and The Spy Next Door (2010) find humor in the significant contrast between suburban life and the action-­oriented stories of spies, superheroes, and assassins. Using the espionage–­suburban life opposition embedded in its genre hybridity to increase narrative tension rather than as a source of comic relief, The Americans deploys a more dramatic approach than most similar texts. By taking all aspects of its constituent genres seriously, the creators of The Americans generated a particularly complex narrative that yields storylines and conflicts rarely explored on screen, further elevating the status of the series for many critics.

Tradecraft: Emphasizing Authenticity and Accuracy From early announcements of the show’s development through the end of its run, promotional materials and press coverage of The Americans celebrated the show’s accuracy and authenticity, particularly its ­handling of espionage storylines and its 1980s setting. Reviewers frequently highlighted this authenticity by emphasizing the professional credentials of The Americans’ creator and showrunner, Joe Weisberg, who worked for the CIA before becoming a writer. A Rolling Stone article titled “The Spy Who Made a Hit Show” exemplifies this approach by focusing more on Weisberg’s background than on the series itself.18 With the subtitle “How Joe Weisberg turned a gig recruiting spies for the CIA into The Americans,” the article accentuates the roots of the series in the actuality of intelligence work.

28 • David R. Coon

While most press coverage does not focus solely on Weisberg’s pedigree, many articles and reviews do incorporate anecdotes from Weisberg to underscore this connection. An article in Time, for example, includes Weisberg reminiscing about his experience as an inspiration for the series. He says, “The most in­ter­est­ ing t­ hing I observed during my time at the CIA was the f­ amily life of agents who served abroad with spouses and kids,” and he goes on to claim, “In the CIA, I lied all the time, every­body I worked with lied all the time.”19 ­These comments suggest that the Jennings f­ amily’s strug­gles to balance spy work and domestic life are drawn partly from Weisberg’s experience rather than just from his imagination. An early review in The New York Times also explains that Weisberg’s knowledge of intelligence work is substantial enough to be of concern to the federal government, noting that “as part of his C.I.A. nondisclosure agreement Mr. Weisberg must submit his scripts to the agency for approval.”20 Even articles that do not focus on Weisberg’s intelligence work frequently reference it in passing, introducing him, for example, as “the creator of the series (and a former C.I.A. operative)” to indicate the show’s grounding in real­ity.21 In addition to locating The Americans’ roots in a secret world that is usually off-­limits to the public, the emphasis on Weisberg’s experience also enhances his status as an author and creative force ­behind the series. As Michael Newman and Elana Levine argue, positioning a showrunner as an “auteur” is a strategy commonly used to elevate some tele­vi­sion programs, helping to pre­sent them as works of art rather than as commercial products. For some critics, identifying autobiographical ele­ments in a showrunner’s artistry establishes auteur credentials, as it points to personal expression “within the constraints of a commercial medium.”22 Viewers must be made aware of the showrunner’s past, as this autobiographical detail “always depends on the audience’s extra-­textual knowledge about the tele­vi­sion author for its legitimating effects.”23 Thus, repeated references to Weisberg’s CIA past not only suggest authenticity but also bolster Weisberg’s auteur credentials, further amplifying the status of the series. Getting the espionage ele­ments right was only part of the challenge for the creators of The Americans, and the show’s reconstruction of the 1980s has also been critically praised. In some ways, setting The Americans in the past was bound to heighten its cachet, as critics and award-­giving organ­izations frequently reward films and tele­vi­sion shows that revisit real or fictionalized historical events. For example, a quick glance at recent Oscar nominees reveals a preference for films set in the past: seven of the nine Best Picture nominees in 2020 fit this description. Many reviews of The Americans go beyond mentioning its 1980s setting and label it as a “period piece,” “period drama,” or “historical drama,” situating it within a category generally revered by critics and awards shows. But The Americans is not set in an era typically associated with prestigious period pieces. As one early critic noted, “A period drama set in the early 1980s is tough—­not enough time has passed to make the clothes and set design Mad Men chic, and big hair and shoulder pads look plain silly.”24 Despite this challenge, critics praised

Spies Like Us • 29

The Americans for its careful attention to era-­specific clothing, set design, technology, news headlines, po­liti­cal developments, and social trends.25 As one critic noted of the series premiere, however, ­these details are often “relatively muted,” taking a back seat to and enhancing the story rather than drawing attention to themselves.26 While period accuracy may not be as flashy as the big-­budget special effects of Game of Thrones (2011–2019) or the highly stylized cinematography of True Detective (2014–), it is a more subtle version of the high production values that characterize many prestige dramas. The approach to visual design used in The Americans differs from many other recent programs set in the 1980s and is in line with the show’s overall tone. Rather than ­going for jokes and nostalgic references that distract from the story, the creators of The Americans play it straight, emphasizing accuracy while downplaying laughable fads and trends. As a contrasting example, American Horror Story: 1984 (2019) tempers its requisite scares and gore with heavy doses of kitsch and camp, including spandex-­clad aerobics instructors with teased bangs and a fictionalized per­for­mance by one-­hit-­wonder synth pop band Kajagoogoo. Similarly, shows like The Goldbergs (2013–), Glow (2017–2019), and Stranger Th ­ ings (2016–) mine the fashions and trends of the 1980s for laughs and nostalgia even while using them as touchstones to ground their stories. The more serious approach to the era depicted in The Americans is in line with its overall aesthetic. In an interview about the writing of the series, Weisberg says, “As soon as you start dropping in t­ hose l­ ittle ­things that have self-­awareness, ­those ­little jokey, clever t­ hings, the ­whole tone of your show changes.”27 By taking their setting seriously, the creators of The Americans invite the audience to do the same, further enhancing the show’s status.

Counterintelligence: Reframing Reagan’s 1980s In an early discussion of programs labeled as “Quality TV,” Jane Feuer argues that “Quality TV is liberal TV.”28 Writing about tele­vi­sion of the 1970s and 1980s, she notes that shows branded as “Quality” by critics tended to be ­those that appealed to more liberal (yet not too radical) po­liti­cal sensibilities, suggesting a par­tic­u­lar ideological stance at work in defining the status of tele­vi­ sion programs. This critical inclination likely influenced the reception of The Americans. The complex narrative generated by the show’s genre hybridity shapes its approach to the 1980s, as the series offers multiple perspectives on the era, some of which ­counter the hegemonic narratives promoted by the Reagan administration. With Soviet spies as protagonists, the basic premise of The Americans encourages viewers to reconsider po­liti­cal events of the 1980s. Elizabeth and Philip frequently express views aligned with U.S.-­based po­liti­cal movements that actively challenged Reagan’s policies, including the Nuclear Freeze Campaign and the Central Amer­i­ca Solidarity Movement.29 Beyond the protagonists, the series devotes significant time to exploring the perspectives

30 • David R. Coon

of the primary antagonist (FBI agent Beeman, who would likely have been the hero of a story made during the 1980s), as well as t­ hose of secondary characters like the Jennings ­children as well as diplomats and agents working at the Soviet Embassy and the FBI. By giving at least some dimension to all t­ hese characters and their points of view, The Americans challenges monolithic interpretations of 1980s politics and culture, particularly with re­spect to collective memories and historical knowledge of American militarism and consumerism. As told by Reagan and his supporters, the history of the 1980s includes the United States triumphing over the global threat posed by the dangerous USSR. Michael Brenes notes that “for Reagan, the only ­counter to Soviet aggression was American might.”30 The president, for instance, increased expenditures for military resources and development of proj­ects like the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was intended to intercept nuclear launches by the USSR. This coincided with policies and actions that became known as the Reagan Doctrine, an effort to support anti-­communist insurgents in countries like Nicaragua, Af­ghan­i­stan, and Angola.31 The Reagan administration justified t­hese actions and expenditures with a carefully crafted narrative that portrayed the USSR as a morally corrupt “Evil Empire” threatening the world. This narrative was reinforced by popu­lar films from the 1980s, such as Red Dawn (1984), Rocky IV (1985), and Top Gun (1986). Although some critics then and in the years since the 1980s have questioned Reagan’s anti-­Soviet fearmongering, he was widely credited with ending the Cold War, a story bolstered by supporters and po­liti­cal allies long ­after he left office. In an essay published two de­cades ­a fter the Reagan presidency ended, Edwin Meese III, a member of Reagan’s cabinet, celebrated Reagan’s legacy by stating that his strategies “resulted in the end of the Cold War, with the West and forces of freedom winning.”32 The Americans challenges the dominant narrative about heroic and righ­teous U.S. forces defeating an evil Soviet threat. In line with other con­temporary prestige dramas that provide nuanced approaches to complex po­liti­cal issues, the producers of The Americans offer a range of perspectives to show that neither side was entirely right or wrong, good or bad. For example, much of the storyline in the second season involves Soviet efforts to limit and expose U.S. support for the Contras in Nicaragua. Although the Reagan administration presented such efforts as vital to preventing a global takeover by communist forces, The Americans dramatizes and humanizes the arguments of Reagan’s critics, presenting his actions as meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations, enabling h ­ uman rights violations, and potentially breaking international laws. In the episode “New Car,” Philip talks to KGB handler Kate (Wrenn Schmidt) about a plan to infiltrate a Contra training camp, and she reminds him that the mission w ­ ill help them “show the world American hy­poc­risy, their bloodiness, their willingness to topple demo­cratic governments.” This point of view pre­sents the United States as a threat to world peace rather than as its guardian. Similarly, in the episode “Yousaf,” KGB agent Oleg (Costa Ronin) shares his motivation for joining the

Spies Like Us • 31

KGB. He says that if the United States has military technology that the USSR does not, “it’ll destroy the balance of power. That’s what I’m ­here to do—­restore the balance.” With a stated goal of preserving world peace by preventing the United States from having too much power, Oleg pre­sents a view of Soviet intentions and U.S. military might that differs significantly from that of the Reagan administration. Beyond providing alternative views on the United States as a global power, The Americans offers individual characters as representatives of their respective countries (United States, USSR) and organ­izations (FBI, CIA, KGB) to complicate simplified notions of right and wrong. For example, in the first season episode “Safe House,” Stan’s partner is accidentally stabbed in a scuffle with Philip and is taken to a safe ­house for questioning. Stan assumes that the KGB has kidnapped his partner, so he retaliates by kidnapping a young KGB operative. Elizabeth and Philip give their hostage painkillers and dress his wounds, ­doing their best to keep him alive. Meanwhile, Stan disobeys ­orders, threatens his hostage, and eventually shoots him in the head. Stan’s vengeful, ruthless be­hav­ior in this episode contrasts starkly with Elizabeth and Philip’s compassion in a similar situation. This is not to say, however, that Elizabeth and Philip do not kill many innocent p­ eople (they rack up plenty of collateral damage throughout the series) or that Stan does not do any good deeds. No individuals in The Americans are presented as entirely good or bad—­and by extension, neither are the organ­izations and nations that they represent. All are shown as fighting for what they believe in and engaging in acts they know are wrong (always in ser­vice of a greater cause). This complexity challenges the simplistic notions of good Americans and bad Soviets that circulated during the Reagan era, encouraging viewers to reconsider their understandings of the United States’ role in global affairs. The Reagan-­era desire to defeat the USSR can be viewed as part of a larger trend that Nicolaus Mills identifies as the “Culture of Triumph,” which is based on the admiration of power and status.33 Beyond demonstrations of military might, this culture of triumph was expressed through Reagan’s economic policies and the social developments that followed. Reagan aggressively cut taxes on the wealthy, arguing that if the rich had more money, they would invest it back into the economy, which would benefit every­one.34 While Reagan’s policies actually widened the gap between rich and poor, they also helped to fuel the image of the big spender as a social hero, turning con­spic­u­ous consumption into a key marker of success in 1980s American culture.35 The Americans complicates this understanding of consumerism in the 1980s by again offering multiple perspectives and the nuanced approach characteristic of con­temporary prestige dramas. Philip enjoys and embraces consumerism, seeing it as a benefit of living as typical Americans. Elizabeth, in contrast, considers it a distraction from their true mission, and she worries that her c­ hildren are being weakened by the luxuries that their lifestyle affords them. This is a

32 • David R. Coon

consistent source of tension, highlighted in the season two episode “New Car,” when Philip buys a new Chevrolet Camaro Z28, much to Elizabeth’s chagrin. In response to his wife’s disapproval, Philip asks, “­Don’t you enjoy any of this? This ­house, the clothes, all ­those beautiful shoes? It ­doesn’t make you bad at what you do, it just makes you a h ­ uman being.” In response, Elizabeth says, “That’s not why I’m h ­ ere. We have to live this way, for our job, for our cover.” She reminds him that ­people a few miles away do not have the same luxuries and that she grew up in poverty. “It’s nicer h ­ ere, yes. It’s easier. It’s not better.” L ­ ater, Philip has a meeting with his handler, who informs him of recent actions taken by the United States that led to the deaths of many Soviet sailors. When Philip returns to his new car ­after the meeting, he stands and stares at it for a while, seemingly contemplating the connections between the consumerism he has embraced and the politics he despises. This tension resurfaces throughout the series, serving as a constant reminder that the pleasures of consumer capitalism are not easy to separate from broader po­liti­cal structures. While individual characters express counter-­hegemonic views, The Americans does not fully reject dominant narratives about national security and economics in the 1980s. Instead, the series highlights the complexity of t­ hese issues by offering multiple perspectives on them. All characters have redeeming qualities as well as flaws, thus creating a situation where no person or group is ever fully good or bad, hero or e­ nemy. In this way, the series challenges the monolithic rhe­toric of the Reagan administration, which tried to define good and bad in crude terms. The show never goes so far as to endorse communism, and the creators openly note that system’s failures, but it does complicate rather than celebrate the conservative rhe­toric of Reagan and his supporters.36 Similar to the “Quality TV” programs discussed by Feuer, The Americans ultimately takes a comparatively liberal approach to understanding American culture in the 1980s, encouraging viewers to see the complexity of a po­liti­cal era that many oversimplify.

Communism Meets Cobranding: The Americans and FX Central to The Americans’ prestige status is its mutually beneficial relationship with its basic cable home, FX. The reputation of FX helped raise the profile of The Americans, while the critical acclaim of The Americans added value to the FX brand. This connection is highlighted by the vocal presence of FX president John Landgraf in much press coverage about the show. In 2013 (the same year that The Americans premiered) FX ­adopted “Fearless” as its one-­word brand slogan, indicating that it was willing to take creative risks with its programming, rather than playing it safe as broadcast networks and many basic cable channels are generally expected to do. An article in Adweek points to the fit between The Americans and FX, saying “The Americans represents the purest expression of FX’s guiding princi­ple, which as Landgraf characterizes it, is ‘to make shows that

Spies Like Us • 33

appeal to the lizard brain as well as the frontal cortex.’ ”37 In another Adweek story near the end of the show’s run, Landgraf says of FX, “We’ve always been looking for the point of view and tone that ­doesn’t exist on tele­vi­sion, as opposed to replicating other ­people’s success.”38 By building a brand based on complex and risk-­taking programming, FX has established itself as a welcoming home for and supporter of creator-­centered, prestige shows.39 In addition to being a public face for FX, Landgraf became visibly associated with The Americans by appearing in trade and popu­lar press coverage about the show. Far from being a distant executive, Landgraf is portrayed in most coverage as a hands-on team member. He is, for example, credited with selecting Russell for the role of Elizabeth, and Weisberg notes that he worked closely with Landgraf from the moment the pi­lot was picked up, saying “John and his team have been an integral part of the development of the show.”40 Landgraf’s involvement and public support for The Americans (along with the usual network-­branded promotional materials) helped associate the program with the FX brand, thus framing it as a show that took creative risks and added something unique to the tele­vi­sion landscape. This branding also linked The Americans to other high-­profile FX shows like The Shield (2002–2008), American Horror Story (2011–), Fargo (2014–), and American Crime Story (2016–), increasing its status through association. The connection also benefited FX, as the channel could use the success of The Americans to enhance its creator-­centered identity and attract f­ uture proj­ects from innovative writers and producers. Additionally, the critical acclaim and awards received by The Americans further bolstered the channel’s brand. For example, to boost awards chances, FX frequently took out “For your consideration” ads in industry trade publications, often including superlatives from critics and highlighting the FX brand along with the series itself to elevate the status of both. The brand-­enhancing value of The Americans is not unique in the realm of prestige tele­vi­sion. In his discussion of prestige dramas on AMC, Anthony Smith notes that shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad did not always generate significant advertising revenue, but their acclaim and positive reputation enhanced the channel’s brand. This allowed AMC to command higher carriage fees from cable providers, generating millions of dollars in profits for the channel.41 Such an assertion is supported by comments made by AMC’s former general man­ag­er, Charlie Collier. Following the debut seasons of ­these shows, Collier noted that their “lukewarm ratings numbers” did not deter com­pany leaders b­ ecause they saw the shows as valuable “brand builders and calling cards” for AMC.42 Similarly, near the finale of The Americans, Landgraf said, “We make more money when we have a highly rated show, and The Americans has never been a highly rated show. But it has demonstrated enormous value for our business as a ­whole by virtue of its excellence.”43 As with the aforementioned AMC dramas, The Americans likely stayed on the air for six years in spite of its low ratings ­because the value of the show was more in the prestige it brought to FX

34 • David R. Coon

An FX ad in Emmy magazine, encouraging support for The Americans and bolstering the channel brand.

than in the advertising dollars it generated. Additionally, the buzz-­worthy (and binge-­worthy) nature of the show likely helped FX’s then corporate sibling 21st ­Century Fox accumulate additional revenue through its exclusive streaming deal with Amazon Prime.44 Although some viewers and critics may imagine that prestige programming is somehow distanced from the commercialism associated with the rest of tele­vi­sion, The Americans is a reminder that t­ hese

Spies Like Us • 35

programs still serve impor­tant economic functions. Even if they do not generate substantial advertising dollars immediately, they can support the long-­term profits of their parent companies by enhancing brand images and feeding revenue streams beyond first-­run ad sales. The prestige status of The Americans has its roots in the characteristics of the series itself, but that status was cemented by its critical reception and its relationship to FX. The series embraces popu­lar and familiar genres and settings, and through subtle aesthetic choices and sophisticated portrayals of sociocultural issues, it takes t­ hose genres and settings more seriously than other media texts that occupy similar terrain. In this way, the show itself seems to announce that it is not a typical spy thriller (or typical melodrama, suburban narrative, or ’80s nostalgia trip) but something more—­something better. Critics and other journalists, often with the help of the show’s PR team, picked up on ­these textual characteristics and praised them in their coverage of the series. This strengthened The Americans’ image as a first-­rate drama, likely helped it win a string of industry awards and nominations, and ultimately supported the ongoing development of the FX brand. While the efforts of critics and vocal fans like Superstore’s Jonah may not have translated into strong ratings, The Americans demonstrates how prestige tele­vi­sion sits at a unique intersection of art and commerce, making it a noteworthy component of the con­temporary tele­vi­sion landscape.

Notes 1 ​The series premiered with an audience of 3.22 million viewers, but then dropped to an average of 1.85 million same-­day viewers for its first season. DVR viewers (Live-­Plus-7 ratings) increased the first season average to 3.38 million. Same-­day ratings for subsequent seasons dropped steadily, averaging 662,000 viewers by the sixth and final season, while rising DVR viewership kept the total numbers relatively steady. Even with strong DVR viewership, The Americans ranked outside the top 100 throughout its run. See Mikey O’Connell, “TV Ratings: ‘The Americans’ Returns to a Softer 1.9 Million Viewers,” The Hollywood Reporter, February 27, 2014, https://­w ww​.­hollywoodreporter​.­com​/­live​-­feed​/­t v​-­ratings​ -­americans​-­returns​-­a​-­684042; Lesley Goldberg, “FX’s ‘The Americans’ Renewed for a Fourth Season,” The Hollywood Reporter, March 31, 2015, https://­w ww​ .­hollywoodreporter​.­com​/­live​-­feed​/­americans​-­renewed​-­fourth​-­season​-­785558; Dominic Patten, “ ‘ The Americans’ Ratings Fall from 2016 to Lowest Season Debut Ever,” Deadline, March 8, 2017, https://­deadline​.­com​/­2017​/­03​/­the​-­a mericans​ -­ratings​-­debut​-­low​-­keri​-­r ussell​-­f x​-­1202039740​/­; and “The Americans: Season Six Ratings,” TVseriesfinale, May 31, 2018, https://­t vseriesfinale​.­com​/­t v​-­show​ /­americans​-­season​-­six​-­ratings​/­. 2 ​Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 233. 3 ​Jason Mittell, Genre and Tele­vi­sion: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture (New York: Routledge, 2004), 157. 4 ​Trisha Dunleavy, Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Tele­vi­sion (New York: Routledge, 2018), 39.

36 • David R. Coon

5 ​Wesley Britton, Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005), 103. 6 ​Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2010), 82. 7 ​Jeremy Egner, “­Those Cute Spies around the Corner,” The New York Times, January 27, 2013, 20. 8 ​Anthony Crupi, “Sleeper Agent,” Adweek 54, no. 2 (2013): 26. 9 ​Crupi, “Sleeper Agent,” 26. 10 ​Gary Levin, “Spies ­Can’t Disguise Growing Bond,” USA T ­ oday, February 26, 2014, 3-­D. 11 ​Egner, “­Those Cute Spies,” 23. 12 ​Crupi, “Sleeper Agent,” 26. 13 ​Dorothy Rabinowitz, “The Best of 2013: Tele­vi­sion: A Rousing Sleeper Series Stands Out,” Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2013, D-3. 14 ​“The Americans (FX),” Peabody Awards, accessed November 12, 2019, http://­w ww​ .­peabodyawards​.­com​/­award​-­profile​/­the​-­americans. 15 ​Crupi, “Sleeper Agent,” 26; Beth Felker Jones, “Fake Marriage, Real Kids,” The Christian ­Century, July 10, 2013, 42; Rabinowitz, “Best of 2013,” D-3. 16 ​David Coon, Look Closer: Suburban Narratives and American Values in Film and Tele­vi­sion, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 228. 17 ​Eliza Berman, “Why The Americans Still Resonates De­cades ­a fter the Cold War,” Time, January 28, 2015, https://­time​.­com​/­3683875​/­a mericans​-­identity​ -­a ssimilation​/­. 18 ​“The Spy Who Made a Hit Show,” Rolling Stone, February 27, 2014, 22. 19 ​Katie Arnold-­R atliff, “Spy Games,” Time, March 25, 2013, 58. 20 ​Egner, “­Those Cute Spies,” 20. 21 ​Jeffrey Toobin, “Rus­sia Redux,” The New Yorker, April 2, 2018, 28. 22 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 48. 23 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 49. 24 ​Alessandra Stanley, “Fit for the P.T.A. (and the K.G.B.),” The New York Times, January 30, 2013, C-1. 25 ​See, for example, Natalie Abrams, “A History Lesson from The Americans,” Entertainment Weekly, January 28, 2015, https://­ew​.­com​/­article​/­2015​/­01​/­28​ /­americans​-s­ eason3​-s­ poilers​-­2​/;­ Jones, “Fake Marriage, Real Kids,” 42; and Paula Hendrickson, “­Those Crazy 80s,” Emmys​.c­ om, May 13, 2016, https://­w ww​.­emmys​ .­com​/­news​/­mix​/­those​-­crazy​-­80s. 26 ​Egner, “­Those Cute Spies,” 20. 27 ​Shirley Li, “Cold War Confidential,” Entertainment Weekly, March 17, 2017, 40. 28 ​Jane Feuer, “The MTM Style,” in MTM ‘Quality Tele­vi­sion’,” ed. Jane Feuer, Paul Kerr, and Tise Vahimagi (London: BFI Publishing, 1984), 56. 29 ​For a discussion of t­ hese and other anti-­Reagan efforts, see Bradford Martin, The Other Eighties: A Secret History of Amer­i­ca in the Age of Reagan (New York: Hill and Wang, 2011). 3 0 ​Michael Brenes, “Peace through Austerity: The Reagan Defense Buildup in the ‘Age of In­equality,’ ” in The Cold War at Home and Abroad: Domestic Politics and US Foreign Policy Since 1945, ed. Andrew L. Johns and Mitchell B. Lerner (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2018), 250. 31 ​Peter Schweizer, “Did Ronald Reagan Make the Berlin Wall Fall Down?,” in Living in the Eighties, ed. Gil Troy and Vincent J. Cannato (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 143.

Spies Like Us • 37

32 ​Edwin Meese III, “An Insider’s Look at the Reagan Legacy,” in Living in the Eighties, 33. 3 3 ​Nicolaus Mills, “The Culture of Triumph and the Spirit of the Times,” in Culture in an Age of Money: The Legacy of the 1980s in Amer­i­ca, ed. Nicolaus Mills (Chicago: I.R. Dee, 1990), 12. 3 4 ​Mills, “Culture of Triumph,” 15. 3 5 ​Kim Phillips-­Fein, “Reaganomics: The Rebirth of the ­Free Market,” in Living in the Eighties, 127. 36 ​Levin, “Spies C ­ an’t Disguise,” 3-­D. 37 ​Crupi, “Sleeper Agent,” 26. 3 8 ​“The Best of FX,” Adweek, February 26, 2018, 27. 39 ​Dunleavy, Complex Serial Drama, 29. 4 0 ​Crupi, “Sleeper Agent,” 26. 41 ​Anthony N. Smith, “Putting the Premium into Basic: Slow-­Burn Narratives and the Loss-­Leader Function of AMC’s Original Drama Series,” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 14, no. 2 (2013): 161. See also Amanda D. Lotz, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Tele­vi­sion and the Internet Revolutionized It All, (­Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018), 81–86. 42 ​Ray Richmond, “AMC Serious about Its Series,” Hollywood Reporter, July 18, 2008, https://­w ww​.­hollywoodreporter​.­com​/­news​/­amc​-­serious​-­series​-­115916. 4 3 ​Cynthia Littleton, “Coming In from the Cold War,” Variety, March 20, 2018, 40. 4 4 ​Todd Spangler, “Amazon Gets FX’s ‘The Americans,’ ‘How I Met Your ­Mother,’ and More in Pact with 21st ­Century Fox,” Variety, February 6, 2014, https://­variety​ .­com​/­2014​/­digital​/n ­ ews​/­amazon​-­gets​-­exclusive​-­on​-­f xs​-­the​-a­ mericans​-­and​-­other​ -­fare​-­in​-­pact​-­with​-­21st​-­century​-­fox​-­1201089717​/­.

2

Disrupting the Pattern of Prestige TV Fringe AMANDA KEELER

From its beginning, Fringe (2008–2013) checked all of the boxes of what might be termed “prestige” science fiction programming on network tele­vi­sion. Fringe’s “highly pedigreed” executive producer, J. J. Abrams, had established himself in science fiction storytelling as the executive producer of Lost (2004–2010) and producer of Cloverfield (2008).1 Fringe also continued the collaborations between Abrams and composer Michael Giacchino, who won the Emmy Award in 2005 for “Outstanding ­Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore)” for the pi­lot episodes of Lost. Working alongside Abrams w ­ ere Fringe’s co-­creators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who had been writers for the Abrams-­ produced tele­vi­sion program Alias (2001–2006). Though Fringe’s star Anna Torv and co-­star Jasika Nicole w ­ ere largely unknown to U.S. audiences, other members of the ensemble cast, including Blair Brown, John Noble, Lance Reddick, and Joshua Jackson, had achieved critical and popu­lar success in film and tele­vi­sion with The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd (1987–1991), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Wire (2002–2008), and Dawson’s Creek (1998–2003), respectively. Fringe aired on Fox, a network known for launching and nurturing highly regarded science fiction tele­vi­sion programs such as The X-­Files (1993–2002; 2016–2018) and Millennium (1996–1999). All of ­these 38

Disrupting the Pattern of Prestige TV • 39

pedigreed markers of distinction helped propel the program’s successful debut. Fringe’s ten-­million-­dollar pi­lot episode premiered on September 9, 2008, garnering 9.13 million viewers and winning “its timeslot in adults 18–49.”2 Despite the creative acumen ­behind the series, critics rarely included Fringe in conversations of contemporaneous programs lauded as prestige tele­vi­sion such as Dexter (2006–2013; 2021–), Breaking Bad (2008–2013), and Justified (2010– 2015). As a consequence of its creators’ revered credentials and the show’s tepid reception, Fringe is an ideal case study for interrogating the notion of prestige tele­vi­sion, a label meant to indicate a program’s distinction above other programs. The use of prestige intersects with other contested terms such as “Quality TV” and “cult” television—­similar evaluative frameworks used to elevate certain tele­vi­sion texts over o­ thers. By examining how tele­vi­sion scholars, critics, and viewers employ the term prestige in relation to Fringe, I demonstrate the under­lying trends that elevate certain tele­vi­sion programs over ­others, and how t­ hese patterns shift over time around thematic and programmatic cycles.

Prestige Tele­vi­sion and Categories of Distinction ­ ere is no consensus on what constitutes prestige tele­vi­sion b­ ecause critical Th notions of the category are perpetually in flux. Geoff Berkshire writes, for example, about how “high-­quality offerings” in science fiction and fantasy tele­vi­sion programs such as Game of Thrones (2011–2019) and Stranger ­Things (2016–) have invaded “prestige TV.”3 In his article “The Prestige Playbook,” Brian Lowry also discusses how cable channels and streaming ser­vices “have endeavored to carve out their own prestige niches,” and Netflix’s executives, in par­tic­u­lar, “­haven’t been shy about declaring their intent to follow the prestige playbook HBO has used for the past 25 years.”4 Sonia Saraiya further complicates ­these conceptions by suggesting that comedic prestige programs such as Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–2020) and other “groundbreaking half-­hour” comedies have now surpassed dramas in the current “golden age of tele­vi­sion.”5 Eric Thurm puts it bluntly by remarking that the current critical practice of the term prestige “signal[s] one ­thing: That the show is meant to be taken seriously.”6 ­These dif­ fer­ent interpretations of prestige programming appear not in academic publications but in Variety, an entertainment industry magazine, and in Esquire, a general interest magazine aimed at men. In ­these types of articles, the use of prestige need not be followed by a lengthy analy­sis of the term, and thus t­ hese writers only allude to their own sense of the par­ameters of the category, which is itself ­shaped by ­earlier critical discourse. Their use of prestige also does not form a clear sense of ­whether prestige tele­vi­sion is evaluated through visual and aural style, storytelling modes, economic success, fan engagement, or other ­factors. Popu­lar press designations of the prestige genre do not explain why t­ hese critics choose to exalt certain programs above ­others, nor do they suggest how this practice creates and perpetuates cultural hierarchies. However, its use hints

40 • Amanda Keeler

at how ­these labels allow tele­vi­sion producers and critics to create buzz around certain shows, which can bolster their success and longevity in an increasingly crowded fictional programming landscape. In many ways, t­ hese examples suggest that the use of prestige is arbitrary and changes over time. The slipperiness of the term aligns with Jason Mittell’s work on tele­vi­sion genres as “cultural categories.”7 As Mittell explains, “Genres work as discursive clusters, with certain definitions, interpretations, and evaluations coming together at any given time to suggest a coherent and clear genre. However, t­ hese clusters are contingent and transitory, shifting over time and taking on new definitions, meanings, and values within differing contexts.”8 In Mittell’s conception, tele­vi­sion genres are not defined by textual properties alone. Instead, producers and audiences, along with other industry professionals and critics, culturally construct genres. The critical reviews cited above demonstrate how labels such as prestige tele­vi­sion circulate and shift in meaning through discursive utterances. While terms like prestige tele­vi­sion begin as critical labels to mark a show as somehow better or dif­fer­ent, the widespread use of t­ hese terms helps to coalesce certain stylistic and thematic ele­ments into a colloquial genre, as critic Logan Hill suggests in his article “The 13 Rules for Creating a Prestige TV Drama.”9 Thurm also writes about this trend, noting that “Shows like Fargo [2014–] are beginning to turn ‘prestige TV’ into a formulaic genre.”10 Curiously, once the use of labels like prestige tele­vi­sion begin to locate identifiable textual characteristics across a body of programs, it largely signals that this type of storytelling, while still perhaps distinctive, is no longer innovative. Though its meaning may shift over time, the cultural construction of prestige tele­vi­sion and its deployment to elevate certain programs leads to broader questions about ideology and hegemony, all tied to “larger systems of cultural power.”11 As Michael Newman and Elana Levine write, the very notion of labeling some tele­vi­sion programs as prestige represents multifaceted attempts by interested parties to convince viewers that tele­vi­sion should be considered “art.”12 Newman and Levine suggest that the move to reclassify tele­vi­sion as prestige attempts to “legitimate” tele­vi­sion, and to dissociate it, consciously or unconsciously, from “the mass, the commercial, the domestic, and the feminine.”13 One wave of this “legitimating” pro­cess occurred in the scholarly and critical discussions around what was termed Quality TV. A “notoriously contentious term” that has been thoroughly theorized, debated, celebrated, and challenged over the last several de­cades, Quality TV came into widespread use in the 1980s to refer to programs produced by Mary Tyler Moore Enterprises, such as Hill Street Blues (1981–1987) and St. Elsewhere (1982–1988).14 As Robert Thompson sees it, ­these programs and o­ thers labeled as Quality TV shared a loose set of traits that separated them from “regular” tele­vi­sion.15 In general, Quality TV programs ­were created by “artists” from other media, such as the filmmaker David Lynch’s foray (with Mark Frost) into tele­vi­sion with Twin Peaks (1990–1991).16 Thompson writes that ­these programs ­were designed to attract “upscale, well-­educated,

Disrupting the Pattern of Prestige TV • 41

urban-­dwelling” viewers.17 “Quality” programs featured ongoing, serialized storytelling that mixed genres to create hybrid storytelling modes. ­These programs ­were made up of “ensemble casts,” often with offbeat or quirky characters existing alongside controversial subject ­matter.18 In short, the Quality TV label was meant to designate some critically acclaimed tele­vi­sion programs as being better or dif­fer­ent than “regular” tele­vi­sion. Yet, with this alleged innovation came saturation. As Thompson notes, “The revolutionary shows of the early-­and mid1980s had become the prototypes for what was fast becoming yet another set of predictable formulas.”19 By the 1990s, Quality TV had “become a genre in itself, complete with its own formulaic characteristics.”20 The legitimating pro­cess that began with Quality TV continues t­ oday, now often ­under cover of the term prestige, an equally vague replacement connoting the same idea that certain tele­vi­sion programs are somehow dif­fer­ent or better than so-­called regular tele­vi­sion. While celebrating some programming over ­others, much like Quality TV did in the 1980s, at pre­sent this term defines a narrow, somewhat homogenous group of programs. Thompson’s analy­sis of the “second golden age of tele­vi­sion” centers entirely on network tele­vi­sion programs, claiming that the Quality TV programs grew out of networks’ fear of losing viewers to cable.21 Based on shifting viewer numbers connected to the growth of cable, premium channels, and streaming ser­vices, ­those fears ­were correct. Many cable channels frame their programs as more distinguished than network tele­ vi­sion. As Avi Santo suggests, the subscription cable channel HBO has been able to attract an audience through narrowcasting by cultivating its brand around “quality” and “exclusivity” to differentiate its programming “from standard broadcast tele­vi­sion.”22 The U.S. networks, however, still largely operate u­ nder the broadcast programming philosophy that they “must attempt to appeal to a broad, general audience.”23 As a result, con­temporary programming on the traditional broadcast networks is often overlooked in discussions of prestige tele­vi­ sion in f­ avor of original programming on cable. As Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey write, “Con­temporary tele­vi­sion scholarship, popu­lar criticism, and other legitimating discourses tend to focus on the technological and aesthetic ‘newness’ of cable, satellite, and streaming production and distribution strategies, glibly denying the enduring importance of broadcast tele­vi­sion as ‘old,’ mass, and lacking innovation.”24 While the networks continue to attract audiences, they now operate ­under ostensibly impossible dual tasks—to create programs that are both popu­lar and critically acclaimed in an era of seemingly endless options. Connected to this constructed hierarchy of channels, prestige tele­vi­sion has also come to imply a dif­fer­ent but narrow and somewhat problematic version of programming, akin to Quality TV, with its own set of formulaic settings, characters, and situations. According to Nygaard and Lagerwey, the most celebrated series over the past two de­cades have borrowed “the soap opera structures and  melodramatic tropes typical of ‘­women’s genres’ common on broadcast”

42 • Amanda Keeler

tele­vi­sion, which have been “re­imagined as narrative complexity in the ser­vice of stories about men.”25 Over the past de­cade, cable channels such as HBO and AMC have created a surge of what Amanda Lotz calls the “male-­centered serial,” programs that center on crafting “intricate examinations of their uncertain negotiation of modern male identity.”26 In ­these cases, prestige tele­vi­sion serves as shorthand for cable shows that feature men as “flawed protagonists” who “transgress the bounds of propriety” in their daily lives.27 As I previously noted, the most celebrated programs that ran concurrent to Fringe, such as Dexter, Breaking Bad, and Justified, fit more neatly into this conception of prestige tele­vi­sion. Like Fringe, ­these three programs are all hour-­long dramas, but they appeared on cable channels rather than on a traditional broadcast network and featured supposedly complicated male protagonists. This narrow conception of celebrated programs largely overlooks other types of innovative or boundary-­ pushing storytelling like Fringe, a science fiction program that featured several prominent female characters and aired on Fox, a traditional broadcast network. ­Counter to Berkshire’s claim that science fiction and fantasy programming is “being taken seriously for a change,” science fiction “genre tele­vi­sion,” particularly t­ hose series that air on the traditional broadcast networks, are still routinely overlooked by the Emmys and the Golden Globes.28 The absence of significant numbers of science fiction programs from the prestige tele­vi­sion label is curious in terms of the historical importance of programs such as Star Trek (1966–1969). Arguably the first significant “cult” tele­vi­sion program, Gene Roddenberry’s creation is often lauded for its innovative, forward-­thinking storytelling and the race and gender diversity of its casting. Star Trek set expectations for audience engagement and franchise longevity—­precisely the f­ actors often associated with prestige tele­vi­sion programs, which Murray Leeder discusses in chapter 3 of this anthology. However, it is impor­tant to remember that Star Trek’s ongoing legacy and popularity came about many years a­ fter its release on tele­vi­ sion in the 1960s, and that some programs have the potential to expand their audience long ­after their initial run, especially in the post-­network era proliferation of viewing platforms. More often than not, celebrated science fiction tele­vi­sion programs have received the same treatment as Star Trek by being labeled as cult rather than prestige tele­vi­sion, largely ­because their venerated reputations took time to calcify. As Sara Gwenllian-­Jones and Roberta Pearson suggest, “ ‘cult’ is often loosely applied to any tele­vi­sion program that is considered offbeat or edgy, that draws a niche audience, that has a nostalgic appeal, that is considered emblematic of a par­tic­u­lar subculture, or that is considered hip.”29 Much like Mittell’s work on the cultural construction of genre, Pearson asserts that “cult tele­vi­sion is best understood from an industry/audience rather than from a textualist perspective.”30 Pearson’s note that cult comes from extra-­textual ­factors mirrors the prestige label in that neither term demarcates the precise ele­ments that define ­these classifications. And as with the Quality TV and

Disrupting the Pattern of Prestige TV • 43

Fringe’s Walter Bishop, Peter Bishop, Olivia Dunham, and Astrid Farnsworth begin their work in Walter’s lab.

prestige tele­vi­sion labels, cult has also come to a formulaic apex. A ­ fter analyzing tele­vi­sion programs from the last two de­cades, tele­vi­sion writer Jane Espenson detected a blueprint for creating successful cult programs. From a textual perspective, Espenson notes that a cult program must “have complex arcs,” should “under-­explain” certain ele­ments of the story, and the mise-­en-­scène, editing, and sound should lead the viewer to critical narrative ele­ments not revealed through dialogue.31 Producers are aware that such a formula sometimes proves beneficial. As Catherine Johnson notes, “The X-­Files was actively produced by Fox as a cult series designed to attract the fan-­consumer taste market,” which it did with g­ reat success.32 Although it aired on a basic cable channel, SyFy, the dense, meandering storyline of Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009) also attracted a dedicated cult fan base and significant critical acclaim. While such analyses of ­these subjective labels underscore how they are constructed and fluid, they are not necessarily a call to dismiss categorizing tele­vi­ sion programs. It remains worthwhile to explore how creators craft fictional programming in ways that might intersect with the shifting par­ameters of t­ hese labels. It is in this regard that I examine Fringe, a program that illuminatingly demonstrates how revisiting a series that was somewhat overlooked in its era might facilitate a show’s movement from forgotten to cult, and ultimately to prestige tele­vi­sion. Fringe’s shifting reputation is a result of how the show’s creators engage with and challenge con­temporary understandings of prestige tele­vi­sion in several key ways. For instance, Fringe goes against the “stories about men” trend noted by Nygaard and Lagerwey ­because it instead features a mixed-­ race/ethnicity and diverse gender ensemble cast with several impor­tant and prominent female characters.33 Like Twin Peaks, The X-­Files, and Lost before it,

44 • Amanda Keeler

Fringe succeeded as a science fiction/fantasy program on network tele­vi­sion, yet it debuted in a more competitive industrial moment, perhaps explaining the differences in audience size between it and ­those three pre­de­ces­sors. Fi­nally, Fringe aired on a traditional broadcast network, Fox, in an era when original cable programming now dominates discussions of prestige tele­vi­sion.

Fringe and Prestige Tele­vi­sion Over its five seasons, the creators of Fringe constructed a familiar yet uncanny world populated by complex characters and strange phenomena. Its narrative largely focuses on an array of main characters as they investigate “fringe science,” such as “dark ­matter, telepathy, psychokinesis, and precognition.”34 In par­tic­u­ lar, the show centers on a Boston-­based, career-­focused female FBI agent, Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), who convinces a brilliant but troubled scientist Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), and his equally intelligent and unfocused son Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), to help her solve cases and uncover the mysteries at the center of “the pattern,” a series of unexplained events affecting the eastern United States. In classic Quality TV tradition, the show also features a host of quirky characters. ­These characters include Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole), an FBI ju­nior agent tasked with serving as Walter’s lab assistant, and Nina Sharp (Blair Brown), the executive director and chief operating officer for Massive Dynamic, a fictional technology and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal corporation that is described as the world’s most power­ful com­pany, and which turns up in nearly ­every case that Agent Dunham’s team investigates. Dunham’s boss at the FBI, Col­o­nel Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick), commands this assortment of eccentric characters and slowly softens to Olivia and her team’s unorthodox investigation techniques. Despite ­these idiosyncrasies, many conventional aspects of tele­vi­sion drama remain central to the series. For instance, in addition to its emphasis on cases ­under investigation, Fringe explores several of the characters’ internal strug­ gles and interpersonal relationships. This focus falls mainly on Olivia as she comes to terms with the death of her FBI partner and lover John Scott (Mark Valley) in the pi­lot episode, her shifting role at the FBI, and on Walter and Peter’s father-­son relationship as they work through many years of estrangement. With t­ hese ele­ments, Fringe preserves the familiar structures of many celebrated tele­ vi­sion melodramas, including a focus on biological f­amily, the workplace and its surrogate ­family, and the everyday drama its characters experience. Fringe’s producers and creators skillfully crafted its imaginative narrative across five seasons. Though it is one of the more popu­lar recent science fiction tele­vi­sion programs, relatively l­ ittle scholarship has been published on the show.35 In the popu­lar press, however, Fringe was celebrated by several writers who frequently compared it to The X-­Files and Lost to highlight the show’s genre hybridity and narrative structure. For example, Jeff Jensen described the show as “gory, gonzo, and witty,” “a serious yet accessible sci-fi series” that was a

Disrupting the Pattern of Prestige TV • 45

Olivia Dunham, Fringe’s protagonist, discusses a case with her FBI colleague Agent Charlie Francis.

“high-­impact hybrid of The X-­Files and CSI [2000–2015; 2021–].”36 Gillian Flynn similarly noted that “Fox’s new sci-fi serial Fringe just might be a worthy successor—­fin ­ ally—to The X-­Files.”37 Ken Tucker also wrote that “Fringe—­a series about weird (but fact-­based) phenomena—­successfully mixes the crime genre with sci-­fi.”38 In Science Fiction TV, J. P. Telotte explores con­temporary genre hybridity by noting that Fringe is exemplary of a “new world of hybrid story-­telling and consumption” that blends “familiar SF generic trappings with borrowings from the crime drama or police procedural story.”39 According to Thompson, one of the hallmarks of Quality TV was its ability to “create a new genre by mixing old ones.”40 By the time of Fringe’s 2008 premiere, however, the blending of crime procedurals with science fiction no longer constituted a novel mix of genres, rendering critics less apt to identify it as prestige. In addition to its genre hybridity, the show combines other tele­vi­sion conventions. As Michael Newman writes, creators of con­temporary serialized tele­vi­ sion programs are increasingly striking a “balance between episodic closure and serial deferment,” meaning that the episodic issue w ­ ill be resolved in one hour, while the serialized content of the program w ­ ill carry on for multiple episodes or seasons, slowly revealed through a “character’s journey.”41 Fringe’s writers and producers balanced the “monster-­of-­the-­week” episodes, its stand-­alone stories containing narrative closure, with its long-­form my­thol­ogy that delineated all of the ongoing aspects of its narrative. Thanks to its episodic and serial combination, Fringe differed from its closest pre­de­ces­sor, Lost, which was criticized for revealing its my­thol­ogy and the secrets of its island setting too slowly across six seasons. As Jensen notes, when Kurtzman and Orci “began brainstorming the series in the spring of 2008, they learned t­ here was one sci-fi classic that the TV

46 • Amanda Keeler

marketplace ­didn’t want them to emulate: Abrams’ own Lost. Over the past five years, networks have become averse to heavi­ly serialized dramas with increasingly dense plotlines that can drive viewers away and discourage new viewers from joining.”42 The choice to c­ ounter lingering narrative ambiguity with partial episodic closure, however, likely contributed to critics initially not associating Fringe with prestige tele­vi­sion. Although the often-­used phrase “monster-­of-­the-­week” describes much science fiction or horror episodic storytelling, Fringe contains a minor modification to this formula. The show’s episodic investigations are rarely monster-­centric. Rather, they nearly always involve scientists whose experiments have produced monstrous results, or ­people who have inexplicable, innate bodily powers. A more precise term might be “scientifically created problem-­of-­the-­week,” which highlights the program’s effective blend of science fiction and the crime procedural. ­These scientifically created problem-­of-­the-­week episodes feature a variety of strange occurrences that the investigative team must resolve by the hour’s end. For example, in the season one episode “Power Hungry” the agents investigate Joseph Meegar (Ebon Moss-­Bachrach), whose unusual ability to harness electricity c­ auses a fatal elevator malfunction. Joseph’s electrical impulse control issue results from an experiment conducted on him by Dr. Jacob Fisher (Max Baker). In the season three episode “Os” the agents must determine why a deceased robber’s body has become lighter than air. They uncover that the phenomenon derives not from a sinister ­grand larceny plot but rather from a scientist, Dr. Krick (Alan Ruck), who wants to help muscular dystrophy patients walk. The problem-­ of-­the-­week, however, is not always created by an ostensibly mad scientist; sometimes a character’s body or mind is naturally imbued with extraordinary abilities. In season four’s “Forced Perspective,” the team investigates a case where Emily Mallum (Alexis Raich) experiences psychic visions of p­ eople’s deaths, which she rec­ords through drawings. Working with Emily, the FBI agents prevent a bomber from killing many p­ eople. Emily is neither a science experiment nor a monster, but instead is a teenager who has an ability she did not ask for, that nonetheless irreversibly changes her, much like Joseph in “Power Hungry” and Dr. Krick’s patients in “Os.” Interwoven within ­these episodic cases, Fringe’s dense my­thol­ogy unfolds slowly through several character arcs, with small details doled out in most episodes. Across season one, the writers reveal the existence of an alternate universe, parallel to the one in which Olivia and the other agents currently live. Season one also introduces September, one of “The Observers” played by Michael Cerveris, a character who physically appears at all the major events that Olivia’s team investigates. Additionally, Walter and Olivia learn that they have deeper connections than they previously realized. Both characters have forgotten that in his pre-­institutionalization mad-­scientist days, Walter subjected young Olivia and many other ­children to tests of the drug Cortexiphan, which may have enhanced Olivia’s telekinesis and allowed her to move between the two universes

Disrupting the Pattern of Prestige TV • 47

in a way that the other characters cannot. Through Olivia’s personal introspection she comes to terms with the experiments she endured as a child, which aligns with many of the cases that her team investigates. “Power Hungry,” for example, features a one-­time character to foreshadow Fringe’s unfolding my­thol­ogy and its theme of how scientists use (and abuse) experiments to enhance ­human abilities, correlating to Olivia’s past as an unwitting science experiment. The show’s my­thol­ogy continues to unfold in season two by exploring Walter’s life in the past, from Peter’s childhood illness that resulted in his death to Walter’s universe-­disrupting trip to the alternate universe to kidnap the other Peter, whom Walter then raises as his own son. While early in the show it appears that Massive Dynamic might be creating the incidents of the pattern, the my­thol­ ogy episodes of seasons two and three focus on Walter’s responsibility for the structural instability of the two universes. Season two episode “White Tulip” pre­sents Alistair Peck (Peter Weller) as analogous to Walter, as does the season three episode “Os” with Dr. Krick. In t­ hese two episodes all three scientists bend and break the known laws of science to help loved ones. In the strug­gle to negotiate the intersection of their personal lives and their scientific experiments, they neglect to consider the consequences of their actions. In season three, the two universes build a bridge between them to stabilize both worlds. Walter grapples with his complicity in this dual-­universe instability in “Os,” confessing to Nina that Krick’s scientific achievements ­were only pos­si­ble ­because Walter disrupted the laws of physics to save Peter in the alternate universe. Both “Os” and “Forced Perspective” involve several characters’ introspection regarding fate, destiny, and ­free ­will, which foreshadows how ­these concepts ­will play out as Fringe wraps up its story in seasons four and five. In “Os” Peter delves into questions about his purpose in the complex connection between the two universes. In “Forced Perspective” Olivia continues to fear her fated demise, as communicated to her by The Observer, which is explored through her conversations about psychic visions with Emily. While its blend of episodic and serialized narratives resembles many programs now considered to be prestige tele­vi­sion, Fringe also disrupts that conception in several ways. For one, the program features a mixed-­gender ensemble cast, and several of its leading ­women are integral to the show’s narrative trajectory, distinguishing it from most con­temporary prestige programming. Lotz, as well as Nygaard and Lagerwey, observes that many programs recently deemed prestige tele­vi­sion feature “stories about men.”43 In contrast to Lost, Fringe’s female characters have more depth and nuance. As Torv noted in a 2009 interview, “What’s in­ter­est­ing about this show is that in many ways, Olivia has the masculine role, and the two guys are the ­women. She carries the gun, they sit around and talk.”44 Olivia, an FBI agent in her late twenties, is indeed a character with a stoic, intelligent sensibility and an occasional need to defend herself physically. As Torv also opined, the show crafts Olivia as a somewhat aty­pi­cal “action heroine,” in that she defies the model set by Xena (Lucy Lawless in Xena: Warrior Princess

48 • Amanda Keeler

Walter Bishop and Astrid Farnsworth at work in the lab in Fringe.

[1995–2001]) and Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy the Vampire Slayer [1997–2003]), who are “visibly highly feminine ­women” but “also physically super-­powered.”45 Based on her appearance, Olivia seems like a highly feminine and conventionally attractive White ­woman. However, rather than rely on her physical strength, Olivia generally employs her mind to resolve cases, both with her intelligence and her Cortexiphan-­enhanced ce­re­bral superpowers. As with the scientifically created problem-­of-­the-­week, Olivia is a partially scientifically created protagonist whose special abilities result from being the subject of experimentation. Two other w ­ omen appear prominently in this diverse ensemble cast and work alongside Olivia, Walter, and Peter. Jasika Nicole, an actress of color, portrays Astrid, who is a ju­nior agent with the FBI and attends to Walter’s eccentric spectrum of needs, from autopsy assistance to procuring random snacks. Astrid’s importance to the team differs from that of the other characters ­because she solves puzzles that confound the other agents. This talent stems from her intellect and her linguistics degree, which have trained her to decipher codes and patterns. ­These qualifications also help Astrid interpret Walter’s eccentricities even though he frustrates and confuses other characters. Her puzzle-­solving skills provide the team with valuable information, such as in season one’s “The Ghost Network,” when she helps to solve a case by translating Roy McComb’s (Zak Orth) “ghostly” Latin. In season three’s “Reciprocity,” Col­o­nel Broyles tells Astrid, “We could use your skills,” and asks her to analyze the data recorded in the “mission log” written by Fauxlivia, the name the team has given to the alternate universe’s Olivia. By the end of the episode Astrid and Olivia unscramble Fauxlivia’s code, locating dangerous “shape shifters” from the alternate universe.

Disrupting the Pattern of Prestige TV • 49

The executive director and chief operating officer of Massive Dynamic, Nina Sharp, also figures prominently in the narrative. As a power­ful w ­ oman in her fifties, a rarity on U.S. tele­vi­sion, she possesses a unique external power that impacts the FBI’s ability to solve its fringe cases. Through the technologies that her com­pany develops and manufactures, she provides the FBI agents with unparalleled access to proprietary information and tools that prove to be indispensable. Nearly e­ very case the agents work on involves Agent Dunham or Broyles asking for Massive Dynamic’s support. For example, in season one’s “Ability,” Nina gives Olivia the names of former test subjects from Massive Dynamic’s Cortexiphan drug ­trials from the 1980s, a step which helps unfold some of the show’s serialized my­thol­ogy. In the season one episode “The Same Old Story,” Nina shares Massive Dynamic’s “electronic pulse camera” to help the agents locate a serial killer. This episode demonstrates how the team works collectively to solve cases as each member contributes their own unique skills to the cause. As the agents search for the serial killer before he murders again, Walter posits that he theoretically could recover the electrical impulses imprinted on a dead ­woman’s ret­ina, thereby identifying the last image she saw before her death. Using the special camera from Massive Dynamic, Walter and Peter reproduce a blurry image that slowly comes into focus. Astrid recognizes the shape of the image as the Sargent Bridge in Stoughton, and Olivia uses this information to determine the murdered ­woman’s location during her final living moments. Overall, Fringe’s creators challenge the con­temporary male-­centric notion of prestige tele­vi­sion by making the case for reconsidering programs that fall outside of this narrow conception, particularly ­those that feature integral female characters of color and older w ­ omen. However, this reinspection is not meant to suggest that the program completely avoids troubling ele­ments in its ­women

Massive Dynamic’s chief operating officer Nina Sharp from Fringe.

50 • Amanda Keeler

characters or in its narrative trajectory. Though Torv suggests that Fringe thwarts the traditional expectation that male characters carry the guns and the female characters “sit around and talk,” the two main male characters, Walter and Peter, are afforded enormous amounts of screen time, during which they partake in science experiments and investigate cases, but also work through de­cades of issues in their father-­son relationship. While this shift does create a narrative that enables characters to act in ways not often seen on other tele­vi­sion programs, it leaves l­ittle screen time for introspection and backstories of impor­tant female characters like Astrid and Nina. ­Here the show aligns with Lost in some ways. While Lost prominently featured ­women in its narrative, the characters charged with moving the story forward w ­ ere largely White and male. Furthermore, Fringe’s two most conventionally attractive, heterosexual, White characters, Olivia and Peter, are given the screen time to develop a romantic relationship, though in l­ater seasons this narrative thread grows increasingly more significant to the show’s my­thol­ogy. In all, even in its imaginative storytelling and eccentric characters, Fringe largely followed classical narrative structures as it blended Olivia and Peter’s heterosexual romance with the central quest to save the parallel universes. Fringe’s mix of my­thol­ogy and “case-­of-­the-­week” episodes demonstrates the type of storytelling its writers had to produce to be a successful science fiction program on network tele­vi­sion in 2008. Fringe’s creators had to balance con­ temporary practices of prestige narrowcasting with classic broadcasting appeal in order to attract and maintain an audience, which it did to varying degrees of success across its five seasons. Though each episode of Fringe’s first season “averaged a solid 8.8 million” viewers, ­these numbers began to decline across its second and third seasons.46 By the end of season four, Fringe’s “super modest” ratings dropped to approximately four million viewers per episode.47 Its season five finale episode was watched by 3.2 million viewers, which is about a third of its original audience and represents a common drop in audiences of complex serialized dramas.48 While Fringe managed to succeed where many other programs did not— it was one of the few network science fiction programs in the wake of Lost renewed for multiple seasons—it certainly never matched or transcended Lost’s popularity or ratings. Like Pearson’s discussion of cult tele­vi­sion’s status as being rooted in extra-­ textual ­factors tied to audience practices, the consideration of Fringe as prestige tele­vi­sion must be weighed in relation to industrial practices. As I demonstrated throughout this chapter, shifting taste cultures are evidenced by which programs find and maintain an audience, and which programs critics choose to elevate. In this analy­sis of Fringe as a program that might fit into some notions of prestige tele­vi­sion but never seemed to do so completely, it is impor­tant to consider the time frames in which it and similar shows aired. While Fringe might look, feel, and sound much like several generic pre­de­ces­sors such as The X-­Files and Lost, each of ­these programs entered into distinctly dif­fer­ent industrial and critical

Disrupting the Pattern of Prestige TV • 51

moments. In 1993, The X-­Files began airing on a relatively new network, Fox, that was e­ ager to experiment with programming to draw new audiences and reap the benefits of additional hit shows in the wake of the success of Married . . . ​with ­Children (1987–1997) and The Simpsons (1989–). The X-­Files also began airing in an unpre­ce­dented moment when science fiction was only beginning to be shown on non-­network tele­vi­sion, such as the syndicated program Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994) and the debut of the SciFi (now SyFy) cable channel in 1992. In hindsight, Lost seems to have marked the end of highly rated science fiction/fantasy storytelling on network tele­vi­sion. Aside from Fringe, none of the mythology-­dense, copycat shows that premiered in its wake, including V (2009–2011), Flashforward (2009–2010), The River (2012), and Revolution (2012–2014), survived beyond two seasons. Lost’s premiere was followed by the emergence of the wave of critically praised, male-­centric cable dramas that Nygaard and Lagerwey discuss, such as three AMC programs, Mad Men (2007–2015), Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead (2010–2022), all of which largely followed a template pop­u­lar­ized by The Sopranos (1999–2007). The Walking Dead, a highly rated science fiction/horror program, is the exception in this list, though it differs from Fringe on two accounts. First, it aired on a basic cable channel (AMC). Second, although its narrative revolved around super­natural zombie-­like creatures, the program closely resembled AMC’s other hit programs in its male protagonist–­driven storylines.49 ­These industrial differences bring an impor­tant context to this analy­sis in that they help locate the shifting ideological and hegemonic taste culture–­ forming practices that ­shaped the critical usages of prestige tele­vi­sion and other similar designations over the last two de­cades.

Conclusion Overall, in this chapter I suggested ways that Fringe complicates the notion of prestige tele­vi­sion. From one perspective, the program featured a pedigreed group of producers and several well-­known actors in leading roles. From another perspective, it was a mythologically dense program that aired on network tele­vi­sion at the same time as several failed post-­Lost science fiction programs with equally prominent producers and actors. Nonetheless, the program lasted for five seasons, and while it never pushed past the 8.8 million viewers averaged across season one, millions of viewers tuned in to Fox each week to enjoy Fringe’s blend of genres, its quirky characters, and its story’s twists and turns. While no fixed meaning exists that can define prestige tele­vi­sion ­because it is a subjective and shifting notion employed to elevate certain programs over ­others, it remains impor­tant to tease out its par­ameters and the larger ideological frameworks that inform its use. For academics, analyses of terms such as prestige and Quality TV are fundamental and foundational to understanding the con­temporary tele­vi­sion landscape and who benefits from t­ hese labels. The use

52 • Amanda Keeler

of prestige tele­vi­sion serves producers and distributors in that the mere suggestion of this label can help elevate a program, making it stand out from competing shows. In some ways the discussion of prestige tele­vi­sion and the need to apply this label to certain programs comes out of an attempt to sidestep a complex and somewhat discouraged task in academic scholarship. Specifically, scholars are deterred from evaluating tele­vi­sion programs or allowing personal feelings to inform critical analyses. As Mittell notes, evaluation is potentially beneficial ­because it can be “an invitation to a dialogue, as debating the merits of cultural work is one of the most enjoyable ways we engage with texts, establish relationships with other cultural consumers and gain re­spect for other critics and viewers’ opinions and insights.”50 Merely labeling a program prestige tele­vi­sion without exploring the par­ameters of the term does not necessarily invite dialogue, but it should prompt discussion. An ongoing examination of prestige tele­vi­sion would encourage viewers, and both academic and popu­lar press writers, to locate the tangible or intangible ele­ments of programs that resonate with them. This exercise would foster an understanding of why par­tic­u­lar audiences are drawn to certain tele­vi­sion texts over o­ thers. An evaluative dialogue could entice viewers to think more critically not just about what they like but also about the reasons why viewers choose certain programs over o­ thers. This evaluative work would further acknowledge the under­lying ideological frameworks embedded in tele­vi­sion texts that not only work to attract viewers but also impact the types of programs and stories the industry does (and does not) fund and produce.

Notes 1 ​Brian Lowry, “Fringe,” Variety, September 5, 2008, https://­variety​.­com​/­2008​/­scene​ /­markets​-­festivals​/­fringe​-1­ 200470950​/­. 2 ​Bilge Ebiri, “$10 Million for a Pi­lot?,” New York Magazine, August 19, 2008, 81; Rick Kissell, “No Frenzy for Fox’s ‘Fringe,’ ” Variety, September 11, 2008, 13. 3 ​Geoff Berkshire, “Prestige TV’s Genre Invasion,” Variety, June 5, 2017, 36. 4 ​Brian Lowry, “The Prestige Playbook,” Variety, July 23, 2013, 35. 5 ​Sonia Saraiya, “Comedies Steal the Prestige Spotlight,” Variety, August 15, 2016, 10. 6 ​Eric Thurm, “It’s Not Prestige, It’s Just TV,” Esquire, April 27, 2017, https://­w ww​ .­esquire​.c­ om​/e­ ntertainment​/­t v​/­a54762​/­the​-­flaws​-­of​-p­ restige​-­t v​/­. 7 ​Jason Mittell, Genre and Tele­vi­sion: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture (New York: Routledge, 2004), xi. 8 ​Mittell, Genre and Tele­vi­sion, 17. 9 ​Logan Hill, “The 13 Rules for Creating a Prestige TV Drama,” Vulture​.­com, May 15, 2013. 10 ​Thurm, “It’s Not Prestige, It’s Just TV.” 11 ​Mittell, Genre and Tele­vi­sion, 23. 12 ​Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2012), 2. 13 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 10. 14 ​Janet McCabe and Kim Akass, “Introduction: Debating Quality,” in Quality TV: Con­temporary American Tele­vi­sion and Beyond, ed. Janet McCabe and Kim Akass

Disrupting the Pattern of Prestige TV • 53

(London: I.B. Taurus, 2007), 2; Jane Feuer, Paul Kerr, and Tise Vahimagi, eds., MTM ‘Quality Tele­vi­sion’ (London: BFI Publishing, 1984). 15 ​Robert J. Thompson, Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 13. 16 ​David Lynch’s Twin Peaks was certainly not the first example of a filmmaker shifting their medium to work on tele­vi­sion or radio. Throughout the twentieth ­century exist examples of artists working across multiple media forms, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s tele­vi­sion program Alfred Hitchcock Pre­sents (1955–1965). 17 ​Thompson, Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age, 14. 18 ​Thompson, Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age, 14–15. 19 ​Thompson, Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age, 149. 20 ​Thompson, Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age, 16. 21 ​Thompson, Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age, 148. 22 ​Avi Santo, “Para-­television and Discourses of Distinction: The Culture of Production at HBO,” in It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-­Television Era, ed. Marc Leverette, Brian L. Ott, and Cara Louise Buckley (New York: Routledge, 2008), 19–20. 23 ​Andrew J. Bottomley, “Quality TV and the Branding of U.S. Network Tele­vi­sion: Marketing and Promoting Friday Night Lights,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 32, no. 5 (2015): 485. 24 ​Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey, “Broadcasting Quality: Re-­centering Feminist Discourse with The Good Wife,” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 18, no. 2 (2017): 109. 25 ​Nygaard and Lagerwey, “Broadcasting Quality,” 108. 26 ​Amanda Lotz, Cable Guys: Tele­vi­sion and Masculinities in the 21st ­Century (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 51, 62. 27 ​Lotz, Cable Guys, 63. 28 ​Berkshire, “Prestige TV’s Genre Invasion,” 36. 29 ​Sara Gwenllian-­Jones and Roberta E. Pearson, introduction to Cult Tele­vi­sion, ed. Sara Gwenllian-­Jones and Roberta E. Pearson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), ix. 3 0 ​Roberta Pearson, “Observations on Cult Tele­vi­sion,” in The Cult TV Book: From Star Trek to Dexter, New Approaches to TV Outside the Box, ed. Stacey Abbott (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2010), 16. 31 ​Jane Espenson, “Playing Hard to ‘Get’—­How to Write Cult TV,” in The Cult TV Book, 45–47. 32 ​Catherine Johnson, “Quality/Cult Tele­vi­sion: The X-­Files and Tele­vi­sion History,” in The Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion Series, ed. Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 62. 3 3 ​Nygaard and Lagerwey, “Broadcasting Quality,” 108. 3 4 ​J. P. Telotte, Science Fiction TV (New York: Routledge, 2014), 169. 3 5 ​See Felix Brinker, “On the Formal Politics of Narratively Complex Tele­v i­sion Series: Operational Self-­Reflexivity and Audience Management in Fringe and Homeland,” in Poetics of Politics: Textuality and Social Relevance in Con­temporary American Lit­er­a­ture and Culture, ed. Stefan Schubert and Katja Kanzler (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015), 41–62; Manuel Garin, “Truth Takes Time: The Interplay Between Heroines, Genres and Narratives in Three J. J. Abrams’ Tele­vi­sion Series,” Communication & Society 26, no. 2 (2013): 47–64; Alexia Smit, “Visual Effects and Visceral Affect: ‘Tele-­a ffectivity’ and the Intensified Intimacy of Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion,” Critical Studies in Tele­vi­sion

54 • Amanda Keeler

8, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 92–107; and Stacy Takacs, “Entertainment Uncertainty: The Role of the 9/11 Shout-­Out on U.S. TV,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 31 (2014): 161–179. 36 ​Jeff Jensen, “Fringe,” Entertainment Weekly, September 18, 2009, 34–39. 37 ​Gillian Flynn, “Fringe,” Entertainment Weekly, September 26, 2008, 76–77. 3 8 ​Ken Tucker, “Fringe,” Entertainment Weekly, November 20, 2009, 74–75. 39 ​Telotte, Science Fiction TV, 168. 4 0 ​Thompson, Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age, 15. 41 ​Michael Newman, “From Beats to Arcs: ­Towards a Poetics of Tele­vi­sion Narrative,” The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall 2006): 20, 23. 42 ​Jensen, “Fringe,” 34–39. 4 3 ​Nygaard and Lagerwey, “Broadcasting Quality,” 108. 4 4 ​Jensen, “Fringe,” 34–39. 45 ​Lisa Purse, Con­temporary Action Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 78. 4 6 ​Jensen, “Fringe,” 34–39. 47 ​James Hibberd, “Official: ‘Fringe’ Renewed for Final Season,” Entertainment Weekly, April 26, 2012. 4 8 ​James Hibberd, “ ‘Fringe’ Ratings Up for Finale: How the Show Survived,” Entertainment Weekly, January 19, 2013. 49 ​For more information about the male-­centric storytelling on The Walking Dead, see Amanda Keeler, “Gender, Guns, and Survival: The W ­ omen of The Walking Dead,” in Dangerous Discourses: Feminism, Gun Vio­lence, and Civic Life, ed. Catherine Squires (New York: Peter Lang, 2016), 235–256; and Amanda Keeler, “A Post-­ Apocalyptic Return to the Frontier: The Walking Dead as Post-­Western,” Critical Studies in Tele­vi­sion: The International Journal of Tele­vi­sion Studies 13, no. 4 (2018): 422–437. 50 ​Jason Mittell, “The Qualities of Complexity: Vast Versus Dense Seriality in Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion,” in Tele­vi­sion Aesthetics and Style, ed. Jason Jacobs and Steven Peacock (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 46.

3

“But Is It Star Trek?” Prestige, Fandom, and the Return of Star Trek to Tele­vi­sion MURRAY LEEDER At the 2018 Official Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, John Champion and Ken Ray led a panel called “But, Is It Star Trek?,” ­later released through their podcast, Mission Log (2012–).1 Champion and Ray propose that the answer is always “Yes,” but also allow for it to be “Yes, but . . .” In the discussion, fans emphasized that one of Star Trek’s primary roles is to “show us ourselves” in a positive, optimistic fashion, and repeatedly declared that by that mea­sure, the most recent series, Star Trek: Discovery (2017–), fell short. Discovery was subject to special scrutiny b­ ecause it represented the return of Star Trek to tele­vi­sion ­after more than a dozen years. In this essay, I discuss the complicated relationship of Star Trek to questions of cultural value and prestige, focusing on how the first season of Discovery uneasily combines Trek franchise identity with the conventions of con­temporary prestige tele­vi­sion. I then show how its second season seemed calculated to offer a lighter and more fan-­friendly experience, and how the creators of a subsequent show, Star Trek: Picard (2020–), offer a similar commentary on the franchise’s state through the prism of the title character. ­These examples demonstrate how the commitment to optimistic Star Trek values proves vital despite broader changes impacting tele­vi­sion, as their stories ultimately 55

56 • Murray Leeder

narrativize prestige-­style darkness as a transient state that the characters and the audience must overcome.

Franchising, Fandom, and Prestige Although the phrase “Star Trek franchise” is inescapable ­today, it was only ­after creator Gene Roddenberry’s death in 1991 that this corporatized language became routine.2 The franchise includes officially authorized media products that bear the Star Trek brand name: to date, ten tele­vi­sion series and thirteen movies comprise the “canon.” The franchise also includes licensed but largely noncanonical tie-­ins, like novels, comic books, and games, but excludes fan works, no ­matter how accomplished or praised. However, the question “Is it Star Trek?,” which is routinely asked about ­every new incarnation, is not primarily about the nuances of corporate owner­ship. Instead, it interrogates fidelity to a set of themes, iconographies, and tonalities associated with Star Trek as well as to the perceived commitment by creatives to a group of humanistic, optimistic, borderline Utopian aspirations often bundled together ­under the phrase “Gene’s vision.” Star Trek proposes, even promises, that humanity ­will overcome its backward, warlike infancy and take its proper place in the stars, leading the multi-­species United Federation of Planets, as well as engage in exploring and peacekeeping through Starfleet. To many, that vision seems to be fraying in the era of con­temporary prestige tele­vi­sion. “Prestige tele­vi­sion,” of course, refers to the paradigm that crystallized around 2000 with The Sopranos (1999–2007) and related shows that comprise the oft-­touted “Golden Age,” which are associated with high production values, purportedly mature themes, and a combination of episodic and serial storytelling that Jason Mittell calls “narrative complexity.”3 ­These shows often have an auteur showrunner in whom creative control is putatively concentrated; Roddenberry and Rod Serling ­were prototypes of this “genius” or “visionary” figure.4 Another notable feature of recent prestige tele­vi­sion is “the prominence of fantastic genres”: “fantasy, horror, and science fiction have played an increasingly dominant role in the development of 21st  ­century ‘Quality TV.’ ”5 This media landscape might seem like a natu­ral environment for Star Trek. Yet, while it has suited other interstellar series like the revived Battlestar Galactica (2003– 2009) and The Expanse (2015–2022), prestige tele­vi­sion has been an uneasy fit for the franchise. This incongruity is partly attributable to Star Trek already being considered prestige tele­vi­sion in some circles, but of a dif­fer­ent kind than what is now typically associated with the category. The series known to posterity as Star Trek: The Original Series (1966–1969; henceforth TOS) is frequently identified as sophisticated, culturally relevant science fiction in contrast to shows like Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1949–1955) or Lost in Space (1965–1968). The early NBC promo for TOS even billed it as “the first adult space adventure.” Its

“But Is It Star Trek?” • 57

multiple Hugo Awards place TOS in the com­pany of only The Twilight Zone (1959–1964) among tele­vi­sion shows of the era, and it was also twice nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. Similarly, Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994; henceforth TNG) was the first science fiction program to earn a Peabody Award.6 TOS’s version of prestige tele­vi­sion was rooted si­mul­ta­neously in storytelling conventions of network-­era tele­vi­sion and in the science fiction short story. Its reputation as serious televised science fiction was bolstered by teleplays by accomplished writers of short fiction like Richard Matheson, Jerome Bixby, Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, and Robert Bloch. The characters and setting of the U.S.S. Enterprise ­were continuous, but plotlines rarely carried over into subsequent episodes. Instead, episodes have central science fiction dilemmas that clearly begin and conclusively end.7 Linked to this episodic format is straightforward moralizing ­because ­there is a sense that the characters’ decisions are unquestionably righ­teous; if they liberate a society from a domineering computer, to take a stock TOS plotline as an example, audiences w ­ ill never know the consequences b­ ecause of the episodic closure. Despite containing some longer-­spanning plot arcs, TNG largely retained the episodic format to capitalize on syndication. While nonserialized formats persist in the con­temporary moment (witness Black Mirror [2011–]), the prioritization of narrative complexity minimizes the self-­contained storytelling style on which Star Trek was founded. As a result, ­there is now considerable pressure to make “prestige Star Trek” look quite dif­fer­ent than prior incarnations.

“We Are the Real Star Trek”: Authorship, Fan Owner­ship, and Berman-­Era Trek Further complicating Star Trek’s relationship to prestige tele­vi­sion is the fact that fans are often hostile or indifferent to the concept. This is ­because they typically prioritize their own competing narratives of what the franchise is and should be rather than comport to broader categories of cultural taste. As fond as fans are of invoking “Gene’s vision,” they generally see themselves as the ultimate arbiters of what Star Trek is and should be; as screenwriter David Gerrold notes, “It is the fans who act as if they are the ­actual ­owners of the show.”8 This proprietary interest derives from the aftermath of TOS’s cancellation, when fans saw themselves as having kept Star Trek alive through conventions, clubs, fanzines, and the like, and eventually asserted enough pressure on Paramount to revive the franchise in new film and tele­vi­sion iterations. TNG faced a rocky reception from TOS originalists initially unwilling to sanction it as “their” Star Trek. Reflecting on TNG’s pi­lot just a­ fter it aired, fan writer Walter Irwin addressed the perennial question “Is it Star Trek?” with “A definite yes. [TNG] is completely true to the princi­ples and ideals of the original series . . . ​[it is] an extension of Roddenberry’s dream, a continuation of the ­things we love and cherish about

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Star Trek and what it stands for.” Irwin added, “It ­doesn’t ­matter if [TNG] is ‘real Star Trek.’ We are the real Star Trek.”9 Such sentiments prioritized narratives of informal fan owner­ship over officialdom even in an endorsement of TNG’s legitimacy. TNG inaugurated “Berman-­era Trek”; executive producer Rick Berman would be the lone consistent presence for the next eigh­teen years. Berman remains controversial among fans b­ ecause he is the Paramount “suit” who usurped Roddenberry. Whereas Roddenberry is discursively enshrined as a “visionary,” Berman is associated with workmanlike, bottom line–­oriented functionality; when asked, “Is ­there a Rick Berman vision?,” Berman answered, “My vision is to create the best and most entertaining tele­vi­sion shows that we can for the money that they give us.”10 Nevertheless, Berman presided over many of the franchise’s greatest successes. TNG’s considerable mainstream audience success motivated Paramount to commission two spin-­off shows: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999; henceforth DS9) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001). DS9 was the biggest break from the format established by TOS to date ­because it downplayed adventure/exploration themes by instead setting the narrative on a space station in a volatile region. Where the more serialized, morally and narratively complex DS9 anticipated some of the key features of con­temporary prestige tele­vi­sion (and is retroactively claimed as such), Voyager is a sort of “TNG-­lite” that embraced familiar episodic storytelling centered on exploration.11 The franchise’s fortunes next turned for the worse at the same time that prestige programming began to dominate tele­vi­sion. Although Star Trek had been virtually inescapable during TNG’s height, it was barely on the radar in the age of The Sopranos and The Wire (2002–2008). Twin failures in tele­vi­sion (Star Trek: Enterprise [2001–2005]) and film (Star Trek: Nemesis [2002]) spelled the end for Berman’s tenure. A ­ fter a few fallow years, a franchise regime change came in the form of the new film simply titled Star Trek (2009). As Amanda Keeler similarly discusses in this anthology’s preceding chapter, the creative team b­ ehind this new film had pedigrees in prestige tele­vi­sion with Lost (2004–2010) co-­ creators J.  J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof as producers, Abrams as director, and a screenplay by Abrams’s Fringe (2008–2013) co-­creators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The 2009 film inaugurated what is now called “the Kelvin Timeline,” which is a version of TOS’s setting freely revised through time travel. The Kelvin Timeline films also include Star Trek into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016). The trilogy was commercially successful, yet criticized by fans as dumb action blockbusters that lacked Star Trek’s traditional focus on science and discovery; the parody website The Onion offered the apt headline “Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film as ‘Fun, Watchable.’ ”12 Star Trek’s renewed financial fortunes and cultural visibility made a new tele­vi­sion series seem inevitable, but it took almost another de­cade for that to transpire. When the franchise fi­nally returned to tele­vi­sion, it entered a landscape vastly reshaped by prestige shows,

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forcing creators to walk a delicate line between adhering to new programming paradigms and delivering familiar conventions.

Discovering Discovery One of the many changes between when Enterprise went off the air and the beginning of Discovery was institutional: Star Trek now had many masters. In 2005, the media conglomerate Viacom, Paramount’s parent com­pany, split into two new publicly traded companies.13 One, which retained the name Viacom, was more film oriented and included Paramount Pictures as a subsidiary. The other, CBS Corporation, held the CBS TV network. The cata­logue of Star Trek films and the right to produce more resided with Viacom/Paramount, while CBS owned all existing Star Trek tele­vi­sion shows and the authority to produce further series. It was incumbent on this “shared custody” agreement that any new Star Trek series take place in the CBS-­controlled “Prime Universe” and not in the Viacom-­held Kelvin Timeline. The split also created a tonal distinction associated with dif­fer­ent generic traditions: the films w ­ ere linked to action blockbusters, and the shows became tied to the melodrama and darkness of prestige tele­vi­sion. Regardless of the divide, t­ hese “two Star Treks” shared creative personnel. In November 2015, CBS announced that a new program, Discovery, would be produced by Alex Kurtzman, who since then has held a czar-­like position for Star Trek roughly analogous to Kevin Feige’s role at Marvel Studios. The new series was designed for CBS’s new streaming ser­vice, CBS All Access (rebranded as Paramount+ in 2021).14 Discovery thus shouldered much of the burden in driving subscriptions initially; at the time of its launch the only other original program on All Access was The Good Fight (2017–2022). As All Access only serves the United States, Discovery was also licensed to Netflix in 188 countries and to Bell Media in Canada, where Discovery is available through its streaming ser­ vice Crave.15 Consequently, Discovery became the first Star Trek series largely ­behind a paywall, which is an affront to fans who have a stake in the franchise’s contested “owner­ship.”16 Since it is also available on cable in select locations, including Canada’s Sci-­Fi channel, a familiar five-­act structure with spaces for commercial breaks was maintained. The show was also released weekly with a midseason gap rather than as a more binge-­ready simultaneous release. Discovery’s creators, then, could not fully capitalize on the possibilities of most direct-­ to-­streaming series b­ ecause other considerations encouraged adherence to conventions. Further muddying Discovery’s prestige credentials was Bryan Fuller’s initial attachment as showrunner. Fuller was ideal for ushering Star Trek into the prestige milieu, as he worked on Voyager and DS9 before creating Dead Like Me (2003–2004), Pushing Daisies (2007–2009), Hannibal (2013–2015), and American Gods (2017–2021), but his involvement was short-­lived. He ­later detailed

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The opening credits position Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman as Star Trek: Discovery’s co-­creators.

tensions with CBS over creative and deadline issues;17 evidently, CBS wanted to harness Fuller’s reputation without granting him autonomy to do Star Trek his way. Although he left before the first episode aired, Fuller is still credited alongside Kurtzman as the show’s creator. Fuller was succeeded as showrunner by Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg, who w ­ ere themselves fired in the m ­ iddle of the second season over bud­get issues and allegations of verbal abuse against writers; Kurtzman took over for the remainder of that season and was joined by Michelle Paradise as the season three showrunner. This creative revolving door is one obstacle to Discovery’s prestige aspiration. The only consistent creative presence is Kurtzman, who inherits Berman’s mantle as a popu­lar hate figure among fans. Discovery’s opening credits list another familiar name as an executive producer: “Eugene Roddenberry.” Eugene Wesley Roddenberry Jr., called “Rod,” is Star Trek royalty b­ ecause he is the son of Gene Roddenberry and actress Majel Barrett. He also produced a documentary called Trek Nation (2010) about his relationship with the franchise and its fans, from which he always felt some distance. At around the same time, he founded the Roddenberry Podcast Network, where programs like Mission Log, ­Women at Warp (2015–), and Daily Star Trek News (2019–) provide platforms for fan discourse ­under his imprimatur. Regardless of his practical role on Discovery, Rod Roddenberry’s presence functions like a Foucauldian author name that legitimizes Discovery as Star Trek’s next phase.18 To a similar end, Discovery references Star Trek’s past on diegetic and other fronts. Most basically, it is set in the franchise’s past, in the 2250s, which is roughly a de­cade before TOS and more than a c­ entury before TNG.19 The U.S.S. Discovery itself is also based on the unused redesign of the U.S.S. Enterprise by graphics designer Ralph McQuarrie for Planet of the Titans, a spin-­off film that was

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briefly in production in the early 1970s.20 The design thus flatters specialized fan knowledge without alienating general audiences. An early teaser trailer solely showed the ship; another was based around the phrase “Star Trek is . . . ,” which was the title of the first draft proposal written by Roddenberry in 1964 that outlined a Western-­modeled series about h ­ umans exploring space in the far ­future, and evokes Roddenberry’s totemic presence as a legitimating force.21 In terms of story, Discovery’s lead character, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-­Green), is the foster ­daughter of Sarek of Vulcan (James Frain) and his ­human wife Amanda Grayson (Mia Kirshner), making her the foster s­ ister of Spock himself. Through retroactive continuity or “retconning,” Michael—­and with her, Discovery—is sutured into the core of all ­things Star Trek. But for all of its careful links to the franchise canon, Discovery is also dif­fer­ ent from prior Trek series in ways that align with con­temporary prestige tele­vi­ sion. Its seasons are considerably shorter (fifteen-­, fourteen-­, and thirteen-­episode seasons) than ­those of previous live-­action Star Trek series. As opposed to the episodic format that dominated ­earlier Star Trek series, it is also highly serialized.22 In its first season, especially, Discovery echoes shows like True Blood (2008–2014) with its constant cliff-­hangers. Additionally, the material pushes the envelope in terms of profanity (Star Trek’s first uses of “f-ck”) and sexual content. It is similarly hard to imagine Discovery’s lengthy, subtitled Klingon dialogue sequences in any e­ arlier series. Discovery is also less ensemble-­driven than prior series, as almost all key plotlines center on Burnham’s melodramatic entanglements; it thus resembles how prestige tele­vi­sion shows like Mad Men (2007–2015) and Breaking Bad (2008–2013) ­favor strong central protagonists, but replaces the White men of ­those shows with a Black ­woman (anticipating Watchmen [2019–]). Discovery is also more difficult to summarize concisely than other Star Trek series ­because it is more plot-­driven. The title ship does not even appear ­until the third episode, with the inaugural two-­parter serving as a sort of prequel. That extended opener focuses on Burnham’s ser­vice on the U.S.S. Shenzhou ­under Captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), the incidents that precipitate the Klingon War, the destruction of the Shenzhou, Georgiou’s death, and Burnham’s imprisonment for mutiny. Six months l­ ater, Burnham is freed and posted to the U.S.S. Discovery at the behest of its captain, Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs). Discovery is outfitted with an experimental “spore drive” designed by Lt. Commander Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) that allows near-­instantaneous space travel, and Lorca enlists Burnham to weaponize this technology against the Klingons. Yet Lorca has an ulterior motive that connects to another facet of the franchise; he is actually a double from the alternate “Mirror Universe,” which was introduced in TOS’s “Mirror, Mirror” and revisited on DS9 and Enterprise. Lorca eventually pulls the Discovery into his universe to try to seize power from Mirror-­Georgiou, the Hitlerian empress of the Terran Empire. The situation is complicated by a Klingon infiltrator, Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif), who is also

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World-­building is visualized in the opening credits of Star Trek: Discovery.

Burnham’s lover. A ­ fter a four-­episode arc that includes Mirror-­Lorca’s death, Discovery returns to the Prime Universe with Mirror-­Georgiou in tow only to discover that the Federation is about to lose its war with the Klingons. In a controversial development, Sarek and Mirror-­Georgiou scheme to destroy the Klingon home world; holding to Starfleet princi­ples, Burnham rejects this genocidal plan and instead ends the war by installing L’Rell (Mary Chieffo), a Klingon whose attitude about the Federation evolved during her time as a prisoner on Discovery, as Klingon chancellor. The filtering of core franchise ele­ments through prestige tele­vi­sion conventions is evident in Discovery’s introductory sequence, which is quite unlike the typical “vistas of space” of prior series. While the intro to Game of Thrones (2011–2019) emphasizes world-­building with the unfolding of a huge clockwork map, Discovery’s is diagrammatic, with recognizable pieces of Star Trek brand identity (a TOS-­style phaser and communicator, a “Vulcan salute,” dilithium crystals, ­etc.) sketched into existence on a papery-­white backdrop. The ­music starts and ends by citing ele­ments of Alexander Courage’s original Star Trek score, but between t­ hose optimistic notes, Jeff Russo’s use of ostinato in the theme establishes a dark, serious tone. Casting choices also reflect Discovery’s prestige ambitions. Martin-­Green came straight from another prestige genre show, The Walking Dead (2010–2022). Jason Isaacs was prob­ably best known for playing Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies (2001–2011) and for Netflix’s The OA (2016–2019). The most impressive casting coup was Michelle Yeoh, the accomplished Malaysian actress best known for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Rainn Wilson, familiar from The Office (2005–2013), guest stars as a younger version of the TOS character Harry Mudd. Discovery has a diverse cast (and a more diverse slate of writers and directors than prior Star Trek series), and also answers a long-­standing

“But Is It Star Trek?” • 63

complaint by providing Star Trek’s first gay regular characters in Stamets and Dr. Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz).23 Reminiscent of shows like Lost, True Detective (2014–), and Westworld (2016–), Discovery had a series of core mysteries built into it. Though calculated to provoke fan engagement, they w ­ ere in hindsight perhaps too obvious.24 Voq, the albino Klingon selected as Torch-­Bearer by the would-be Klingon messiah T’Kuvma (Chris Obi), was putatively played by “Javid Iqbal.” Fans became suspicious about the fact that Javid Iqbal had no other credits or social media presence, and noticed that actor Shazad Latif, who plays Lt. Tyler, was born as “Shazad Khaliq Iqbal.” Sure enough, it is eventually revealed that Tyler was Voq in disguise. Furthermore, fans speculated early on that Lorca was a double from the Mirror Universe. At least since the death of Big Pussy (Vincent Pastore) on The Sopranos, unexpected character demises have been stock-­in-­ trade of prestige tele­vi­sion, and Discovery delivers with the deaths of Georgiou, Mirror-­Lorca, Commander Landry (Rekha Sharma), and especially Culber when his neck is snapped by a berserk Tyler. Discovery does not break entirely with Trek’s tradition of humanistic, issue-­ oriented storytelling. However, it is generally expressed only in indirect ways. While Discovery inarguably “reflects the current po­liti­cal, economic and social climate, in which the U.S. has now been embroiled in two wars for over a decade”—­and K’Tuvma’s motto “Remain Klingon” clearly suggests “Make Amer­ic­ a G ­ reat Again”—­Discovery’s serialization also precludes discrete, TOS-­ style “issue episodes.”25 Nonetheless, advance publicity foregrounded cultural relevance as a selling point. Two days before the pi­lot’s release, a Rolling Stone feature explic­itly framed Discovery as a response to the Trump era. Perhaps trying to forestall fan criticism, this piece, at least officially, asserted distance from the “prestige” label. Harberts is quoted as saying: “I think [viewers] instantly just think prestige drama—­it’s dystopian, dark, antihero, grim, no hope at all. . . . ​It ­couldn’t be further from the truth. This show is hopeful.”26 Despite Harberts’s insistences, a major fan complaint about the first season of Discovery was that, as long-­time Trek reviewer Chuck Sonnenburg (“SFDebris”) put it, Discovery simply “­isn’t fun . . . ​[it is] devoid of joy.”27 Two years before Discovery premiered, Elizabeth Alsop argued that wallowing in gloomy self-­seriousness is a sign of “genre programming’s striving for cultural legitimacy.”28 Discovery is a particularly striking example of this phenomenon ­because it exists in a franchise usually associated with optimism. Negative reviews consistently accuse Discovery of being “too enamoured of prestige TV.”29 But Discovery also contains its own meta-­commentary on the state of the franchise, as peace-­loving explorers (on a ship called “Discovery”!) are rerouted—to borrow the title of the second Abrams film—­into darkness. Moreover, Burnham’s attempts to stand up for Federation values result in her being stripped of rank and branded a traitor, and a miraculous tool for exploration, the spore drive, is instead exploited for military applications. Early in the series, Stamets laments that his research has

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Gabriel Lorca and Michael Burnham represent Star Trek: Discovery’s divide between cynicism and optimism.

been coopted, “Not for truth, or to further Starfleet’s mission statement of democracy and exploration, but for war.” Captain Georgiou, the show’s embodiment of the enlightened, optimistic Starfleet officer of Picard’s ilk, is killed in the second episode, and it takes the full season for Burnham to reembrace her princi­ples. Even the show’s mise-­en-­scène is dark and gloomy, which is narratively justified by Lorca’s sensitivity to light. If Mirror-­Lorca rather than Burnham often registers as the most significant character of Discovery’s first season, that is b­ ecause he is a microcosm of the show itself in relation to the franchise: he is a cynical, perverse, and violent infiltrator who led o­ thers astray and needs to be slain to restore equilibrium. When his true nature is revealed, he tells the Discovery crew, “My admiration for you was and is sincere. When I look at you, I see the formidable unit of soldiers that I sculpted. If I thought for a second that any of you ­were capable of relinquishing this cult-­like devotion to Federation, I’d enlist your skills ­today.” In that same episode, Commander Saru (Doug Jones) says, “Lorca abused our idealism. Make no m ­ istake: Discovery is no longer Lorca’s. She is ours.” This reflexive dialogue gains special meaning b­ ecause it is voiced by one of the show’s more peaceable characters. Lorca’s death signals an overall lightening trend that moves the series out of its “wallowing” in prestige-­style darkness and closer to Star Trek optimism. Other “dark” developments are reversed at the end of season one. The Klingon War is resolved. Burnham’s rank and reputation are also restored. In the season’s final moments, the U.S.S. Enterprise itself appears, which is followed by credits scored to the original TOS theme. Collectively, ­these developments suggest that the prestige darkness has passed and ­there w ­ ill now again be Star Trek.

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Out of Darkness? Discovery’s Second Season This lightening trend largely continued in season two of Discovery. Season two also amplified the series’ engagement with the Star Trek canon, which fans generally welcomed. Some of ­these references are small, like the appearance of a Saurian (an obscure species seen only in one franchise film). Other allusions are major, such as the new captain being Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter in the first TOS pi­lot), who is a character as old as Star Trek itself. Now portrayed by Anson Mount, Pike takes command of Discovery ­because its unique spore drive feature allows it to investigate a series of mysterious red signals that have appeared across the galaxy. The tone of the show shifts with Pike’s command style, which is more casual and empathetic than Lorca’s. Meanwhile, Michael sets off on a literal search for Spock (Ethan Peck) when her estranged foster b­ rother flees in response to an accusation of murder. The second season’s quest-­like format mixes in more episodic tendencies, with Discovery visiting a succession of planets to learn more about the signals and the mysterious “Red Angel.” Th ­ ere was thus an effort to deliver something that resembled the traditional episodic format of Star Trek while still remaining within the frame of serialized prestige tele­vi­sion. Fans appreciated it on that level: as one article put it, season two “Is Better ­Because It’s Properly Star Trek Now.”30 The second episode of season two, “New Eden,” epitomizes t­ hese trends. It is reminiscent of TOS both in its morality and its relative stand-­alone status. Following one of the signals, Discovery finds a distant colony of h ­ umans, dating from well before ­humans could travel in space. Visiting incognito, the crew learns that its inhabitants descend from a group trapped in a church that was teleported to safety by the Red Angel during World War III. The resulting society has a vaguely Luddite sensibility, but a local named Jacob (Andrew Moodie) is descended from scientists and has secretly preserved some advanced technology. Pike reveals to Jacob their true nature as space travelers in exchange for footage of the Red Angel, and in return gives him the technology to relight the church’s long-­extinguished light source. Evoking classic Trek themes of exploration, science, and compassion, “New Eden” ends with literal enlightenment. Another season two episode deals with the timely topics of racial strife and refugeeism, emphasizing Saru’s status as a displaced person from a p­ eople subject to institutional slavery on their home world. Commentary on salient social issues is a central feature of both con­ temporary prestige tele­vi­sion and Star Trek brand identity, and Discovery’s second season integrated it more naturally than season one. Though t­ here ­were certainly holdouts, Trek fans largely responded positively to ­these changes, especially the respectful pre­sen­ta­tions of classic characters like Spock, Number One (Rebecca Romijn), and Pike. The day ­after the first episode of season two aired, for instance, one commenter claimed that Mount “may actually single-­handed [sic] make this show semi-­watchable.”31 Some fan complaints ­were actively addressed in Discovery’s second season. While the first season’s

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Klingon makeup suggested Tolkien’s orcs more than previous designs, for example, their appearance becomes something closer to their TNG-­era look in season two.32 Dr. Culber is even restored to life by the mycelial network, undoing the prior season’s most shocking murder (and the implications of having killed a rare gay character). Certain continuity issues, notably around the nigh magical spore drive, are resolved at the season’s end through a high-­level cover-up, and the ship itself is shuttled into the far ­f uture. Fi­nally, Discovery’s third season promised to resolve the oldest complaint about the show—­that it does not advance the timeline—by transforming a prequel into a sequel. Season two still had traces of the prior season’s darkness. This was mostly associated with Section 31, the covert, conspiratorial faction of Starfleet established in DS9, which is linked to darkness both literal (black uniforms and inadequately lit ships) and figurative (black ops and realpolitik). Section 31 provides the season’s main villain, Control, a self-­aware computer that plans to eradicate the galaxy’s organic life. Again, the overall structure of the season is a passage through gloomy prestige darkness into light, with a final twist promising a radical reformatting by sending the Discovery and its crew through time to the thirty-­second ­century. The second season even ends with the last red signal flaring into light, promising that Discovery (both ship and show) has a place in the ­future.

No Country for Old Captains: Short Treks, Picard, and ­After Discovery was not the only new Star Trek series on CBS All Access for long. It was followed by Short Treks (2018–), which has had two seasons to date. It is this new series that makes the best use of potential freedoms of streaming for artistic flexibility. Spanning between eight and eigh­teen minutes, the episodes range from lowbrow comedy to serious drama. Two episodes are even animated, representing the first official Trek animation since 1974. Some entries provide back-­ or side-­stories, while o­ thers are loosely linked to the canon. The most striking episode so far is “Calypso.” It takes place on the U.S.S. Discovery but features no established characters, and occurs in what appears to be a distant ­future, considerably ­later than ever before featured on Star Trek. Its melancholy story of a stranded traveler detained by an amorous self-­aware computer avatar redresses an episode from Homer’s Odyssey, and might plausibly be described as a stand-­ alone science fiction tale with minimal links to the Trek canon. “Calypso” was well received; SFDebris called it “the first truly positive sign since CBS All Access started that Star Trek in this new era has promise.”33 It also had a famous writer: Michael Chabon. Chabon is ideally suited to balance literary reputation and genre credentials as a Star Trek creative. He is both a Pulitzer Prize–­winning novelist and an avowed comic book and science fiction fan whose screenwriting credits include Spider-­Man 2 (2004) and John Car­ter (2012). In July 2019, Chabon was announced as showrunner for another new series, Star Trek: Picard, also for CBS All Access. The strategy of boosting Trek’s prestige through the cultural

“But Is It Star Trek?” • 67

status of an established author was unheard of in Berman-­era Trek and harkens back more to TOS’s stable of science fiction writers. In October 2019, The New Yorker ran Chabon’s piece “The Final Frontier,” in which he reflected on writing his second Short Treks entry, “Q&A,” at his d­ ying f­ ather’s bedside. Situated in an elite magazine, it served as advance publicity for Picard, which premiered in January  2020. Chabon provided for Picard what Discovery never ­really had ­because of the failure to secure Fuller: a branded auteur showrunner. Playing the “fanboy auteur,” Chabon uses Instagram to address fan questions, demonstrating intricate franchise knowledge.34 The tightly serialized first season of Picard contains ten episodes and features Patrick Stewart’s return as Jean-­Luc Picard a­ fter an eighteen-­year hiatus. While brighter than Discovery aesthetically, Picard is nonetheless ­bitter and cynical, quite unlike TNG’s stately optimism. Picard himself is no longer a starship captain, having retired from Starfleet over its mishandling of a humanitarian crisis on Romulus, and now lives in seclusion as a vintner. Picard also shows the Federation as having become paranoid and isolationist. This commentary on geopo­ liti­cal realities can be ostensibly attributed to Stewart, who is both the show’s star and an executive producer, ­because he claimed that it is a repre­sen­ta­tion of “me responding to the world of Brexit and Trump and feeling, ‘Why ­hasn’t the Federation changed? Why ­hasn’t Starfleet changed?’ Maybe t­ hey’re not as reliable and trustworthy as we all thought.”35 Picard’s tightly held princi­ples now lack effectiveness without institutional support; in a recurring motif, his familiar speechifying falls on deaf ears, as the head of Starfleet even tells him to “shut the f-ck up.” The show’s central image is the lined and wrinkled face of the ninety-­ four-­year-­old Picard, suggesting both gravitas and shocking fragility. Picard pre­sents a rougher vision of the ­future than is typical for Star Trek. It centers on a slate of characters with distinctly con­temporary flaws, and it touches on topics like income in­equality, PTSD, and drug addiction. In keeping with con­temporary prestige tele­vi­sion’s conventions, Picard is more “adult” than ­earlier

A close-up of Star Trek: Picard star Patrick Stewart emphasizes his aged face.

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iterations of Star Trek, featuring profanity and shocking scenes of torture and vio­lence. Th ­ ese qualities proved predictably controversial among fans. Of Picard’s fifth episode, long-­time fan reviewer Jamahl Epsicokhan wrote: I am easily bored by the “What is Star Trek?” debate. This question has been asked for de­cades and it comes up with ­every new series, and now e­ very new episode. It is a cliché and I avoid it like the plague. That being said, “Stardust City Rag” is all wrong. This is not Star Trek.36

Similarly, reviewing the Picard prequel novel The Last Best Hope (2020), ­Women at Warp co-­host Andi said: I ­don’t like the w ­ hole direction that Star Trek seems to be ­going lately, which basically, like, instead of it being idealistic and inspirational, it is now very realistic and not inspirational at all . . . ​I’m used to ­things being shitty. That’s not why I watch or read Star Trek . . . ​The society presented in this book is not better. It’s the same one we have.37

Though Picard is slower paced and more contemplative than Discovery, t­ here are similarities between the shows’ first seasons. Both series uneasily navigate between Star Trek’s traditional positivity and fash­ion­able cynicism, as well as con­temporary prestige tele­vi­sion’s moral and narrative complexity. Both shows are also premised on the Federation falling short of its princi­ples due to trying circumstances, and feature wounded, dispirited protagonists (Burnham and Picard), who must prove more principled and optimistic than the decaying institutions around them. Picard’s central question—­can a man of deep thought and princi­ple stay relevant in a cynical world?—­reflects the situation of Star Trek as an optimistic franchise in a pessimistic era. In the end, optimism wins out: as with the first season of Discovery, season one of Picard builds to a looming genocide that is prevented by rhetorical persuasion; Picard convinces the young “synthetic” Dr. Soji Asha (Isa Briones) to choose compassion and empathy over paranoia. Like Discovery, Picard ends its first season with an implicit promise that something lighter and more familiar w ­ ill follow, as Picard himself is granted a literal new lease on life. The season ends by promising that Star Trek has life and relevance left to it, and that its course forward w ­ ill balance age and wisdom (Picard) with youth and vitality (Asha). Yet, as with Discovery, getting to that moment requires slogging through the darkness and cynicism that prestige tele­ vi­sion seems to demand.

The ­Future of the ­Future Both Discovery and Picard have been renewed for multiple additional seasons. August 2020 saw them joined on CBS All Access by a new adult animation series

“But Is It Star Trek?” • 69

called Lower Decks, created by Mike McMahan of Rick and Morty (2013–) fame. Despite sharing a twenty-­fourth-­century setting and an auteur showrunner with Picard, it is other­wise quite dif­fer­ent ­because rather than prestige tele­vi­sion it is instead affiliated with the conventions of adult animation. Focusing on ju­nior officers on an unimportant ship, Lower Decks has deliberately low stakes. Cheerful, optimistic, and brimming with nostalgia for ­earlier series, especially TNG, Lower Decks’ mode of light self-­parody flatters longtime fans with dense referentiality and stands starkly opposed to the weighty prestige aspirations of Discovery and Picard. It predictably also has been accused by some critics of “not being Star Trek,” albeit for a new reason: “A parody by the very definition cannot be what it parodies. Discovery is a very poor Star Trek show, Picard is a zombified Star Trek show but Star Trek Lower Decks is a straight up parody and therefor [sic] not ­actual Star Trek.”38 Meanwhile, Discovery’s third season reveals a far-­in-­the-­future Federation that is fragmented and scattered ­after a mysterious disaster called “the Burn” has compromised space travel and interstellar communication. Season three resembles the second season in balancing serialized and anthologized formats by focusing on uncovering a cosmic mystery that often requires visiting a “planet-­of-­the-­ week.” Burnham herself experiences a “soft reboot” ­after spending a year away from Discovery; her “lighter” mode is signaled by a change in hairstyle. Perhaps commenting on the prior seasons’ detours into prestige tele­vi­sion darkness, season three as a w ­ hole and almost all of its individual episodes concern recovery, both individual and societal, which is an appropriate theme for a show airing during the ravages of COVID-19. Now Discovery and its crew serve as hopeful anachronisms working to restore the Federation to its past glory and helping it put its princi­ples back into practice, while also opposing an exploitative, capitalistic, anti-­Federation antagonist: the Emerald Chain. Like the first season, the third season ends with the TOS musical theme, with Burnham ascending to captaincy of a refitted ship with a twenty-­third-­century appearance but thirty-­ second-­century technology. The overall impression seems to be that a path forward for the franchise lies within the retro. Similarly, producer Akiva Goldsman promises that the Pike-­centered series, Strange New Worlds, w ­ ill “harken back to some classical ‘Trek’ values, to be optimistic, and to be more episodic. . . . ​Obviously, we ­will take advantage of the serialized nature of character and story building. But I think our plots w ­ ill be more closed-­ended than ­you’ve seen in ­either Discovery or Picard.”39 Clearly, producers have heard fan criticisms about ­those two shows being too serialized, dark, and pessimistic, and now offer Strange New Worlds as the antidote. Indeed, the exploration theme, submerged throughout streaming-­era Star Trek, is even implied in the title. The “Paramount Mountain” ad campaign that accompanied the rebranding of CBS All Access as Paramount+ aligns with this shift. In par­ tic­u­lar, it contains the strange spectacle of Burnham, Spock, and Pike sharing the screen with Beavis and Butthead, Snooki from Jersey Shore (2009–2012),

70 • Murray Leeder

Dora the Explorer, and Chase from PAW Patrol (2013–). This depiction seems to represent a step away from prestige affiliation; rather, Star Trek is treated as just another item in Paramount’s intellectual stable. Interestingly, Patrick Stewart appears in one of the campaign’s ads not as Picard but as a campy version of himself, emceeing an event at the summit of “Paramount Mountain” while Stephen Colbert works the bar. The prestige dignity of Picard the character is thus preserved even as Stewart mocks his own image as a lofty British thespian. The current guiding princi­ple, then, seems to be to expand the capacious franchise laterally, by providing something for every­one. Such a strategy resembles the way the creators of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have attempted to diversify its offerings of late on tele­vi­sion, which range from sitcom pastiche (WandaVision [2021–]) and action/adventure (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier [2021]) to high-­concept science fiction (Loki [2021–]). Indeed, Marvel has been repeatedly cited as a model to emulate; when Kurtzman’s contract was extended in 2021, he described vague plans to “[push] the bound­aries much further than . . . ​ most ­people would want. . . . ​Marvel has actually proven that you can.”40 The organ­izing model for franchise expansion no longer seems to be prestige tele­vi­ sion. Instead, creators are now imitating Marvel’s astonishing success at fan-­ friendly, multi-­platform franchise building. Prestige aspirations are not being forsaken altogether, however, as evidenced by another recent Paramount+ promo, which was Star Trek specific, narrated by Anson Mount, and frames Picard as “Trek’s first true adult drama.”41 In the near f­ uture, Picard and Discovery might be regarded as the prestige offerings within a varied slate of tele­vi­sion series, with Strange New Worlds occupying a dif­f er­ent niche that is more “classical” in style. The animated series similarly target dif­fer­ent audiences, with Lower Decks as adult animation alongside the new, youth-­oriented offering Star Trek: Prodigy (2021–), which is co-­produced by Nickelodeon, another subsidiary of Paramount Global. Still other shows are reportedly in development, including a spy show based around Section 31 that is intended to be a star vehicle for Michelle Yeoh. It seems certain that only in the streaming era could this diverse portfolio of franchise content coexist. What­ever the dynamic of this slate of shows ends up looking like, Star Trek’s creators have secured, however uneasily, a continuing presence in the era of con­ temporary prestige tele­vi­sion. With the 2019 re-­merger of Viacom and CBS Corporation into the conglomerate ViacomCBS (as of February  2022, renamed Paramount Global), ­there would now seem to be no institutional obstacle to a more integrated film/tele­vi­sion franchise akin to Marvel, but this has not yet materialized.42 In fact, in a stark inversion of the situation of a de­cade past, it is now cinematic Star Trek that languishes in limbo while the franchise thrives on tele­vi­sion. The aforementioned Paramount+ promo narrated by Mount claims that Discovery “brought the look and feel of our Star Trek movies to tele­vi­sion,” hinting perhaps that movies are consequently no longer as vital to the franchise.43 To wit, several recognizable figures from prestige tele­vi­sion, including Fargo

“But Is It Star Trek?” • 71

(2014–) and Legion (2017–2019) creator Noah Hawley, have been attached to film proj­ects that ultimately came to nothing.44 At this writing, Game of Thrones and FX’s Fargo director and WandaVision director/producer Matt Shakman is attached to direct the next Star Trek film. It is reported to be co-­written by Captain Marvel (2019) screenwriter Geneva Robertson-­Dworet, providing more evidence that Star Trek now looks to Marvel for its creative cues.45 One ­thing appears sure in relation to all of t­ hese f­ uture proj­ects: the question “Is it Star Trek?” w ­ ill continue to be asked.

Notes 1 ​John Champion and Ken Ray, hosts, “Supplemental 044—­But, Is It Star Trek? Or, Yet Another One from the Rio,” Mission Log, August 9, 2018, http://­w ww​ .­missionlogpodcast​.­com​/­but​-­is​-­it​-­star​-t­ rek​-o­ r​-­yet​-­another​-­one​-­from​-­the​-­rio​/­. 2 ​Derek Johnson, Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 54. Some sources have used “Star Trek Universe” but I ­will avoid this for fear of confusion, since, in-­narrative, t­ here are multiple universes. 3 ​Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015). 4 ​Michael Kmet, “Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Vision of the F ­ uture’: The Creation of an Early Tele­vi­sion Auteur,” Networking Knowledge 5, no. 2 (September 2012): 69. 5 ​Dan Hassler-­Forest, “Game of Thrones: Quality Tele­vi­sion and the Cultural Logic of Gentrification,” TV/Series 6 (December 2014): 161. 6 ​For a discussion of how discourses of quality operated around TNG and other contemporaneous series, see Charlotte E. Howell, “Legitimating Genre: The Discursive Turn to Quality in Early 1990s Science Fiction Tele­vi­sion,” Critical Studies in Tele­vi­sion: The International Journal of Tele­vi­sion Studies 12, no. 1 (2017): 35–50. 7 ​The live anthology was tele­vi­sion’s original prestige format, i.e., Play­house 90 (1956–1960). 8 ​David Gerrold, The World of Star Trek, 2nd ed. (New York: Bluejay, 1984), 119. 9 ​Walter Irwin, “Star Trek: The Next Generation—­Review and Commentary,” in The Best of Trek #14, ed. Walter Irwin and G. B. Love (New York: Signet, 1988), 191. 10 ​Roberta Pearson and Máire Messenger Davis, Star Trek and American Tele­vi­sion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 39. 11 ​For example, Jamie Lovett’s article “ ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ Was Tele­vi­sion Ahead of Its Time,” Comicbook, January 4, 2018, accessed June 9, 2020, https://­ comicbook​.­com​/­startrek​/­news​/­star​-­trek​-­deep​-­space​-­nine​-­25th​-­anniversary​/­. 12 ​“Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film as ‘Fun, Watchable,’ ” The Onion, May 4, 2009, accessed January 29, 2020, https://­entertainment​.­theonion​.­com​/­trekkies​-­bash​-n ­ ew​ -­star​-­trek​-­fi lm​-­as​-­f un​-w ­ atchable​-­1819594814. 13 ​“CBS, Viacom Formally Split.” CBS News, January 3, 2006, accessed February 5, 2020, https://­w ww​.­cbsnews​.c­ om​/­news​/­cbs​-­viacom​-­formally​-­split​/­. 14 ​ Voyager was similarly designed to launch the United Paramount Network (UPN). 15 ​Alex Wong, “How to Stream ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ on Netflix and CBS All Access,” Inverse, September 25, 2017, accessed July 4, 2020, https://­w ww​.­inverse​ .­com​/­article​/­36006​-­star​-­trek​-­discovery​-­cbs​-­a ll​-­access​-­stream​-­netflix.

72 • Murray Leeder

16 ​Andrew Depledge, “Cutting through the Paywall—­A ll Access,” Redshirts Always Die, October 9, 2018, accessed March 27, 2020, https://­redshirtsalwaysdie​.­com​/­2018​ /­10​/­09​/­cutting​-­through​-­paywall​-c­ bs​-­a ll​-­access​/.­ 17 ​James Hibberd, “Bryan Fuller on His Star Trek: Discovery Exit: I Got to Dream Big,” Entertainment Weekly, July 28, 2017, accessed January 5, 2020, https://­ew​.­com​ /­t v​/­2017​/­07​/­28​/­bryan​-­f uller​-­star​-t­ rek​-­discovery​/­. 18 ​For readings of Roddenberry through Foucault’s author name, see John Tulloch and Henry Jenkins, Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek (London: Routledge, 1995), esp. 189–190; and Leora Hadas, “A New Vision: J. J. Abrams, Star Trek, and Promotional Authorship,” Cinema Journal 56, no. 2 (2017): 51–52. 19 ​This alone was a disappointment to many fans, who wanted more Star Trek set subsequent to the Berman-­era shows. See Katharine Trendacosta, “Star Trek: Discovery’s Biggest Prob­lem Is That It’s a Prequel,” Gizmodo, October 24, 2017, accessed January 5, 2020, https://­w ww​.g­ izmodo​.c­ om​.a­ u​/­2017​/­10​/­star​-t­ rek​ -­discoverys​-­biggest​-­problem​-­is​-­that​-­its​-a­ ​-­prequel​/.­ 20 ​Sherilyn Connelly, The First Star Trek Movie: Bringing the Franchise to the Big Screen, 1969–1980 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2019), 73. 21 ​“Star Trek is . . .” Memory Alpha, accessed January 29, 2020, https://­memory​-­a lpha​ .­fandom​.­com​/­wiki​/­Star​_­Trek​_­is​_­​.­​_­​.­​_­. 22 ​Only DS9 and Enterprise have extended serialized arcs. 23 ​ Discovery season three would introduce Star Trek’s first nonbinary h ­ uman character in Adira Tal (Blu del Barrio). 24 ​For example, the podcast ­Women at Warp accurately guessed all of them midseason. Andi and Sue, hosts, “Disco Fever,” ­Women at Warp, Roddenberry Podcast Network, December 3, 2017, accessed June 8, 2020, https://­w ww​.­womenatwarp​.­com​ /­episode​-7­ 3​-­disco​-­fever​/­. 25 ​Amanda Keeler, “Visible/Invisible: Female Astronauts and Technology in Star Trek: Discovery and National Geographic’s Mars,” Science Fiction Film and Tele­vi­sion 12, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 135. 26 ​Chris Chafin, “Inside ‘Star Trek: Discovery’: The Franchise’s Answer to the Trump Era,” Rolling Stone, September 22, 2017, accessed June 8, 2020, https://­w ww​ .­rollingstone​.­com​/­t v​/­t v​-f­ eatures​/i­ nside​-s­ tar​-t­ rek​-d­ iscovery​-­the​-­franchises​-­answer​-­to​ -­the​-­trump​-­era​-­201726​/­. 27 ​Chuck Sonnenburg, “Star Trek (Dis): ­Will You Take My Hand,” SFDebris, accessed January 4, 2019, https://­sfdebris​.­com​/­videos​/­startrek​/­c115​.­php. 28 ​Elizabeth Alsop, “The Unbearable Darkness of Prestige Tele­vi­sion,” The Atlantic, July 8, 2015, accessed June 8, 2020, https://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­entertainment​ /­archive​/­2015​/­07​/­true​-­detective​-­game​-­of​-­thrones​-­bleak​-­television​/­397577​/.­ 2 9 ​Calum Marsh, “Why Star Trek: Discovery is a betrayal to the franchise,” National Post, November 15, 2017, accessed June 8, 2020, https://­nationalpost​ .­com​/­entertainment​/­television​/­why​-­star​-­trek​-­d iscovery​-­i s​-­a​-­b etrayal​-­to​-­t he​ -­f ranchise. 3 0 ​Dusty Stowe, “Discovery Season 2 Is Better B ­ ecause It’s Properly Star Trek Now,” Screenrant​.­com, February 13, 2019, accessed June 8, 2020, https://­screenrant​.­com​ /­star​-­trek​-­discovery​-­season​-­2​-­better​-w ­ hy​/­. 31 ​MadManMUC, re: “­Brother,” Jammer’s Reviews, January 18, 2019, accessed June 8, 2020, https://­w ww​.­jammersreviews​.c­ om​/s­ t​-­dsc​/­s2​/­brother​.­php. 32 ​For a damning treatment of the Discovery Klingons, see Berndt Schenider, “Discovery Klingons and Star Trek’s Continuity,” Ex Astris Scientia, December 8, 2019,

“But Is It Star Trek?” • 73

accessed December 28, 2019, http://­w ww​.e­ x​-­astris​-­scientia​.­org​/­inconsistencies​/d­ is​ -­k lingons​.­htm. 33 ​Chuck Sonnenburg, “Star Trek (Short Treks): Calypso,” SFDebris, accessed January 5, 2020, https://­sfdebris​.­com​/­videos​/­startrek​/s­ t02​.­php. 3 4 ​Suzanne Scott, “Who’s Steering the Mothership? The Role of the Fanboy Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling,” in The Participatory Cultures Handbook, ed. Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson (London: Routledge, 2012), 43–52; Michael Chabon, “­You’re a Star Trek Fan Watching Star Trek: Picard. You Have Questions,” Instagram, February 9, 2020. Chabon stepped down as showrunner ­a fter Picard’s first season, replaced by Goldsman and Terry Matalas, formerly of 12 Monkeys (2015–2018). 3 5 ​Daniel Holloway, “ ‘Star Trek: Picard’: Patrick Stewart on Why He Returned to the Final Frontier,” Variety, January 8, 2020, https://­variety​.­com​/­2020​/­t v​/­features​ /­patrick​-­stewart​-­star​-­trek​-­picard​-­cbs​-­a ll​-­access​-­1203459573​/­. 36 ​Jamahl Epsicokhan, “Stardust City Rag,” Jammer’s Reviews, February 22, 2020, accessed February 23, 2020, https://­w ww​.­jammersreviews​.­com​/s­ t​-­picard​/­s1​/s­ tardust​ -­city​-­rag​.­php. 37 ​Andi, Jarrah, and Sue, hosts, “Episode 137: Book Club—­The Last Best Hope,” ­Women at Warp, April 20, 2020, https://­w ww​.­womenatwarp​.­com​/­episode​-1­ 37​-­book​ -­club​-­the​-­last​-­best​-­hope​/.­ 3 8 ​Booming, re: “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” Jammer’s Reviews, September 15, 2020, accessed September 15, 2020, https://­w ww​.­jammersreviews​.­com​/­st​-l­ d​/­s1​/­terminal​ -­provocations​.­php. 39 ​Daniel Holloway, “New ‘Star Trek’ Series Featuring Spock and Pike ­Will Be ‘Optimistic and More Episodic,’ Creators Say,” Variety, May 15, 2020, accessed September 12, 2021, https://­variety​.­com​/­2020​/­t v​/­news​/­star​-­trek​-­strange​-­new​-­worlds​ -­spock​-­pike​-e­ pisodic​-1­ 234608181​/­. 4 0 ​Anthony Pascale, “ViacomCBS Extends Alex Kurtzman’s Contract as They Map Out Star Trek Universe ­Future on Paramount+,” Trekmovie​.­com, August 1, 2021, https://­trekmovie​.­com​/­2021​/­08​/­01​/­viacomcbs​-­extends​-­a lex​-­kurtzmans​-­contract​-­as​ -­they​-m ­ ap​-­out​-­star​-t­ rek​-­universe​-­f uture​-o­ n​-­paramount​/­. 41 ​This framing is of course ironic in light of the fact that TOS was initially billed as science fiction for adults. Paramount Plus, “Expansion Continues in the Star Trek Universe: Paramount+,” YouTube, February 24, 2021, accessed September 12, 2021, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​? v­ ​=­gq1Wmfr4XKQ). 42 ​Brian Silliman, “The CBS/Viacom Merger Is a Go, and a New Age for Star Trek Could Come with It,” Syfy, December 4, 2019, accessed January 28, 2020, https://­ www​.­syfy​.­com​/­syfywire​/­cbs​-­viacom​-­merger​-­finalized​-­star​-­trek. 4 3 ​Paramount Plus, “Expansion Continues.” 4 4 ​Anthony Pascale, “Noah Hawley Laments Paramount Halting His ‘­Really Fun’ Star Trek Movie Just Before Production,’ ” Trekmovie​.­com, June 15, 2021, accessed September 12, 2021, https://­trekmovie​.­com​/­2021​/­06​/­15​/­noah​-­hawley​-­laments​ -­paramount​-­halting​-­his​-­really​-­f un​-­star​-­trek​-­movie​-­just​-­before​-­production​/­. 45 ​Mike Fleming Jr., “Next ‘Star Trek’ Film to Be Directed by WandaVision’s Matt Shakman; Script by Lindsey Beer & Geneva Robertson-­Dworet,” Deadline, July 13, 2021, accessed September 19, 2021, https://­deadline​.­com​/­2021​/­07​/­star​-t­ rek​-­fi lm​ -­director​-­wandavision​-m ­ att​-­shakman​-­1234792438​/­; Jessica Jones (2015–2019) director S. G. Clarkson was previously attached to the next Star Trek film.

4

Negotiating Prestige on The CW Is Ros­well, New Mexico “Another Show about ­ Teen­agers Getting F-cked Up and Having Sex” or a Sophisticated Exploration of Racial and Gender Politics? CATHERINE MARTIN In July 2020, The Hollywood Reporter noted that Ros­well, New Mexico’s (2019–­; Ros­well, NM) creator and co-­showrunner, Carina Adly MacKenzie, was leaving the series ­after season two.1 In a Twitter announcement, MacKenzie disputed allegations of tensions between herself and the show’s writers and stars, but acknowledged “fundamental disagreements” with the production studio, Warner Bros. Tele­vi­sion, and by extension, the studio’s corporate sibling tele­vi­sion network, The CW.2 While the network initially supported MacKenzie’s vision for Ros­well, NM as a forum for explorations of con­temporary racial and gender politics, her authorial approach came u­ nder fire ­after the first season failed to attract the critical or award show recognition to mark it as prestige tele­vi­sion. Despite her assurances to fans that she was leaving the series in “capable hands” 74

Negotiating Prestige on The CW • 75

and still believed in its “heart and soul” as a vehicle for promoting progressive po­liti­cal aims, MacKenzie concluded that tele­vi­sion production “is a business,” implying that she and Warner Bros./The CW could not reach a compromise on their approaches to the series.3 Once it became clear that Ros­well, NM was unlikely to garner prestige accolades, executives protected their financial investment by prioritizing the program’s economic potential over MacKenzie’s prestige ambitions. Ros­well, NM seems to be an unlikely candidate for prestige tele­vi­sion treatment from critics, audiences, or its network. While MacKenzie asserted a premium cable–­style model of prestige tele­vi­sion that elevated her authorial and po­liti­cal aspirations, The CW is best known for its teen soap operas and paranormal and superhero melodramas, including two long-­running hit series: Super­natural (2005–2020), the channel’s most enduring and iconic dark fantasy melodrama, and The Flash (2014–), a DC franchise with strong female characters and a diverse cast. A premium channel like HBO might be able to assert Ros­ well, NM’s prestige status simply by virtue of their brand, but The CW has to fight for its shows to be recognized as anything more than guilty pleasures. This has not ­stopped The CW from attempting to cultivate prestige. The network appeals to young, and presumably progressive, audience demographics and signals its programming’s social relevance through diverse casting. Social relevance has historically served as a reliable prestige marker, especially for defraying criticism of risqué or violent content, and many producers see a controversial “edge” as essential to attracting elite audiences.4 The conflicts between MacKenzie and The CW, however, went beyond branding and economic concerns. They ­were compounded by Ros­well, NM’s status as a reboot. In par­tic­u­lar, the series is a broadcast network–­commissioned reboot of Ros­well (1999–2002), which itself was adapted from prolific young adult author Melinda Metz’s Ros­well High book series.5 In accordance with its science fiction and melodramatic conventions, Ros­well traced the tumultuous romance between ­human high schooler Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby) and her extraterrestrial classmate, Max Evans (Jason Behr). Over three seasons, Liz, Max, and their friends faced questions of destiny, romantic triangles, and the constant threat of exposure by hostile ­humans and other extraterrestrials. Ros­well was one of the earliest iterations of the paranormal melodramas that have since comprised much of youth-­oriented tele­vi­sion, especially on The CW’s primetime schedule. During its initial run, Ros­well aired alongside and drew comparisons to more critically acclaimed examples of the genre, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003) and Smallville (2001–2011). By 2019, however, many tropes that seemed original in the 1990s, including Ros­well, NM’s “allegedly normal girl meets definitely special boy and chaos ensues” plot, had become cliché and indistinguishable from the rest of The CW’s programming.6 MacKenzie attempted to differentiate her series by asserting her own authorship for a po­liti­cally relevant, Latinx cast reboot of Ros­well. However, similar to the responses to Star Trek: Discovery (2017–) that

76 • Catherine Martin

Murray Leeder charts in this anthology’s preceding chapter, MacKenzie’s forceful authorial style angered some fans who expressed owner­ship over the original series. Reboots often inspire what Derek Johnson calls “fan-­tagonisms,” the tension between fans and creatives over artistic choices.7 The low-­rated reboot thus threatened to alienate audiences, undermining the profitability of the larger Ros­ well franchise, over which Warner Bros. retains intellectual property (IP) rights.8 MacKenzie’s disputes with her production studio, network, and franchise fans underscore central conflicts over exactly how Ros­well, NM—­and the other reboots multiplying across con­temporary television—is understood, promoted, and evaluated. As a case study, Ros­well, NM highlights tensions persisting between dominant conceptions of prestige tele­vi­sion, network brands, and the reboot. Consequently, I use Ros­well, NM to explore how frictions between the show’s dif­fer­ent stakeholders relate to the industrial logic of con­temporary tele­vi­sion. I ultimately focus on how the show embodies multifaceted challenges deriving from efforts to extend an existing franchise beyond the confines of a network’s established brand by attempting to transform it into prestige tele­vi­sion.

The CW’s Prestige Turn The CW is unique among American commercial broadcast networks in a few ways. First, it is an unusual cooperation between media conglomerates b­ ecause it is co-­owned by AT&T’s Warner Bros. and Viacom’s CBS Corporation. Second, it is the youn­gest network by several de­cades. The CW emerged in 2006, when its corporate parents merged the wreckage of their netlets, The WB and UPN. The new network then had to assem­ble a schedule and audience from its pre­de­ces­sors and affiliates. The most successful of ­these programs ­were teen or female-­targeted series like Gilmore Girls (2000–2007), One Tree Hill (2003– 2012), Amer­i­ca’s Next Top Model (2003–2018), and Super­natural, establishing the network’s enduring association with young, female viewers. The CW has pinned its success on franchises based on presold properties that appeal to profitable youth demographics ­because of its smaller reach. This trend began and continues partly out of economic necessity, as The CW has fewer affiliates and a smaller programming bud­get than its broadcast competitors. The CW has dif­fer­ent business incentives than the other major broadcast networks do ­because of its unusual corporate owner­ship. CBS and Warner Bros. have consistently and increasingly used their joint network venture to mitigate financial risks inherent in program development and to ensure that their productions and IP holdings are profitable. For example, The CW frequently embraces programming that CBS Tele­vi­sion Studios developed for subsidiary channels, including Ringer (2011–2012) and Crazy Ex-­Girlfriend (2015–2019), both of which ­were originally developed for Showtime, and

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Supergirl (2015–2021), which moved to The CW ­after its first season on CBS.9 Warner Bros. Tele­vi­sion was a production partner for Ros­well, and both it and CBS now have a financial interest in Ros­well, NM. This arrangement stems from The CW’s idiosyncratic market position, which tele­vi­sion critic Josef Adalian describes as a “hybrid . . . ​an old-­school broadcast network with the heart and soul of a niche cable channel.”10 As a traditional broadcast network, The CW must provide affiliate stations with programming that attracts significant audiences, yet it has found success partly by adopting cable-­style niche strategies. The network currently targets a few key demographics, some of which are underserved on other networks; back in 2011, 70 ­percent of The CW’s audience was female, and the network appeared dedicated to serving the eighteen-­to thirty-­four-­year-­ old female demographic.11 The CW continues to court young w ­ omen with romantic teen melodramas, but it has also augmented its male viewership by expanding its franchises to include adaptations based in more male-­centric superheroes and supernatural/science fiction franchises.12 Additionally, Jane the Virgin (2014–2019) helped The CW reach the United States’ rapidly growing Latinx population. The CW’s niche strategies may effectively attract target markets, but it has hurt the network’s efforts both to expand to other demographics coveted by affiliates and advertisers, and to be taken seriously by critics. By 2016, male viewers comprised almost half of the network’s audience, but The CW maintains its reputation as a purveyor of melodramas for teenage girls.13 Melodramatic narrative arcs are also the backbone of prestige dramas like The Sopranos (1999–2007) and Breaking Bad (2008–2013). However, romantic melodramas aimed at w ­ omen remain devalued ­because of their associations with culturally denigrated daytime soap operas. Reviews of Ros­well, NM demonstrate how terms like “soap opera” and “CW drama” have become almost interchangeable. Some critics claimed the show “is a CW series to its core” b­ ecause of how it aligns with “the network’s superhero shows, which mix soapy drama with science fiction.”14 Despite ­these challenges, the network has recently garnered critical acclaim and awards, and expanded its progressive brand by tackling contentious social issues like immigration, race, and m ­ ental health through diverse, female-­driven dramedies.15 ­These efforts ­were epitomized by Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-­ Girlfriend, which both ended in 2019 and left the network without a critically recognized prestige series for the first time in five years. ­Those deficiencies ­were amplified by the potential loss of Latinx viewers a­ fter Jane the Virgin concluded. Although neither program was a ratings juggernaut, even by The CW’s comparatively low standards, they helped the network build a reputation as a place where young, liberal audiences could find diverse, thoughtful repre­sen­ta­ tions of social issues ignored by other networks.16 Jane the Virgin, a loose adaptation of Venezuelan telenovela Juana la Virgen (2002), was especially impor­tant to this status b­ ecause of how it dealt frankly with immigration, gender, and religion. Lead actress Gina Rodriguez also won a Golden Globe for its first

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season and was nominated for the next two seasons, and the show was nominated for Best Tele­vi­sion Series in 2015. Prominent critics like Emily Nussbaum praised the series for continuing to mix over-­the-­top telenovela plots with serious treatments of trauma and racial injustice. Such positive reception primed Ros­well, NM to fill the programming void.17 Whereas critics and audiences have treated series like Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-­Girlfriend as outliers in the context of The CW’s primetime soap-­heavy fare, the network’s reputation for racially and sexually diverse repre­sen­ta­tions extends beyond t­ hose examples. Most programs The CW has rebooted originally starred White casts and embodied White, heteronormative values, but racially and sexually inclusive reboots have become more common on the network in response to calls for on-­screen diversity.18 The established brands of t­ hese shows and their nostalgic appeals mitigate the risk that White audiences w ­ ill avoid programs with non-­White leads. Indeed, Latinx-­cast reboots have recently become almost their own subgenre. Younger-­skewing broadcast and cable outlets like The CW and Freeform have certainly sought to benefit from Latinx-­cast reboots, such as Party of Five (2020), Charmed (2018–), and Ros­well, NM. Racially and ethnically diverse reboots have the dual advantage of making The CW appear socially progressive and congratulating audiences for their interest in diversity. This feeling is enhanced by the sense some viewers have that they are watching something subversive. Many creators of such series have invoked Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019; OITNB) creator Jenji Kohan’s widely circulated claim that ­Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), the show’s White lead, was a “Trojan Horse” that allowed her to sneak more “fascinating tales of black ­women, and Latina ­women, and old w ­ omen and criminals” past resistant industry executives.19 This resonates with The CW’s core demographic of young viewers who are more interested in diverse repre­sen­ta­tions than they are in other markers of prestige, suggesting why Ros­well, NM was ideal for the network’s programing strategies at the time. Still, as Javier Ramirez points out in chapter 5 of this collection, Latinx-­cast series have more difficulty finding critical acclaim than White-­cast series, partly b­ ecause the White, male reviewers who continue to dominate critical discourses tend to critique them as inferior imitations of White-­ led prestige dramas.

The Reboot and Prestige Tele­vi­sion The concept of prestige tele­vi­sion is subjective and fungible, but the term invokes enduring popu­lar and industrial associations. Audiences, critics, and industry insiders conceive of prestige tele­vi­sion in vari­ous ways. However, the concept is most often associated with legacy notions of “Quality TV.” Deborah Jaramillo has shown how premium cable channels like HBO defined their programming as “Quality” by promoting characteristics like authorial freedom, serialized storylines, morally complex protagonists, and uncensored vio­lence and sexuality,

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as well as film-­style visuals.20 While a so-­called Quality TV program can technically appear on any channel or network, the prestige tele­vi­sion label is generally ascribed to series that debut on outlets that have built—or, as new streaming ser­vices proliferate, asserted—an exclusive brand. Channels employ many tactics to establish this reputation, but most adopt some variation of HBO’s seminal “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO.” tag­line to differentiate their programming from critically derided, mass audience–­aimed broadcast tele­vi­sion. This strategy reinforces the inferior standing of broadcast networks like The CW. Fi­nally, although it is less acknowledged in popu­lar criticism, the Quality TV label is typically reserved for programming coded as masculine. Derek Johnson and ­others have shown how “Quality” conventions like seriality are praised in adventure series with presumably male target audiences, like Lost (2004–2010), even as they are derided in dramas that are positioned as more emotional and feminine, such as Gossip Girl (2007–2012) and the daytime soap operas that codified such conventions.21 Ros­well, NM, then, does not align neatly with most established prestige TV signifiers. Its relationship to the genre is further strained by how dominant conceptions of the reboot clash with discourses valorizing originality and artistic integrity. Scholars have used a range of terms to describe the influx of remade, re­imagined, adapted, or rebooted series proliferating on con­temporary tele­vi­sion. “Reboot” was introduced into media industry discourses through the comic book industry: Batman Begins (2005) co-­writer David S. Goyer referenced the well-­ established comic book industry practice of periodically restarting “the story from the beginning [with] the slate . . . ​wiped clean” to distance his screenplay from the Batman franchise’s previous, widely mocked Batman & Robin (1997).22 Rebooting a franchise involves reducing the narrative to its core ele­ments and recombining or reimagining them. As a result, producers hope the reboot w ­ ill attract both existing fans and new audiences. As Goyer’s meta­phor implies, reboots can never be fully original, but neither are they inherently derivative. Once stripped to its core ele­ments, a franchise’s properties can be recombined in myriad ways. At a 2018 Comic-­Con panel introducing Ros­well, NM, MacKenzie likened the experience to playing “in a sandbox.”23 Still, few reboots fully escape the shadows of their pre­de­ces­sors. Despite scholarly efforts to move beyond narrow discussions of fidelity, popu­lar and critical frameworks primarily continue to evaluate reboots, like other adaptations, in terms of their loyalty to a supposedly authoritative original.24 This pre­sents a double bind for makers of reboots ­because they must satisfy fans and offer something new to “justify [their] existence” in an era when many of the initial versions of the now rebooted series are widely available on DVDs and streaming platforms.25 They must also overcome suspicion and fatigue from audiences who regard reboots as a cynical cash grab by media conglomerates. Many critics and viewers lament the lack of original programming concepts and worry about shrinking opportunities for tele­vi­sion writers ­because of t­ hese

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developments, but some reboots garner critical acclaim. Despite backlash from fans objecting to Starbuck’s (Katee Sackhoff) gender change, for instance, Ronald D. Moore’s reboot of Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009) was lauded for improving on the property’s first iteration in 1978–1979.26 Jacinta Yanders describes reboots like Netflix/Pop’s Latinx-­themed version of One Day at a Time (2017– 2020; ODAAT) as “reimaginings,” to capture the way the new series “attends to the po­liti­cal and cultural environment it exists in.”27 Regardless of their reception, Yanders argues that rebooted and re­imagined tele­vi­sion programs have become crucial within the peak TV landscape; programmers rely on established properties to help new series stand out in a saturated market.28 Even if some audiences are unfamiliar with the original, a re­imagined tele­vi­sion show’s title can still act as a power­ful presold commodity. Like ODAAT, Ros­well, NM uses its source material as a launching point for con­temporary transformations.

Positioning Ros­well, New Mexico as Prestige Tele­vi­sion As MacKenzie consistently claims, both she and The CW network executives who “bought [her version of Ros­well, NM] at the [pitch] t­ able” w ­ ere invested in distinguishing their reboot from its source material and from other genre constituents flooding the market. In fact, The CW hoped MacKenzie’s changes would attract a young, po­liti­cally engaged audience—or at least generate critical praise—­for the “reboot with an immigration twist.”29 In the months before the series premiere in January 2019, both the network and MacKenzie used marketing and publicity to mobilize diverse audiences through discourses of nostalgia, authorship, race, gender, and politics. Th ­ ese issues all invoke implications of cultural, economic, or artistic prestige designed to elevate the program’s reputation. While established franchises are a safer bet for networks that want programs to stand out, a recognizable title may not be enough to attract an audience. This is especially true when the rebooted series has an ambivalent history or f­ aces a crowded field of similar programs. Unlike other popu­lar reboots, the first Ros­ well was neither unequivocally popu­lar nor associated with a highly recognizable showrunner. Its tepid initial reception was partly driven by the strug­gle of creators to balance Ros­well’s character-­driven melodrama and science fiction credentials throughout its brief run. Despite its lack of critical acclaim, however, Ros­well attracted a cult audience that or­ga­nized fan events and agitated for a reboot ­after its cancellation.30 Indeed, Ros­well’s uneven narrative inspired fans to call for someone to redo the series “correctly,” ­either by rebooting or reviving the story. As Myles McNutt argues, however, fan enthusiasm for reboots, and especially revivals, can quickly turn to derision when the end result does not meet their expectations or resolve the story in the way members of the community ­imagined.31 It is difficult to assess how much critical acclaim The CW expected Ros­well, NM to generate when it debuted in January 2019, but early promotional and

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Ros­well, New Mexico’s Liz Ortecho and Max Evans connect with each other with sweeping views of New Mexico’s desert b­ ehind them.

scheduling decisions indicate executives hoped the series would resonate with Ros­well fans and appeal to viewers of their superhero melodramas. Ros­well, NM’s first season aired immediately a­ fter The Flash, and the second season was paired with the final season of Super­natural, linking the reboot both to The CW’s most diverse show and one of its biggest successes, respectively. Ros­well, NM’s marketing campaign si­mul­ta­neously hailed Ros­well fans by foregrounding the romance and sci-fi ele­ments of the new series and signaled its prestige aspirations through glossy vistas of the New Mexico desert locales where the show was shot. Additionally, advertisements superimposed close-­ups of the cast over sweeping landscapes, which incorporated shadowed black desert rock formations, a brilliantly red sunset, and an aquamarine starry sky. Th ­ ese wide-­angle shots privileged Ros­well, NM’s distinct aesthetic, differentiating the series from its comparatively lowbrow progenitor. Like other 1990s productions, Ros­well relied on tighter-­framed visuals to obscure that it was filmed in Southern California rather than on location. In contrast, Ros­well, NM received critical praise for “drink[ing] in the town’s atmosphere” and its “lush, original look.”32 Individual posters depicting the show’s nine central characters w ­ ere also issued for Ros­well, NM as part of an initial marketing campaign intended to court fans of Ros­well and new audiences. In each ad, the character displays an expression meant to emphasize the alluring nature of their secrets. However, the most frequently used promotional shot featured a close-up of the central heterosexual romantic ­couple, Liz and Max, standing close together with a bright light emanating from Max’s hand as it rests on Liz’s chest. The scene on which this similar advertising image is based appears in the pi­lot and would be immediately legible to Ros­well fans as the moment when Max shares his memories of Liz with

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Max Evans shares his memories with Liz Parker, revealing that he has loved her since childhood in the original Ros­well.

her, thereby revealing that he has loved her from their childhood. This iconography was also often accompanied by the first season’s tag­line, “Make Contact,” a double entendre referring both to the idea of first contact with an extraterrestrial species as well as to Liz and Max’s romance. MacKenzie promoted this duality as part of the show’s prestige appeal.

Ros­well, NM’s Authorship and Prestige Aspirations Ros­well, NM thus draws on Ros­well’s themes of mystery, alienation, and fear of discovery, but MacKenzie made key changes that became central to the reboot’s initial prestige promotion. First, the reboot ages the central cast by ten years. The change created distance from the popu­lar ste­reo­type that CW series are mostly about “teen­agers getting f-cked up and having sex,” which ostensibly renders them inferior to supposedly more serious, adult-­themed series on other venues.33 More significantly, most of Ros­well, NM’s cast is Latinx, with the exception of its three central extraterrestrials, who are White. At the aforementioned 2018 Comic-­Con panel, MacKenzie and Jeanine Mason, the Cuban American actress who plays the show’s protagonist, Liz Ortecho, emphasized how the series uses ­these characters to explore racial issues. Throughout MacKenzie’s two seasons in charge she followed through on this agenda. Specifically, Ros­well, NM parallels its White, human-­passing extraterrestrials’ fear of exposure with the threats of vio­ lence and deportation Liz f­aces b­ ecause her f­ather, Arturo Ortecho (Carlos Compean), is an undocumented Mexican immigrant.34 ­Until her departure before season three, Mackenzie was the show’s public face, and she was never shy about highlighting how individual episodes reflected

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her personal vision. While MacKenzie acknowledged contributions from her better-­established co-­showrunner, Chris Hollier, she framed them only in terms of his helping her get the show made, which reinforced her purported status as its sole creative visionary. To wit, in one Twitter thread introducing Hollier, who has no social media presence, she noted that she hired him ­because, ­after working with him on The Originals (2013–2018), she trusted him to help her manage industry misogyny.35 Even amid her departure, she claimed her authorship would endure by noting that she had already talked the cast through the next season’s “character journeys” and completed the season premiere’s script.36 In addition to accentuating her authorial vision, MacKenzie laid out several markers of prestige by which Ros­well, NM could be differentiated from its progenitor. First, while the reboot would still feature romance, that aspect would now merely be a vehicle for weightier discussions about politics and culture, especially issues pertaining to race and gender. Second, the characters would be more realistic, complicated, and edgier, echoing trends in HBO series like True Detective (2014–). Even as Ros­well, NM drew its inspiration from Ros­well and was loyal to core themes like alienation and discovery, it avoided clichés and limitations inherent in 1990s tele­vi­sion. Comic-­Con panel moderator Aisha Tyler, a friend of MacKenzie’s who also directed a season two episode of Ros­well, NM, expanded on t­ hese developments by arguing that con­ temporary TV characters can be “more dimensionalized and flawed . . . ​and frail and ­human” than the “more archetypal” characters that ­were previously standard.37 MacKenzie’s assertion that The CW gave her freedom to reinterpret her source material for a new generation and po­liti­cal moment reflects her desire to become established as a progressive, po­liti­cally engaged prestige tele­vi­sion creative. However, her status as a heterosexual blonde w ­ oman potentially undercut her claim to authority over a Latinx-­themed series. MacKenzie attempted to address this tension first by detailing her ­family’s experiences with racism growing up as a White-­presenting Muslim with an Egyptian American m ­ other ­after 9/11.38 This experience, she argued, informed her decision to cast the extraterrestrials as White ­people passing as h ­ umans. She also highlighted her efforts to diversify her writers’ room and solicit feedback from her Latina star, Mason, and immigrant advocacy groups.39 MacKenzie reiterated her commitment to inclusion by revealing that she refused to accept the network’s suggestion of hiring a White actress when Liz proved difficult to cast: “I was legitimately like ‘If we c­ an’t cast a Latina ­woman in this role, we ­don’t have a show!’ And I was fine with that.”40 During the show’s second season, she also partnered with immigration advocacy group Define American to tell an “au­then­tic” story about Arturo’s complicated path to citizenship.41 Although t­ hese efforts w ­ ere not entirely successful in relation to MacKenzie’s authorial objectives, they helped to position the series as having sophisticated takes on salient sociocultural issues.

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Endowing the Reboot with Prestige through an Immigration Twist While the marketing and publicity situated Ros­well, NM as a paranormal romance, industry trades also characterized the series as a “reboot with an immigration twist” when it was first announced in 2017.42 ­These discourses framed the series as new and po­liti­cally relevant, augmenting its reputation. Like other recent Latinx-­driven reboots and some similarly themed prestige TV shows, such as Queen of The South (2016–2021), which Ramirez analyzes in this anthology’s ensuing chapter, Ros­well, NM directly addressed the increasingly overt personal and po­liti­cal attacks immigrants and other p­ eople of color endured in the United States ­after Donald Trump became president in 2016. Ros­well, NM avoids naming Trump directly. ­There are many allusions to his policies, though, as characters reference his aspiration to build a U.S.-­Mexico border wall, increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presence, and the administration’s f­ amily separation program. Liz’s status as the first-­generation ­daughter of Mexican immigrants ensured that prestige-­enhancing issues of race and gender ­were central to Ros­well, NM. The series premiere opens with Liz returning to her hometown as an adult. ­There, she is ­stopped at an immigration checkpoint. The delay almost c­ auses her to miss her emotionally charged reunion with Max (Nathan Parsons), her high school lab partner and soon-­to-be love interest, ­because she is enraged at seeing a Latino man being loaded into an ICE van. Deportation looms as a constant threat ­because Arturo is undocumented. It also provides an opportunity for intergenerational conflicts between Liz and Arturo as well as Liz’s high school boyfriend, Kyle Valenti (Michael Trevino), and his m ­ other Michelle (Rosa Arredondo), the county sheriff. Liz cannot believe her f­ ather would stay in a town where he can neither go to the hospital nor report racist attacks on his diner without risking deportation, while Arturo refuses to leave the home where he raised his ­daughters. Kyle cannot comprehend why Michelle dislikes the Ortechos, arguing that she is bigoted for resenting undocumented immigrants that she claims give a bad name to families like hers, who instead endured poverty to immigrate “the right way.”43 Prototypical arguments such as ­these bolster the show’s prestige credentials by consistently incorporating heated discussions about racial issues into the narrative. Gender politics also play a prominent role in Ros­well, NM. Liz states this most powerfully in the second season premiere, as she tries to use her scientific knowledge to save Max: I chose regenerative medicine as my focus when [my s­ ister] died cause I was broken and I wanted to repair the irreparable. It’s an ethics nightmare. I’ve been spit on by protestors and shut down by the government. . . . ​A nd over and over, old men on boards have told me to stay in my lane. To calm down. To wait. But I can do this. . . . ​Now it’s my turn.44

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Liz’s desire to continue her research into the extraterrestrials’ regenerative potential, unhindered by po­liti­cal considerations and disapproving men, continues even ­after she saves Max, and despite his fear of exposure. She initially avoids conflict by hiding her ongoing research, but Max discovers and destroys Liz’s lab near the end of season two. This conflict, which remains unresolved in the season finale, reflects Tyler’s call for prestige characters to be complex and vulnerable. It also marks a significant departure from Ros­well, in which teenaged Liz instead prioritizes her love for Max, eventually abandoning her dream of becoming a scientist to escape with him. In Ros­well, NM, the adult Liz loves Max, but she is unwilling to give up her c­ areer. As one of their arguments emphasizes, her desire to prove her worth in a country that vilifies her immigrant ­family outweighs her fear that he ­will be captured.45 In a Collider interview published the day season two premiered, MacKenzie foreshadowed ­these developments by promising the coming season would tell “bolder” stories.46 Such narrative machinations also included tracing Max’s ­sister Isobel’s (Lily Cowles) recovery a­ fter discovering that her apparently perfect ­human husband, Noah (Karan Oberoi), was actually a murderous extraterrestrial who controlled her mind and used her body to kill Liz’s ­sister when they ­were teens. The season two premiere concludes with Isobel discovering she is pregnant with Noah’s child, deepening her sense of violation. In season two’s third episode, “Good M ­ other,” she self-­i nduces an abortion. As Den of Geek’s Delia Harrington remarked, the episode is more direct about abortion than most U.S. broadcast programs.47 In an extended conversation with Max, she forcefully argues, “Motherhood ­isn’t what this is about . . . ​I c­an’t recover from what [Noah] did ­until I put an end to the parts of him that are living inside of me.”48 Creators’ willingness to grapple explic­itly and unflinchingly with such a controversial issue is a testament to how they also mobilize gender politics to augment the show’s standing.

Critical and Fan Reception of Ros­well, NM’s Prestige Credentials Regardless of the network’s expectations and MacKenzie’s prestige goals, Ros­ well, NM netted mixed reviews. Forbes writer Merrill Barr hailed it for making a surprisingly “overt push to be something impor­tant,” while Paste Magazine’s Amy Amatangelo derided it as “lazy” for relying on “schlocky dialogue” more appropriate for teenage than adult characters.49 Detractors also cited it as an example of “the remake craze at its worst,” and even “a slap in the face to fans of the original,” for overemphasizing racial politics and “radically” changing “all the characters that we know and loved.”50 However, several reviewers noted the series fit well into The CW’s efforts to reposition itself as a bastion of inclusive programming; shortly a­ fter the first season’s finale, Tor’s Alex Brown praised the series for exploring varied queer sexualities through characters who

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­ ere more than “just ‘the gay character,’ ” and for tackling immigration themes w through Latinx characters and White, human-­passing extraterrestrials.51 Collider’s Andrea Reiher thus wondered w ­ hether the show might become an adequate replacement for Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-­Girlfriend.52 Early reviewers ­were split over ­whether Ros­well, NM’s treatment of po­liti­cal issues effectively countered U.S. network tele­vi­sion’s tendency to avoid controversy or if it amounted to belated and heavy-­handed virtue signaling.53 The A.V. Club’s Danette Chavez argued the series needed to move beyond “all the pertinent buzzwords” and instead should explore the subtle differences between the overt racism Liz and her undocumented immigrant ­family face and the more existential threat felt by the White-­passing, mostly assimilated extraterrestrial trio.54 Still, critics like NBC’s Nicole Acevedo and Latinx-­ centric media blog’s Remezcla’s Kristen Lopez wanted to give the program a chance to grow in the hopes that it would use its “social platform to create” a space for Latinx stories on tele­vi­sion.55 Despite a slowly growing number of Latinx-­themed series, Ros­well, NM remains one of the few shows that foregrounds the Latinx experience on tele­vi­sion.56 Fans w ­ ere similarly divided on Ros­well, NM, especially in relation to w ­ hether or not it was a worthy successor to Ros­well. As opposed to a revival like Twin Peaks (1990–1991) in 2017, for which prestige standing was reinforced by auteur-­ creator David Lynch’s return, Ros­well fans did not necessarily consider Mac­ Kenzie the ultimate authority on the show, partly ­because she was unaffiliated with the original series. Regardless, some viewers enjoyed how MacKenzie subtly invoked their fan knowledge through guest appearances by Ros­well’s stars and small references to its plots. Perhaps most poignant for t­ hese fans, though, was her use of popu­lar m ­ usic, which was an integral part of the emotional appeal of teen melodramas from the 1990s like Ros­well.57 Each Ros­well, NM episode title thus references a thematically linked pop hit from the 1990s, and the characters are obsessed with the period’s m ­ usic even though they ­were not actually teen­ agers u­ ntil the next de­cade. This was not enough to satisfy detractors, however. While many adult ­women celebrated Liz’s increased in­de­pen­dence, o­ thers derided her as “unlikeable and not the sweet innocent cherub” of the original.58 One reviewer encapsulated the backlash by describing the reboot as “a clean, white glove to the face” of fans who had begged the network to revive the cult favorite.59 Coverage in trades and fan blogs often attempted to offset ­these critiques by emphasizing connections between the two series through Ros­well, NM’s second season. Doris Elin Urrutia reported, for example, that Shiri Appleby, who played Liz in Ros­well, would be directing a season two episode featuring guest star Jason Behr, who played Max in the original series.60 Her article ultimately blurs the line between the two series while upholding the original show’s position as the reboot’s primary source material rather than the novels. Ros­well, NM’s producers courted fan nostalgia, but they refused to be bound by it. Even as MacKenzie reassured Comic-­Con audiences that she was a fan of

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Liz Ortecho looks at a compilation of 1990s songs that epitomize Ros­well, New Mexico’s soundtrack to learn more about her deceased ­sister Rosa’s last days.

the original series, she also emphasized that she wanted her show to be dif­f er­ent ­because she hoped it would attract young fans. Con­ve­niently, her desires dovetailed with industrial motives ­because The CW particularly values young audiences with an active online presence.61 ­These viewers, and their requisite virtual communities in Wikis, Tumblrs, and fan fiction repositories, help retain and expand a program’s audience. Ros­well, NM’s production staff and cast bolster ­these efforts by deploying social media to promote the show directly, and by advocating for related progressive po­liti­cal c­auses to enhance its prestige status. MacKenzie is especially vocal about issues like racial and gender justice on social media and in interviews. Mason is also particularly active promoting her membership in #FiercelyLatina, a group of Latinas in film and tele­vi­sion who advocate for better Latinx repre­sen­ta­tion on-­screen and ­behind the scenes.62 She also uses Twitter to promote books about the Latinx experience in connection to her character.63 The network’s dependence on social media engagement from creatives and fans became a prob­lem, however, for MacKenzie’s prestige ambitions. While Twitter and other platforms can elevate showrunners into mini-­celebrities, they also encourage a sense of intimacy that encourages fans to become brazen when engaging with creators and expressing their opinions about artistic decisions.64 As Annemarie Navar-­Gill points out, the degree of this comfort is often regulated by a show’s prestige status.65 Twitter accounts for programs like OITNB, which are more securely legitimated by their platform and critics, generally buttress the showrunner’s authority by emphasizing the program’s critical accolades and limiting fan interactions.66 Meanwhile, youth-­oriented channels like The CW instead prioritize a level of fan engagement that implies viewers

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might enjoy reciprocity with creators.67 While MacKenzie was happy to participate with fans on Twitter, she consistently made it clear that she was in charge of creative decisions.68 This enraged fans who felt she owed it to them to respond to their criticism and “keep the audience engaged by giving them, in part, what they want,” negatively impacting the show’s reception.69

Conclusion In May 2019, Mackenzie retweeted a fan’s image of Ros­well, NM’s Netflix page categorizing the series as “Teen,” “Alien Sci-­Fi,” and “Steamy” with the comment “ ‘Steamy’ I get, ‘teen’ not so much.”70 While most responses agreed that her more mature, adult program was unfairly stigmatized by its connections to The CW and Ros­well’s teen associations, some mocked her for taking herself too seriously or complained that the characters “behave like teen­agers or ­children . . . ​and not as adult [sic].”71 As season two progressed, fan anger over MacKenzie’s decision to break up beloved gay ­couple Michael Guerin (Michael Vlamis) and Alex Manes (Tyler Blackburn) became increasingly vitriolic. Despite promising the rift was a temporary development, MacKenzie defended it as part of the characters’ larger journey of self-­discovery and recovery. MacKenzie’s out­spoken assertions of authorship made her a lightning rod for audiences who felt the show did not go far enough in its portrayals of diversity. Moreover, her efforts to assert auteur-­style prestige markers backfired b­ ecause The CW ultimately cares more about building the values of its franchises than it does about cultivating prestige. Accepted prestige showrunners like The Sopranos’ David Chase have had their artistic credentials boosted when they defend controversial plot points. However, as the first-­time, ­woman showrunner of a reboot on a youth-­oriented network, MacKenzie did not have the authority to defend her creative decisions and retain control of her program. Indeed, some fans celebrated her departure from the show as a victory and expressed their hope for more fan control over the production. One Tumblr post titled a GIF of ­women toasting “­Here’s to the next” showrunner actually understanding what fans want!72

Notes 1 ​Bryn Sandberg, “Carina Adly MacKenzie Out as ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Showrunner (Exclusive),” The Hollywood Reporter, July 10, 2020, https://­w ww​ .­hollywoodreporter​.­com​/­live​-­feed​/­carina​-­adly​-m ­ ackenzie​-­as​-­roswell​-­new​-m ­ exico​ -­showrunner​-­1302667. 2 ​Carina Adly MacKenzie (@cadlymack), “I’m Gonna Let Him Fly,” Twitter, July 10, 2020, https://­t witter​.­com​/­cadlymack​/­status​/­1281639833505390593. 3 ​MacKenzie, “I’m Gonna Let Him Fly.” 4 ​Charlotte Howell, Divine Programming: Negotiating Chris­tian­ity in American Dramatic Tele­vi­sion Production 1996–2016 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 2.

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5 ​Stan Beeler, “Ros­well,” in The Essential Cult TV Reader, ed. David Lavery (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 214–220. 6 ​Ariana Romero, “Ros­well, New Mexico Review: It’s Just Twilight Plus Aliens and It’s Fun,” January 10, 2019, https://­w ww​.r­ efinery29​.­com​/­en​-­us​/2­ 019​/­01​/­221360​/­roswell​ -­new​-­mexico​-­cw​-­review​-­season​-­1​-­a lien​-r­ omance. 7 ​Derek Johnson, “Fan-­Tagonism: Factions, Institutions, and Constitutive Hegemonies of Fandom,” in Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 287. 8 ​Derek Johnson, “Devaluing and Revaluing Seriality: The Gendered Discourses of Media Franchising,” Media, Culture & Society 33, no. 7 (2011): 1084. 9 ​Caryn Murphy, “The CW: Media Conglomerates in Partnership,” in From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels, ed. Derek Johnson (New York: Routledge, 2018). 10 ​Josef Adalian, “The CW Is One of the Bigger TV Success Stories of the De­cade,” Vulture, May 19, 2016, https://­w ww​.­vulture​.­com​/­2016​/­05​/­cw​-­is​-­a​-­t v​-­success​-­story​ .­html. 11 ​Murphy, “The CW,” 40. 12 ​Murphy, “The CW,” 40. 13 ​Murphy, “The CW,” 40. 14 ​Linda Holmes, “Every­one Is a Traveler as The CW Returns to ‘Ros­well, New Mexico,’ ” NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour, January 15, 2019, https://­w ww​.­npr​.­org​ /­2019​/0 ­ 1​/1­ 5​/­685488142​/­everyone​-i­ s​-­a​-­traveler​-­as​-t­ he​-­cw​-­returns​-t­ o​-­roswell​-n ­ ew​ -­mexico; Josh Bell, “REVIEW: The CW’s Ros­well Reboot Is an Underwhelming Alien Soap Opera,” CBR, January 2, 2019, https://­w ww​.c­ br​.­com​/­review​-r­ oswell​ -­new​-­mexico​/­; Romero, “Ros­well, New Mexico Review.” 15 ​Murphy, “The CW,” 40. 16 ​Nick Venable, “Why Crazy Ex-­Girlfriend Got Renewed, Despite Low Ratings,” Cinemablend, January 9, 2017, https://­w ww​.c­ inemablend​.­com​/­television​/­1610030​ /­why​-­crazy​-e­ x​-­g irlfriend​-­got​-­renewed​-­despite​-­low​-r­ atings. 17 ​Emily Nussbaum, “ ‘Jane the Virgin’ Is Not a Guilty Plea­sure,” The New Yorker, March 5, 2018, https://­w ww​.­newyorker​.­com​/­magazine​/2­ 018​/­03​/­12​/­jane​-­the​-­virgin​ -­is​-­not​-­a​-g­ uilty​-­pleasure. 1 8 ​Jacinta Yanders, “ ‘ We ­Can’t Have Two White Boys Trying to Tell a Latina Story’: Nostalgia, Identity, and Cultural Specificity,” in Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand, ed. Kathryn Pallister (New York: Lexington Books, 2019), 139. 19 ​“ ‘Orange’ Creator Jenji Kohan: ‘­Piper Was My Trojan Horse,’ ” Fresh Air, NPR, August 13, 2013, https://­w ww​.­npr​.­org​/­2013​/­08​/1­ 3​/­211639989​/­orange​-­creator​-­jenji​ -­kohan​-­piper​-­was​-­my​-­trojan​-­horse. 20 ​Deborah L. Jaramillo, “The ­Family Racket: AOL Time Warner, HBO, The Sopranos, and the Construction of a Quality Brand,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 26, no. 1 (2002): 65. 21 ​Johnson, “Devaluing and Revaluing Seriality”; Elana Levine, Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera & US Tele­vi­sion History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020). 22 ​James Greenberg, “Rescuing Batman,” Los Angeles Times, May 8, 2005, https://­ www​.­latimes​.­com​/­archives​/­la​-­xpm​-­2005​-­may​-­08​-­ca​-­batman8​-­story​.­html. 23 ​Carina Adly MacKenzie, Jeanine Mason, Nathan Parsons, and Aisha Tyler, “ ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Panel,” Comic-­Con, San Diego, CA, July 21, 2018, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​/­watch​? v­ ​=­DBo74b5vuEM.

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24 ​Robert Stam, “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation,” in Film Adaptation, ed. James Naremore (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 54–76; Linda Hutcheon with Siobhan O’Flynn, A Theory of Adaptation, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2013). 2 5 ​Caroline Framke, “TV Review: ‘Ros­well, New Mexico,’ ” Variety, January 14, 2019, https://­variety​.­com​/­2019​/­t v​/­reviews​/­roswell​-­new​-­mexico​-­c w​-­review​ -­1203105892​/­. 26 ​Laura Miller, “Where No TV Show Has Gone Before,” Salon​.c­ om, July 9, 2005, https://­w ww​.­salon​.­com​/­2005​/0 ­ 7​/­09​/­battlestar​_ ­galactica​_­3​/­. 27 ​Yanders, “ ‘ We C ­ an’t Have Two White Boys Trying to Tell a Latina Story,’ ” 137–138. 28 ​Yanders, “ ‘We ­Can’t Have Two White Boys Trying to Tell a Latina Story,’ ” 140. 29 ​Leslie Goldberg, “ ‘Ros­well’ Writer Inks Development Deal with Warner Bros. TV (Exclusive),” The Hollywood Reporter, April 11, 2018, https://­w ww​ .­hollywoodreporter​.­com​/­live​-­feed​/­roswell​-­writer​-­inks​-­development​-­deal​-­warner​ -­bros​-­t v​-­1101673. 3 0 ​Zenaida Gorbea, “ ‘Ros­well’ Re­unites at ATX TV Festival,” The Young Folks, June 9, 2014, https://­w ww​.­theyoungfolks​.­com​/­television​/­34337​/­roswell​-­reunites​-­at​-­atx​-­t v​ -­festival​/­. 31 ​Myles McNutt, “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life: TV Revivals,” in How to Watch Tele­vi­sion, ed. Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell, 2nd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2020), 254. 32 ​Bruce Miller, “ ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Drinks in the Town’s Atmosphere,” Sioux City Journal, February 9, 2019, https://­siouxcityjournal​.­com​/e­ ntertainment​ /­television​/­roswell​-­new​-­mexico​-d­ rinks​-i­ n​-­the​-­towns​-­atmosphere​/­article​_4 ­ 3d37d1b​ -­2344​-­54d9​-­9390​-­e52b1c32684a​.­html. 3 3 ​MacKenzie et al., “ ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Panel.” 3 4 ​MacKenzie et al., “ ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Panel.” 3 5 ​Carina Adly MacKenzie, (@cadlymack), “I Would like to Tell You Guys about Chris Hollier  .  .  .  ,” Twitter, February 4, 2019, https://­t witter​.­com​/­cadlymack​/­status​ /­1092513271809171460. 36 ​MacKenzie, “I’m Gonna Let Him Fly.” 37 ​MacKenzie et al., “ ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Panel.” 3 8 ​Carina Adly MacKenzie, “Ros­well, New Mexico Creator Talks Reversing the White-­Washing from the Original Series,” Entertainment Weekly​.­Com, February 12, 2019, https://­ew​.­com​/­t v​/­2019​/­02​/­12​/­roswell​-­new​-­mexico​-­creator​-­personal​ -­experiences​-s­ how​-­influence​/­. 39 ​MacKenzie, “  ‘Ros­well, New Mexico Creator Talks.” 4 0 ​MacKenzie et al., “ ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Panel.” 41 ​Kristen Lopez, “ ‘Ros­well, N.M’: How The CW Series Worked to Promote an Au­then­tic Citizenship Story in Season 2,” IndieWire, March 25, 2020, https://­ www​.­indiewire​.­com​/­2020​/­03​/­roswell​-­nm​-­the​-­c w​-­inclusive​-­season​-­2​-­1202219256​/­. 42 ​Nellie Andreeva, “ ‘Ros­well’ Reboot with Immigration Twist In Works at the CW from Amblin TV,” Deadline, October 12, 2017, https://­deadline​.­com​/­2017​/­10​ /­roswell​-r­ eboot​-­with​-­immigration​-­t wist​-­the​-­cw​-­amblin​-­t v​-­1202187242​/­. 4 3 ​Geoffrey Wing Shotz, “Tearin’ Up My Heart,” Ros­well, New Mexico, The CW, January 29, 2019. 44 ​Lance Anderson, “Stay (I Missed You),” Ros­well, New Mexico, The CW, March 16, 2020. 45 ​Franklin A. Vallette, “Linger,” Ros­well, New Mexico, The CW, June 1, 2020.

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46 ​Christina Radish, “Ros­well New Mexico Showrunner Interview: Season 2 and Beyond,” Collider, March 16, 2020, https://­collider​.­com​/­roswell​-­new​-­mexico​ -­showrunner​-i­ nterview​-­season​-­2​/­. 47 ​Delia Harrington, “Ros­well Season 2 Episode 3 Review: Good ­Mother,” Den of Geek, March 31, 2020, https://­w ww​.d­ enofgeek​.­com​/­t v​/­roswell​-s­ eason​-­2​-­episode​-­3​ -­review​-­good​-­mother​/­. 4 8 ​Jeffrey G. Hunt, “Good ­Mother,” Ros­well, New Mexico, The CW, March 30, 2020, https://­w ww​.i­ mdb​.­com​/t­ itle​/­tt10947704​/­. 49 ​Merrill Barr, “ ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Review: A Solid Genre Romp That D ­ oesn’t Take Shots at Red State Culture,” Forbes, January 3, 2019, https://­w ww​.­forbes​.­com​ /­sites​/m ­ errillbarr​/­2019​/­01​/0 ­ 3​/­roswell​-n ­ ew​-­mexico​-­review​-­a​-­solid​-­genre​-­romp​-­that​ -­doesnt​-­take​-­shots​-­at​-r­ ed​-s­ tate​-­culture​/­; Amy Amatangelo, “The CW’s Lazy Ros­well, New Mexico Is the Remake Craze at Its Worst,” Paste Magazine, January 14, 2019, https://­w ww​.­pastemagazine​.­com​/­t v​/­roswell​-­new​-­mexico​/­roswell​-­new​ -­mexico​-­the​-c­ w​-­remake​-r­ eview​/­. 50 ​Amatangelo, “The CW’s Lazy Ros­well”; Michelle Alexandria, “TV Review: Ros­well, New Mexico Is a Slap in the Face to Fans of the Original, Michelle’s Review,” Eclipse Magazine, January 15, 2019, http://­eclipsemagazine​.­com​/­88175​-­2​/­. 51 ​Alex Brown, “We Need More Ros­well, New Mexico in Our Lives,” Tor​.­com, April 24, 2019, https://­w ww​.­tor​.­com​/­2019​/0 ­ 4​/­24​/­we​-­need​-­more​-­roswell​-­new​ -­mexico​-­in​-­our​-­lives​-­review​/­. 52 ​Andrea Reiher, “ ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Review: The CW Reboot Finds New ­Relevancy,” Collider, January 14, 2019, https://­collider​.­com​/­roswell​-­new​-­mexico​ -­review​/­. 5 3 ​Brown, “We Need More Ros­well”; Danette Chavez, “The Ros­well Reboot’s Most In­ter­est­ing Idea Is Also Its Least Developed,” The A.V. Club, January 15, 2019, https://­t v​.­avclub​.­com​/t­ he​-­roswell​-­reboot​-­s​-­most​-­interesting​-­idea​-­is​-­a lso​-­its​ -­1831650915; Veronica Rose, “Ros­well, New Mexico: Let’s Unpack,” The Series Regulars, January 16, 2019, https://­theseriesregulars​.­com​/­roswell​-­new​-­mexico​-­lets​ -­unpack​/­. 5 4 ​Chavez, “The Ros­well Reboot’s”; Sezín Koehler, “ ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Brings the Immigration Debate into an Extraterrestrial Love Story,” Black Girl Nerds, January 24, 2019, https://­blackgirlnerds​.­com​/­roswell​-­new​-­mexico​-b­ rings​-t­ he​ -­immigration​-­debate​-­into​-­an​-­extraterrestrial​-­love​-­story​/­. 55 ​Nicole Acevedo, “TV Shows Strug­g le to Reflect U.S. Latino Presence. ­Will It Get Better?,” NBCNews​.­com, May 24, 2019, https://­w ww​.n ­ bcnews​.­com​/n ­ ews​/­latino​ /­producers​-­latino​-­themed​-­t v​-­shows​-­fight​-s­ tay​-n ­ 989561; Kristen Lopez, “  ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Sets a Sci-­Fi Story about Aliens against a Backdrop of Anti-­immigrant Sentiment,” Remezcla, January 15, 2019, https://­remezcla​.­com​/­features​/­fi lm​/­review​ -­roswell​-­new​-­mexico​-s­ eason​-­1​/­. 56 ​Acevedo, “TV Shows Strug­g le.” 57 ​Miranda J. Banks, “A Boy for All Planets: Ros­well, Smallville and the Teen Male Melodrama,” in Teen TV: Genre, Consumption and Identity, ed. Glyn Davis and Kay Dickinson (London: BFI Publishing, 2004), 19. 5 8 ​Alexandria, “TV Review.” 59 ​Alexandria, “TV Review.” 6 0 ​Doris Elin Urrutia, “ ‘Ros­well’ Star ­Will Direct On-­Screen Love Interest in Reboot’s Season 2,” Space​.­Com, October 24, 2019, https://­w ww​.­space​.­com​/­g uest​ -­appearances​-a­ nnounced​-­roswell​-­new​-­mexico​.­html.

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61 ​Annemarie Navar-­Gill, “From Strategic Retweets to Group Hangs: Writers’ Room Twitter Accounts and the Productive Ecosystem of TV Social Media Fans,” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 19, no. 5 (2018): 420. 62 ​Ariana Romero, “This Secret Sisterhood of Latinx Actresses Started A Hollywood Revolution,” Refinery29, October 7, 2019, https://­w ww​.­refinery29​.­com​/­en​-­us​/­2019​ /­10​/­8505288​/­latina​-­actresses​-­young​-­hollywood​-­society. 6 3 ​Jeanine Mason (@itsjeaninemason), “Next Up in Our Burgeoning Book Club . . . ​ I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican D ­ aughter by @ErikaLSanchez. Major Liz Ortecho Vibes! Can Not Put It Down. Grateful for All It Tackles in Navigating Expectations, ­Mental Health & Loss. All While Making Me Laugh & Say ‘Preach,’ ” Twitter, July 6, 2019, https://­t witter​.­com​/­itsjeaninemason​/­status​ /­1147530524354863114; Jeanine Mason (@itsjeaninemason), “Back in Liz Ortecho’s Combat Boots & Continuing Our Book Club with #ThePoetX by Another Brilliant Liz, @AcevedoWrites. So Happy to Have Th ­ ese Words with Me This Week. #ReadswellNM,” Twitter, August 26, 2019, https://­t witter​.­com​ /­itsjeaninemason​/­status​/­1166039602416635904. 6 4 ​Navar-­Gill, “From Strategic Retweets to Group Hangs,” 416. 65 ​Navar-­Gill, “From Strategic Retweets to Group Hangs,” 423. 66 ​Navar-­Gill, “From Strategic Retweets to Group Hangs,” 423. 67 ​Navar-­Gill, “From Strategic Retweets to Group Hangs,” 427. 6 8 ​Farid-­u l-­Haq, “Carina Adly Mackenzie Defending Poor Queer Repre­sen­ta­tion in ‘Ros­well, New Mexico’ Is Hilarious!,” The Geekiary, April 11, 2019, https://­ thegeekiary​.­com​/­mackenzie​-­defends​-­poor​-­queer​-­representation​/­63260. 69 ​Thusitakemyleave, “S3 Wishlist,” Tumblr, May 19, 2020, https://­thusitakemyleave​ .­tumblr​.c­ om​/­post​/­618567336170078208​/­i​-­was​-­going​-­to​-­wait​-­til​-­the​-­end​-­of​-­the​ -­season​-­to. 70 ​Carina Adly MacKenzie (@cadlymack), “ ‘Steamy’ I Get, ‘Teen’ Not so Much,” Twitter, May 1, 2019, https://­t witter​.c­ om​/­cadlymack​/­status​/­1123691823220830209. 71 ​Michael Guerin (@aliencurls), “She Whines about This . . . ,” Tumblr, March 16, 2020, https://­a liencurls​.­tumblr​.­com​/­post​/­612787279806775296​/­she​-­whines​-­about​ -­this​-­but​-s­ ays​-­this​-­get​-­your; Kitty (@Hell0Kit_ty), “@cadlymack This Is Prob­ably ­Because They Behave like Teen­agers or C ­ hildren . . . ​and Not as Adult,” Twitter, May 2, 2019, https://­t witter​.­com​/H ­ ell0Kit​_­t y​/­status​/­1124013389427159042. 72 ​Kaile, “Did That R ­ eally Actually Just Happen?,” Tumblr, Idealuk, July 10, 2020, https://­idealuk​.­tumblr​.­com​/p­ ost​/­623287429913346048​/­did​-t­ hat​-­really​-­actually​-­just​ -­happen.

Part 2

How Con­temporary Programming Met Prestige TV Unconventional Depictions of Cultural and Televisual Norms

5

Prestige Adaptation by Design The Commercial Appeal of Latinx Tropes in Queen of the South JAVIER RAMIREZ

In June 2016, Queen of the South (QOTS) debuted on USA Network.1 Unlike the lighthearted and optimistic series previously synonymous with the cable channel, QOTS tells the story of Teresa Mendoza (Alice Braga), a poor w ­ oman from Culiacán, México, who becomes a power­ful drug queen.2 While the drug storyline may have initially appeared to be incompatible with USA’s brand, QOTS emerged as part of the channel’s rebranding strategy that favored socially relevant series. Although most critics acknowledged the show’s affiliation with USA’s deliberate programming reconfiguration, several of them derided what they perceived to be its formulaic drug-­themed properties. The New York Times reviewer Mike Hale, in par­tic­u­lar, took issue with the show’s self-­conscious references to Hollywood gangster cinema. Hale criticized such mob-­specific allusions b­ ecause he believed that its creators w ­ ere pandering to U.S. spectators by making QOTS’s hyperviolence and drug trafficking more accessible.3 However, the channel’s decision to cater to viewers’ assumed desires, including their preference for familiar gangster genre conventions, proved effective. The success of 95

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the series, though, is only partly attributable to accommodating t­ hose audience expectations. QOTS’s reputation has been equally enhanced by a strategic reliance on a range of unconventional Latinx representations—­from power­ful Latina ­women to redeemable sicarios (drug cartel hitmen)—­that challenge some of the very generic traditions that the show also supports. This Latinx character complexity has amplified QOTS’s cultural value and made the series more appealing to both Latinx and wider audiences. In this chapter, I examine how Latinx portrayals and drug-­related themes in QOTS complicate its relationship to prestige tele­vi­sion. The use of contradictory Latinx depictions in the USA series aligns with industry repre­sen­ta­tional practices in which creators strategically deploy—­for better or worse—­provocative Latinx characters to optimize revenue generation. My examination of QOTS exemplifies this phenomenon by highlighting the industrial challenge of adapting Latin American tele­vi­sion content in ways that appeal to a growing U.S.-­based Latinx population but do not alienate a mass audience. QOTS is also an in­ter­est­ing case study b­ ecause USA and its scripted, original programming are not typically associated with prestige tele­vi­sion. Additionally, the show’s textual properties highlight contradictions of repre­sen­ta­tion and underscore cultural hierarchies that shape evaluations and understandings of con­temporary tele­vi­sion programming. To demonstrate ­these tensions, I first introduce key aspects of QOTS and then map the polarized critical reception of seasons one through four. Consequently, I also focus on the delicate balance showrunners maintain to appeal si­mul­ta­neously to Latinx audiences and mainstream U.S. viewers. I ultimately contend that in a saturated and competitive media landscape, interpretations of prestige tele­vi­sion should be considered in relation to the broader contexts shaping media criticism and portrayals of identity. Diverse cast cable programming, such as QOTS, epitomizes how industrial inclusivity efforts do not always align with conventional understandings of televisual prestige primarily ­because of the role the critical establishment plays in categorizing constituent programming.

Redesigning QOTS’s Source Material for U.S. Tele­vi­sion In contrast to most prestige programs, QOTS is not based entirely on an original script. Instead, it derives from Arturo Pérez-­Reverte’s La reina del sur (2002), the novel that inspired both Telemundo’s La reina del sur (2011, 2019, 2021; LRDS) and QOTS. Although the USA version shares the same female protagonist and features a similar narrative trajectory as the book and LRDS, its portrayal of Teresa’s ascent in the narco (drug trafficking) world differs in a number of ways. For starters, most of the drama in QOTS is set in the United States and México. This was a smart move by creators ­because U.S. audiences are more familiar with the generic convention of locating drug trafficking and drug-­related vio­lence between ­these two countries than they are with how the

Prestige Adaptation by Design • 97

illicit activities operate in the other Latin American and Eu­ro­pean nations depicted in the novel and LRDS. The addition of the Camila Vargas (Veronica Falcón) character, who is not portrayed in the Spanish-­language versions, also sets QOTS apart. Camila is the wife of Epifanio Vargas (Joaquim de Almeida), the leader of the Vargas Cartel. ­A fter Teresa thwarts Epifanio’s plan to kill her, she finds refuge with Camila, who runs her estranged husband’s operations in Dallas, Texas. Teresa’s street smarts and mathematical savvy initially impress Camila, but their partnership ends ­because Teresa finds Camila’s tactics cruel and unethical. This rift forces the two power­ful Mexican ­women to fight to become “Queen of the South.” The unconventional pitting of two female drug queens against each other, combined with the cast of male foes Teresa eliminates, si­mul­ta­neously differentiates the show from the U.S. tele­vi­sion competition and also distinguishes QOTS from Pérez-­Reverte’s novel and LRDS. Another textual ele­ment aimed at raising the profile of QOTS relates to the choice creators made to accentuate Teresa’s moral ambiguity. Teresa may be a vindictive narcotrafficker who methodically and strategically defeats her rivals, but she does not cold-­bloodedly kill all of her enemies. Her unconventional capacity to express empathy in a brutal drug trafficking milieu separates Teresa from the generic norm. In fact, Yeidy M. Rivero contends that in LRDS, Teresa “is a melodramatic antiheroine.”4 The choice to focus on a melodramatic protagonist and to create a melodramatic tone, she theorizes, distances Telemundo’s adaptation from standard Columbian narco telenovelas, which instead are characterized by merciless w ­ omen and a less melodramatic tone.5 Such differentiation demonstrates how LRDS was “­shaped by . . . ​transnational cultural, industrial and economic forces” that Rivero argues led to the “creation of a new telenovela protagonist” with Teresa.6 Teresa’s depiction in QOTS is similarly a product of its par­tic­u­lar contexts ­because of how creators purposefully aligned it with the U.S. prestige tele­vi­sion convention that centers on empathetic, yet morally conflicted, protagonists. QOTS and Teresa emerge from what Amanda Lotz dubs the “male-­centered serial” and the “flawed protagonists” whose internal strug­gles and moral decay reliably produce critically acclaimed tele­vi­sion.7 Similar to ­these male-­centered serials, QOTS and its serialized narrative emphasize a single protagonist in this mold. The frequent use in the series of protagonist voice-­overs that express interior monologues—an attribute of some influential male-­centered serials—­sheds light on what motivates Teresa to become a queenpin and to remain in power.8 Such introspective ruminations and the consequent sustained focus on a Latina protagonist offer a distinctively female perspective that lures audiences seeking diverse female voices. Additionally, Teresa evokes many hallmarks of the quin­ tes­sen­tial con­temporary White male “flawed protagonist” that Lotz examines, such as being conflicted and “morally ambiguous.”9 Teresa’s involvement in the global drug trade resembles that of other flawed male antiheroes who dominate prestige programming and are often forced into participating in criminal

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activities. Specifically, Teresa’s enmeshment in the narco world stems from the killing of her boyfriend, Güero (Jon-­Michael Ecker), by Epifanio’s henchmen. His death, combined with her experiencing and witnessing the brutality of Mexican drug cartels, influence the queenpin to create her own drug organ­ ization. As a result, she operates illicitly outside of society’s l­egal and moral bounds; however, Teresa is a likeable protagonist b­ ecause she sustains the principled belief that she can run a cartel without being cruel or inhumane. This ethicality makes Teresa a more marketable sociocultural product, especially for viewers wanting complex ­women characters of color. Perhaps more importantly, Teresa’s characterization bolsters the strategic purpose of linking the flawed female protagonist with the troubled male characters that dominate U.S. prestige programming.

Is It Serious Enough? QOTS and the Question of Prestige QOTS’s hyperviolence and antiheroine also align with USA’s contemporaneous rebranding proj­ect and its corresponding new audience-­targeting tactics. In his case study of Mr. Robot (2015–2019), Anthony Smith details how changing industrial contexts led to an abandonment of the cable com­pany’s “blue skies” strategy, which characterized the channel’s original programming before Mr. Robot’s premiere.10 Smith argues that USA’s shift is “exemplary of a broader industrial pattern . . . ​of basic cable channels reconfiguring brand identities due to the increased industrial significance of millennials.”11 Mr. Robot, The Sinner (2017– 2021), and The Purge (2018–2019) exemplify the ominous programming tone that the channel has recently ­adopted, which Alex Zalben refers to as the “grey skies era.”12 QOTS is another example of USA’s programming modifications that respond to increased competition and the economic incentive of attracting underserved audience demographics. Whereas Mr. Robot was constructed primarily to cater to a younger market segment, QOTS reveals USA’s similar attempt to target Latinx audiences. In contrast to Mr. Robot’s almost universal critical acclaim, though, reviewers have been polarized about QOTS. Critical reviews of season one of QOTS demonstrate why it can be difficult to categorize the show as prestige tele­vi­sion. Esquire’s Eric Thurm contends prestige shows are designed “to be taken seriously. Its characters are very serious ­people d­ oing serious work.”13 IndieWire’s Ben Travers casts doubt on QOTS in this regard by saying that the show’s “amped up aesthetics” and stilted female characters devalue QOTS’s dramatic seriousness.14 Similarly, reviewer Mitchel Broussard believes that QOTS could potentially “diverge into some quality, captivating TV,” but maintains that “its shelf life is already reading as worryingly stale.”15 The “stale” Broussard refers to is the prototypical, hyperviolent portrayal of narcos. Regardless, he at least grants that Braga’s strong depiction of the fictional queenpin deserves credit. Variety’s Sonia Saraiya disagrees with ­these male critics. For Saraiya, QOTS is akin to Netflix’s Narcos (2015–2017), and its

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“female-­empowerment ­angle . . . ​weirdly kind of works.”16 Her “weirdly kind of works” assertion does not outright signal that she deems QOTS to be prestige tele­vi­sion. Indeed, Saraiya’s review is not without critiques, yet her all-­around positive assessment ­counters Broussard and Travers, both of whom praised the female per­for­mances, but largely devalued the series. As this critical polarization highlights, reviewers did not reach consensus on QOTS’s quality, which is demonstrated by the aggregated season one critical score of 68 ­percent on Rotten Tomatoes. This is in stark contrast to Mr. Robot and its almost perfect scores on the same website.17 It appears that the uncertainty some critics have about QOTS’s artistic value often connects directly to the reviewer’s race and gender in relation to the show’s repre­sen­ta­tional politics. In their groundbreaking report, Marc Choueiti et al. investigated the impact that a lack of inclusivity has on film criticism.18 They found that White, male critics wrote 65.6 ­percent of all film reviews, which is a staggering figure in comparison to the 3.7 ­percent written by “underrepresented female critics.”19 Their data also indicates that the identity of a critic and a film’s protagonist “intersect[s] to affect standardized review scores, particularly for White male and underrepresented female critics.”20 In other words, underrepresented female and White, male critics assessed White, male-­led movies the same, but they differed when judging films with underrepresented female leads, as “­women of color ­were more likely to rate ­these movies as ‘fresh’ (81.1%) than White male critics (59.2%) w ­ ere.”21 Significantly, even though the report focuses solely on film reviews, Choueiti et al.’s findings on the White-­majority composition of movie reviewers expose similar prob­lems with tele­vi­sion critics determining what constitutes prestige programming. Based on my analy­sis of Rotten Tomatoes reviews for seasons one through four of QOTS, underrepresented w ­ omen critics tend to evaluate this minority-­ led and minority-­dominant series more favorably than their White male counter­ parts.22 For example, Travers recommends that the show’s quality would improve by scaling “the vio­lence back a bit. Keep the sex, but make it sexy.”23 Such commentary dismisses the seriousness of QOTS and troublingly reduces Teresa to a sexualized, one-­dimensional character. Rob Owen also offers a negative assessment in relation to gender repre­sen­ta­tion by writing that a “female drug dealer’s rise” to power is “less in­ter­est­ing than, say, ‘Traffic,’ or certainly ‘Breaking Bad.’ ”24 In contrast, Danette Chavez, a ­woman of color, recognizes that QOTS “looks like a gender-­swapped Breaking Bad . . . ​But that glib assessment sells both shows short.”25 She notes that QOTS’s source material, Pérez-­Reverte’s novel, predates AMC’s highly acclaimed show, which is evidence for her that QOTS is not beholden to Breaking Bad.26 Chavez’s differentiation of QOTS from Breaking Bad identifies a c­ ouple of salient issues concerning prestige tele­vi­sion. First, adapted Latin American narco tele­vi­sion content is often deemed to lack artistic and cultural value ­because, according to critics like Owen, U.S.-­produced televisual narcotraffickers are instead viewed as original and consequently

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signify prestige. Second, the suggestion that Teresa is simply a female facsimile of the White male “flawed protagonists,” to use Lotz’s apt description, perpetuates a racial and gendered bias that uncritically accepts shows with difficult White, men characters as being inherently higher quality than diverse cast programs with similarly complicated w ­ omen of color. Although White, male critics ­were generally unimpressed with the series, Salon’s Melanie McFarland typifies how w ­ omen critics pointed out that shows like QOTS are at a disadvantage with reviewers accustomed to prestige tele­vi­ sion that centers on men ­because they instead focus on “­women as criminal masterminds and anti-­heroes.”27 Categories like “prestige” and “quality,” writes Jason Mittell, “are all cultural constructions, used to reinforce hierarchies steeped in social power and identity.”28 Mittell’s description of prestige and Quality TV lays bare the power White, male tele­vi­sion critics can have in determining a show’s cultural legitimacy. Likewise, McFarland cites the recent cancellations of series featuring minority lead characters—­East Los High (2013–2017) and Under­ ground (2016–2017)—as examples of “the tele­vi­sion industry’s circular habit of embracing inclusion and then backing away from it.”29 McFarland thus exposes how the racial and gendered value systems of White, male critics can impact the success and renewal of a dramatic series. If its cultural and artistic value is based solely on the whims of the critical establishment, then QOTS has not yet been, and prob­ably ­will never be, treated as an unequivocal constituent of the prestige category b­ ecause of ­these and similar biases. QOTS’s polarized critical reception reveals the prob­lem with relying too heavi­ly on critics to delineate the par­ameters of prestige tele­vi­sion. To gain a clearer picture of the show’s relationship to the category, it is instructive to examine how industry practices, especially as they relate to off-­and on-­screen Latinx repre­sen­ta­tion, influenced producers of QOTS to court two specific audience segments. The roles of creatives on the show are vital to this dual audience-­targeting strategy ­because their repre­sen­ta­tional decisions underscore the complicated ways that Latinx tropes have been employed to elevate QOTS’s reputation for Latinx and mainstream audiences. Of course, the prioritization of Latinx viewers is not a new development in the industry. Latinx-­centered programs like George Lopez (2002–2007), Ugly Betty (2006–2010), Jane the Virgin (2014–2019), and, as Catherine Martin effectively documents in the previous chapter, Latinx reboots such as Ros­well, New Mexico (2019–) proved it can be financially advantageous to lure Latinx viewership.30 Even so, the success of ­these shows has not yet inspired widespread competition for Latinx audiences. In her overview of “The Latino Media Gap” report (2014), Frances Negrón-­Muntaner documents the off-­and on-­screen exclusion of Latinx repre­sen­ta­tion in U.S. mass media.31 Such discriminatory practices, Negrón-­Muntaner asserts, often run contrary to the economic interests of media companies. She notes, for example, that by diversifying Latinx talent both in front of and ­behind the camera, ABC attracted Latinx viewers, which, in turn,

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yielded higher ratings and advertisement revenues.32 However, ABC still recently canceled The Baker and The Beauty (2020), a Latinx comedy show with an all-­ Latinx cast and a predominantly Latinx crew, which illustrates not only its continued re­sis­tance to diversification but also how TV industry economics do not always translate into increasing the market value of Latinx audiences.33 To capitalize on this underserved market segment, in 2014, at a time when Latinx media participation was overwhelmingly low, NBCUniversal announced that they would begin mining their subsidiary, Telemundo, for Spanish-­language source material to be distributed on USA.34 By adapting popu­lar telenovelas into English-­language programming, much of which already had a presold Spanish-­ speaking audience, NBCUniversal believed it gained a competitive advantage by attracting Latinx viewers to ­counter an ever-­diminishing audience pool. Put simply, the decision to run English-­language versions of popu­lar Latin American programs on USA made good business sense. The challenge, though, was that creators’ adaptation of Latin American content also had to Americanize the program for broader viewership, but not so much that it would lose its par­tic­u­lar appeal to Latinx audiences. Evidence suggests that a guiding force ­behind QOTS’s creation was capturing Latinx viewers. When executive producer David Friendly pitched the series to network executives, he called English-­speaking Latinx spectators a “­g iant sleeping audience.”35 His statement implies that basic cable networks have failed to attract, much less compete for, Latinx audiences. In fact, the scarcity of Latinx-­ specific programs speaks directly to how a rapidly growing demographic is disproportionately underrepresented and underserved by the U.S. TV industry.36 Discourses of Quality TV help maintain such structural inequalities. “The quality audience,” as Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey explain, “is relatively affluent, educated, po­liti­cally and socially left-­leaning, and—­a lthough typically unspoken—­W hite.”37 This tacit characteristic of prestige viewers reveals why Latinx spectators historically never have been considered a part of that coveted audience. Friendly’s pitch and his “­giant sleeping audience” comment, however, realize the economic and cultural capital of Latinx viewers. Their appreciation of QOTS’s female-­driven storyline, minority-­dominant cast, and an original portrayal of relevant sociocultural issues could legitimize the show while also creating a universal appeal, which, for Nygaard and Lagerwey, means attracting White viewers.38 Friendly may have wanted to prioritize Latinx audiences, but the show’s first season strug­gled with critics, and the production itself highlighted prob­lems with not having Latinx creatives involved in key artistic decisions. ­These issues w ­ ere rooted in designing a female-­driven show about Latina women’s empowerment without initially hiring a single Latina w ­ oman in a position of creative authority. Braga rightly described season one as “more action-­y, more boyish in a way” than the show would ­later become, the outcome of its originally being created by White, male head writers: M.  A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller. This

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White-­and male-­dominated creative team was further bolstered by Scott Rosenbaum serving as the showrunner for season one.39 Martin also addresses the tension surrounding White creatives on Ros­well, NM in the preceding chapter. Specifically, she notes that Carina Adly MacKenzie, the straight, White-­presenting creator and co-­showrunner of Ros­well, NM attempted to build her authority to produce a Latinx-­themed series by emphasizing her efforts to diversify the writer’s room and casting a Latina actress in the lead role. A slightly dif­fer­ent picture emerges in QOTS. ­A fter season one, Friendly replaced Rosenbaum with Natalie Chaidez as co-­executive producer and showrunner and Dailyn Rodriguez as co-­executive producer. Just like MacKenzie, Friendly believed Latina inclusivity could legitimize the cultural merits of QOTS for Latinx audiences.40 However, MacKenzie remained the “public face” of Ros­well, NM. By contrast, Latinx creatives controlled the artistic direction of QOTS ­after season one. Even ­after Chaidez left a­ fter season three to pursue her own proj­ects with Fox 21 TV Studios and Universal Cable Productions, the creative helm remained in Latinx hands, with Friendly next promoting Rodriguez and Benjamin Daniel Lobato to co-­showrunners, which protected the show’s off-­and on-­screen Latinx bona fides.41 Chaidez, Rodriguez, and Lobato’s deployment of Latinx tropes in seasons two through four reveals the delicate balance that they struck to elevate the status of the series for Latinx and White viewers.

The Repre­sen­ta­tional Tightrope: Latinx Tropes and the Commerciality of QOTS Hypocritical mediations of identity politics demonstrate how the show’s Latinx repre­sen­ta­tions help QOTS stand out in a crowded tele­vi­sion landscape without alienating its two primary audiences. Teresa, for example, subverts what Lee Bebout refers to as the archetypal erotic, exotic Mexicana ­because she is instead depicted less as a desirable, sexual object and more as what Alicia Gaspar de Alba describes as a “Mexican version of the bad w ­ oman.”42 Although she is more ethically upstanding than is standard in ­these types of media, Teresa also lies, steals, drinks, and enjoys the fruits of her criminal enterprise. Her indiscretion departs from the long-­standing tradition of typically limiting Latina ­women to subordinate roles in the narcotrafficking world. Such transgressive be­hav­ior appeals to the sensibilities of Latinx audiences through its repre­sen­ta­tion practice of countering ste­reo­typical portrayals of Latina w ­ omen. Teresa’s “badness” also participates in the prestige tradition of celebrating antiheroes, thus making her more sympathetic for White viewers, many of whom might find her depiction progressive despite her illicit be­hav­iors. At the same time, Teresa’s badness performs the ideological work of reinforcing the televisual criminality of Latinx characters. She is, ­after all, a successful drug queen, who is unwilling to give up her drug trafficking enterprise for anyone or anything. For instance, in “Amores

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Perros/Love’s a B-­tch,” episode 7 of season 4, Teresa and Eddie Brucks (Bailey Chase) embark on a romantic getaway, but t­ hings turn violent when she murders a sicario. Teresa’s values are revealed when she subsequently chooses to continue being a narcotrafficker instead of maintaining the romance b­ ecause she knows that she w ­ ill endanger Eddie. Despite challenging the conventional portrayal of ­women privileging romantic relationships over every­thing e­ lse, Teresa’s badness also upholds the generic expectation of criminalizing Latinx populations. However empowering Teresa’s progressive depiction is in the series, then, she still confirms the cultural assumption for a White audience that Latinx characters are always narcos. Teresa’s contradictory repre­sen­ta­tion also allows the show to engage in the prestige tele­vi­sion convention of sophisticatedly addressing significant con­ temporary sociocultural issues. In season three, while exiled in Malta, Teresa learns that the man charged with laundering her money, Rocco de la Peña (Jordi Mollà), not only drugs and cuts w ­ omen but uses them as sexual currency. Teresa’s own experiences as a victim of sexual exploitation emboldens her to go to war against him. James (Peter Gadiot) and Pote Galvez (Hemky Madera), her two most trusted advisers, note that cartels have always exploited w ­ omen, and that saving de la Peña’s sex slaves ­will not change ­things. But Teresa’s ethicality is built upon being principled, which means she must aid and protect t­ hese ­women. Her willingness to jeopardize her own narco operations, combined with her assault on the patriarchal system of the global drug trade, not only makes Teresa a more empathetic character for Latinx and White audiences, it also enables the series to distance its w ­ oman narcotrafficker from ­actual, ruthless cartel leaders, like Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.43 Teresa’s repre­sen­ta­tion is further complicated by other ele­ments. To wit, her characterization aligns with what Clara Rodríguez dubs the “Latin look,” which refers to the media industry’s practice of favoring not-­too-­dark Latinx performers.44 Indeed, Braga, who plays Teresa, possesses light olive skin and dark hair and eyes, all key characteristics of the Latin look. This repre­sen­ta­ tional strategy privileges a Whiteness that bleaches her portrayal. Given the contemporaneous sociocultural and sociopo­liti­cal climate, in which strong anti-­Latinx sentiments emanated from the Trump White House and in popu­ lar discourses, Teresa’s sanitized depiction is particularly germane b­ ecause it disassociates her from the racialized threat that she poses as a drug queen. At the same time, the cultural and economic capital of Teresa’s Whiteness eliminates the social and cultural diversity of Latinx p­ eople, most notably darker and Black Latinx individuals. Conversely, her nemesis, Camila, is more racially coded. She almost always appears in tight and revealing clothing, deep red lipstick, and jet-­black eyeliner. Her portrayal heightens what Jillian M. Báez calls the “gendered dimension” of the “Latin look,” which features the same racial components (olive skin and dark hair and eyes) but idealizes the curvaceousness and voluptuousness of Latinx

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Teresa Mendoza from Queen of the South embodies the Latin look as she ponders her next move ­a fter seizing control of drug corridors in New Orleans and Miami.

Faced with an ultimatum, Camila Vargas, who exemplifies the ste­reo­t ypically racialized Latina, goes to war against her husband in Queen of the South.

­women.45 Camila’s ste­reo­typical depiction thus exalts a racialized femininity that is distinctly non-­White. Such racial registering demonstrates a careful repre­sen­ ta­tional juggling act on the part of Latinx creators. Their decision to racialize Camila affords them the opportunity to embody non-­W hite femininity. Her personification of Latina femininity, however, is ­limited ­because Camila’s pejoratively ste­reo­typical depiction lacks the nuancing that would problematize the industrial practice of the “Latin look.”

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Camila’s repre­sen­ta­tion also signifies many of the negative tendencies of Latinx televisual portrayals. As the antithesis to Teresa, Camila is willing to do what­ever is necessary to dominate her competition, including engaging in unethical activities that her rival would outright reject. In par­tic­u­lar, Camila has no qualms about killing indiscriminately, and t­ hose unfortunate enough to get caught in the crossfire are merely collateral damage. Camila even uses her own ­daughter, Isabela Vargas (Idalia Valles), to enact revenge against Epifanio, thus underscoring the expendability of every­one, especially “loved ones.” By representing Camila in such a manner, Latinx creators cater to what White mainstream viewers expect, which is the cultural assumption regarding the inhumane and violent proclivities of Latinx narcos. It is perhaps QOTS’s usage of Camila’s sexuality that panders most to cultural expectations of Latina ste­reo­types. Camila engages in sexual activities that allow her to succeed in the male-­dominated global drug trade. Her sexuality thus aligns her with the Latinx trope that reduces secondary Latina characters and their bodies to desirable objects.46 Camila’s sexualization is particularly impor­tant ­because it serves the strategic purpose of aligning QOTS with the boundary-­ pushing subject m ­ atter of prestige programming. Dan Hassler-­Forest suggests that frequent depictions of nudity, sex, vio­lence, and profanity are less a “qualitative distinction” and more about distinguishing HBO from other premium subscription ser­vices.47 Hassler-­Forest adds that by offering what he describes as the “most objectionable programming,” HBO frames series like Game of Thrones (2011–2019) as “ground-­breaking” and “challenging.”48 USA is not known for tele­vi­sion transgressions, but the cable channel’s effort to rebrand its original, scripted programming provides creators more latitude to employ highly sexual material not typically associated with the channel. Although no nudity ever appears on-­screen, sexually explicit material jibes with the perceived desires USA hopes to cater to when QOTS quite literally puts the Latina body on display for White audiences. The conflicting depictions of the two queenpins also figure prominently in the show’s related employment of the “lawless” and “violent, savage” Latinx tropes. As Bebout explains, the “lawless” Mexican configures characters “as always already criminal and unable to forge or maintain a rule-­governed demo­cratic order,” while the “violent, savage” trope frames Latinx p­ eoples as subhumans “incapable of rational thought.”49 The repre­sen­ta­tion of Jed Mayo (A. Martinez) exemplifies the cultural significance of both tropes in the series. In “La Fuerza/The Strength,” episode 4 of season 3, Teresa flees to Phoenix to escape Camila’s assassination attempts, only to confront Mayo, a xenophobic Mexican American sheriff. When Teresa asks why he tortures and exploits immigrants, Mayo, a U.S.-­born Arizonian with Mexican heritage, defensively says that he blames documented and undocumented Central and South Americans for the discrimination and “ass-­kicking” he received ­earlier in his life. His internalized racism parrots the same racism of real-­life former Arizona sheriff

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Sheriff Mayo typifies the lawless and violent, savage Latinx tropes in Queen of the South by killing a local reporter in front of Teresa Mendoza.

Joseph Michael Arpaio. ­Under Arpaio’s direction, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office was “sued over 2,300 times for vari­ous reasons, including cruel treatment of inmates, racial profiling, and illegally carry­ing out immigration enforcement.”50 Mayo acts as an exaggerated extension of Arpaio b­ ecause he not only purposefully polices minorities but also kills innocent civilians, especially Latinx individuals. Mayo’s unruliness and irrationality engage in anti-­ immigration and anti-­Latinx rhe­toric that emblematizes a willingness on the part of Latinx creators to address culturally specific and socially relevant Latinx topics. This topicality is yet another aspect of the show that overlaps with what Martin identifies in chapter 4 as a prestige-­enhancing ele­ment of the similarly themed Ros­well, NM. Mayo’s personification of the lawless and violent, savage Latinx tropes also affords QOTS the opportunity to critique the supposedly few bad apple police officers who exploit the illicit l­ abor of minorities without having to alienate pro–­law enforcement Latinx and White audiences. Mayo’s character traits typify how Latinx tropes are nuanced in QOTS. Take, for example, Javier Jiménez (Alfonso Herrera), who is the leader of the Juárez Death Squad and the cousin of Boaz Jiménez (Joseph T. Campos). As hitmen, Javier and Boaz have no qualms about killing indiscriminately. Contradictions in Javier’s portrayal and his alignment with the lawless and violent, savage Latinx tropes appear at the beginning of season four. In “Bienvenidos a Nueva Orleans/ Welcome to New Orleans,” episode 1 of season 4, Boaz informs Javier that Teresa’s no torturing policy endangers his ability to employ the tactics that made them formidable. Specifically, Boaz contends that such an approach w ­ ill result in them losing the re­spect that they have earned and that their last name, Jiménez, w ­ ill no longer strike fear into enemies. As Boaz complains, while callously

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drinking and smoking, three bleeding victims are shown hanging upside down in the mise-­en-­scène, a clear sign that he refuses to obey Teresa’s request. Conversely, Javier never questions her no torturing policy or her ethical standard of avoiding unnecessarily killing. Yet he is still able to maintain his sicario instincts despite following her ­orders. In par­tic­u­lar, when he is fed up with the racial taunts of Judge Cecil Lafayette’s (David Andrews) son, René Bardot (James Austin Kerr), Javier brutally kills René and his friend. Together with Boaz, they dispose of the bodies and attempt to keep the secret from Teresa, which are all actions embodied by the prototypical male narcotrafficker. Inevitably, Teresa finds out the truth about Javier and Boaz’s actions. Judge Lafayette also unearths what actually happened and sends Detective Randall Green (Cory Hart) to torture and kill Javier’s love interest, Emilia (Sofía Lama). With Teresa’s drug empire hanging in the balance, Javier turns himself over to Judge Lafayette and Detective Green. In true heroic fashion, Javier subsequently sets himself and Detective Green on fire, thus avenging Emilia’s death. The show’s repre­sen­ta­tional strategy in relation to Javier is twofold. First, it celebrates the murderous proclivities of hitmen and supports the generic norm of depicting sicarios as incapable of participating in a civilized, demo­cratic society.51 Javier and his cousin, then, are characters that court the kind of audience that enjoys the spectacle of narcotrafficking and its hyperviolence. Second, through his love storyline and heroic death, Javier’s characterization adds unconventional complexity to ­those negative Latinx tropes. His depiction as a romantic and redeemable narco hero in spite of his lawless and violent, savage Latinx tendencies underscores QOTS’s nuanced approach to identity politics. Moreover, by killing Detective Green, a caricature of the racist and xenophobic Southern ste­reo­t ype, Javier’s portrayal targets ­those viewers, especially Latinx audiences, who might root for and support the cartel sicario. The show’s most notable example of a redeemable hitman is Pote. The distinction between Javier and Pote is that the latter’s murderous impulses stem from an effort to defend ­those incapable of protecting themselves. Pote directs his vio­lence only to ­those he feels deserve it, challenging the generic convention that typically portrays sicarios as violent and inhumane. Another distinguishing feature is his principled belief in living by sicario morals, even if it means self-­sacrificing. In the “Love’s a B-­tch” episode, Pote is left to take care of Tony Parra (Julian Silva), the son of Chino (Jean Paul San Pedro), a man Pote murdered in season one. Tony inevitably finds out the truth and sets out to avenge his ­father. Tony fi­nally gets his opportunity when he finds Pote asleep on the couch, but cannot kill him. ­A fter a dejected Tony walks away, Pote opens his eyes, revealing that he could have ­stopped Tony at any point but chose to do other­wise. Pote’s self-­sacrificing and unwavering adherence to the sicario code make him more redeemable, which, in turn, elicits sympathy from Latinx and White viewers who might other­wise detest the atrocities hitmen perform.

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Pote’s redemptive sicario narrative is also designed to add sociocultural value to the lawless and violent, savage Latinx tropes. In “Secretos y Mentiras/Secrets and Lies,” episode 8 of season 4, Pote confides in Kelly Anne Van Awken (Molly Burnett), the w ­ oman he secretly loves, about Tony’s situation. She chastises Pote for following a sicario belief system, but he ­counters by noting that he killed Tony’s ­father, and should Tony ever get the courage to fi­nally pull the trigger, then he deserves to be executed. Astounded, Kelly Anne admits her love for him. Pote feels as if he does not deserve her love, but she disagrees, adding that he is the kindest and gentlest man she has encountered. They eventually kiss and engage in an interethnic romantic relationship. Pote’s depiction in this episode straddles the opposing employment of Latinx tropes. His desire to uphold a sicario doctrine reinforces the identity politics normalized by generic norms of representing narcos as irrational and lawless. Yet, Pote’s romantic narrative arc and his interethnic relationship with Kelly Ann amplify the unconventional usage of the tropes to signify his redeemability. With five seasons now having been made, QOTS represents NBCUniversal’s first effective crossover between Telemundo and USA.52 The success of the English-­language series is significant ­because it epitomizes how media conglomerates are approaching the Latinx market in the post-­network era. Efforts to capitalize on this growing niche audience signal the difficulties of redesigning Latin American content for an English-­speaking U.S. tele­vi­sion market. Linked closely to developing multicultural, bilingual serials are questions surrounding a show’s relationship to the prestige tele­vi­sion genre. In the case of QOTS, critics figured prominently in mea­sur­ing the narco drama’s fit with the category. Their participation in delineating allegedly sophisticated original, scripted programming speaks volumes to the reinforcement of problematic cultural hierarchies. More broadly, the gendered and racial biases of tele­vi­sion reviewers require scrutinizing in relation to ­whether or not preexisting markers of prestige can encompass female-­dominant, minority-­led series like QOTS. Equally impor­tant to that critical discourse are repre­sen­ta­tional practices and their strategic use to cultivate critical attention. The inherent tensions in QOTS’s complex portrayals of Latinx characters evidences the power of social identities in signifying prestige programming. Consequently, QOTS and its deployment of Latinx tropes expands viewers of prestige tele­vi­sion to include ­those who appreciate the sociocultural value of original depictions, even t­ hose steeped in contradictions.

Notes 1 ​This chapter covers seasons one through four of QOTS ­because the show’s fifth and final season aired in 2021, when it was too late in the publication pro­cess to incorporate an analy­sis of it. 2 ​Anthony N. Smith, “Pursuing ‘Generation Snowflake’: Mr. Robot and the USA Network’s Mission for Millennials,” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 20, no. 5 (2019):

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444; Dan Snierson, “USA Network’s Secrets for Success,” Entertainment Weekly, November 13, 2009, https://­ew​.­com​/­article​/­2009​/­11​/­13​/­usa​-­networks​-­secrets​ -­success​-­0​/­. 3 ​Mike Hale, “Review: ‘Queen of the South’ Oozes Vio­lence and Excess,” The New ­ ytimes​.c­ om​/­2016​/0 ­ 6​/­23​/a­ rts​/t­ elevision​/­t v​ York Times, June 22, 2016, https://­w ww​.n -­review​-­queen​-o­ f​-­the​-­south​-­usa​.­html. 4 ​Yeidy M. Rivero, “La reina del sur: Teresa Mendoza, a New Telenovela Protagonist,” in Tele­vi­sion Antiheroines: ­Women Behaving Badly in Crime and Prison Drama, ed. Milly Buonanno (Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2017), 146. 5 ​Narconovelas, or narco telenovelas, are a Colombian tele­vi­sion genre. ­These shows, as Rivero describes, “pre­sent a thorny aspect of Colombia’s violent past and the continuance of vio­lence in the pre­sent,” See Rivero, “La reina del sur,” 155n1. See also Omar Rincón, “New Tele­vi­sion Narratives: Entertainment, Telling, Citizenship, Experimental,” Comunicar 18, no. 36 (2011): 47; Omar Rincón and María Paula Martínez, “Colombianidades Export Market,” in Con­temporary Latina/o Media: Production, Circulation, Politics, ed. Arlene Dávila and Yeidy M. Rivero (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 177; and O. Hugo Benavides, “Narconovelas: The Po­liti­cal Evolution of a Telenovela Genre,” ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin Amer­i­ca 17, no. 1 (Fall 2017): 29−32. 6 ​Rivero, “La reina del sur,” 146. It is worth mentioning that Mexican telenovelas are not U.S. soap operas. As Omar Rincón explains, the name telenovela “refers to the format,” which relies on the melodramatic mode to demonstrate for impoverished and disenfranchised communities that success “comes from ‘achieving love,’ ‘obtaining justice’ . . . ​a nd climbing out of a lower social class through marriage or destiny.” Omar Rincón and María Paula Martínez also note that telenovelas “are stories with a definite end . . . ​[that] normally take into account the context of each [Latin American] country.” See Omar Rincón, “Our Telenovela, Ourselves,” ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin Amer­i­ca 17, no. 1 (Fall 2017): 3; and Rincón and Paula Martínez, “Colombianidades Export Market,” 181−182, n1. 7 ​For more on the male-­centered serial, see Amanda D. Lotz, Cable Guys: Tele­vi­sion and Masculinities in the 21st ­Century (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 5, 63. 8 ​Lotz, Cable Guys, 55−56. 9 ​Lotz, Cable Guys, 63. 10 ​Examples of “blue skies” shows include Psych (2006–2014) and Burn Notice (2007–2013), which are both pleasant, easy-­to-­watch, lighthearted, and optimistic programs. See Alex Zalben, “What­ever Happened to ‘Mr. Robot,’ ” Decider, December 23, 2019, https://­decider​.c­ om​/­2019​/1­ 2​/­23​/­mr​-r­ obot​-­series​-­finale​-­usa​ -­network​-­ratings​-­retrospective​/­. For more on Mr. Robot and its signaling of USA’s programming shift, see Eric Francisco, “How Mr. Robot Made USA Network Change Its Style,” Inverse, February 9, 2016, https://­w ww​.­inverse​.­com​/­article​/­11254​ -­mr​-­robot​-­usa​-­network​-­style​-­change; and Anthony Crupi, “USA Network Goes All-­In on Gritty Scripted Fare,” AdAge, April 7, 2015, http://­adage​.c­ om​/a­ rticle​ /­media​/u­ sa​-n ­ etwork​-­dark​-­ambitious​-­drama​-­slate​/­297959​/­. 11 ​Smith, “Pursuing ‘Generation Snowflake,’ ” 444. 12 ​Zalben, “What­ever Happened to ‘Mr. Robot.’ ” See also section on “gray skies” in Smith, “Pursuing ‘Generation Snowflake,’ ” 447−452. 13 ​Eric Thurm, “It’s Not Prestige, It’s Just TV,” Esquire, April 27, 2017, https://­w ww​ .­esquire​.­com​/­entertainment​/t­ v​/­a54762​/­the​-­flaws​-­of​-­prestige​-­t v​/­.

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14 ​Ben Travers, “Review: ‘Queen of the South’ Tarnishes the Crown by Pandering to Boys’ Club Conventions,” IndieWire, June 22, 2016, https://­w ww​.­indiewire​.­com​ /­2016​/­06​/­queen​-­of​-­the​-­south​-­review​-s­ eason​-­1​-­usa​-n ­ ot​-­mr​-­robot​-1­ 201691574​/­. 15 ​Mitchel Broussard, “Queen of the South Season 1 Review,” We Got This Covered, June 23, 2016, https://­wegotthiscovered​.­com​/­t v​/­queen​-­south​-­season​-1­ ​-­review​/­. 16 ​Sonia Saraiya, “TV Review: ‘Queen of the South,’ ” Variety, June 21, 2016, https://­ variety​.­com​/­2016​/­t v​/­reviews​/q­ ueen​-o­ f​-t­ he​-­south​-­t v​-­review​-­1201797493​/­. 17 ​See “Queen of the South: Season 1,” Rotten Tomatoes, accessed March 28, 2020, https://­w ww​.­rottentomatoes​.­com​/­t v​/­queen​_­of​_t­ he​_ ­south​/­s01; and “Mr. Robot: Season 1,” Rotten Tomatoes, accessed March 28, 2020, https://­w ww​.­rottentomatoes​ .­com​/­t v​/­mr​_r­ obot​/­s01. 18 ​“Critic’s Choice 2” is an expanded study of the issues of in­equality in film criticism from Choueiti et al., 2019, https://­assets​.­uscannenberg​.­org​/d­ ocs​/­critics​-­choice​-2­ ​ .­pdf. For more information on their inaugural report, see Marc Choueiti, Stacy L. Smith, and Katherine Pieper, “Critic’s Choice? Gender and Race/Ethnicity of Film Critics Across 100 Top Films of 2017” (Los Angeles: Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 2018), 1, accessed December 17, 2019, http://­assets​.u­ scannenberg​.­org​/­docs​ /­cricits​-­choice​-­2018​.­pdf. 19 ​Choueiti et al., “Critic’s Choice 2,” 2. 20 ​Choueiti et al., “Critic’s Choice 2,” 7. 21 ​The 2019 Choueiti et al. study connects differences of evaluation to a film’s profit margins. The authors conclude that lower ratings, especially as they relate to female-­driven movies, could impact a movie’s box office per­for­mance. See Choueiti et al., 2019, “Critic’s Choice 2,” 7. 2 2 ​The Choueiti et al., 2018 report “searched each critic for online images, photos, and videos. . . . ​evaluated the gender and the apparent race/ethnicity [sic] critics,” and “inferred each critics’ race/ethnicity,” Choueiti et al., 2018, 18. Similarly, my mea­sure­ment of underrepresented identity considers “apparent race/ethnicity.” My findings indicate that, overall, the critic pool was gender-­balanced, but still, only five (out of a total of twenty-­eight) ­were underrepresented female critics, revealing an inequity pattern similar to that found in the 2018 Choueiti et al. study. It is impor­tant to point out that in the case of one ­woman critic, Christine Orlando, I could not ascertain “apparent race/ethnicity.” Therefore, I left Orlando off the list, even though she reviewed seasons two through four and is the lone critic for season four. Her reviews of QOTS are all positive. 23 ​Travers, “Review: ‘Queen of the South.’ ” 24 ​Rob Owen, Queen of the South review for the Pittsburgh Post-­Gazette, June 23, 2016, https://­w ww​.­metacritic​.­com​/­critic​/­rob​-­owen​?­fi lter​= t­ vshows&num​_i­ tems​ =­100&sort​_­options​= ­critic​_­score&dist​=­neutral&page​=5­ . 25 ​Danette Chavez, “Queen of The South Traffics in Culture and Tropes as Well as Drugs,” AV Club, June 23, 2016, https://­t v​.a­ vclub​.c­ om​/­queen​-­of​-­the​-­south​-t­ raffics​ -­in​-c­ ulture​-­and​-­tropes​-­as​-­we​-­1798188199. 26 ​Chavez, “Queen of The South.” 27 ​Melanie McFarland, “ ‘Queen of the South’ and ‘Claws’: Sometimes Bad Can Be Very, Very Good,” Salon, June 8, 2017, https://­w ww​.­salon​.­com​/­2017​/­06​/­08​/­queen​ -­of​-­the​-­south​-­and​-­claws​-­sometimes​-­bad​-­can​-­be​-­very​-­very​-­good​/­. 28 ​Jason Mittell, “Better Call Saul: The Prestige Spinoff,” in How to Watch Tele­vi­sion, 2nd ed., ed. Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell (New York: New York University Press, 2020), 16. 29 ​McFarland, “ ‘Queen of the South’ and ‘Claws.’ ”

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30 ​Juan Piñón, “Ugly Betty and the Emergence of the Latina/o Producers as Cultural Translators,” Communication Theory 21, no. 4 (2011): 392–412. See also Chon ­ uture of Latino In­de­pen­ Noriega, “Latino Advocacy: The Numbers Game,” in The F dent Media: A NALIP Sourcebook, ed. Chon Noriega (Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, 2000), 99–103. 31 ​Frances Negrón-­Muntaner, “The Gang’s Not All ­Here: The State of Latinos in Con­temporary US Media,” in Con­temporary Latina/o Media: Production, Circulation, Politics, 103−106. 32 ​Negrón-­Muntaner, “The Gang’s Not All H ­ ere,” 113. 3 3 ​Justice Namaste, “­There Are No Latinx Shows Left on Network Tele­vi­sion,” Jezebel, July 9, 2020, https://­themuse​.­jezebel​.­com​/t­ here​-­are​-­no​-­latinx​-­shows​-l­ eft​-­on​ -­network​-t­ elevision​-­1844331573. 3 4 ​See Marisa Guthrie, “NBC, USA Developing English-­L anguage Versions of Telemundo Telenovelas (Exclusive),” The Hollywood Reporter, April 24, 2014, https://­w ww​.­hollywoodreporter​.­com​/­news​/­nbc​-­usa​-­developing​-­english​ -­language​-­698644; Juan Piñón, “Corporate Transnationalism: The US Hispanic and Latin American Tele­v i­sion Industries,” in Con­temporary Latina/o Media: Production, Circulation, Politics, 38−39; and Juan Llamas-­Rodriguez, “Mapping the Narco-­Televisual Universe,” Flow TV: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture, February 26, 2018, https://­w ww​.­flowjournal​.­org ​/­2018​/­02​/­mapping​-­t he​ -­narco​-­televisual​-­u niverse​/­. 3 5 ​Manuel Betancourt, “ ‘Queen of the South’ Returns with a New Latina Showrunner and a Season Full of Drama, Drugs & Divas,” Remezcla, June 8, 2017, accessed June 25, 2020, https://­remezcla​.­com​/­features​/­fi lm​/q­ ueen​-­of​-­the​-­south​-­season​-­2​/.­ 36 ​On the gap between Latinx population and media repre­sen­ta­tion, see Negrón-­ Muntaner, “The Gang’s Not All ­Here,” 113. On the invisibility of Latinxs in Hollywood, see Stacy L. Smith et al., “Latinos in Film: Erasure On Screen & ­Behind the Camera Across 1,200 Popu­lar Movies” (Los Angeles: Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 2019), 1, accessed November 1, 2020, http://­assets​.­uscannenberg​ .­org ​/­docs​/­aii​-­study​-­latinos​-­in​-­fi lm​-­2019​.­pdf. 37 ​Taylor Nygaard and Jorie Lagerwey, Horrible White P ­ eople: Gender, Genre, and Tele­vi­sion’s Precarious Whiteness (New York: New York University Press, 2020), 43. 3 8 ​Nygaard and Lagerwey, Horrible White P ­ eople, 62. 39 ​Betancourt, “ ‘Queen of the South’ Returns.” See also Hale, “Review: ‘Queen of the South.’ ” 4 0 ​Nellie Andreeva, “ ‘Queen of the South’ Renewed for Season 4 by USA with Dailyn Rodriguez and Ben Lobato as New Co-­Showrunners,” Deadline, October 1, 2018, https://­deadline​.­com​/­2018​/­10​/­queen​-­of​-­the​-­south​-­renewed​-­for​-­season​ -­4​-­by​-­usa​-­with​-­dailyn​-­rodriguez​-­ben​-­lobato​-­as​-­new​-c­ o​-­showrunners​-­1202473913​/­. On the broad usage of the term showrunner and its strategic purpose in legitimizing the artistic merits of certain programming, see Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2012), esp. 39. 41 ​Lobato had been a staff writer on QOTS since season one and had acted as supervising producer. See Andreeva, “ ‘Queen of the South’ Renewed.” 42 ​Alicia Gaspar de Alba, [Un]Framing the “Bad ­Woman”: Sor Juana, Malinche, Coyolxauhqui and Other Rebels with a Cause (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 8. On the erotic, exotic Mexicana trope, see Lee Bebout, Whiteness on the Border: Mapping the U.S. Racial Imagination in Brown and White (New York: New York University Press, 2016); Charles Ramírez Berg, Latino Images in Film:

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Ste­reo­types, Subversions, & Re­sis­tance (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 70−71, 76−77. 4 3 ​Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who headed the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, was notorious for torturing and murdering enemies. On the series’ purposeful attempts to distinguish Teresa from Guzmán, see Rosy Cordero, “Queen of the South Wraps Season 4 with a Heartbreaking Death and a Shocking Return,” Entertainment Weekly, August 29, 2019, https://­ew​.­com​/­t v​/­2019​/­08​/­29​/­queen​-­of​ -­the​-­south​-s­ eason​-­4​-­fi nale​-­ben​-l­ obato​-­interview​/­. 4 4 ​Clara E. Rodríguez, introduction to Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media, ed. Clara E. Rodríguez (New York: Routledge, 2018), 4. 45 ​Jillian M. Báez, In Search of Belonging: Latinas, Media, and Citizenship (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018), 46. 4 6 ​Bebout, Whiteness on the Border. 47 ​Dan Hassler-­Forest, “Game of Thrones: Quality Tele­vi­sion and the Cultural Logic of Gentrification,” TV/Series 6 (December 2014): 64. 4 8 ​Hassler-­Forest, “Game of Thrones,” 64. 49 ​Bebout, Whiteness on the Border, 60−63. See also Ramírez Berg, Latino Images in Film, 68−69. 50 ​Lisa Magaña, “SB 1070 and Negative Social Constructions of Latino Immigrants in Arizona,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 38, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 156. 51 ​Bebout, Whiteness on the Border, 60. 52 ​Llamas-­Rodriguez, “Mapping the Narco-­Televisual Universe.”

6

“Tell Them We Are Gone” Imperial Narratives, Indigenous Perspectives, and Prestige in The Terror JUSTIN O. RAWLINS Ruminating on the Arctic’s enduring place in Canadian legend, writer Margaret Atwood noted the curious primacy conferred upon British explorer Sir John Franklin, who in the mid–­nineteenth c­ entury was swallowed by the very North that he sought to conquer.1 He was initially memorialized as an ill-­fated Christian nobleman before being branded a “hubristic imperialist” by critics of the British empire.2 Eventually, conservative Canadian nationalists ­adopted him “as an argument for Arctic sovereignty,” echoing colonialism’s enduring legacies in the region.3 The disappearance of his 1845 expedition indeed spurred an Anglo American obsession, what Hester Blum has called “Frankliniana,” that spilled beyond the nineteenth ­century into ongoing Western cultural repre­sen­ta­tions.4 Characterizations of the North as uncanny, empty, and hostile to White adventurers persist across ­these portrayals. The fact that, as Atwood puts it, “Franklin lives,” indicates the resilience of this myth and its associated narratives, including in the first season of the critically lauded anthology show from AMC Studios, The Terror (2018–2019).5 Co-­produced by AMC Studios and Scott ­Free Productions, The Terror has been described as a “historical horror anthology drama” wherein horror and 113

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historical settings serve as the only common features shared across other­wise distinct, self-­contained seasons b­ ecause its narratives unfold in completely dif­ fer­ent story worlds.6 Early indications suggested that The Terror might become an Arctic-­themed horror anthology. It was ­later announced, however, that the season one writers w ­ ere departing and that the second season would focus on World War II Japa­nese American internment, signaling a decisive separation between The Terror’s season-­long narratives. Accordingly, I exclusively examine the first season in this essay, as its narrative stands apart from the rest of the show. Season one is also of par­tic­u­lar interest b­ ecause of its significant distance from the pre­sent, its setting in the symbolically loaded landscape of the Arctic, and the narrative structure and themes through which it contends with prestige, imperialism, and indigeneity. Led in 1845 by Sir John Franklin (Ciarán Hinds), what became known as the Franklin expedition vanished during this mission to pioneer potentially lucrative Arctic trade routes for the British Empire. The show depicts how its ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, along with their combined crews of 129 men ­were stranded in ice in the Victoria Strait for years by two brutal winters ­until they slowly and wretchedly succumbed to the ele­ments. While scattered artifacts and h ­ uman remains from the ­actual expedition ­were recovered in the intervening 160 years, and Inuit oral histories previously identified the ships’ resting places, Canadian authorities did not “officially” locate the Erebus and Terror ­until 2014 and 2016, respectively. The tele­vi­sion series debuted not long a­ fter, in March 2018. Confined to a five-­year period that spans the expedition’s 1845 departure from London to the 1850 arrival of the first British rescue party, The Terror’s first season unfolds in prolonged flashbacks that largely play out in linear fashion. ­These flashbacks are focalized through the expedition’s second-­in-­command—­ and only survivor—­Irishman Francis Crozier (Jared Harris). Plagued by ­Franklin’s incompetent leadership and arrogance, as well as British imperialist classism and racism, the ships are soon frozen in ice. The setback does l­ittle to alter the expedition’s procedures or to provoke critical reflection on its guiding ideology. Franklin persists, catalyzing a series of even more disastrous events. His disregard for Crozier’s navigational expertise, for example, leads to the ships’ fateful encounter with Arctic ice. The leadership’s commitment to using ­these vessels as essential displays of imperial dominance also forecloses the possibility of the crews’ overland march to safety. The unbridled faith in British superiority—­ manifest in the form of canned food technology—­likewise occasions the unchecked contamination of provisions and subsequent lead poisoning of the crew. Dehumanizing the Inuit, meanwhile, leads to the killing of a Shaman (Apayata Kotierk). This act, combined with the expedition’s dismissal of indigenous knowledge, unleashes a ­giant anthropomorphic bearlike creature, the Tuunbaq. The Tuunbaq, whose ravenous appetite had been controlled by the Shaman, proceeds to kill Franklin and decimate the crew.7 Together, ­these expressions of the

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Franklin expedition’s vainglorious self-­estimation doom their mission to expand the prestige of the British empire and its constitutive reliance on hierarchies and subjugation. The depth of their failure—in which they not only die but soon dis­ appear from the landscape—­implicates the Arctic itself in their repudiation. This is where The Terror’s first season story begins, with the 1850 British rescue party—­and the audience—­learning from a Netsilik Hunter (Johnny Issaluk, henceforth referred to as “Hunter”) that the final, ominous communication from the crew was “We are gone. Dead and gone.” Beyond its immediate narrative function, this posthumous message to the rescuers reverberates across the show, establishing at the outset an “official” British conclusion to the expedition’s fate. As season one of The Terror unfolds, however, this original ending seems increasingly distant from the two competing perspectives that ultimately define the story. The tension between Franklin’s imperial point of view and that which Crozier adopts from the series’ most prominent Inuk character, Lady Silence (Nive Nielsen), structures and drives the season-­long narrative.8 While “you ­can’t keep a good [Franklin] myth down,” according to Atwood, the show’s thematic, narrative, and repre­sen­ta­tional engagements with perspective and power—­particularly with regard to the status stratifications that underpin British imperialism—­provoke reflection on what exactly endures in Franklin stories.9 Like other con­temporary prestige historical dramas, this work of historical fiction functions less as an explicit history lesson and more as “an ­imagined past.”10 As Allison Perlman argues, the reception of such texts hinges “on their capacity to render a mythic vision of the past consonant with prevailing tensions and conflicts of the pre­sent.”11 In this chapter, I explore The Terror’s prestige-­affirming reception as well as season one’s complex narrative, thematic, and repre­sen­ta­tional engagements with prestige in the guise of British imperialism. I analyze the show’s critical reception alongside its competing imperial and indigenous diegetic perspectives. In ­doing so, I consider the notion of prestige as it arises at the intersection of extrinsic markers of value ascribed to the show, and as it manifests internally in the caste and imperial dynamics expressed by the show’s main characters.12 I contend that prestige provides an interpretive grid to interrogate the power relations underwriting The Terror’s divergent histories as well as the “Quality” tele­vi­sion status the series enjoys. The Terror offers a corrective that utilizes the implicitly Eurocentric platform of prestige tele­vi­sion to revise explic­itly Eurocentric narratives of exploration and discovery. Consequently, I conclude that it encourages audiences to interrogate how imperialism abets power relations narratively and extratextually. The Terror invites viewers to imagine alternate histories and competing stories adjudicated by privilege. It offers an enticing model for alternative mediations of the Arctic—­and of indigenous communities largely absent from so-­called Quality TV fare—­and draws crucial attention to prestige tele­vi­ sion’s role in codifying other­wise contentious cultural narratives.

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“No Melodramas H ­ ere. Just . . . ​Dead Men.” As Michael Newman and Elana Levine argue, the prestige accorded to shows like The Terror coalesces out of industrial conditions, institutional practices, and ideological legacies.13 Bound more by “cultural markers” than “a clear set of formal or thematic ele­ments,” t­ hese maneuvers emerged out of decades-­long efforts by cultural gatekeepers—­“ journalists, popu­lar critics, TV creators and executives, and media scholars”—to identify supposedly exceptional programming by connecting it to more established artistic forms (e.g., cinema and lit­er­a­ture).14 ­These critical discourses reinscribe high-­low binaries that insinuate a program’s inherent superiority over the rest of tele­vi­sion, which is comparatively positioned as ­simple entertainment.15 Such shows are thus often portrayed as meticulous in their detail, methodical in their pacing, and consequential in their themes. Rhiannon Bury adds that discourses of prestige tele­vi­sion are also “intrinsically linked to the pro­cess of subject formation,” leading to the intertwined identification of viewers and the boundary policing of “good” and “bad” audiences.16 “Quality texts” and the discourses that abet them do more than “produce quality readers.”17 Th ­ ese discursive practices also masculinize prestige programming by situating certain shows as complex and demanding, and conflating active and engaged audience practices with essentialized male traits. Rather than c­ ounter enduring classist and patriarchal dismissals of television—­including melodrama—as passive, feminized mass culture, this legitimation pro­cess reiterates the gendering of culture to rationalize its stratification. Viewers of prestige tele­ vi­sion are thus hailed as extraordinary for their purported ability to understand, endure, and appreciate constituent shows.18 Th ­ ese spectators are encouraged not only to see themselves in this exceptionalist and gendered framework but also to use it to reinforce the hierarchies of distinctive programs and audiences. This type of boundary-­keeping, in turn, reinforces privileged producers and audiences as tastemakers, legitimating certain tele­vi­sion programs against the backdrop of con­temporary media convergence that is spurring the renegotiation of distinctions between cultural forms and consequent taste formations. “Complex” tele­vi­sion, while not always synonymous with “Quality” or “prestige” tele­vi­sion, is also a relevant consideration b­ ecause it provides an aesthetic evaluative framework for programming deemed to be experimental or sophisticated.19 It means shifting emphasis t­ oward historical poetics to situate “formal developments within specific contexts of production, circulation, and reception.”20 Such complex storytelling often draws upon the pre-­existing knowledge of audiences of the narrative. It also typically encourages urbane, highly engaged viewers to track the blurring of episodic and serial conventions, prompting them to decipher its sedimented meanings. The Terror’s gothic aesthetic, ominous soundscape, flawed heroes, and grisly vio­lence—­“misery porn” as critic Matt Zoller Seitz vividly put it—­figure prominently in the overwhelmingly positive critical reactions of the series.21 ­These

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contingent and contextual signifiers integrate into a constellation of prestige tele­vi­sion features that reaffirm the show’s pedigree and exceptionality. Chief among ­these qualities is its transgressive gore, including vividly rendered eviscerations, vivisections, and acts of cannibalism that place it in the com­pany of programs such as Deadwood (2004–2006), Hannibal (2013–2015), and The Knick (2014–2015), whose attributed superiority is tied in part to their challenge of historical network tele­vi­sion content restrictions.22 Franklin’s gruesome death at the hands of the Tuunbaq in episode three (“The Ladder”), for example, not only graphically renders his dismemberment but satisfies yet another prestige tele­vi­ sion staple by killing off a lead cast member unexpectedly early in the narrative. Together, its gore and deliberate pacing w ­ ere frequently cited as key to The Terror’s vaunted status as a taxing viewing experience. Reviewers drew upon familiar Quality TV rhe­toric that masculinizes i­ magined viewers capable of enduring and engaging with such demanding programming. It “is like many polar expeditions,” wrote The New York Times’s Mike Hale: “long, educational, full of in­ter­est­ing ­things to look at and not completely successful.”23 ­Others characterized it as a “slow burn,” a “gasp-­inducing . . . ​10-­episode nightmare,” and “some of the bleakest tele­vi­sion I’ve seen, but not in a way that feels exploitative or needlessly miserable.”24 The show “moves at a glacial pace,” opined Terry Terrones in the Colorado Springs Gazette, and “watching men become slowly whittled down from exhaustion, disease, starvation, a strange monster and each other over 10 episodes can be an exhausting and gut-­wrenching experience.”25 Though his endorsement of the “compelling story . . . ​stellar cast and stunning visuals” was more explicit, the fact that the series was “not for the faint of heart” and could be “tough to watch” similarly informed Terrones’s approval.26 In her review of the show, Los Angeles Times writer Lorraine Ali took ­matters further, attributing its macabre noteworthiness to film director Ridley Scott, one of the series’ executive producers.27 The film comparisons continued, with Ali summing up the “nerve-­wracking suspense . . . ​deceptively gorgeous landscape and the deeply developed characters” as contributing to a “rich, big-­screen quality.”28 Even negative criticism of the series leaned heavi­ly on the Scott association, calling him not only “the biggest name attached to The Terror” but also insisting that it bore some—­but unfortunately not enough—of his auteurist trademarks.29 Easily the most well known of the show’s above-­the-­line talent, Scott’s status as a revered film director outshines his ­actual role as executive producer, suggesting that his “auteur” presence in The Terror’s discourse offers a more crucial legitimating link to cinema than an accounting of his ­actual contributions. Such discourses epitomized, in Newman and Levine’s terms, the overall “cinematization” of season one’s reception by linking its content, structure, aesthetics, and thematics favorably with film.30 Critics’ very categorizations of the show, which slip between “anthology series,” “­limited series,” and “mini-­series,” further normalize The Terror’s legitimation as prestige tele­vi­sion by suggesting that its originality eludes existing

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categories. Myles McNutt argues that designations like “­limited series” represent a brand management tactic rather than a new tele­vi­sion form. The “anthology miniseries,” he contends, comes closest to realizing a new form in its hybrid combination of the mid-­century anthology program (shifting from self-­ contained episode-­to-­episode to season-­to-­season stories) and the season-­long narrative arcs of con­temporary serial shows.31 For Molly Schneider, the shift from episodic to season-­long stories precludes a direct lineage to mid-­twentieth-­ century tele­vi­sion anthologies. However, “­limited series” like The Terror “combine the narrative structures of the anthology and the miniseries by fusing the self-­contained, episodic nature of the anthology with the extended storytelling of the miniseries.”32 Anthologies and miniseries recall pre-­existing prestige identities and ­imagined Quality TV lineages. Similarly, the hybrid ­limited series “mines a heritage of quality” in an effort both to “capitalize on [­those] historical markers” of exceptional tele­vi­sion and to “manage risk [of a lackluster story or cast] in a volatile con­temporary tele­vi­sion landscape.”33 The show’s bona fides are bolstered by additional prestige signifiers. Several reviews identify the three lead performers by referencing their previous prestige tele­vi­sion roles, like Jared Harris as Lane Pryce in Mad Men (2007–2015) and Tobias Menzies as Edmure Tully and Ciarán Hinds as Mance Rayder in Game of Thrones (2011–2019), as well as Menzies as Brutus and Hinds as Caesar in Rome (2005–2007).34 The same goes for its production studio and distributor, AMC, which for more than a de­cade prior cultivated an identity as a prolific producer and distributor of prestige programming, such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad (2008–2013), and Better Call Saul (2015–2022). High production values also figured prominently in The Terror’s critical acclaim, with commentators lauding the production’s painstaking research to reproduce the expedition’s historical details. Phrases like “steeped in period maritime detail,” “meticulous evocation of time, place and mood,” “lavish,” and “geekily accurate archival details” typified near-­universal praise for the production design, which, like the cast, earned plaudits even in other­wise unfavorable reviews.35 The recreation of the Arctic landscape “is arguably the best ­thing about the AMC series,” averred RogerEbert​ .­com’s Brian Tallerico, while Variety’s Maureen Ryan touted the “terrific” work of “poetic elegance” in its depiction of the “stark beauty” of the Arctic.36 Such reception rationalizes The Terror’s graphic vio­lence and patience-­testing narrative pace by drawing on the pre-­existing gender binary of tele­vi­sion’s discursive legitimation and pitting its exceptional traits (e.g., activity, endurance, vio­lence, complexity) against ­those of tele­vi­sion writ large (e.g., passivity, sentimentality, superficiality). Tallerico unselfconsciously exemplifies this reception by noting that “anyone coming into ‘The Terror’ thinking this ­will be a tea-­and-­ crumpets period piece should be startled.”37 While ­these discourses work externally to link observed features of The Terror to broader constellations of social and cultural value, prestige tele­vi­sion attributes also manifest internally in the show’s complex thematics and narrative

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perspectives. Taken together, ­these dimensions distinguish The Terror as a program granted the discursive privileges of legitimation at the same time that it wrestles with prestige tele­vi­sion structurally, thematically, and repre­sen­ta­tionally via its conceptions of power and perspective through a narrative split along characters’ relation to empire-­building.

“A Colonialist Nightmare” In addition to the external markers of distinction surrounding the show, t­ here are two primary and interrelated ways in which prestige is expressed internally in The Terror. 38 The first involves the contested narratives occasioned by the series’ opening conversation between the Hunter and the British rescuers searching for the Franklin expedition. The second concerns Crozier’s subject position relative to t­ hese competing perspectives as well as to the colonialist relations that animate them. Together, ­these forces alienate the Irish Crozier—­and by extension The Terror’s audience—­from the imperial proj­ect of the Franklin expedition. They align Crozier instead with the show’s most prominent Inuk character, Lady Silence. They also transform the ship’s fate from one historically romanticized by neo-­imperial agendas to one that functions as a kind of indigenous corrective to the devastation wrought by Western imperialism-­turned-­colonialism. For all of the rhe­toric of distinction surrounding the series, few commentators have addressed how the post-­colonialist sensibility of The Terror’s first season also potentially impacts its reputation. In one exception, a reviewer observed that the Royal Navy officers’ hubris and “the evils of British imperialism” w ­ ere as responsible as the Arctic environment for dooming the men.39 Similarly, critics have largely neglected how the narrative structure of season one invites its own internal challenges to imperialist storytelling. By beginning with what seems to be the story’s end, season one of the series ultimately concludes with this same encounter, but from a dif­fer­ent perspective the second time that destabilizes its original meaning. Beginnings and endings are extremely impor­tant to complex tele­vi­sion storytelling, yet cancellations often shorten a show’s life span and consequently throw the narrative’s inception and conclusion out of balance. “To highlight a beginning,” as such series often do, “is to suggest the parallel of an ending,” something that—­for all of its supposed importance to the completion of a good story—is often absent.40 The Terror is an exception in this regard, partly due to Scott’s cachet. His production com­pany, Scott ­Free, entered into its inaugural tele­vi­sion “first-­look deal” with AMC in 2013, a two-­year agreement granting AMC the right of first refusal on prospective Scott ­Free proj­ects.41 This deal emerged out of the partnership developing The Terror, making AMC’s decision to order the show’s entire ten-­episode first season straight to series unsurprising.42 The full season order also guaranteed the creators of the show control over both the story’s beginning and ending.

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The Terror’s Hunter conveys to British rescuers the purported d­ ying words of the Franklin expedition’s last survivor by pointing to a portrait of Francis Crozier.

The Terror’s cold open to this ominous moment creates a narrative enigma enticing viewer commitment to learn how the expedition’s destruction comes to pass. Most importantly, its beginning also foreshadows the season-­long narrative tensions between competing imperial and indigenous perspectives. Whereas the predominantly British explorers cling to their mission even as it precipitates their demise, indigenous characters display a more complete understanding of what is happening. Through this tension, Crozier emerges as a cinematic-­style narrator, an outsider with whom audiences are intended to identify as they make sense of this violent history. In addition, his increasing alienation from the expedition and its guiding ideologies gives the audience a  clearer understanding of the devastation wrought by and on the Franklin expedition.

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Aside from setting the tone, introducing characters, and establishing the show’s overall aesthetic, the first episode quickly aligns the Discovery Ser­vice mission, as it was officially known, with British imperialism. The central narrative thrust of the show’s first season, the expedition, evokes a prestige ethos through not only the imperial sense of superiority in attempting to “civilize” the Arctic and its indigenous ­peoples in the name of British pro­gress but also through hierarchical stratifications depicted between characters. Th ­ ese distinctions are most prominent with regard to Crozier, whose Irishness and lower social station had been preemptively used to suppress his professional rise in the ser­vice and his personal ascent in British high society. Though Franklin and much of the British leadership spurn self-­reflection on the arrogance and self-­righteousness of empire-­building, selective engagements with the past prove vital in extolling and maintaining their logic. The series quickly wrestles with this exercise, as Crozier confides in his attendant Thomas Jopson (Liam Garrigan) that, “Of all the hardships of the Discovery Ser­vice, this [upcoming formal dinner with expedition officers] may be the toughest.” The confession reveals Crozier’s internalized sense of exclusion from Britain’s rigid class and imperial caste systems that circumscribe his mobility as an Irishman in the British Admiralty as well as in British society. The event transpires as he expected; his strained body language accentuates his strug­gles to acclimate to Franklin’s culture of repression and haughty ignorance. Shortly ­after the meal and over copious drink that reveals Crozier’s alcoholism stemming from his déclassé status, he stares at a row of books. He and the viewer are then transported to the first of the episode’s two tableau vivant flashbacks, which are set years before the expedition’s departure. The show’s subsequent cut to a man dressed in ste­reo­t ypical Native American attire, yielding silently to other similarly adorned performers, is initially jarring. An off-­screen narrator next announces, “Algonquin massacred by Mohawk,” initiating a shot-­ reverse-­shot sequence that depicts an ornate theater setting populated by British high society in formal attire and red-­face performers on the stage. The curtain then closes to applause, as the action cuts away from the preparation of the next scene to the box where a contented Crozier flirts with his com­pany, Sophia Cracroft (Sian Brooke), Franklin’s niece. When the curtains part, a new tableau vivant of James Ross’s Antarctic exploration to locate the South Magnetic Pole appears. Two performers stand poised aboard the cross section of Ross’s ship, the HMS Erebus.43 Contrasted with the trim and handsome Ross double in the foreground, the unnamed other is revealed by Ross (Richard Sutton), who is sitting next to Crozier, to be an unflattering repre­sen­ta­tion of Crozier, whom they joke is far heavier and has much worse teeth. The narrator similarly excludes Crozier, calling the audience’s attention only to “the ­actual James Ross” sitting in the audience. Crozier is never explic­itly identified, and it is only at Ross’s urging that he reluctantly stands to wave at the cheering crowd. As an Irishman in the

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Performers representing Sir James Ross and Francis Crozier pose in a tableau vivant, honoring a previous expedition to the magnetic South Pole in The Terror.

British Royal Navy and British society, Crozier’s daring and productive exploits can never earn him a place of prestige standing in the inflexible class system. Even though he has long sailed u­ nder the Union Jack, Franklin aptly describes their class and colonial distinctions as a ­matter of “dif­fer­ent banners.”44 At the same time, this moment crucially foreshadows Crozier’s outsider status as well as his alienation from Franklin, who personifies British imperialism. ­Later in the episode, a gathering of Terror and Erebus leadership deep into their expedition lays bare the estrangement, rooting it both in Crozier’s liminal status and in the leadership’s divergent responses to worsening conditions. Crozier observes that pack ice is rapidly advancing on the ships as autumn approaches, cautioning that they ­will be trapped and likely crushed if they maintain course. He criticizes Franklin’s disastrous Coppermine expedition de­cades e­ arlier, where half the crew died, insisting a similar fate ­will befall them if they proceed with the current plan. “This place wants us dead,” Crozier tells the convened officers. James Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies)—­a Franklin loyalist, Crozier’s subordinate, and the third in command—­dismisses the warnings as “melodrama.” Fitzjames’s dismissal of his superior echoes British imperialism’s patronizing policing of its hierarchies, emboldening solidarities between Crozier and w ­ omen and crew across vari­ous non-­elite strata as the story unfolds.45 Such derision-­by-­feminization also constitutes a point of inflection for the gender binaries operating within the show. It buttresses the expedition’s fateful arrogance and—­outside of the show—­ valorizes The Terror’s distinctiveness as aty­pi­cal tele­vi­sion. Pounding the t­ able and staring at Franklin’s surrogate, Fitzjames, Crozier attempts to parry the insult using the same lingua franca of power: “­There’ll be no melodramas h ­ ere,” he says grimly, “just live men or dead men.” Fitzjames is momentarily chastened,

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but Franklin condescendingly deflects Crozier’s point. The warning, and the foreshadowing of the disaster to come, go unheeded by the pious Franklin and the expedition he commands.46 Demonstrating the show’s complex serial storytelling further, the episode’s conclusion avoids tying up loose narrative threads in ­favor of teasing a clue to the series’ overall narrative enigma and foreshadowing the ramifications of Franklin’s hubris. Returning to the theater once more, the final moments pick up where the e­ arlier flashback ended. As the crowd applauds Ross and Crozier, Franklin stands to receive his due. Jeers emerge and grow the longer Franklin stands, waves, and nods perfunctorily. The sudden shift in reception, which the ensuing rapid series of shots clearly attribute to Franklin, reinforces Crozier’s ­earlier critique of his poor judgment. It also suggests Franklin’s competence and reputation are buoyed by Britain’s hierarchical institutions even as the public has come to see him differently. This penultimate scene is preceded by Fitzjames’s realization that his captain may have made a critical error, and is followed by a ­silent bird’s-­eye view of the two ships frozen in a seemingly endless field of ice. This visual framing helps to establish how The Terror’s complex serial narrative often hints at aspects of its core narrative mystery (i.e., how the expedition arrives at its fate) while also steadily realigning Crozier’s and the audience’s perspective with the Inuit. The move is typical of the season’s remaining episodes, as each installment’s final scenes ­favor quieter moments where characters seek to pro­cess events and alter outcomes. Such occasions attend to the connective tissue across episodes rather than provide closure for them; even the series finale ends with Crozier crouched over a fishing hole in the ice, waiting with intense, wordless stillness. It is the Inuit presence in The Terror that ultimately crystallizes the alternative perspectives of Crozier and the viewer into a clearer understanding of the narrative enigma. Introduced in episode two (“Gore”), Lady Silence comes aboard the Erebus to accompany her Shaman f­ ather ­after he’s mortally wounded by an expedition crew member.47 She is dismayed and angered by the attack and the stranger’s belligerence in h ­ andling her f­ ather’s care as well as his dead body, and she tells Crozier and ­others that they ­will dis­appear if they do not leave.48 Though forcibly removed from the Erebus, Lady Silence next builds a shelter and remains nearby, presumably to attempt, like her f­ ather, to control the ravenous Tuunbaq and consequently maintain ecological equilibrium. As the manifestation of imperial hubris, Franklin wields prestige like a weapon epitomized by Britain’s supposed mastery of the prospective trade route, its resources, and its ­people. His leadership reflects this arrogance, constructing O ­ thers out of presumed inferiors, and instilling cloistered thinking and actions in the crew. Much like the ships themselves, ­these ideologies and be­hav­iors become meta­phor­ically cramped quarters and treacherous spaces. Lady Silence’s proximity to this environment thus endangers her far more than the Tuunbaq does, creating a stark juxtaposition for viewers, Crozier, and a select few sympathizers, as the purported savagery of the beast is ultimately surpassed by the crew as conditions deteriorate.

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Francis Crozier sits outside of a tent where the Hunter shares information (dictated to him by Crozier) with Sir James Ross and his translator at the end of The Terror.

It is fi­nally through Lady Silence that Crozier, his allies, and viewers understand the logic of the Tuunbaq’s wrath and the Franklin expedition’s fate. Adopting an alternative, in this case Inuit, perspective enables Crozier to comprehend not so much how to stop the creature but rather why the expedition’s disregard for the ­people, land, and resources in its path constitutes the greatest threat. The Tuunbaq should be feared, yet its ferocity also operates as an anti-­imperial corrective that at least temporarily interrupts inexorable British expansion. Franklin is not just the embodiment of imperialism b­ ecause he believes in it zealously; he also personifies its rigidity as well as the vio­lence of its extractivist exploration. Franklin is killed early in the story, yet the ramifications of his decisions, like ­those of imperialism, bring death and destruction long ­after its original perpetrators have passed. This may partly explain the season’s per­sis­tent lack of closure. Such lingering unease also helps to explain the ultimate twist in The Terror’s narrative enigma. In the waning moments of episode ten (“We Are Gone”), the story returns to the start. Crozier, who is two years removed from the deaths of his last remaining crewmen, learns that British rescuers are approaching the Inuit camp where he lives. Asked by the Hunter what he wants to do, Crozier responds, “This is what you tell them,” which precedes a jump back to the opening scene now intercut with a shot of the disguised Crozier listening in on the conversation. It is no coincidence, then, that the lone survivor in The Terror’s telling of events is the subjugated Irishman. Crozier’s decision to remain “gone” signals his ultimate break from the expedition’s imperial perspective and the society that birthed it. Being discovered as the lone survivor may have boosted his reputation back in E ­ ngland and elevated him to the social status that would have gained him both Sophia’s hand in marriage and the financial security he long coveted.

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Even if such an unlikely event had come to pass, it would have also likely failed to impart the tragic lessons of the Franklin expedition. By sending his warning through the indigenous surrogate, Crozier both sides with the Inuit and crafts a counternarrative of the expedition meant to dissuade ­future British imperial designs on the Arctic.

Conclusion: Indigenous Narratives in Prestige Tele­vi­sion It remains to be seen if The Terror ­will herald a broader critical interrogation of prestige tele­vi­sion’s colonial DNA and exclusionary politics, especially with re­spect to indigenous characters and narratives. Series such as Westworld (2016–) and Fargo (2014–) have also recently attempted revisionist approaches to Native American screen repre­sen­ta­tion. In its knowing winks to enduring fantasies of frontier conquest, the dystopian turn of Westworld’s hyperreal Western theme park meta­phorized a decolonization campaign against h ­ uman oppressors who ­violated the sanctity of the robot residents’ bodies and spaces. The show’s gesture ­toward a narrative reversal of settler colonialism was predicated, however, on the sacrifice of Native American avatars to advance a rebellion still fronted by largely White-­presenting robots. Considered among the best episodes in the series thus far, the late season two installment “Kiksuya” stands out precisely ­because—­unlike the rest of Westworld—it centered indigenous characters formerly regarded as blank fixtures of the frontier landscape. Revolving around recurring character Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon), and featuring dialogue entirely in Lakota (with En­g lish subtitles), the episode’s narrative arc tracked his self-­ awareness and tenuous efforts to retain both his familial bonds and sovereignty ­under the ever-­present threat of erasure. The cold open to Fargo’s second season, built around the fictional Ronald Reagan movie Massacre at Sioux Falls, foreshadows the season’s narrative arc of vio­ lence while suggesting that the brutality of settler colonialism continues to define the Northern Plains’ culture and identity.49 The most sustained indigenous presence in the season—­and indeed the entire series to date—is Gerhardt crime ­family lieutenant Hanzee Dent (Zahn McClarnon). Dent’s myriad traumatic experiences at a residential school and in the Vietnam War—as well as routinized abuse from his ­adopted ­family and the region’s vestiges of genocide lingering in casual conversation and on historic plaques—­are intermittently pre­sent yet never a central thematic concern in any par­tic­u­lar episode, let alone the season. Dent’s noted lack of birth certificate and tribal affiliation—as well as his relative silence—­contribute to the overall narrative shrouding of his biography and interiority. Juxtaposed against his omnipresence on-­screen, the lack of access to Dent’s perspective reduces him to a roaming ste­reo­type in pursuit of vio­lence without convincing motivation.50 In comparison to the troubling aspects of Westworld and Fargo, the most promising mainstream U.S. series in relation to portrayals of indigenous ­peoples

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are Rutherford Falls (2021–) and Reservation Dogs (2021–). As with season one of The Terror, ­these two shows locate indigenous characters and perspectives at the core of each of their first season narratives. Beneath the effervescent veneer of a small town sitcom, the fictional hamlet of Rutherford Falls has not yet come to terms with its settler colonial past. Over the course of its first season, the location and significance of a statue of the town’s namesake catalyzes unresolved community tensions over the Rutherford f­ amily’s broken treaty obligations and im­mense wealth accumulation at the expense of the Minishonka p­ eople—­facts all but erased from the town’s official, whitewashed history. Located within the grittier landscape of rural Oklahoma, Reservation Dogs boasts the first entirely indigenous writers’ room and director roster for a mainstream American tele­vi­ sion series. The show’s main characters (portrayed by an all-­indigenous cast) have designs on leaving Oklahoma to escape their ­limited opportunities at home. Deliberate pacing and genre hybridity open up the diegesis, cultivating an overarching first season narrative woven together from diverse indigenous experiences and perspectives. Altogether, the ostensibly comedic Reservation Dogs provides its characters space to ruminate on the reverberations of dispossession and trauma yet not—as has so often been the case in U.S. repre­sen­ta­tions of Native Americans—be defined by it. For its part, The Terror represents a compelling example of how critically acclaimed and structurally complex tele­vi­sion can provide alternative mediations of the North and indigenous communities, while also inviting greater scrutiny of prestige tele­vi­sion’s role in representing histories. The shifting bound­aries of “The North,” as Margaret Atwood put it, reflect its dual position as both an ­actual place and state of mind where “we know—or think we know—­what sorts of ­things go on.”51 The centuries-­long fixation on the lost Franklin expedition reflected such a preoccupation with both knowing and controlling the narrative of that knowledge. “The sum of what was lost,” Heather Davis-­Fisch has observed, “extended beyond the men and materials to the imperial control over memory and history they possessed and represented.”52 This disappearance juxtaposed the lack of written British rec­ords with the presence of Inuit and other oral accounts, playing a crucial role in communicating that knowledge. Yet Euro-­indigenous power relations, as well as the Eurocentric lionization of written over oral culture, consolidated exclusionary and incomplete narratives in lieu of more capacious intercultural storytelling and epistemologies. Consequently, it is imperative to consider how the con­temporary iteration of the Franklin myth in The Terror ­counters such dominant accounts. Externally conferred by way of legitimating discourse and internally constituted by way of complex serial storytelling, prestige provides an analytical entrée through which to explore The Terror’s efforts to revise historically Eurocentric narratives within what still amounts to a Eurocentric cultural form. Audiences are encouraged to interrogate how the vio­lence of imperialism—­both epistemological and material—­manifests in the season’s narrative as well as in the extra-­textual

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interpretive frameworks that perpetuate the exceptionalism of Western cultural production without critical self-­reflection. The Terror deviates from this trend by contemplating an alternative fate for the Franklin expedition and inviting viewers to imagine the countless other histories and narratives lost as a consequence of strategic agendas rather than misfortune.

Notes 1 ​Margaret Atwood, Strange ­Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Lit­er­a­ture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 33. 2 ​Kat Eschner, “Tales of the Doomed Franklin Expedition Long Ignored the Inuit Side, but ‘The Terror’ Flips the Script,” Smithsonian Magazine, April 6, 2018, https://­w ww​.­smithsonianmag​.­com​/­arts​-­culture​/­heres​-­how​-­amc​-­producers​-­worked​ -­inuit​-fi ­ ctionalized​-­franklin​-­expedition​-­show​-­180968643​/­. 3 ​Eschner, “Tales of the Doomed Franklin Expedition.” Paul Watson contends that it was the encroachment of Rus­sian claims into the Arctic that spurred then Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper (2006–2015) to undertake searches for the Erebus and Terror anew. “It was a crafty way of packaging a po­liti­cal agenda with the shiny wrapping of an adventure,” says Watson, “that speaks to the heart of Canadian nationalism.” See Simon Worrall, “How the Discovery of Two Lost Ships Solved an Arctic Mystery,” National Geographic, April 15, 2017, https://­w ww​.­nationalgeographic​ .­com​/­news​/2­ 017​/­04​/­franklin​-­expedition​-­ship​-w ­ atson​-­ice​-g­ hosts​/­. 4 ​Hester Blum, The News at the Ends of the Earth: The Print Culture of Polar Exploration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), xviii; Atwood, Strange ­Things, 19. One of the earliest surviving relics of Frankliniana is Lady Franklin’s Lament, which has been found on broadsides dating to the early 1850s. See “Lady Franklin’s Lament,” The Traditional Ballad Index, California State University, Fresno, January 15, 2020, http://­w ww​.­csufresno​.­edu​/­folklore​/­ballads​/­L K09​ . ­html 5 ​Atwood, Strange ­Things, 19; “Franklin and his men have not rested in peace,” Heather Davis-­Fisch contends, ­because “they remain as spectral figures who engage us through their eerie endurance . . . ​haunting the margins, failing to appear clearly.” See Heather Davis-­Fisch, Loss and Cultural Remains in Per­for­mance: The Ghosts of the Franklin Expedition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 195; As of April 2022, AMC has neither canceled The Terror nor renewed it for a third season. 6 ​Peter White, “ ‘The Terror’: AMC Mulls Third Season of Historical Horror Drama,” Deadline, January 16, 2020, https://­deadline​.­com​/2­ 020​/­01​/­the​-­terror​-­amc​ -­talks​-­third​-s­ eason​-o­ f​-­historical​-­horror​-­drama​-1­ 202833569​/­. 7 ​The Tuunbaq is not an Inuit mythological creature but rather the work of The Terror’s creative team. “As long as it’s representative of a hybrid of t­ hings that actually are in wider Inuit my­thol­ogy, we felt comfortable enough using it,” says writer and executive producer David Kajganich. See Eschner, “Tales of the Doomed Franklin Expedition.” 8 ​Nielson’s officially credited character name, Lady Silence, is the expedition’s nickname for her. Her Inuk name, Silna, is revealed ­later in the series. To avoid confusion, I use only “Lady Silence” when discussing this character. 9 ​Atwood, Strange ­Things, 29. 10 ​Allison Perlman, “Deadwood, Generic Transformation, and Televisual History,” Journal of Popu­lar Film and Tele­vi­sion 39, no. 2 (2011): 105.

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11 ​Perlman, “Deadwood, Generic Transformation, and Televisual History,” 105. 12 ​An extension of this proj­ect would explore how t­ hese external and internal features of the show get woven into the contentious Inuit, British, and Canadian imperial/ colonial relations and competing epistemologies informing the narratives of the ­actual expedition’s loss and discovery. 13 ​Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2012). 14 ​Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 211; Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 7. 15 ​Rhiannon Bury, “Raise You Like I Should: Cyberfans and Six Feet ­Under,” in It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-­Television Era, ed. Marc Leverette, Brian L. Ott, and Cara Louise Buckley (New York: Routledge, 2008). 16 ​Bury, “Raise You Like I Should,” 191. 17 ​Original emphasis. Bury, “Raise You Like I Should,” 195. 18 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 7. 19 ​Mittell, Complex TV, 216. 20 ​Mittell, Complex TV, 5. 21 ​In one particularly illustrative review, Matt Zoller Seitz captures the overlap of quality and queasiness. “Death by freezing, drowning, falling, suffocation, disease, animal attack: You name it, it’s h ­ ere. This makes it sound as if The Terror . . . ​is an unpleasant experience. It is. Oh, believe me, dear reader, it most definitely is. And ­there’s prob­ably too much of it. . . . ​You have to be a masochist to keep coming back. . . . ​I came back.” See Matt Zoller Seitz, “The Terror Is a Horrifying 19th-­Century Nightmare,” Vulture, March 23, 2018, https://­vulture​.­com​/­2018​/0 ­ 3​/­the​-­terror​-­amc​-­review​.­html. 22 ​Marc Leverette, “Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits,” in It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-­Television Era, 123–151. 23 ​Mike Hale, “Review: ‘The Terror,’ or ‘Alien’ in the Arctic,” New York Times, March 25, 2018, https://­w ww​.n ­ ytimes​.c­ om​/­2018​/­03​/­25​/a­ rts​/t­ elevision​/­the​-­terror​ -­review​.­html. 24 ​Brian Lowry, “ ‘The Terror’ Finds Icy Horror in Doomed Voyage,” CNN, March 26, 2018, https://­w ww​.­cnn​.­com​/­2018​/­03​/­26​/­entertainment​/­the​-­terror​-­review​/­index​ .­html; Nick Schager, “ ‘The Terror’ Is the Spookiest TV Show of the Year (So Far),” Daily Beast, March 27, 2018, https://­w ww​.t­ hedailybeast​.­com​/­the​-­terror​-­is​-­the​ -­spookiest​-­t v​-s­ how​-­of​-­the​-­year​-­so​-­far; Emily St. James, “AMC’s The Terror Is a Near Masterpiece of Survival Horror,” Vox, March 26, 2018, https://­w ww​.­vox​.­com​ /­culture​/­2018​/­3​/­26​/­17163368​/­the​-­terror​-­review​-­amc​-­dan​-­simmons​-­jared​-­harris. 25 ​Terry Terrones, “TV Review: ‘The Terror’ Offers Chilling True Story of Ships Lost in the Arctic,” Gazette, March 23, 2018, https://­gazette​.c­ om​/­news​/­t v​-­review​-­the​ -­terror​-­offers​-­chilling​-­true​-­story​-­of​-­ships​-­lost​-­in​-­the​-­arctic​/­article​_­e79aeb64​-­18d2​ -­5165​-­994b​-­e440a1450e99​.­html. 26 ​Terrones, “TV Review: ‘The Terror.’ ” 27 ​Lorraine Ali, “Ridley Scott’s ‘The Terror’ Turns Macabre Arctic History into an Engrossing Fight for Survival,” Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2018, https://­w ww​ .­latimes​.­com​/­entertainment​/­t v​/­la​-­et​-­st​-­the​-­terror​-­review​-­20180326​-­story​.­html. 28 ​Ali, “Ridley Scott’s ‘The Terror.’ ” Matt Zoller Seitz compares the series to a nineteenth-­century novel and to masterworks of horror film auteurists such as Ridley Scott (Alien [1979], a film other critics have also cited), John Carpenter’s The ­Thing (1982), and David Cronenberg. See Seitz, “The Terror Is a Horrifying 19th-­Century Nightmare.”

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29 ​Mike Hale opines that the show’s mysterious monster that slowly picks off crew members combined with the setting on “what might as well be a distant planet (­unless ­you’re an Inuit)” indicate Scott’s influence. The show fails in Hale’s estimation, however, to “display Mr. Scott’s ruthless talent for putting the viewer’s guts in a knot.” See Hale, “Review: ‘The Terror.’ ” 3 0 ​Hale, “Review: ‘The Terror’ ”; Brian Tallerico, “Prestigious, Expensive Adaptation of The Terror Debuts on AMC,” rogerebert​.­com, March 23, 2018, https://­w ww​ .­rogerebert​.­com​/d­ emanders​/­prestigious​-­expensive​-a­ daptation​-­of​-­the​-­terror​-­debuts​ -­on​-a­ mc; Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 5. 31 ​Myles McNutt, “­Limited Series Are a Product of Brand Management, Not Innovation,” Carsey-­Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara: Media Industries Proj­ect Creative ­Labor Initiative, 2014, https://­w ww​.­carseywolf​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­research​ /­industry​/­cli​/­. 32 ​Molly Schneider, “A ‘Solution to an Ongoing TV Prob­lem’: The ‘­Limited Series’ as Quality TV Format” (pre­sen­ta­tion, Annual Meeting of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Toronto, Canada, March 17, 2018). 3 3 ​Schneider, “A ‘Solution to an Ongoing TV Prob­lem.’ ” 3 4 ​A casual glance at the credits of its leading cast members Ciarán Hinds (Rome, Game of Thrones), Tobias Menzies (Rome, Outlander, Game of Thrones, Catastrophe, The Night Man­ag­er, ­later The Crown), and Jared Harris (Mad Men, The Crown, ­later Chernobyl) suggest The Terror to be another series vetted by acclaimed performers and industry professionals (e.g., Scott) as worthy of production. Darren Franich takes this one step further, noting that Caesar and Brutus are re­united, which “makes The Terror worthwhile for a certain generation of cable TV fan.” Darren Franich, “The Terror Is a Chilly Acting Feast: EW Review,” Entertainment Weekly, March 26, 2018, https://­ew​.­com​/­t v​/­2018​/­03​/­26​/­the​-­terror​-­ew​-­review​/­. 3 5 ​Schager, “ ‘ The Terror’ Is the Spookiest TV Show of the Year (So Far);” Hale, “Review: ‘The Terror’ ”; Tallerico, “Prestigious, Expensive Adaptation of The Terror Debuts on AMC.” 36 ​Tallerico, “Prestigious, Expensive Adaptation of The Terror Debuts on AMC”; Maureen Ryan, “TV Review: Jared Harris in ‘The Terror’ on AMC,” Variety, March 22, 2018, https://­variety​.­com​/­2018​/­t v​/­reviews​/­terror​-­amc​-­jared​-­harris​-­tobias​ -­menzies​-­ciaran​-­hinds​-­ships​-­arctic​-­1202733600​/­. 37 ​Tallerico, “Prestigious, Expensive Adaptation of The Terror Debuts on AMC.” 3 8 ​Darren Franich, “The Terror Is a Chilly Acting Feast: EW Review.” 39 ​Danette Chavez, “The Terror: Infamy Is Haunting, Unwieldy, and One of the Most Relevant Shows of the Year,” The A.V. Club, August 9, 2019, https://­t v​.­avclub​.c­ om​ /­the​-t­ error​-i­ nfamy​-­is​-­haunting​-­unwieldy​-a­ nd​-­one​-­of​-­th​-­1837107363. 4 0 ​Mittell, Complex TV, 55. 41 ​Nellie Andreeva, “Scott ­Free Inks First-­Look Deal with AMC, Sets Up Futuristic Drama Proj­ect,” Deadline, May 1, 2013, https://­deadline​.­com​/2­ 013​/0 ­ 5​/­scott​-­free​ -­inks​-­first​-­look​-­deal​-­with​-­amc​-s­ ets​-­up​-­f uturistic​-d­ rama​-­project​-­487797​/.­ 42 ​Nellie Andreeva, “AMC ­Orders ‘The Terror’ Anthology Drama Series from Scott ­Free,” Deadline Hollywood, March 2, 2016, https://­deadline​.­com​/2­ 016​/­03​/­the​-t­ error​ -­anthology​-­series​-­scott​-­free​-­1201712908​/­. 4 3 ​While the ship represented in the tableau is not specifically named, Ross’s hand on the wheel suggests it was the vessel he captained on the expedition, the Erebus. 4 4 ​Franklin uses this characterization to convince his niece that she should not marry a man like Crozier, who is so far beneath her station, a conversation overheard by Crozier himself.

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45 ​The irony of this moment is that as he realizes he’s d­ ying, Fitzjames confides in Crozier that he is an illegitimate child whose biography is a fabrication. The revelation provides a momentary solidification of the bond between the two men while providing another example of the self-­destruction incurred by outsiders seeking access to British high society. 4 6 ​In episode six of season one (“A Mercy”), Fitzjames fi­nally admits that the expedition must abandon ship and seek rescue over land, that Crozier had been right all along. Franklin’s former response to Crozier at this vital moment was that they w ­ ere two weeks from “finding the grail” (locating the Northwest Passage) and that “God and winter” would see them through. 47 ​The Inuk Shaman appears momentarily to crew member David Young (Alfie Kingsnorth) as he lay ­dying of natu­ral ­causes in episode one of season one (“Go for Broke”). The Shaman says nothing, but Young screams in terror that “he wants us to run.” No other character experiences this, and the show neither returns to nor explains it. Also, The Terror retains the “Lady Silence” moniker from the Dan Simmons source material, yet unlike the book the series gives her a voice throughout. 4 8 ​Erebus’s chief physician, Dr. Stanley, refuses to treat the Shaman. Yet the crew (including eventual allies Crozier and Goodsir) restrain Lady Silence when she says her ­father must die on the ice, ­under the sky so that it—­what we learn to be the Tuunbaq—­can find him. For unexplained reasons, Dr. McDonald only translates part of Lady Silence’s conversation with her f­ ather about the Tuunbaq. By the time Crozier translates her wishes and calls for a stretcher, the Shaman has passed away. Franklin quickly re-­enters the sick bay, coldly ­orders Lady Silence off the ship, and requests that “order” be restored to the space. Against Lady Silence’s wishes, her ­father’s body is desecrated by being placed in a hole in the ice—­a fate that the Tuunbaq ­will poetically revisit on Franklin in the following episode, “The Ladder.” 49 ​A producer awkwardly attempts to pass the time with an extra outfitted in ste­reo­t ypical indigenous regalia as the two wait for the off-­screen Reagan to be outfitted with arrows for the film’s eponymous scene. The producer’s failed, tokenizing efforts to connect with the man he presumes to be Native American—­ including a glib history lesson of the ­actual massacre and an ungainly attempt to compare the genocides against indigenous and Jewish p­ eoples—­outline the constrained capacity for articulating the very vio­lence the Northern Plains so freely expresses. 50 ​Dent is the most significant of the second season’s characters not to be afforded the narrative space necessary to draw out his dimensionality. 51 ​Atwood, Strange ­Things, 8. 52 ​Davis-­Fisch, Loss and Cultural Remains in Per­for­mance, 195–196.

7

Prestige Comedy Con­temporary Sitcom Narrative and Complexity in How I Met Your M ­ other ANDREW J. BOTTOMLEY In the current “new golden age of tele­vi­sion,” the once rarified traits of aesthetic sophistication and narrative complexity that distinguished Quality TV of the 1980s–2000s from the rest of tele­vi­sion are now de rigueur.1 Serialized storytelling, narrative complexity, “cinematic” visual aesthetics, moral profundity, and the like are commonplace in streaming, cable, and even post-­millennium network programs. Yet, scholarship on prestige programming focuses almost entirely on hour-­long dramas. A discursive divide persists between dramatic and comedic programming: audiences and critics tend to praise serial dramas, while comedies—­especially the sitcom genre—­frequently remain marked with low cultural value. In this chapter, I examine the CBS sitcom, How I Met Your ­Mother (2005–2014; HIMYM), to highlight the normalization of complex storytelling and the shifting cultural status of the sitcom in U.S. tele­vi­sion. In par­tic­u­lar, I map the textual properties that position HIMYM as illustrative of the growing overlap between what have traditionally been presented as fixed and distinct televisual formulas: the multi-­camera sitcom and the single-­camera sitcom as well as the episodic series and the serial. I ultimately interrogate how the show is constructed to align with con­temporary notions of narrative complexity and 131

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The audience-­less, multi-­camera soundstage setup for How I Met Your M ­ other from the “A Week in the Life” featurette included in the season one DVD.

perceived quality, which amplify its cultural value in relation to comparatively disparaged programming. HIMYM reveals the subjectivities and taste biases associated with t­ hese discourses of prestige. HIMYM is a half-­hour, multi-­cam sitcom that premiered in 2005 on CBS and aired ­until 2014, producing 208 episodes across nine seasons. It is also a hybrid program that blends the old and the new in sitcoms, mixing formal ele­ments from the traditional multi-­cam mode (e.g., simultaneous three-­or four-­camera shooting style; bright, flat lighting; shallow staging; laugh track) and the modern single-­camera mode (e.g., hyperactive, often absurdist televisual style with a profusion of short scenes; abundance of locations; frequent narrative digressions).2 In fact, HIMYM’s unique production method truly is an amalgam of more traditional and modern styles: it is shot multi-­cam but in an empty studio with a laugh track recorded at audience screenings of the edited episodes. This strategy accommodates the addition of single-­cam ele­ments, including a larger number of shots and locations with aty­pi­cal quick cuts and rapid scene changes.3 Moreover, HIMYM is an example of a narratively complex comedy through its inclusion of serialized plots, self-­reflexivity, and metatextuality. Its narrative chronology is also consistently interrupted by flashbacks, flash-­forwards, and ­imagined scenarios. Nonetheless, the basic premise of HIMYM is hardly groundbreaking. The series chronicles the love, sex, and work misadventures of five twentysomething

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friends living in New York City. Th ­ ese main characters include Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor), an architect and self-­proclaimed romantic determined to find his soulmate; Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders), a local cable news anchor and commitment-­phobic Canadian; Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris), a notoriously womanizing, perpetually suit-­wearing businessman; and married c­ ouple Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel), a ­lawyer and Ted’s best friend since college, and Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan), a kindergarten teacher. Despite this generic setup, the creators of HIMYM innovate by adding structural complexity through the tactic of telling “a love story in reverse.” The deployment of layered, temporal storytelling devices in HIMYM imbues the show with narrative complexity and a unique style of humor. Its mix of multi-­cam and single-­cam styles adds to this complexity, albeit in moderation. Th ­ ere are enough innovations to appear novel to younger and sophisticated viewers. However, the show’s creators also adhere to conventions that avoid confusing casual viewers or alienating the mass audience. The current rise of prestige tele­vi­sion is inextricably linked to discussions of increasing narrative complexity, making HIMYM a provocative case study in relation to such discourses b­ ecause of the paucity of sitcoms typically identified as constituents of the category.

Understanding Prestige and Identifying Narrative Complexity in Tele­vi­sion During the con­temporary “peak TV” era, critics and scholars have observed a trend t­ oward formally sophisticated and narratively complex fictional tele­vi­sion programming, which stretches back more than three de­cades.4 Primetime dramas have garnered significant scholarly attention, particularly melodramatic and crime series. Considerably less research exists, though, on comedic programming. This is partly b­ ecause a majority of tele­vi­sion scholarship emphasizes the medium’s po­liti­cal, social, or cultural dimensions to justify its relevance and relinquish its “bad object” status.5 The sitcom genre is, according to Paul Attallah, frequently deemed an “unworthy discourse.”6 When the sitcom is discussed, it tends to be doubly marginalized since it is characterized by repetition and as lacking the artistry and social value of “serious” programming formats.7 Publications on the sitcom routinely focus on ideology and identity repre­sen­ta­tions, an approach that Brett Mills claims pre­sents the sitcom “as a prob­lem.”8 As a result of the sitcom’s denigration, t­here is a dearth of scholarship on the genre’s narrative and formal attributes, including how comedy works in relation to its conventions of writing, shooting, editing, and comic per­for­mance. Nonetheless, scholars have begun to address questions of televisual form in their explorations of single-­cam sitcoms, especially t­ hose that use the “mockumentary” format.9 Although the single-­cam shooting mode dates back to ­programs like The Andy Griffith Show (1960–1968) and The Addams ­Family (1964–1966), it has proliferated since the early 2000s. Consequently, the mode

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is now associated with innovation and legitimation, while the multi-­cam mode is linked to stagnancy and degraded status.10 Shows such as 30 Rock (2006–2013), The Office (2005–2013), Arrested Development (2003–2006; 2013–2019), Modern ­Family (2009–2020), and Parks and Recreation (2009–2015) are hailed as stylistically innovative and “reinvigorating the sitcom format.”11 ­These analyses primarily focus on camerawork and editing. However, Michael Newman and Elana Levine argue that such approaches privilege film-­orientated conceptions of style at the expense of comedic writing and per­for­mance.12 Moreover, ­these single-­cam sitcoms are contrasted with traditional multi-­cam sitcoms, with the artistic and cultural value of the single-­cam style augmented by positioning the multi-­cam style as deficient. Efforts to define prestige tele­vi­sion and which shows are constituents of the category generally center on issues of artistry, resulting in a focus on visual style and narrative complexity.13 Jeffrey Sconce proposes a “poetics” of tele­vi­sion that identifies the attributes that make narrative complexity distinct from alternatives.14 He contends that tele­vi­sion’s core storytelling competency resides in its long-­form structure, and yet due to legacy economic motives, series have been predominantly episodic and reliant on formulaic conventions, such as stock plots and familiar characters, settings, and themes.15 Thus, t­ here generally is a core distinction in tele­vi­sion analy­sis between episodic and serial formats. Ultimately, seriality has been positioned as a fundamental trait of modern prestige tele­vi­sion, and episodic shows are typically considered to be narratively simplistic. The sitcom genre has long been quintessentially episodic, which has prevented most of its constituents from being categorized as elite. The sitcom refers to a “situation comedy” in which a fixed set of characters, who possess highly stable personality traits and who are placed in fixed locations (e.g., home, office, school), deal with new situations in each episode. Episodes provide clear resolution via a closed ending. While “pure” sitcoms adhering to “the Platonic ideal of a wholly self-­contained episode” are rare, according to Jeremy Butler, the narrative development that carries over several episodes or seasons in traditional sitcoms is typically confined only to character development and relationships.16 Serial shows, especially prestige dramas, typically prioritize a dark tonal register and intricate, layered plotting over character relations.17 While seriality and cumulative narrative are lynchpins of prestige tele­vi­sion, narratively complex series nevertheless must balance some stand-­alone, episodic plotlines with long-­ term, multi-­episode story arcs.18 Complexity is a ­matter of degree; the most complex narratives go beyond merely carry­ing information over from one episode or season to the next. Instead, ­these shows contain so much interconnected material—­some of it purposefully obscure, ambiguous, or even misleading—­that significant viewer attention and engagement are necessary to make sense of all of it. Steven Johnson has pointed to characteristics such as multiple, simultaneous story threads, lack of reiteration, and minimal exposition as evidence of how

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t­ hese shows illustrate tele­vi­sion’s increasing narrative complexity.19 Johnson’s claims that narrative convolution encourages viewers to become more actively involved in interpretation is compelling, albeit problematic.20 When t­ here is no clear distinction between dominant and minor plots and key narrative details are not repeated for clarity, viewers are encouraged to parse out information and “[fill] in” connections.21 In addition to fostering strong audience engagement, ­these programs encourage audiences to speculate about narrative information that has been or ­will be exposed. Sconce claims that such shows contain “conjectural narratives,” as they break from tele­vi­sion’s traditional realist frame—in which fictional programs are presumed to pre­sent a transparent reflection of the world—­and instead explore hy­po­thet­i­cal scenarios presented for “intellectual and narratological plea­sure.”22 Brad Chisholm similarly observes that many viewers enjoy the intellectual test that narratively “difficult” programs pre­sent, deriving plea­sure from the interpretive challenge.23 Narratively complex series thus depend on an audience attuned enough to decode them. This relationship reveals a key linkage between narrative complexity and prestige tele­vi­sion; critically acclaimed prestige tele­vi­sion most frequently pre­sents intricate plotlines and narrative devices like flashbacks, plus morally complicated characters and thematic weightiness. All of t­ hese traits convey knowledge to viewers in a manner that encourages self-­awareness and critical engagement. Such content presumes a sophisticated audience that desires a challenge from the viewing experience, elevating the program’s cultural legitimacy. This analytical effort is exemplified by the prevalence of metatextual ­ele­ments—­intertextuality, parody, self-­reflexivity—in con­temporary complex programs, including HIMYM. Metatextuality and audience engagement play impor­tant roles in the structuring and appreciation of complex narratives; viewers must not only be knowledgeable about the intricacies of a series, they also often need substantial pop culture and broader televisual literacy.24 Drawing on cultural historian Neil Harris’s research on p­ eople’s fascination with seeing machines function, Jason Mittell suggests that viewers of complex narratives adopt an “operational aesthetic,” deriving plea­sure from its self-­consciousness and storytelling mechanics.25 The narrative itself becomes a spectacle with many viewers concentrating on the construction of the story, questioning how creators pulled off a plot twist or brought together multiple, divergent plotlines at an episode’s end. A series like 30 Rock is self-­consciously reflexive through its fictional show-­within-­a-­show concept and satirical use of product placement. Seinfeld (1989–1998) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–­; CYE) are densely plotted and make a spectacle out of developing numerous distinct plotlines that are brought together by an episode’s conclusion.26 The reputations of ­these narratively complex antecedents w ­ ere elevated by attracting coveted audiences and encouraging them to reflect on the artifice. Notably, though, the bulk of ­these other complex comedies, including 30 Rock and CYE, have been single-­cam shows, whereas

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HIMYM’s pre­sen­ta­tion as a narratively complex, multi-­cam sitcom stands out as unconventional.

Narration in How I Met Your M ­ other: “I’m ­Going to Tell You an Incredible Story . . .” HIMYM’s narrative is similarly unorthodox partly b­ ecause it is focalized through the narrator’s frame story. Specifically, in the year 2030, the narrator, an Older Ted (voiced by Bob Saget), sits down with his two c­ hildren, a girl of about sixteen and a boy around fourteen, and announces, “Kids, I’m ­going to tell you an incredible story. The story of how I met your ­mother.” He recounts events that started “twenty-­five years ago” in 2005, when Ted was twenty-­seven.27 Thus, the entire series is essentially one big analepsis (i.e., flashback) with each episode being a story-­within-­a-­story.28 ­These past events unfold more or less chronologically from episode to episode and dominate the narrative. Older Ted never appears in the a­ ctual extended flashbacks, and the year 2030 scenes are brief.29 Still, the series is marked by continuous time jumps, including frequent flashbacks and flash-­forwards within the primary narrative of “twenty-­five years ago.” The voice-­ over narration also brackets each episode, providing necessary information to establish the episode’s plot and to tie together the main story threads at episode’s end. In addition to ­those functions, Older Ted’s narration maintains continuity of the show’s larger frame narrative by linking together its many time frames and subplots (the episodic main plot and vari­ous ongoing character and plot arcs). ­These are notable instances of HIMYM’s hybrid status as a series that adheres to some episodic, sitcom conventions while defying other generic standards, appealing to both loyal and casual viewers. The complicated temporal structure is sustained and foregrounded by Older Ted’s narration, yet the device also neatly aligns with an episodic structure and functions to catch up casual viewers. This is a key site where prestige tele­vi­sion ele­ments of serial narration and complexity—­multiple plotlines, voice-­over narration and retelling, time jumps, metatextuality—­are interwoven with episodic forms. Storytelling techniques that foreground narrative temporality and multiple time frames of past, pre­sent, and ­future are thus integral to HIMYM’s narrative structure, and situate seriality and narrative discourse (i.e., the way in which the events of the story are presented) as central to its appeal. When events do not occur in the order in which they are recounted in a narrative, narratologists call it an anachrony. Anachronies can revert to the past in flashbacks (analepses) or go forward to the f­ uture in flash-­forwards (prolepses).30 Gérard Genette categorizes the order of a narrative according to its anachronies, referring to the dif­fer­ent temporal sections as first narrative, second narrative, and so on.31 However, rather than arrange t­ hese by chronology (i.e., which events happen first, second, e­ tc., in the story itself), Genette creates a hierarchy of temporality based on quantity of narration. That is, the first narrative is the primary

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An older Ted Mosby’s narration initiates How I Met Your M ­ other’s frame story by telling his kids that he ­will recount his memories of meeting their ­mother.

narrative ­because ­there is more of it. The second narrative (and so on) is an excursion from this base temporality, subordinate to the first at a temporal level ­because its duration is shorter and its main function is to fill out the first narrative by providing viewers with additional detail. In HIMYM, despite the fact the series opens in 2030 and is narrated in a flashback, the events of “twenty-­five years ago” (starting in 2005) assume the role of first narrative while the year 2030 events make up the second narrative, since the “twenty-­five years ago” events are presented in far greater quantity.32 First-­person voice-­over narration is a staple in fiction films yet it is relatively rare in scripted tele­vi­sion, and HIMYM’s extensive use of it in the second narrative is convoluted.33 Older Ted is what narratologists refer to as a character narrator, as opposed to an anonymous narrator, since he is a character in the story he is telling.34 First-­person character narration has been used in a handful of recent series, including Dexter (2006–2013; 2021–2022), Grey’s Anatomy (2005–), Sex and the City (1998–2004; 2021–), and You (2018–). In each of t­ hese shows, however, the narration occurs in the pre­sent. An exception is The Won­ der Years (1988–1993), which, similar to HIMYM, features an unseen narrator nostalgically reflecting on his youth, who is voiced by a dif­fer­ent actor than the one who plays the protagonist. Unlike HIMYM, the prior action in The Won­ der Years is set in the distant past and the narration is positioned as delivered in the viewer’s pre­sent.35 In HIMYM this situation is problematized since the pre­sent in the show’s story world (the time of the telling of the story) is the ­future (2030) while the past (the events of “twenty-­five years ago”) is the audience’s pre­sent (the time at which the audience viewed the show’s original run). In other words, the narrative is retrospective ­because Older Ted reflects on

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events and refers to them in the past tense, yet the audience experiences t­ hese events for the first time in the pre­sent. Indeed, the show’s creators situate the “twenty-­five years ago” flashback action painstakingly to match each episode’s original airdate, with time-­based references in the show coinciding with when audiences initially viewed them. HIMYM is a plot-­driven series in that it takes a central question—­“How does Ted meet the ­mother of his ­children?”—­and foregrounds it by making it the show’s title. This choice is self-­reflexive since it explic­itly draws attention to the narrative and its plotting. It is also an intertextual gesture ­because the title winkingly acknowledges how sitcoms start with a simplistic scenario that is then exploited. Such plot-­driven storytelling is unusual for a comedy series, which are commonly known for being character-­driven, and thus it is a central aspect that brings HIMYM into prestige tele­vi­sion territory. The question of “How?” is the series-­long plot arc. Reluctant romance storylines are the primary serial ele­ment in many tele­vi­sion comedies and dramas; the fundamental question in ­these programs is “­Will they or ­won’t they?”36 HIMYM has a romantically inclined premise, and the question of “Who is the ­mother?” exists, but the fact that ­there is a m ­ other is predetermined. Therefore, the two central questions for dedicated viewers are how Ted ­will meet her and, drawing on the operational aesthetic, how her identity ­will be revealed in the discourse. Notably, both questions tie into concerns of plot more than character. Nonetheless, HIMYM’s hybridity is again relevant, since t­ hese plot concerns are balanced with the more traditional sitcom narrative issue of Ted’s character development, as he pursues an array of ­women ­until he finds the one. Unlike serial dramas, continuity is often minimized in tele­vi­sion comedies. HIMYM, however, is cumulative and serialized, eschewing the “conditional seriality” that is common to sitcoms, since narrative events often return l­ ater in the series.37 For instance, t­ here are numerous clues about the meeting with the m ­ other that accumulate, such as the importance of a yellow umbrella and that she was in the classroom that Ted incorrectly entered on his first day as a college professor.38 Even trivial details, like Barney’s propensity to use the figure 83 ­percent whenever he makes up a statistic, persist across multiple episodes.39 Also, as opposed to comedies like F ­ amily Guy (1999–) or Arrested Development in which flashbacks and flash-­forwards are what Ross Simonini calls “narrative digressions” that function in a non sequitur–­like manner akin to sketch comedy, the anachronies in HIMYM are more seamlessly integrated, usually taking on significant narrative import.40 The fact that HIMYM is a series with “a memory” that requires more attentive viewing and cognitive pro­cessing from its audience aligns it with prestige tele­vi­sion conventions. A prominent example of comedic seriality in HIMYM is the “slap bet” narrative arc that appears in six episodes across four seasons. It is introduced in “Slap Bet” (2006) as a wager between Marshall and Barney. The winner gets to slap the loser as hard as he wants. A ­ fter Barney prematurely slaps Marshall, Lily, as

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Marshall Eriksen delivers the last of eight slaps to Barney Stinson, ending the “slap bet” ­running gag across multiple seasons of How I Met Your M ­ other.

“slap bet commissioner,” grants Marshall “five slaps that can be doled out any point.” He delivers the first slap immediately but leaves the four remaining slaps unfulfilled. The second slap appears three months l­ater in “Stuff” (2007), the third slap another nine months l­ater in “Slapsgiving” (2007), the fourth slap a full two years thereafter in “Slapsgiving 2: Revenge of the Slap” (2009), and the fifth slap years ­later in “Disaster Averted” (2011). Marshall is subsequently granted three extra slaps, the last of which does not arrive ­until the show’s penultimate episode, “The End of the Aisle” (2014). Each of ­these slaps appears unexpectedly in the first narrative, exemplifying how the audience derives plea­sure from the show’s narrative discourse. Viewer suspense relates to the question of “How is the next slap g­ oing to happen?” In some ways, the “slap bet” is a traditional ­running gag, though the complexity of its trajectory hints at the role that seriality plays in the show’s narrative.41 This makes HIMYM similar to narratively complex comedies, like Seinfeld and CYE, which, as Mittell observes, turn serialized plotlines into “elaborate inside jokes.”42 In addition to ­these narrative complexities, the show plays with the common and false perception of tele­vi­sion programming occurring “live.” Consequently, liveness is exposed as a construction by drawing audience attention to the show’s form, which embodies its metareflexivity.43 HIMYM’s prestige status emerges through its narrative complexity and playfulness, which is epitomized by how it juggles narrative information. In contrast to many narratively complex serial dramas that strive to confuse or misdirect viewers, HIMYM instead encourages them to engage actively and reflect on the show’s hyperawareness of its own construction. It is as if the entire series is delivered as an elaborate, multi-­layered joke with interweaving plots and timelines that often correspond and collide. In

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sum, much of the humor and viewing plea­sure derives from HIMYM’s manipulation of its own telling.

Complex Depictions of Time and the Imaginary The manipulation of time and chronology in HIMYM merely begins with the frame narrative. Although the story starts in 2005 and progresses week by week in tandem with the show’s broadcast schedule, the narrative discourse is not linear.44 In addition to the frame narrative, HIMYM’s first narrative is filled with flashbacks and flash-­forwards that disrupt its chronology. Past and ­future events materialize in the narrative out of turn, as ­these digressions are often triggered not by Older Ted’s narration but instead by bits of dialogue in the first narrative. The act of narration itself is a common theme in the series: characters constantly tell stories that trigger anachronies, most often flashbacks (more accurately, flashbacks-­within-­flashbacks b­ ecause the first narrative is itself an extended flashback). The episode “The Duel” (2005) epitomizes how HIMYM incorporates multiple levels of flashbacks. ­A fter the narrator’s introduction, the episode begins with an incident that just occurred: Lily and Robin enter Ted and Marshall’s apartment, at which point Lily states, “You guys ­will never believe what just happened to us . . .” The show then cuts to Lily and Robin walking on a street in Queens, as the pair is about to visit Lily’s old apartment, which is now a Chinese restaurant. By using the flashback, the creators compress the narrative and have the characters add humorous commentary to its retelling. Notably, while this approach accentuates the show’s narrative self-­consciousness and its temporal playfulness, it also helps keep the episode within the standard twenty-­two-­minute time frame for a network sitcom, reinforcing its legacy aspects. An example of a distant-­past flashback follows shortly when roommates Ted and Marshall argue about who gets their apartment a­ fter Lily and Marshall marry. When Barney and Robin ask Ted if he and Marshall ever discussed this issue, t­ here is a cut to Ted, struggling to think back, and then to a subsequent scene revealing a younger Marshall and Ted having this very discussion. Younger Marshall asks, “So, when Lily and I get married, who’s ­going to get the apartment?” Younger Ted responds, “Oh, that’s a tough one. You know who I think can ­handle a prob­lem like that? ­Future Ted and F ­ uture Marshall.” “Totally, let’s let t­ hose guys h ­ andle it,” concludes Younger Marshall. The flashback ends and returns to the first narrative. Again, Ted responds to the flashback that the audience just witnessed (and he presumably described to Barney and Robin), saying, “Dammit, Past Ted!” In both cases, ­these flashbacks reconstruct events that led to the pre­sent, providing past information about events mentioned in the first narrative. At other points in the series, ­there are narrative excursions into the ­future to reveal ­later events, which the narrator foreshadows. For instance, the narrator reveals that Marshall and Lily ultimately have at least one son.45 ­There are also

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flash-­forwards that depict events occurring in the gap between the time of the viewing and the time of the narration. Th ­ ese flash-­forwards occur less frequently than flashbacks. As David Bordwell explains of classical Hollywood film narratives, flash-­forwards are rare since they are hard to motivate realistically, they are highly self-­conscious, and the information they communicate is ambiguous, often teasing, which all violate princi­ples of classical continuity.46 Nevertheless, a sign of HIMYM’s complexity is how its creators embrace such noncontinuity. Moreover, flash-­forwards generally have greater narrative significance than flashbacks ­because they ­either resolve lingering audience questions or anticipate ­future plotlines taken up ­later. In “­We’re Not from ­Here” (2007), for example, a flash-­forward to 2029 shows an older Marshall and Lily, confirming that they are still married. This eliminates ambiguity about ­whether or not Marshall and Lily ­will remain together, but it also hints at ­future occurrences. In the background of this flash-­forward is a newspaper clipping with the headline “N.Y.C. ­Lawyer Captures ‘Nessie,’ ” implying that Marshall accomplishes his dream of capturing the Loch Ness Monster, which has been alluded to multiple times. In terms of narrative complexity, this seemingly minor detail, revealed merely through a prop in the mise-­en-­scène and never mentioned in the dialogue, encourages what Mittell calls “forensic fandom” b­ ecause only highly attentive viewers are likely to recognize it and understand its full meaning.47 ­These flash-­forwards also shift the suspense from questions of “What ­will happen next?” to “How is it g­ oing to happen?,” making them examples of the operational aesthetic.48 Flashbacks (and less often, flash-­forwards) recently have become sitcom staples, even in traditional multi-­cam sitcoms. HIMYM adds to ­these anachronies many ­imagined or hy­po­thet­i­cal scenarios that further distort the genre’s conventional linearity and naturalism. ­These scenes are moments of character subjectivity that I call “interior visions,” which differ from fantasy or dream sequences routinely used in sitcoms.49 The interior vision is a narrative tactic consisting of a usually brief, punched-in scenario that abruptly punctures the diegesis comically.50 For instance, Marshall, while expressing regret about smoking, won­ders aloud, “If I could only go back to that moment . . . ,” referring to the first time he tried a cigarette in 1991. The show then cuts to a scene featuring him in the pre­sent knocking the cigarette out of thirteen-­year-­old Marshall’s hand and sucker punching him. Quickly returning to the first narrative, Marshall comments on the i­ magined sequence, proclaiming, “I hate that l­ ittle bastard.”51 However, unlike the flashbacks and flash-­forwards, which always have narrative repercussions, t­ hese interior visions are fabrications that resemble Sconce’s conjectural narratives. They demonstrate the operational aesthetic and how creators of HIMYM are hyperconscious of the show’s constructedness. The narrative becomes a game where the creators invite audiences to contemplate events from multiple pos­si­ble ­angles, including past, pre­sent, f­ uture, and fantasy. At the same time, as abrupt and self-­reflexive as ­these interior visions may be, they emerge

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seemingly naturally out of character dialogue, making them compositionally motivated and narratively subservient, aligning them with classical continuity princi­ples.52 This is yet another example of HIMYM blending the conventional and the unconventional, the traditional and the new in sitcom modes, and thus upscaling the lowbrow form of the multi-­cam sitcom through the addition of prestige tele­vi­sion ele­ments. ­These scenes are metareflexive ­because of their conspicuousness, and are emblematic of HIMYM’s self-­consciousness and self-­awareness as a show about the pro­cess of televisual discourse. The repre­sen­ta­tional nature of the narrative is made explicit, encouraging the audience to interpret it as fictional.53 Diegetic self-­consciousness also renders t­hese scenes metareflexive, as characters often directly reference the show itself and its construction. This is obvious in the previously referenced scene from “The Duel,” when Ted refers to “­Future Ted and ­Future Marshall” and afterward curses “Past Ted.” Thus, the series flaunts its own constructedness through the telling and retelling of familiar tales. Prestige tele­vi­sion is marked by a formally aware mode of viewing, and by toying with narrative conventions in this way, audiences are alerted to HIMYM’s artificiality. It raises awareness of televisual and sitcom genre conventions.54 Viewers derive plea­sure from both the content of the story—­the jokes delivered in the anachronies, for instance—as well as from how the story itself is atypically designed. Frequent intertextual and parodic moments add self-­consciousness and complexity to HIMYM’s narrative and humor. On one level, this is logical ­because the characters are young, hip, well-­educated urbanites, who regularly reference popu­lar culture, ranging from Mad Libs to the Star Wars (1977) franchise. While many of ­these citations are familiar, o­ thers are relatively obscure, such as Marshall’s use of the line, “Oh, bad idea jeans!,” which references a Saturday Night Live (1975–) commercial parody from 1990.55 Other allusions mock formal ele­ments of existing tele­vi­sion programs and films. Th ­ ese intertextual and parodic moments are neither always easily detected nor read reflexively. Their impact and humor, therefore, hinges largely on the knowledge and sensibility of the viewer. One such example of intertextuality is found in “The Bracket” (2008) when Barney writes a reflective blog entry as a 1980s-­sounding synthesizer melody plays on the soundtrack. The scene reveals a half-­naked ­woman, who believes Barney is an astronaut and coaxes him to join her in bed. It concludes with Barney typing, “I’m awesome.” The humor seems straightforward; even casual viewers know Barney is an arrogant womanizer who as­suredly describes himself as “awesome” and uses absurd aliases to pick up ­women. What is only obvious to some viewers, though, is that this scene replicates the coda to each episode of Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989–1993), which starred a young Neil Patrick Harris. Anyone who does not recognize that it is modeled on Doogie Howser and Harris’s role as that show’s protagonist ­will respond differently than ­those who are “in” on the joke. Again, HIMYM’s humor usually works on

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How I Met Your M ­ other’s Barney Stinson writes a reflective blog entry that intertextually references Doogie Howser, M.D., which also starred actor Neil Patrick Harris.

multiple levels, providing dif­fer­ent laughs for casual and loyal viewers as well as the more or less pop culture savvy. Devices like anachronies, interior visions, and intertextual references point to how HIMYM and its reliance on an intricately woven narrative can produce new styles of humor. As opposed to traditional performance-­oriented sitcoms like I Love Lucy (1951–1957), especially t­ hose filmed in front of a live studio audience that rely principally on verbal and physical comedy (e.g., one-­liners, ­running gags, physical slapstick), much of HIMYM’s humor depends on audience knowledge of other scenes and plots sometimes spread across multiple episodes or even seasons.56 A typical episode of HIMYM may consist of sixty scenes or more, compared to traditional multi-­camera sitcoms that usually feature about a dozen.57 This abundance of short scenes cutting back and forth through time as well as between fantasy and real­ity is symptomatic of a postmodern style that celebrates the mixing up of conventions.58 Numerous con­temporary sitcoms, like 30 Rock and Arrested Development, deploy similar techniques, creating a hypertelevisual style that plays with modes of address and ideas about time, space, and real­ity. HIMYM also borrows aesthetic ele­ments from new technologies—­internet interfaces, mobile media devices, time-­shifting media—as well as other cultural forms like m ­ usic video, metacultural pop culture recap tele­vi­sion shows like The Soup (2004–2015), and sketch comedy. The prevalent use of ­these anachronies and interior visions constructs a sort of metacultural narrative form that expresses new ways that individuals encounter and interpret the information deluge that comprises con­temporary media culture. As a result, this style potentially not only reveals how media production and consumption are changing but also highlights new ways in which humor is constructed and understood.

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The Complexities of an Unreliable Narrator HIMYM’s voice-­over narration is in itself a form of metareflexivity that invites viewers to adopt an operational aesthetic, yet the narrator also reveals himself to be unreliable, calling additional attention to the show’s artifice and further complicating the narrative. Indeed, the frame narrative device cleverly incorporates backstory and brings casual viewers up to speed. Episodes regularly begin with Older Ted giving explanations, like “I should explain. Kids, you remember the slap bet . . .” Yet, the narrator also sometimes inaccurately pre­sents the chronology, forgets details, or blatantly alters parts of the story.59 For instance, in “How I Met Every­one Else” (2007), the narrator cannot remember a former girlfriend’s name and simply calls her “Blahblah.” In the same episode, he uses the phrase “eating a sandwich” as a euphemism for smoking marijuana. Similarly, in “Bagpipes” (2009) he employs “playing the bagpipes” as a euphemism for sexual intercourse. The absurdity of ­these euphemisms alone gets a laugh, but they are also metareflexive since they recur in successive seasons. Th ­ ere are also ulterior motives for ­these substitute terms. First, the narrator is telling his ­children this story and sanitizes his personal stories to conceal his indiscretions. Second, it ensures that the language and content of the series, which are frequently risqué, remain palatable for a primetime network tele­vi­sion audience and the censors. All of t­ hese examples are of momentary slip-­ups or fabrications, but the narrator’s unreliability also has lasting implications. His story about the goat in “Ted Mosby, Architect” (2006) is one such example. The narrator recalls the events of his thirtieth birthday, which concludes with a scene about a goat being locked in his apartment’s bathroom. He eventually realizes, though, that he is incorrect and that the goat incident actually occurred on his thirty-­fi rst birthday, self-­ reflexively stating, “Sorry, I totally got that wrong.” Before correcting himself, however, he inadvertently reveals that Robin w ­ ill be living with him in the apartment by his thirty-­first birthday.60 The episode toys with the traditional convention of “objective pre­sen­ta­tion” to an even greater degree.61 To wit, Robin and Ted, who are dating at this point, have a fight. She and Lily search for Ted afterward, and at locations around the city they encounter characters who have met “Ted Mosby, the architect,” but describe be­hav­ior that is uncharacteristic of Ted, which upsets Robin. The end of the episode reveals that “Ted Mosby, the architect” is actually Barney impersonating Ted to impress w ­ omen. Despite knowing what actually happened, the narrator instead depicts Ted behaving badly, and he purposefully withholds information to mislead audiences. It is not ­until Barney re-­narrates the night’s events for Robin and Lily that viewers discover what actually tran­spired. As such, events in the story appear radically dif­fer­ent depending on which character the narration is focalized through, revealing the narrative’s subjectivity. The narrator may not be lying per se, but ­these examples expose how the story being told is clearly his version of events.

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­ ese inaccuracies prove the narrator’s subjectivity and his compromised credTh ibility. Once viewers recognize the narrator’s unreliability, it encourages reconsiderations of the narrative and how it should be interpreted, both then and in the ­future. The show’s narrative complexity is thus amplified ­because of information being exaggerated, withheld, or unexpectedly revealed. The second narrative further engages viewers by involving them in the narratorial pro­cess. The camera adopts the point of view of the narrator ­because his utterances are directed at Ted’s two unnamed ­children, who sit on a couch and stare directly at him. This type of subjective shot strongly encourages viewers to identify with the narrator and share his perspective.62 The ­children are stand-­ ins for the spectator, considering that they too are listeners hearing the narrator’s story for the first time. In narratological terms, the ­children are the narratees since they are the characters addressed by the narrator.63 As Linda Hutcheon observes, the audience for such a self-­conscious narrative holds the same position as the narratee implied in the narrative. According to Hutcheon, the audience adopts “a diegetic identity and an active diegetic role to play.”64 This role is reflexively acted out through the ­children, who respond to the narration as the audience might. For example, they ask questions that viewers might also wish to know, such as, “So then what happened?”65 At other times, they react with surprise to plot twists, exclaiming “What?!” They also express frustration over the narrator’s long-­windedness and evasion of exactly how he and their m ­ other met.66 The audience, then, is not only encouraged to adopt a “mode of formally aware viewing,” as Mittell suggests; they are actually positioned as such by the narrative discourse.67 Regardless, the audience is invited to get some jokes that the ­children may not, such as “playing the bagpipes,” which means they are not completely the c­ hildren’s correlates. The audience also sees what the c­ hildren only hear, leading to extra play with the narrational format.

Conclusion How I Met Your ­Mother straddles the line between the oft-­championed single-­cam sitcom mode and the much-­derided multi-­cam sitcom mode. Significantly, though, contemporaneous critical responses to the series rarely picked up on its narrative complexity and other prestige ele­ments. In terms of HIMYM’s cultural value, popu­lar tele­vi­sion critics positioned the series hierarchically in relation to more culturally denigrated multi-­cam sitcoms like its CBS comedy stablemates, Two and a Half Men (2003–2015) and The Big Bang Theory (2007–2019), the latter of which HIMYM was scheduled alongside on Monday eve­nings for much of its run. Entertainment Weekly columnist Henry Goldblatt typified this reception by applauding HIMYM’s “good old-­fashioned CBS values.”68 Most reviewers of the show also focused on its characters and familiar premise of romantically entangled twentysomething urbanites rather than on its plot or narrative structure. A standard appraisal comes from Boston Globe writer Matthew Gilbert, who late in its first

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season likened the series to Friends (1994–2004) and called it “a traditional laugh-­ track comedy.”69 When early critics did acknowledge HIMYM’s narrative conceit, it was usually written off as a “gimmick,” to use the words of The Washington Post reviewer Tom Shales.70 Even the Variety critic Brian Lowry, who praised HIMYM as a “sly” and “bright, cleverly constructed half-­hour,” still only compared it to other traditional multi-­cam sitcoms, King of Queens (1998–2007) and Two and a Half Men.71 Now, years a­ fter the end of its run, as the series has become a staple of the broadcast tele­vi­sion rerun cir­cuit and a favorite on streaming platforms, it has become something of a modern-­day cult classic; yet it remains best known in the popu­lar culture for its “lexicon-­entering plots” (e.g., the slap bet, Robin Sparkles) and famous guest stars (e.g., Britney Spears, Mandy Moore).72 Nevertheless, the almost stealth presence of such narrative sophistication in a popu­lar sitcom—­after a few seasons as a “­bubble” show, How I Met Your ­Mother emerged strong in the Nielsen ratings—is perhaps a sign of narrative complexity ­going mainstream in a comedy series and being able to succeed in the sitcom genre.73 HIMYM incorporates aspects of narrative complexity without requiring intensive engagement from all audiences. For infrequent viewers, an understanding of cumulative details or recognition of metareflexive moments is hardly necessary. The humor in HIMYM operates on multiple levels, and ­there is always enough on offer for the casual viewer. In any of the “slap bet” scenes, for example, the physical humor of one grown man aggressively slapping another is enough to surprise and delight. R ­ unning jokes and gags are abundant in the series; Barney, for instance, is a catchphrase-­generating machine, churning out slogans like his “legend . . . ​wait for it . . . ​dary.” The dialogue and delivery are enough to make ­these lines humorous for infrequent viewers, though t­ here is often an additional layer of humor in the context and nuance that only resonates with dedicated viewers. Dominant plotlines are also reiterated in the narrator’s voice-­over. Movement between the dif­fer­ent time sequences is clearly demarcated, so viewers are unlikely to become disoriented. Still, ­there is far more narrative detail that is not recapped, and following the show’s serialized long-­term plot arcs requires considerable dedication, memory, and analy­sis. As a result, dedicated fans are encouraged to view the show in a manner more commonly ascribed to prestige dramas. Audiences that wish to enjoy the many layered narrative pleasures that HIMYM offers must pay close attention, retain details, parse the multiple story threads, and search for clues to form hypotheses that fill in narrative gaps. This emerging style of sitcom is a blend of the classic and the modern, the familiar and the innovative.

Notes 1 ​Martin Shuster, “Our Golden Age of TV: Amid Collapse, a New F ­ amily Emerges,” Aeon, May 16, 2018, https://­aeon​.­co​/­ideas​/o­ ur​-­golden​-­age​-­of​-t­ v​-­amid​-­collapse​-­a​-­new​ -­family​-­emerges. 2 ​Jeremy G. Butler, The Sitcom (New York: Routledge, 2020), 23–26.

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3 ​Christine Becker, “Acting for the Cameras: Per­for­mance in the Multi-­camera Sitcom,” Mediascape (Spring 2008): 1, https://­hcommons​.­org​/­deposits​/­item​ /­hc:18411​/­. 4 ​For an overview of the “Peak TV” phenomenon, see Josef Adalian and Maria Elena Fernandez, “The Business of Too Much TV,” Vulture, May 2016, https://­w ww​ .­vulture​.­com​/­2016​/­05​/­peak​-­t v​-­business​-­c​-­v​-­r​.h ­ tml. For an analy­sis of the discourse of distinction in tele­vi­sion criticism and academic scholarship, see Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2012). 5 ​Michele Hilmes, “The Bad Object: Tele­vi­sion in the American Acad­emy,” Cinema Journal 45, no. 1 (2005): 113. 6 ​Paul Attallah, “The Unworthy Discourse: Situation Comedy in Tele­vi­sion,” in Critiquing the Sitcom: A Reader, ed. Joanne Morreale (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 91–115. 7 ​Brett Mills, The Sitcom (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 2. 8 ​Original emphasis. Mills, The Sitcom, 10. 9 ​Jeremy Butler, Tele­vi­sion Style (New York: Routledge, 2009); Brett Mills, “Comedy Verite: Con­temporary Sitcom Form,” Screen 45, no. 1 (2004): 63–78. 10 ​Inger-­Lise Kalviknes Bore, “Laughing Together? TV Comedy Audiences and the Laugh Track,” The Velvet Light Trap 68 (Fall 2011): 26. 11 ​Ethan Thompson, “Comedy Verite? The Observational Documentary Meets the Televisual Sitcom,” The Velvet Light Trap 60 (Fall 2007): 63. 12 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 73. 13 ​Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015); Jason Mittell, “Narrative Complexity in Con­temporary American Tele­vi­sion,” The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall 2006): 29–40; Michael Z. Newman, “From Beats to Arcs: T ­ oward a Poetics of Tele­vi­sion Narrative,” The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall 2006): 16–28; Jeffrey Sconce, “What If? Charting Tele­vi­sion’s New Textual Bound­aries,” in Tele­vi­sion ­After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, ed. Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 93–112; John Thornton Caldwell, Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Tele­vi­sion (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995). 14 ​Sconce, borrowing a term from Horace Newcomb, calls this new mode “cumulative narrative” ­because it accumulates plot and character details over the life span of a series. Mittell simply calls it “narrative complexity.” I use Mittell’s term, as it recently entered into widespread usage in tele­vi­sion studies. 15 ​Sconce, “What If?,” 96–97. Sconce restricts his analy­sis to fictional, scripted primetime series, primarily serialized dramas. 16 ​Butler, The Sitcom, 17–21. 17 ​Elizabeth Alsop, “The Unbearable Darkness of Prestige Tele­vi­sion,” The Atlantic, July 8, 2015, https://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.c­ om​/­entertainment​/a­ rchive​/­2015​/­07​/­true​ -­detective​-­game​-­of​-t­ hrones​-­bleak​-­television​/­397577​/.­ 18 ​Mittell, “Narrative Complexity,” 32. 19 ​Steven Johnson, Every­thing Bad Is Good for You: How T ­ oday’s Popu­lar Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 62–90. 20 ​Johnson, Every­thing Bad Is Good for You, 14. 21 ​Johnson, Every­thing Bad Is Good for You, 63. 22 ​Sconce, “What If?,” 107, 109. 23 ​Brad Chisholm, “Difficult Viewing: The Pleasures of Complex Screen Narratives,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8, no. 4 (1991): 400–401.

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24 ​Jim Collins, “Postmodernism and Tele­vi­sion,” in Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Tele­vi­sion and Con­temporary Criticism, 2nd ed., ed. Robert C. Allen (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 331. 25 ​Mittell, Complex TV, 41–53. 26 ​Greg M. Smith, “Plotting a TV Show about Nothing: Patterns of Narration in Seinfeld,” Creative Screenwriting 2, no. 3 (Fall 1995): 83. 27 ​“The Pi­lot,” episode 1.1, September 19, 2005. 28 ​Gerald Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology, rev. ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 5. 29 ​For the sake of clarity and consistency, I refer to the “­f uture” Ted character/narrator as Older Ted. Any references to just Ted refer to the “young” Ted of “twenty-­five years ago.” 3 0 ​Prince, A Dictionary of Narratology, 5. 31 ​Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 48–50. 32 ​Mark Currie, About Time: Narrative, Fiction and the Philosophy of Time (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 35. 3 3 ​Sarah Kozloff, Invisible Storytellers: Voice-­Over Narration in American Fiction Film (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 41. 3 4 ​Genette, Narrative Discourse, 255–256. 3 5 ​ Oliver Beene (2003–2004), a short-­lived sitcom on Fox, used a similar device: an older Oliver (voiced by David Cross) reflected on his preteen life in 1962–1963. Interestingly, Craig Thomas and Car­ter Bays ­were staff writers on the show, which was created by Howard Gewirtz, and its narrative used flashbacks and flash-­ forwards much the same as does How I Met Your M ­ other. 36 ​Sconce, “What If?,” 102. 37 ​Mittell, Complex TV, 21. 3 8 ​“Wait For It,” episode 3.1, September 24, 2007; “The Leap,” episode 4.24, May 18, 2009. 39 ​“Brunch,” episode 2.3, October 2, 2006; “The Bracket,” episode 3.14, March 31, 2008. 4 0 ​Ross Simonini, “The Sitcom Digresses,” The New York Times Magazine, November 21, 2008, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2008​/­11​/­23​/m ­ agazine​/­23wwln​-c­ omedy​-­t​ .­html. 41 ​Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik, Popu­lar Film and Tele­vi­sion Comedy (New York: Routledge, 1990), 53. 42 ​Mittell, “Narrative Complexity,” 34. 4 3 ​Caldwell, Televisuality, 28–29. 4 4 ​Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 9. I am following Chatman’s distinction between story and discourse: “Story is the content of the narrative expression, while discourse is the form of that expression,” 23. 45 ​“Last Cigarette Ever,” episode 5.11, December 14, 2009. 4 6 ​David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 78–79. 47 ​Mittell, Complex TV, 52. 4 8 ​Mittell, Complex TV, 42. 49 ​Gerard Jones, Honey, I’m Home! Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1992), 80; Neale and Krutnik, Popu­lar Film and Tele­vi­sion Comedy, 51–53.

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50 ​“Interior visions” is a term attributed to Carl Jung, which is sometimes informally used by literary and film critics. However, to my knowledge no definitive meaning for, or use of, the phrase exists in e­ ither field. I use it to refer to imaginative fictions that characters in a tele­vi­sion series envision or narrate, and which are visually depicted for viewers. Richard P. Sugg, Jungian Literary Criticism (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992), 130. 51 ​“Last Cigarette Ever,” 5.11. 52 ​Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, 156–204. 53 ​Linda Hutcheon, Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980), 28–29. 5 4 ​Scott R. Olson, “Meta-­television: Popu­lar Postmodernism,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 4, no. 3 (1987): 289. 55 ​“The Pineapple Incident,” episode 1.10, November 28, 2005; Saturday Night Live, episode 16.1, September 29, 1990. 56 ​Butler, The Sitcom, 64–68. 57 ​Becker, “Acting for the Cameras,” 6. 5 8 ​Jonathan Bignell, An Introduction to Tele­vi­sion Studies (New York: Routledge, 2004), 166–188. 59 ​“Slapsgiving,” episode 3.9, November 19, 2007. 6 0 ​“The Goat,” episode 3.17, April 28, 2008. 61 ​“Ted Mosby, Architect,” 2.4; David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1992), 95. 62 ​Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art, 215. 6 3 ​Chatman, Story and Discourse, 151. 6 4 ​Hutcheon, Narcissistic Narrative, 139. 65 ​“Purple Giraffe,” episode 1.2, September 26, 2005. 66 ​“Last Cigarette Ever,” 5.11; “Sweet Taste of Liberty,” episode 1.3, October 3, 2005. The main difference between the audience and the son and d­ aughter characters is that the ­children obviously know the identity of their ­mother. Nevertheless, they apparently do not know the story of how and when their parents met. 67 ​Mittell, “Narrative Complexity,” 36. 6 8 ​Henry Goldblatt, “How I Met Your ­Mother,” Entertainment Weekly, September 9, 2005, 56. 69 ​Matthew Gilbert, “With Work, ‘How I Met Your M ­ other’ Could Be the Next ‘Friends,’ ” Boston​.­com, February 6, 2006, http://­archive​.­boston​.­com​/­ae​/­tv​/­articles​ /­2006​/­02​/­06​/­with​_w ­ ork​_­how​_­i​_­met​_ ­your​_m ­ other​_c­ ould​_­be​_­the​_­next​_­friends​/.­ 70 ​Tom Shales, “ ‘How I Met Your ­Mother’: A Sweet Introduction,” The Washington Post, September 19, 2005, https://­w ww​.­washingtonpost​.­com​/­archive​/­lifestyle​/­2005​ /­09​/­19​/­how​-i­ -​ ­met​-­your​-­mother​-­a​-­sweet​-­introduction​/c­ a2994a5​-­3f24​-4 ­ 200​-­8b98​ -­f13ef8ce65e7​/­. 71 ​Brian Lowry, “How I Met Your ­Mother,” Variety, September 18, 2005, https://­ variety​.­com​/­2005​/­fi lm​/­reviews​/­how​-­i​-­met​-­your​-m ­ other​-­2​-­1200523089​/­. 72 ​Vlada Gelman, “ ‘How I Met Your ­Mother’: ‘Big Shake-­Ups’ Are in Store, Says Executive Producer Car­ter Bays,” Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2009, https://­ latimesblogs​.­latimes​.­com​/­showtracker​/­2009​/1­ 2​/­how​-­i​-­met​-­your​-­mother​-­big​ -­shakeups​-­are​-­in​-­store​-­says​-­executive​-­producer​-­carter​-­bays​.­html. 73 ​Kimberly Nordyke, “ ‘­Mother’ Reruns Nest at Lifetime,” The Hollywood Reporter, September 24, 2008, https://­w ww​.­hollywoodreporter​.­com​/­business​/­business​-­news​ /­mother​-­reruns​-­nest​-­at​-­lifetime​-1­ 19744​/.­

Part 3

Top of the Media Hierarchy Cinematization and Tele­vi­sion’s Elevation

8

­Running The Knick Show Transfusing Steven Soderbergh’s Authorial Persona into the Prestige Medical Series SETH FRIEDMAN

Dr. John Thackery (Clive Owen), the irascible genius protagonist of Cinemax’s turn-­of-­the-­twentieth-­century medical series The Knick (2014–2015), shares key traits with its showrunner, Steven Soderbergh. In the show’s first episode, Thackery becomes chief of surgery at New York City’s fictional Knickerbocker Hospital ­after his cocaine-­addicted mentor, Dr.  J.  M. Christiansen (Matt Frewer), commits suicide ­because of patient deaths from his trial placenta previa procedures. Thackery honors his pre­de­ces­sor’s drug-­powered ingenuity by gambling with patients’ lives in his dogged quest for medical advancement, leading to as many spectacular failures as breakthroughs in the surgical theater that he compares to the “center ring” of his “circus.” Extending the meta­phor in the series finale while performing intestinal surgery on himself, which ambiguously ends with an ostensibly fatal wound, Thackery relates his method to a “high-­wire walker,” who “is only thrilling to watch if t­ here is no net below to save him.” This dialogue also applies to Soderbergh’s authorial legend, but it clashes with his ­actual opportunism. Moreover, he did not pen t­ hose words. 153

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Dr. John Thackery, the protagonist of The Knick, performs intestinal surgery on himself, resulting in an apparently fatal wound.

While he directed, co–­executive produced, as well as served ­under his usual pseudonyms as editor (Mary Ann Bernard) and cinematographer (Peter Andrews) on each episode, he wrote none of the teleplays. Soderbergh’s lack of a screenwriting credit complicates his creative agency ­because, in contrast to film auteurism, tele­vi­sion authorship is inextricably linked to screenwriting. In this chapter, I examine how Soderbergh’s authorial reputation was leveraged for The Knick, which was positioned as a new phase in his c­ areer and the show that would remake Cinemax. Despite neither of t­ hose circumstances coming to fruition, I argue that the ways in which the series was constructed and promoted are indicative of notable shifts in conceptions and branding of authorship in prestige tele­vi­sion. Although ­these tendencies are driven by broader conditions changing the U.S. media industries, I contend that The Knick epitomizes how dominant notions of artistry persist across media in the post-­network era.

Fortifying the Health of Soderbergh’s Mainstream Indie Reputation The Knick was packaged as being “from Steven Soderbergh” exclusively in its pre-­ release promotions, such as posters that feature sole members of the cast and advertise its historical modernity theme by declaring that aspects of healthcare are not what they “used to be.” Indiewire’s Ben Travers encapsulates the strategy’s rationale by noting that the show’s head writers and co-­creators, Jack Amiel and Michael Begler, w ­ ere an “odd choice considering their past highlights are soft, romantic films like Raising Helen [2004] and Big Miracle [2012]. Still, Soderbergh has always been one of the most experimental commercial filmmakers.”1

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The teaming of the director with unknown head writers thus offered an opportunity to mobilize his innovator persona in the show’s marketing. As Aaron Baker summarizes, Soderbergh has become renowned for his “guerilla style of shooting with handheld cameras” and “small crews,” resulting in a “willingness to work fast and cheap” that allows him “to follow his creative inclinations and experiment.”2 The director’s identity is indeed linked to his ingenuity and prolific output in the three de­cades since his watershed first film, sex, lies, and videotape (1989), won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. That film, as Michael Newman theorizes, also helped spur the “Sundance-­Miramax era” and an associated new brand of indie film ­because it “launched itself improbably to commercial and cultural success” when creative freedom was being increasingly inhibited by the growing dominance of Hollywood’s synergistic global blockbuster.3 Although that debut instantly made him a wunderkind auteur known for novelty, he would not replicate its per­for­mance for nearly a de­cade. On the heels of sex, lies, and videotape, Soderbergh directed five consecutive films that ­were box-­office or critical disappointments largely ­because they ­were comparatively unconventional, perhaps best exemplified by the highly experimental Schizopolis (1996). It was not u­ ntil he directed the more mainstream heist film Out of Sight (1998) that he began to reverse his declining fortunes with critics and audiences. Paradoxically, the director has been able to sustain his innovator status even though subsequent crossover hits cemented his fame. He is now ironically most linked to blockbuster film series that began with his direction of Magic Mike (2012) and continued with him as cinematographer on Magic Mike XXL (2015) as well as his remake of Ocean’s Eleven (2001), which spawned two sequels that Soderbergh also directed and embodied his propensity for serialization. His persona is also strongly ­shaped by his extraordinary per­for­mance at the 2001 Oscar ceremony, as Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000) both netted him Best Director nominations and other coveted wins. In sum, Soderbergh’s identity is characterized by a remarkable debut and subsequent misfires, which contributed to a turn to more traditional filmmaking to revive his reputation. This tension between challenging and supporting conventions has remained constant throughout Soderbergh’s c­ areer across media. Irrespective of how his films are packaged and received, Baker accurately contends that they typically import “thematic and formal variations into Hollywood genre films featuring A-­list stars, bringing an in­de­pen­dent aesthetic to large audiences.”4 Although such a tendency continues in his Hollywood films, Soderbergh has increasingly moved to tele­vi­sion of late to maintain his innovator standing and crossover appeal. This change of medium also highlights shifting notions of the artistic possibilities in the entertainment industries, indicating that the impediments that the director consistently ­faces and occasionally overcomes in Hollywood film are now considered by some to be easier to surmount in tele­vi­sion. ­These developments underscore how digital technologies and media industry

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consolidation have converged many aesthetic, cultural, and commercial dimensions of film and tele­vi­sion in the post-­network era. For Newman and Elana Levine, discursive evidence of this phenomenon is amplified for prestige TV ­because the “ubiquitous legitimating strategy is cinematization,” linking “tele­vi­ sion with that which has already been legitimated and aestheticized.”5 Consequently, some creatives with a reputation for inventiveness have moved to tele­vi­sion at a time when the medium’s artistic and industrial cachet has risen substantially, and demand for original, scripted programming has also grown in response to the advent of new media platforms. In short, utterances linking prestige tele­vi­sion to film have bolstered its appeal for some established directors. Regardless of t­ hese transformations, Soderbergh’s turn to prestige programming is surprising in light of his experiences with tele­vi­sion prior to The Knick. In a 2011 interview, for instance, Soderbergh said that he was uninterested in the medium b­ ecause he “­can’t have control over the final product” and subsequently admitted that he is not a writer ­because “if ­you’re a writer and you want control, you should not be in the movie business. You should be in tele­vi­sion.”6 His perspective is suspicious, though, as his ­career started in tele­vi­sion in the 1980s and he has consistently returned to the medium thereafter. Yet Soderbergh’s negative sentiments about creating original, scripted programming do align with his relatively ­limited writing credits throughout his c­ areer as well as with his proclivities for film remakes and unscripted improvisation. Such comments, however, also dovetail with dominant notions of con­temporary tele­vi­sion authorship, whereby an individual or small group is branded as a showrunner despite the huge collaboration that production in the medium entails. In relation to “scripted narrative genres, the showrunner is a ‘hyphenate’ writer-­producer,” Levine and Newman state, b­ ecause to be “considered a tele­vi­sion auteur, it is usually necessary for the showrunner to also be the show’s original creator.”7 Daniel Bernardi and Julian Hoxter historicize this phenomenon by chronicling how “the tele­ vi­sion showrunner as brand has its roots in the c­ areer of Norman Lear” and grew “in the 1990s, at the intersection of an expansion of smart genre tele­vi­sion on network and cable and the broadening of fan culture via the emergent Internet.”8 The showrunner has a familiar lineage tied to head writing and producing credits. Shifting industrial and technological contexts, though, recently have made it a more flexible and marketable commodity than before, especially for prestige programming. Tele­vi­sion’s new conditions of production and reception that amplified the showrunner’s status emerged in response to broader circumstances altering the medium. Amanda Lotz influentially identifies t­ hese epochal shifts as comprising the “post-­network era” b­ ecause that term refers to “the break from a dominant network-­era experience in which viewers lacked much control over when and where to view and chose among a l­imited se­lection of externally determined linear viewing options.”9 For Lotz, “the multi-­channel transition” is

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the moment between the “network” and “post-­network” periods, and it encompasses key transformations to the medium, including increasing cable and satellite choices as well as the widespread adoption of time-­shifting devices, most notably the VCR, that began to break up the mass market into niche audiences.10 The introduction of ensuing digital platforms on the cusp of and during the post-­ network age, such as the DVD box set and streaming video on demand, intensified t­hese trends and established v­ iable direct payment options for garnering reliable revenues from target markets. This has rendered the ways that some films and tele­vi­sion shows are designed and promoted closer to each other than before, particularly in relation to the high production values and graphic content that are staples of prestige programs on premium cable, like The Knick. David Lynch’s forays into tele­vi­sion reveal how opportunities for film directors to explore working in the medium and to use it to augment their brand identity expanded in the multi-­channel transition and steadily increased in the post-­network era. Although he teamed with Mark Frost and shared director duties with ­others to create the narratively complex serial Twin Peaks (1990–1991) for ABC when the VCR pop­u­lar­ized time-­shifting and online fandom started in the web’s rudimentary phase, Lynch is largely considered its sole author in the public imagination. Despite lasting just two seasons primarily ­because ABC could not effectively monetize its innovations when only reruns and syndication still comprised the multi-­channel transition aftermarket, the series was recently revived as Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) for Showtime thanks partly to how it could instead be watched on an array of direct payment platforms in the post-­ network age. As Glen Creeber summarizes, Lynch’s experimentation reduced “the stigma of film directors working for the medium,” inspiring o­ thers with how he had “been ‘liberated’ by tele­vi­sion.”11 The growing potential to use prestige TV to enhance authorial status appealed to Soderbergh in similar ways throughout the same period. Although he still has never officially written substantially for tele­vi­sion, before The Knick Soderbergh capitalized on opportunities to try to enhance his filmmaking persona often by routinely dabbling in premium cable. He first attempted directing two episodes of Showtime’s neo-­noir series Fallen Angels (1993–1995) at around the same time that he was shooting The Under­neath (1995), a remake of the film noir Criss Cross (1949). That film is a quin­tes­sen­tial example of Soderbergh’s mainstream indie style, as he deploys his now signature differently tinted cinematography, which he recycled perhaps most memorably in Traffic, to mitigate its frequent spatiotemporal disorientations. His constant use of the device in this way is “classical,” following David Bordwell’s logic, ­because it is the mode “most concerned to motivate style compositionally” by making form subservient to its protagonist, goal-­oriented narrative structure.12 Rather than primarily pursue alternatives, such as art or experimental cinema, in which creative expressivity drives stylistic novelty, Soderbergh often dulls his formal innovations and caters to mass audiences by employing them classically, particularly

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when his reputation is floundering. He also was an executive producer on HBO’s short-­lived series, Unscripted (2005), which was largely actor George Clooney’s proj­ect and privileged improvisation. His most notable ­earlier effort, though, was as showrunner on HBO’s K Street (2003) when, a­ fter The Sopranos’ (1999–2007) enormous success, the channel favored original, scripted programming that reflected its recently developed “It’s not TV. It’s HBO.” slogan and its corresponding turn to prestige tele­vi­sion. As Christopher Anderson posits, ­those marketing and programming tactics transformed the channel into “an exclusive cultural domain, appealing to a restricted taste culture and to viewers of privileged economic circumstances.”13 At first blush, K Street appeared ideal for that new mission and Soderbergh’s inventiveness ­because the largely unscripted series aimed to give HBO’s sophisticated target market a behind-­the-­curtain look at Washington, DC, lobbying by seamlessly integrating a­ ctual po­liti­cal figures with actors, delineating it from other prestige programming. It also dovetailed with Soderbergh’s authorial tendencies, as he already used the device in Traffic, for example, by mixing real congressional representatives with actors in a scene in which they debate the War on Drugs. In spite of ­these circumstances, K Street lasted only ten episodes. Conor McGrath cites the reason for its failure as its inability “to deliver plots and characterization sufficiently comprehensible and accessible to attract a substantial audience.”14 Soderbergh’s premiere as a prestige tele­vi­sion showrunner who directed each episode but did not write any of them, then, was doomed by privileging experimentation over classical concessions. In addition to resembling the trajectory of his early film ­career, K Street’s failure is compelling partly ­because Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–), another largely unscripted and similarly backstage-­themed show, had already become a mainstay on HBO. Of course, it is notable that Curb Your Enthusiasm is one of the few comedy series that has thrived on the channel ­because the prestige brand that distinguishes HBO had already become synonymous with a specific type of original, scripted drama that did not jibe with K Street’s innovations.

Resuscitating Soderbergh’s Authorial Identity with The Knick K Street’s failure likely helps explain why The Knick played on Cinemax, which has long been owned by HBO, making it also a subsidiary of then parent com­ pany Time Warner (now AT&T’s WarnerMedia). In contrast to HBO, Cinemax still does not have a stable brand image, and The Knick aired when its most successful prestige shows ­were the little-­known Banshee (2013–2016) and Strike Back (2010–2020). Most reviewers ­were thus mystified by it being on a channel still pejoratively called “Skinemax” ­because of the seemingly ubiquitous soft-­core pornography that once dominated its lineup. Philadelphia Inquirer critic David Hiltbrand typifies this reception by wondering “why The Knick, dripping with prestige, is playing on Cinemax, HBO’s skanky ­little stepsister, rather than on

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the main platform.”15 Despite its potential fit with HBO’s revered brand, in a 2014 interview Soderbergh claimed that he personally wanted the show to be on Cinemax b­ ecause it would be akin to being “the big kid at a r­ eally small school.”16 Regardless of the veracity of this self-­promotional assertion, Soderbergh’s previous failure on HBO prob­ably helped relegate The Knick to Cinemax, contributing to its cancellation a­ fter two seasons in spite of critical acclaim as well as its winning numerous desirable prizes, including an Emmy and a Peabody Award. The tactic was nonetheless logical for Time Warner ­because a hit might resurrect Cinemax, but another Soderbergh flop could threaten HBO’s brand. The Cinemax decision was still surprising b­ ecause Soderbergh was primed for an HBO partnership ­after directing the Liberace biopic ­Behind the Candelabra (2013) for the channel. The film, which won eleven Emmys and two Golden Globes, aired shortly a­ fter the director disingenuously declared that he was retiring from Hollywood filmmaking.17 As Caetlin Benson-­A llott details, in interviews Soderbergh distinguished that film “from the made-­for-­television movie genre” and proclaimed to have “accepted HBO’s financing only ­because his film was too controversial for U.S. theatrical distributors.”18 Soderbergh thus saw tele­ vi­sion more as a means to bolster his mainstream indie director reputation outside of traditional film distribution methods than as a venue for innovating in ways that are specific to the medium. In his keynote speech at the San Francisco Film Festival, the director elaborated on his retirement motive by noting that “the studio, by attempting to determine on a project-­by-­project basis what w ­ ill work—­I NSTEAD of just backing a talented filmmaker over the long haul—­ actually INCREASES its chances of being WRONG.”19 Soderbergh had grown frustrated, then, with Hollywood’s package-­unit system in which creatives are hired on a one-­off basis rather than according to the studio era’s long-­term contracts. This nostalgia for the halcyon days of the golden age of Hollywood fails to capture the relative artistic freedoms now actually available to many creatives, as commercial agendas and other restrictions greatly constrained studio-­ era directors. It does suggest, however, why Soderbergh found the more enduring industrial commitment associated with prestige tele­vi­sion to be comparatively attractive. Soderbergh’s statements ­were ultimately unreliable ­because The Knick was just a brief digression in which he prioritized enhancing the film auteur persona he immediately returned to a­ fter the show ended. The Knick was canceled a­ fter its cliff-­hanger series finale, which enabled it to conclude with Thackery’s death, continue with his survival from an adrenaline shot, or to be rebooted without him, even though Soderbergh reportedly wanted to experiment in season three. Specifically, he allegedly planned on a black-­a nd-­white season three reboot that updated the setting to 1947, prob­ably also leading to the show’s demise.20 He then unretired with Logan Lucky (2017), which the script self-­ referentially calls “Ocean’s 7–11,” emphasizing its links to his heist films. He

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also l­ater helped spin off that franchise by serving as co-­producer for Ocean’s 8 (2018). Like ­Behind the Candelabra, Logan Lucky was appealing partly b­ ecause he was able to bypass the media conglomerates to get it in domestic theaters, rendering premium cable unnecessary this time for initial distribution.21 It was not ­until his reputation was revived by his only tele­vi­sion proj­ect that made it two seasons and his direction of another customary heist film, then, that he returned to prioritizing formal ingenuity by shooting his next film, Unsane (2018), entirely on iPhones, and which he self-­distributed.22 Although he has subsequently directed multiple films, he has continued exploring dramatic series production. In addition to being an executive producer on Starz’s The Girlfriend Experience (2016–), which builds on his 2009 film of the same name, he directed the innovative series Mosaic (2017–2018), an interactive murder mystery released in dif­fer­ent forms on HBO and the channel’s mobile device app. Such a development suggests that The Knick’s success contributed to HBO’s willingness to give him more leeway to experiment, resulting in Soderbergh having two more interactive series in the works that have not yet come to fruition.23 Put simply, Soderbergh’s retirement and its aftermath reveal how he strategically responds to opportunities across media to sustain his mainstream indie identity. Whereas Mosaic and his other proposed interactive series challenge tele­vi­sion norms by allowing viewers to choose narrative paths, The Knick is largely conventional prestige tele­vi­sion. In fact, perhaps the most innovative aspect of the show is that it was constructed and positioned as the equivalent of an epically long film made in Soderbergh’s trademark guerilla and mainstream indie styles. Matt Zoller Seitz exemplifies this reception by reporting that a­ fter season two “Soderbergh has now directed 20 hours of a lavish costume drama at the speed of a run-­and-­g un indie film” in which he extensively “shoots with a handheld camera” and illuminates “standing sets” using only “vis­i­ble (or ‘practical’) lights.”24 The show’s foregrounding of the director’s stylistic tendencies is mirrored by its mobilization of his thematic preoccupations. The focus in The Knick on an array of controversial issues, including substance abuse, miscegenation, bigotry, discrimination, eugenics, abortion, contraception, poverty, immigration, and healthcare malfeasance, overlaps with what Baker rightly identifies as the obsessions that characterize Soderbergh film oeuvre: “po­liti­cal repression, illegal drugs, vio­lence,” as well as social and “economic injustice.”25 Yet, the show’s single-­director production gambit was hardly novel. A sole individual was able to direct a full season or more on other contemporaneous U.S. shows, such as the first season of True Detective (2014–) and all but one episode of Louie (2010–2015), which w ­ ere directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga and Louie C. K., respectively. More notably, this model was established well before the post-­network era in Eu­ro­pean tele­vi­sion contexts by star auteurs, including Ingmar Bergman, R. W. Fassbinder, Krzysztof Kieślowski, and Lars von Trier, who each directed

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e­ very episode of their respective tele­vi­sion series, which allowed them to augment their brand and experiment with the medium’s long-­form narratives.

Injecting the Medical Series with Prestige As von Trier’s show, The Kingdom (1994–1997), demonstrates, other renowned filmmakers before Soderbergh used a medical series to transfer their authorial tendencies to tele­vi­sion. The hospital drama is such a reliable tele­vi­sion subgenre, Robert C. Allen theorizes, b­ ecause the “locations and occupations” allow for “the introduction of new characters, who enter the story as hospital patients, newly assigned doctors or nurses,” and so on.26 The Knick epitomizes how such settings are particularly well-­suited for tele­vi­sion serials and their perpetually ongoing plotlines in comparison to alternative modes of audiovisual storytelling that have more precise narrative endgames and require greater cast stability. For example, in typical prestige tele­vi­sion fashion, Inspector Jacob Speight (David Fierro) is surprisingly killed off in the season two premiere despite being a primary character in season one. Similarly, Henry Robertson (Charles Aitken) is not introduced ­until the season one finale even though he is stunningly shown in the series finale to have enormous narrative impact. Indeed, he is ultimately revealed to have orchestrated a coup to seize power from the Knickerbocker’s primary benefactors: his f­ather, August (Grainger Hines), and s­ister, Cornelia Robertson (Juliet Rylance). The Knick’s shocking narrative machinations that feature unexpected character deaths and sinister ­family betrayals thus also resemble ­those of a daytime soap opera, which is logical considering that one of the most enduring is General Hospital (1963–). More recently, network primetime programing has been filled with hospital drama serials, including St. Elsewhere (1982–1988), ER (1994–2009), Grey’s Anatomy (2005–), and House (2004–2012), the latter of which The Knick arguably rips off b­ ecause it also centers on a volatile, brilliant physician addicted to drugs. Although it has much in common with t­ hese and other con­temporary medical series across tele­vi­sion, such as Showtime’s Nurse Jackie (2009–2015), The Knick is distinct in ways that accentuate its elite standing. For starters, it contains usual ele­ments of premium cable prestige programming, which now can perform well in the post-­network era largely ­because of changing revenue streams, by featuring explicit content, such as extensive graphic sexuality and gore, particularly in the show’s surgical theater set pieces. Furthermore, in addition to its meticulous historical reconstruction that atypically sets the hospital drama convincingly in the period of modern medicine’s infancy and is largely attributable to Soderbergh’s longtime production designer, Howard Cummings, The Knick is distinguished by its adherence to other norms. The seemingly infinite narratives of daytime network serials, as Allen speculates, “trade an investment in syntagmatic determinacy (the eventual direction of the overall plot line) for one in paradigmatic complexity (how any par­tic­u­lar event affects the complex network

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of character relationships).”27 This begins to explain why the greater narrative unity of comparatively shorter prestige TV shows has helped gender them as less feminine than their more relationship-­obsessed and longer-­enduring daytime serial rivals. Significant cast changes are common, and ­women often become the biggest stars on soap operas, largely b­ ecause they are targeted at w ­ omen and girls and air for as long as advertisers are willing to pay; however, prestige TV centers on differentiation, brand consistency, and aftermarket sales often by activating links to Hollywood film, enabling a prioritization of narrative cohesion. Th ­ ese attributes often mean that the narratives of prestige shows are more classically driven by a clear, goal-­oriented protagonist than alternative programs that often contain no obvious single, central character. The attachment of Hollywood stars to prestige TV series has become increasingly critical to buttressing their high production value and bolstering cinematization. Clive Owen’s casting as The Knick’s protagonist indeed provided the show with greater esteem. Additionally, the primary quest narrative across the two seasons unequivocally followed Thackery’s tumultuous tenure as chief of surgery, from its tragic beginning to its seemingly lethal end. The inclusion of only Owen’s name alongside Soderbergh’s in most pre-­release marketing materials is a testament to the importance of his participation, which also might explain why season three’s proposed experimental reboot option without the star did not ultimately happen. For Dana Polan, this protagonist-­driven narrative template that was codified by HBO is largely derivative ­because it stems from a tradition that is “indigenously American and focused on a supposed Everyman as he confronted life’s quandaries,” leading him to “grow from the encounter or enable hip spectators to feel they have grown.”28 Avi Santo concurs and underlines the formula’s gendered aspects by noting that HBO prestige dramas are “remarkably preoccupied with exploring white, middle-­class male anx­i­eties” to leverage “masculinity as a site for distinguishing its quality brand and promoting the exclusivity it offers its clientele.”29 As ­those claims insinuate, whereas Showtime, Netflix, and other competitors have consistently backed prestige TV shows with ­women protagonists to grab market share, most HBO shows of this ilk to date have featured recognizable White, male protagonists in archetypal classical Hollywood narratives. In spite of its effectiveness, other scholars have similarly critiqued HBO’s elitist “Not TV” promotional rhe­toric for misleadingly distinguishing it from the rest of tele­vi­sion fare. Jane Feuer, for instance, argues that t­ hese shows often attempt to capitalize on familiar formats that blend “soap opera with an established genre such as the cop show or medical series. HBO drama merges series or serialised TV with postmodern theatre or art cinema.”30 This hybridity logically appeals to Soderbergh b­ ecause his biggest crossover and Oscar successes are ­those in which art cinema style innovations are generally contained by classical conventions. Such a mix is often heralded by the critical establishment as serious art. Although the Acad­emy Awards are associated with exclusivity, for

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instance, Gillian Roberts posits that the films that they often reward actually offer a negotiation between the accessibility of low culture and the prestige of high culture.31 This conception builds on Pierre Bourdieu’s seminal hypothesis that culture industry production opposes “intellectual art” by garnering “investment profitability” that typically derives from appropriations of high art.32 Oscars and similar awards thus provide, in Roberts’s words, “the impression of bringing legitimate culture within the reach of all by bestowing legitimacy on accessible cultural products.”33 Rather than pursue the kind of experimentation on the tele­vi­sion shows he directed before and ­after The Knick, Soderbergh played it safer on the Cinemax series by privileging the middlebrow sensibility associated with prestige programming, which resembles the director’s broader mainstream indie approach. The show literally gets off on this foot in its opening frames before any characters are introduced or its title appears. The first shot is from the point of view of the wearer of untied white shoes that are in focus in the foreground of an other­wise blurred mise-­en-­scène. The narrative significance of the shot’s out-­of-­ focus and red-­tinged cinematography becomes clearer when an almost fully naked Asian w ­ oman approaches the camera and subsequently mutters “Johnny” as she awakens the still unknown character in broken En­glish by reporting that the time is “seven and a half.” To help keep viewers oriented in its array of locations beyond the hospital, this red cinematography is pre­sent whenever characters return to what is subsequently revealed to be an opium den brothel that Thackery frequents, illustrating the show’s alignment with Soderbergh’s artistic and ideological tendencies. As Charley Lanyon astutely observes, The Knick’s historical setting allows it “to deal with bigotry and discrimination with a kind of bleak realism that would be intolerable” if it were set in the pre­ sent, but the “same way that other prestige dramas have strug­gled with developing ­those characters who a­ ren’t white or male,” the show has a “very real prob­lem with Orientalism.”34 Soderbergh’s mediations of minorities do abound with contradictions. Traffic exemplifies this, as Deborah Shaw contends, ­because it depicts “sophisticated images of the U.S. and Mexico and produces repre­sen­ta­ tions of characters from each respective country that challenge a number of filmic ste­reo­types” while it also “portrays Latinos and African-­A mericans en masse as dangerous criminals.”35 Such repre­sen­ta­tional tensions persist in The Knick. Whereas the show’s Erin Brockovich–­inspired primary w ­ omen characters are fiercely in­de­pen­dent, seek justice for the oppressed, and use sexuality to exploit men, its Asian characters are ste­reo­typically exotic and non–­English speaking sex workers employed by a depraved gangster who sounds like a fortune cookie and is a fearsome martial arts expert. When the show fi­nally cuts to display Thackery’s face, its mainstream indie sensibility becomes more evident. It discloses that the viewer’s hazy gaze was focalized through the drugged-up protagonist, who is played by the recognizable Hollywood star. As Thackery next leaves to hail a horse-­drawn cab to work,

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the cinematography helps situate the viewer spatially by changing dramatically to match the cold crispness of the exterior street location. The spectator’s bearings, however, are quickly undercut by Cliff Martinez’s electronic ­music score that clashes with the turn-­of-­the-­twentieth-­century setting. This initially strange ­music se­lection becomes narratively significant a­ fter Thackery removes the similarly now relevant untied white shoe to inject his toes with liquid cocaine. As the drug takes full effect, the score swells to a crescendo while Thackery fi­nally ties his laces and then heads into the Knickerbocker, inebriated, before the show abruptly cuts to its belated title card. This seemingly unconventional opening, then, is primarily an elaborate introduction to the classical protagonist who drives its narrative. The apparent artistic innovations contained in this telltale microcosm of the series illustrate how form is compositionally motivated rather than deployed experimentally ­because it all serves the story. This classical logic applies to other ostensibly innovative aspects of the show. Roger Hagedorn argues that “serials differ from classic narratives in multiplying the number of narrative enigmas as well as partial answers, snares, delays, and so on that are activated in the course of the narrative.”36 The Knick, though, makes virtually all of its ambiguities retrospectively classical, provided spectators are up to the interpretive task. Such narrative cohesion corroborates Soderbergh’s reboot plan for season three, suggesting that the show was not intended to continue in standard serial fashion a­ fter season two. In the season one finale, for instance, a reporter with the pen name Genevieve Everidge (Arielle Goldman) first appears only fleetingly in the background as a patient at Cromartie, the shady rehab fa­cil­i­ty where Thackery both is admitted ­after he performs a trial blood transfusion that accidentally kills a girl patient and is recklessly prescribed heroin for his drug prob­lem. Although it is never stated, the historical inspiration for Thackery, Dr. William Halsted, similarly received morphine to treat his cocaine addiction.37 It is not u­ ntil season two’s third episode, though, that Genevieve tells the Knick’s Dr. Bertie Chickering Jr. (Michael Angarano) that she infiltrated the fa­cil­i­t y in Nellie Bly–­inspired fashion, but she never cites actually being ­there with Thackery. Bertie and Genevieve briefly stop that discussion while taking in the sites on a date at Huber’s Palace (an ­actual dime museum that featured freak shows), which include violin-­playing conjoined twins in the mise-­en-­scène whom Thackery separates l­ater in the season. As a consequence, it is up to the viewer to discover such secrets and the show’s historical references, positioning it well for aftermarket fandom. In contrast to ­these subtleties, other enigmas are alluded to explic­itly and their explanations are delayed, but they are blatantly resolved. This is epitomized by August and Thackery’s many references to “Nicaragua” ­because it is where the benefactor became indebted to the surgeon. The circumstances of that bargain are fi­nally shown in the series’ penultimate episode in which many classical devices signal it is an extended flashback, such as the disappearance of Thackery’s signature mustache.

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Untied white shoes l­ ater revealed as Dr. John Thackery’s are in focus in an other­wise blurry opening shot set in The Knick’s opium den brothel.

Dr. Bertie Chickering and Genevieve Everidge on a date while in the background Siamese twins, who l­ ater become prominent in The Knick, perform.

Although this narrative structure distinguishes The Knick from more traditional programming, like the majority of prestige tele­vi­sion, it is also reliant on many established conventions of serial shows. This is most evident in its romantic relationships and tawdry love triangles, which also often connect to its core themes and align the show with the classical film’s heterosexual coupling subplot. Thackery features prominently in ­these paradigmatic scenarios, as he ultimately spurns nurse Lucy Elkins (Eve Hewson) for his ex-­lover, Abigail Alford (Jennifer Ferrin), who returns to have the doctor gruesomely reconstruct her

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A flashback in The Knick of Dr. John Thackery during his time in Nicaragua without his trademark mustache.

nose before he accidentally kills her in a subsequent surgery that eventually leads to his demise. Lucy initially chooses the thrill of a cocaine-­fueled relationship with Thackery over Bertie’s chivalrous advances. A ­ fter Thackery rejects her, though, she partners with the womanizing Henry, whom she manipulates for his money. She is not the show’s only money-­grubber, as the Knick’s conniving superintendent, Herman Barrow (Jeremy Bobb), skims significant cash from its coffers to s­ ettle his many debts, join an elite men’s club, and purchase an apartment for Junia (Rachel Korine), the sex worker for whom he leaves his wife. Social climbing motives likewise inspire Dorothy Walcott (Annabelle Atanasio) when her s­ ister, Eleanor (Ma­ya Kazan), seeks homicidal revenge for being barbarically treated in a psychiatric fa­cil­i­ty while suffering depression due to both her baby’s death from meningitis and the infant she subsequently adopts being killed through her negligence. Dorothy consequently woos Eleanor’s husband, the eugenics proponent Dr. Everett Gallinger (Eric Johnson), who has been spiraling downward since Dr. Algernon Edwards (André Holland), an African American surgeon backed by the Robertsons, replaced Gallinger as Thackery’s chosen deputy by impressing with his remarkable medical expertise and skills. This litany of melodramatic romances does not even include the show’s most prominent and taboo affairs, which include Edwards and Cornelia’s miscegenation as well as another illicit relationship between Tom Cleary (Chris ­Sullivan) and ­Sister Harriet (Cara Seymour). Th ­ ese also intertwine closely with the show’s most controversial topics. Cleary and ­Sister Harriet’s platonic relationship fi­nally develops into more when they partner to make and distribute condoms ­after the nun is arrested for secretly performing abortions, which the series finale shockingly reveals he clandestinely orchestrated to force her out of

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the church and into his arms. The depictions of Edwards and his interracial relationship with a high society ­woman who also needs an abortion epitomize The Knick and Soderbergh’s often contradictory cultural politics. On the one hand, as Claudia Trotzke surmises, the show exposes racism by “emphasizing the power and privilege connected to whiteness” ­because “the skills Edwards has gained and achieved are invalidated as not being seen as white,” even ­after his promotion.38 On the other hand, David Fear critiques the use of “a black character who, when not stuck in the role of quip machine, exists basically to highlight one character’s progressive values or another’s prejudices.”39 This tension is expressed in Edwards’s forbidden romance with Cornelia, who is supposed to end her crusading for immigrants and allay the f­amily’s dwindling fortune by marrying the wealthier Phillip Showalter (Tom Lipin­ski), even though her father-­in-­law-­to-be, Hobart (Gary Simpson), makes sexual advances ­toward her. Th ­ ese plans are threatened when Cornelia is impregnated by Edwards, but S­ ister Harriet gives her an abortion despite Edwards’s pleas to keep the baby and move with him to Eu­rope. Such a doomed take on miscegenation is classic melodramatic content that has long dominated daytime tele­vi­ sion serials. The season one finale thus fittingly resolves it with a prototypical set piece wedding that, like The Godfather (1972), crosscuts between Cornelia’s nuptials and one of Edwards’s self-­flagellating brawls, resulting in both characters ultimately choosing same-­race spouses. The construction of this dramatic wedding climax embodies what is at stake with Soderbergh’s artistic decisions as the aty­pi­cal, nonscreenwriting showrunner of The Knick. This standard climax combines an extended homage to a hybrid of art and classical cinema with the daytime serial’s familiar melodramatic theme of an in­de­pen­dently minded w ­ oman being trapped by White patriarchal capitalism and associated issues of paternity, marriage, and incest. Although the series was framed by both the director and the publicity machine as ideal for experimentation, The Knick instead illustrates how producers increasingly rely on an established type of Hollywood film already imbued with exclusivity to elevate the standing of prestige shows. Such indie mainstream filmmaking has long garnered middlebrow acclaim by combining the mass cultural appeal of classical Hollywood film with highbrow ele­ments of art cinema. Similarly, creators have mixed the previously lowbrow daytime serial with recognizable status-­enhancing properties to construct the celebrated prestige tele­vi­sion genre. Rather than favoring artistic expression that is par­tic­u­lar to tele­vi­sion, The Knick highlights how existing conceptions of the film auteur are being transported to prestige programming, which effectively capitalizes on post-­network-­era industrial motives. The show thus provided the always opportunistic Soderbergh with a temporary way to further his innovator, crossover persona in the face of his growing frustration with Hollywood’s restrictions on his creative freedom by transferring his filmmaking style to a prestige show. As his consistent oscillation between ingenuity and mass market concessions across media throughout his ­career suggests,

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such shrewd tactics are the net that saves the supposedly high-­wire-­walking director from having to end his experimental circus.

Notes 1 ​Ben Travers, “Steven Soderbergh’s Cinemax Series The Knick (Fi­nally!) Lands a Release Date,” IndieWire, May 16, 2014, https://­w ww​.­i ndiewire​.­com​/­2014​/­05​ /­steven​-­soderberghs​-­cinemax​-­series​-­t he​-­k nick​-­f inally​-­lands​-­a​-­release​-­d ate​ -­26641​/­. 2 ​Aaron Baker, Steven Soderbergh (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), xi–­xii. 3 ​Michael Z. Newman, Indie: An American Film Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 1–2. 4 ​Baker, Steven Soderbergh, ix. 5 ​Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2012), 5. 6 ​Mark Gallagher, Another Steven Soderbergh Experience: Authorship and Con­ temporary Hollywood (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 258. 7 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 39. 8 ​Daniel Bernardi and Julian Hoxter, Off the Page: Screenwriting in the Era of Media Convergence (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), 114. 9 ​Amanda D. Lotz, The Tele­vi­sion ­Will Be Revolutionized (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 15. 10 ​Lotz, The Tele­vi­sion ­Will Be Revolutionized, 12–14. 11 ​Glen Creeber, Serial Tele­vi­sion: Big Drama on the Small Screen (London: BFI Publishing, 2004), 56–57. 12 ​David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 162. 13 ​Christopher Anderson, “Overview: Producing an Aristocracy of Culture in American Tele­vi­sion,” in The Essential HBO Reader, ed. Gary R. Edgerton and Jeffrey P. Jones (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 34. 14 ​Conor McGrath, “K Street: ‘Raping HBO’ or ‘What HBO Is All About?,’ ” in It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-­Television Era, ed. Marc Leverette, Brian L. Ott, and Cara Louise Buckley (New York: Routledge, 2008), 185. 15 ​David Hiltbrand, “The Knick, with Clive Owen, Cuts Deep,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 7, 2014, http://­w ww2​.­philly​.­com​/­philly​/­entertainment​/­television​ /­20140807​_­​_­The​_­K nick​_­​_­​_­with​_­Clive​_­Owen​_­​_­cuts​_­deep​.­html. 16 ​Mike Ayers, “Steven Soderbergh on Why He R ­ eally Quit Movies,” Esquire, July 7, 2014, https://­w ww​.­esquire​.­com​/­entertainment​/­movies​/­interviews​/a­ 29344​/­steven​ -­soderbergh​-­interview​/­. 17 ​“­Behind The Candelabra (2013),” Internet Movie Database, accessed December 2, 2018, https://­w ww​.i­ mdb​.­com​/­title​/­tt1291580​/­​?­ref​_​= ­ ­nv​_ s­ r​_ s­ rsg​_­0. 18 ​Caetlin Benson-­A llott, “Made for Quality Tele­vi­sion?,” Film Quarterly 66, no. 4 (Summer 2013): 6. 19 ​Steven Soderbergh, “State of the Cinema Address,” in Steven Soderbergh: Interviews, ed. Anthony Kaufman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 216. Capitalizations are in the original. 20 ​Zack Sharf, “The Knick May Have Ended ­because Steven Soderbergh Wanted to Shoot Season 3 in Anamorphic Black-­and-­W hite,” IndieWire, July 7, 2017, https://­ www​.­indiewire​.­com​/­2017​/­07​/­steven​-­soderbergh​-­k nick​-­cancelled​-­season​-­3​-­details​ -­1201851975​/­.

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21 ​Brooks Barnes, “With Logan Lucky, Soderbergh Hopes to Change Film’s Business Model,” The New York Times, July 31, 2017, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2017​/­07​/­31​ /­business​/­media​/­with​-l­ ogan​-­lucky​-­soderbergh​-­hopes​-­to​-­change​-­fi lms​-­business​ -­model​.­html. 22 ​Justin Kroll, “Juno T ­ emple to Co-­Star with Claire Foy in Steven Soderbergh’s Next Movie,” Variety, July 18, 2017, https://­variety​.c­ om​/2­ 017​/­fi lm​/­news​/­juno​-­temple​ -­claire​-­foy​-i­ n​-­steven​-­soderbergh​-­pic​-e­ xclusive​-­1202499189. 23 ​Todd Spangler, “HBO Launches Steven Soderbergh’s Interactive Storytelling App Mosiac Ahead of TV Premiere,” Variety, November 8, 2017, https://­variety​.­com​ /­2017​/­digital​/­news​/­hbo​-­steven​-­soderberghs​-­mosaic​-­interactive​-­storytelling​-­t v​ -­series​-­1202609978​/­. 24 ​Matt Zoller Seitz, “The Binge Director,” Vulture, October 5, 2015, https://­w ww​ .­vulture​.­com​/­2015​/1­ 0​/­on​-­set​-­steven​-­soderbergh​-­the​-­knick​.­html. 25 ​Baker, Steven Soderbergh, ix. 26 ​Robert C. Allen, introduction to To Be Continued . . . : Soap Operas around the World, ed. Robert C. Allen (New York: Routledge, 1995), 21. 27 ​Allen, introduction, 7–8. 28 ​Dana Polan, “Cable Watching: HBO, The Sopranos, and Discourses of Distinction,” in Cable Visions: Tele­vi­sion Beyond Broadcasting, ed. Sarah Banet-­Weiser, Cynthia Chris, and Anthony Freitas (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 264. 29 ​Avi Santo, “Para-­television and Discourses of Distinction: The Culture of Production at HBO,” in It’s Not TV, 34. 3 0 ​Jane Feuer, “HBO and the Concept of Quality TV,” in Quality TV: Con­temporary American Tele­vi­sion and Beyond, ed. Janet McCabe and Kim Akass (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 157. 31 ​Gillian Roberts, “Circulations of Taste: Titanic, the Oscars, and the Middlebrow,” in Movie Blockbusters, ed. Julian Stringer (New York: Routledge, 2003), 157. 3 2 ​Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Lit­e r­a­ture, ed. Randal Johnson (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1993), 125–131. 3 3 ​Roberts, “Circulations of Taste,” 157. 3 4 ​Charley Lanyon, “Orientalism in the Golden Age: How The Knick Lets Down Its Asian American Characters,” Paste, December 3, 2015, https://­w ww​.­pastemagazine​ .­com​/a­ rticles​/­2015​/­12​/­how​-­the​-­knick​-­lets​-­down​-­asian​-­americans​.­html. 3 5 ​Deborah Shaw, “ ‘You Are Alright, But . . .’: Individual and Collective Repre­sen­ta­ tions of Mexicans, Latinos, Anglo-­A mericans, and African-­A mericans in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 22, no. 3 (2005): 212–213. 36 ​Roger Hagedorn, “Doubtless to Be Continued: A Brief History of Serial Narrative,” in To Be Continued . . . ​, 28. 37 ​Abigail Zuger, “Traveling a Primeval Medical Landscape,” The New York Times, April 26, 2010, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.c­ om​/­2010​/­04​/­27​/­health​/­27zuger​.­html. 3 8 ​Claudia Trotzke, “ ‘Modern Medicine Had to Start Somewhere’: Performing Health and White Privilege in The Knick,” Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies 17, no. 1 (2016): 12. 39 ​David Fear, “A Shot in the Arm,” Film Comment 50, no. 6 (November/December 2014): 76.

9

Legitimating Top of the Lake Jane Campion, the Film Fest, and the Miniseries W. D. PHILLIPS In 2013, Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake premiered at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals. ­There is nothing ostensibly surprising about a work by Campion debuting at prestigious festivals, except that Top of the Lake was not a film but rather a six-­hour (353-­minute) tele­vi­sion miniseries. In this essay, I ­will consider the vari­ous acts of legitimation the creators and distributors of Top of the Lake engaged in to bolster the reputation of the series prior to its tele­vi­sion premiere. Additionally, I trace the exhibition history of this miniseries to examine an aspect of media convergence that has recently become impor­tant for certain tele­vi­sion programs: the televisual sidebar at prestigious global film festivals. As many scholars argue, media convergence is more than just the consequences of technological advances in production, distribution, and exhibition. The pro­ cesses of convergence are also aesthetic, industrial, and cultural. As every­thing from Hollywood movies and tele­vi­sion programs to YouTube videos becomes playable on the same devices, a corresponding aesthetic flattening occurs marked by the disappearance of signifiers that bolstered traditional conceptions of medium specificity. With multimedia conglomerates owning and operating

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Legitimating Top of the Lake • 171

production and distribution companies across media, and critical responses to certain tele­vi­sion shows regularly being more favorable than that of many feature films, economic and cultural convergence are also impor­tant components of the con­temporary media moment.1 Still, competitive practices and previously concretized media hierarchies, or what Christopher Anderson has called an “aristocracy of culture,” persist.2 ­These enduring ideologies can counteract and supersede the ways that dominant notions of medium specificity have actually been eroded by convergence culture. The exhibition history of Top of the Lake, as a tele­vi­sion miniseries written, directed, and produced by award-­winning filmmakers, then, is a productive site of investigation in terms of the nature and limits of con­temporary media convergence and the countervailing forces acting for and against it. The vari­ous acts of approbation leading to the aggregated prestige of Top of the Lake encompassed long-­standing legitimizers for media—­the auteur, the miniseries as a special televisual form, and channel branding—­but also for more recent changes associated with media convergence, including the prestigious film festivals’ screening of televisual works. None of ­these f­ actors w ­ ere in­de­pen­dently sufficient to account for the repute assigned to Campion’s miniseries, nor did such prestige accrue through ­simple summation. Rather, the web of interrelated rhetorical, institutional, and industrial qualities I address in this essay created a framework of legitimation through which audiences could receive and understand the tele­vi­sion program as prestigious. Season one of Top of the Lake premiered on tele­vi­sion in March and April of 2013. Debuting on March 18 on the Sundance Channel (now Sundance TV) in the United States via a special two-­episode block, another five episodes aired on subsequent Monday nights.3 Reformatted as six (rather than seven) episodes, it launched a week ­later on UKTV in Australia and New Zealand and ran weekly thereafter. The miniseries unfurled similarly on BBC Two in the UK, though not ­until several months l­ater, beginning in mid-­July.4 As I already noted, the miniseries previously screened in full at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals, in January and February of 2013, respectively. From this s­ imple exhibition timeline, it is clear that the telecasts gained some degree of legitimation from the ­earlier festival premieres. But what did the festivals stand to gain and on what authority did the creators of the miniseries traverse the long-­established media hierarchies of the elite festivals and their programmers to be not only accepted but feted ­there? Top of the Lake’s first season—­which Campion co-­wrote with Gerard Lee and co-­directed with Garth Davis—­centers on Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss), a police detective specializing in child protection. Set and photographed in New Zealand’s South Island, the miniseries’ central narrative is initiated when she is called in to investigate the pregnancy and subsequent disappearance of Tui (Jacqueline Joe), the twelve-­year-­old d­ aughter of local drug lord Matt Mitcham (Peter Mullan). On loan to the local authorities from her home policing agency

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GJ looks out at Diamond Lake from her ­Women’s Camp at Paradise in a cinematic frame-­within-­a-­frame composition near the beginning of Top of the Lake.

in Australia, Robin works with Detective Sergeant Al Parker (David Wenham) to resolve the mysteries of the disappearance of Tui and the ­father of Tui’s unborn child. Her investigation of Tui’s rape also forces Robin to revisit the circumstances and consequences of her own rape as a young ­woman in that same remote community. Adding texture to both the characters and the themes of the story is the presence of a W ­ omen’s Camp at Paradise (an ­actual location), on the shores of Diamond Lake. Overseen by the enigmatic GJ (Holly Hunter), the camp provides a new home for a group of w ­ omen, mostly postmenopausal, who have come seeking a fresh start a­ fter being forgotten, broken down, and disillusioned by their relationships and communities. In the end, Robin identifies Parker as the villain and shoots and apprehends him, upholding genre expectations. However, the resolution also implies the limits of the hero’s agency in affecting enduring changes to toxic patriarchal and capitalistic society, a recurring concern of Campion’s cinematic output.5 Additionally, the miniseries continues and contributes to several other motifs that appear regularly in her work, including “interventions in postfeminist repre­sen­ta­tional paradigms” and deliberations on “feminist themes . . . ​of w ­ omen’s desire.”6 In addition to Top of the Lake’s inclusion of themes redolent with Campion’s auteur persona, the miniseries also included aesthetic and narrative signifiers associated with international art cinema. This cinematic form has been recognized by Marijke de Valck, among o­ thers, as “the quin­tes­sen­tial genre screened at festivals.”7 Writing around the same time as Top of the Lake’s release, de Valck characterizes ­these films as “director-­driven, au­then­tic, with a local identity as well as potential universal appeal.”8 Such universal appeal was provided in the miniseries largely through a combination of genre tropes and star casting,

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The New Zealand landscape is prominently displayed in the first episode of Top of the Lake.

particularly of Moss in the lead. The local identity de Valck articulates is easily found in the frequent emphasis within the cinematography of “the hauntingly beautiful, isolated mountains of New Zealand” that are “as much part of the story as any of the characters.”9 “Authenticity,” however, is harder to discern. According to David Bordwell, art films foreground “deviations from the classical canon,” with classical films being ­those for which the language of audiovisual storytelling is employed in the ser­vice of narrative clarity.10 Thus, turning to more long-­standing definitions of art cinema allows for its conventions—­ including authenticity—to be read in relief against the spectacle of entertainment associated with commercially minded popu­lar cinema. Top of the Lake, like much of Campion’s post–­The Piano (1993) work, relies significantly on genre conventions but also deviates appreciably from Hollywood formulas by organ­ izing the storytelling less around plot than in the ser­vice of its study of the characters and community.11 This infusion of character study into expected genre patterns results in the emergence of something like authenticity in the show’s storytelling. Geoff King expands upon this critical approach, emphasizing the challenges art cinema pre­sents viewers in comparison to “more commercially-­mainstream viewing plea­sures.”12 Offering a short list of such challenges, he includes: “slowness and opacity, difficulty, ambiguity and complexity, or confrontation with vari­ous forms of uncomfortable material.” If, as he posits, some of ­these art cinema conventions “offer the opacity and reflexivity associated with modernism, ­others are positioned as providing acute realism and/or the exploration of troubling existential or moral dilemmas.”13 Key aspects of ­these descriptions apply to Campion’s filmography and particularly well to Top of the Lake.14 With a run time of six hours, its pacing is distinct from e­ ither a typical genre film or a

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traditional tele­vi­sion series and aligns more closely with the kind of viewing experience that King notes of art cinema. In addition, the enfolding stories of two generations of rape victims prompt viewers to consider the community’s (and, to an extent, society at large’s) role in the gang rape Robin suffered as a young ­woman and its deleterious effect on her life. More insistently, the miniseries forces its viewers to consider the moral depravity at the root of Tui’s pregnancy: the mercenary drugging of young ­people for the sexual plea­sure of wealthy businessmen. Further, this conclusion acknowledges that such perversions are licensed as a result of society’s dominant power dynamics. As a work of tele­vi­sion, such characteristics acted as signifiers of international art cinema, which enabled film festival programmers to gesture ­toward ­these qualities in justifying the miniseries’ inclusion in the program. Additionally, festival audiences ­were able to associate ­these aspects of Campion’s miniseries with the films typically found at such fests. Just as the films that are chosen by festival programmers are designated as estimable in comparison to popu­lar cinema, Top of the Lake’s se­lection contributed to its stature within and against mainstream tele­vi­sion. Nonetheless, the textual features of international art cinema that justified the festival programming of Top of the Lake ­were not regarded as sufficient for the degree of reputation building ultimately desired by its producers. Arguably, no single attribute is adequate for this type of legitimation. Instead, a number of associated qualities and participants are required to affect such a proj­ect of cultural endorsement, which ultimately bestowed symbolic capital on and increased the cultural and artistic value of Top of the Lake. Pierre Bourdieu’s considerations of symbolic capital within the field of cultural production are impor­tant to any such analy­sis; his assessment of “cultural intermediaries” is particularly relevant for this study. Generally comprised, for Bourdieu, by “the producers of cultural programmes for TV and radio or the critics of ‘quality’ newspapers and magazines and all the writer-­journalists or journalist-­writers,” t­ hese arbiters of taste assume the “role of divulging legitimate culture.”15 More recent scholarship has further defined cultural intermediaries as “market actors involved in the qualification of goods, mediating between economy and culture . . . ​They construct value, by framing how ­others—­end consumers, as well as other market actors including other cultural intermediaries—­engage with goods, affecting and effecting ­others’ orientations ­towards ­those goods as legitimate.”16 Such agency in ascribing cultural value additionally requires ­these intermediaries be distinguished by their “professional expertise in taste and value within specific cultural fields.”17 To make this explicit, Shyon Baumann has preferred the phrase “legitimate authorities of legitimation.”18 In his work on the elevation of certain Hollywood films to the status of art, Baumann incorporates the work of cultural distinction by such legitimized intermediaries into a larger “legitimation framework” built on the mobilization of symbolic capital through “intellectualization” discourses, “institutional arrangements,”

Legitimating Top of the Lake • 175

and “opportunity space.”19 By analyzing the legitimate authorities of legitimation (LALs) engaged or activated by Top of the Lake’s producers and exhibitors, I ­will also acknowledge t­ hese other aspects of Baumann’s legitimation framework that ­were significant in establishing the series’ prestige status. One obvious LAL is Campion’s reputation and authority as a world-­renowned filmmaker, which had been bestowed upon her by critics, festival programmers, and audiences over the previous three de­cades of her ­career. Although this was her first foray into tele­vi­sion since An Angel at My ­Table (1990), by 2013 she was a well-­established and highly credentialed auteur of international art cinema. In addition to a long rec­ord of elite film festival premieres across her ­career, she had also claimed a shelf full of prizes, including the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or and the Acad­emy Award for Best Original Screenplay (both for The Piano). This helped her gain access to gatekeepers and tastemakers impor­tant to establishing Top of the Lake’s eventual prestige standing. As a further indication of her status, most of the press and particularly the discourses activated in the trades and marketing materials tended to obscure or even erase the critical participation of both her co-­writer (Lee) and co-­director (Davis). In comparison to the relative anonymity of t­ hese collaborators, Campion’s global recognition as an auteur and corresponding legitimizing power within and beyond art cinema circles made her a compelling figurehead for the miniseries’ creative team. Her courting of the BBC as a producing partner for the miniseries is particularly telling in this regard. When Campion took the idea to Ben Stephenson, controller of BBC drama commissioning, the door was immediately opened: “Having always been a huge fan of Jane’s work,” Stephenson is quoted as saying, “when Christine Langan [head of BBC Films] suggested that Jane would like to meet me to discuss a TV idea I leapt at the chance.”20 Likewise, the promotional materials and attendant press associated with Top of the Lake frequently noted the festival premieres and prestigious awards on her résumé. The one-­minute promotional spots that aired on the Sundance Channel and on BBC Two ahead of the series’ debut both articulated this fact. Approximately halfway through the Sundance Channel’s ad, “From Acad­emy Award Winning Writer & Director Jane Campion” is superimposed in white lettering across a picturesque New Zealand landscape; BBC Two promoted the same aspect of directorial prestige in an authoritative voice-­over at the end of their TV spot.21 Campion’s prestige as an international auteur, but also her “token” status as the rare ­woman filmmaker and her stature as “the most famous or most accomplished w ­ oman filmmaker of [her] generation,” combined to attract a cast of well-­ regarded international performers.22 The lead cast included two Americans (Moss and Hunter), an Australian (Wenham), and a Scot (Mullan). Top of the Lake’s British and Australian producers—­Iain Canning and Emile Sherman of See-­Saw Films—­were also able to leverage the global nature of the package, which

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is connected but not reducible to Campion’s international cachet, to secure producing and broadcast partners from several territories. ­These included BBC Two in the UK, UKTV in Australia, and the Sundance Channel in the United States, with BBC Worldwide coming onboard for additional global distribution; Fulcrum Media Finance (Australia) provided gap financing, with Screen Australia and Screen NSW (New South Wales, Australia) serving as additional, governmental funding sources.23 The international scope of its producing partners and cast helped to divorce the miniseries from strict associations with New Zealand where it was set and shot. Local reviews, in contrast, stated bluntly: “The show w ­ asn’t ­really made for us [New Zealanders].”24 Adding two feted premieres at elite global film festivals to its other international credentials, it seems clear that Top of the Lake would have been primarily received and understood by viewers as an international co-­production. In contrast to the medium’s preponderance of domestically produced material, such a multinational affiliation helped to connote prestige in vari­ous tele­vi­sion markets. Top of the Lake’s legitimation was further buttressed by its creative contributors and their individual credentials. The miniseries was, in fact, replete with award winners, and the press kit’s list of key members of the production regularly emphasizes ­these accolades. It does not simply cite Moss’s name, for example, but also includes the purposeful rhetorical flourish: “SAG® winner and four-­time Emmy® nominated actress Elisabeth Moss.” Holly Hunter’s Best Actress Acad­emy Award for The Piano, Peter Mullan’s BAFTA nomination, and David Wenham’s Australian Film Institute Award are all similarly trumpeted.25 Even the producers ­were Oscar winners, having earned the 2011 Best Picture for The King’s Speech (2010). By including such information in the press kit, executives gestured ­toward the cultural significance of the LALs that bestowed such status prizes, ensuring that critics and reviewers ­were aware of t­ hese credentials. Importantly, as Elizabeth Alsop has recently argued, Campion does not appear to serve the same “token” function for prestige tele­vi­sion showrunners of the post-­network era as she did for her generation of art cinema filmmakers.26 Still, her reputation as both an acclaimed female auteur and avowed feminist filmmaker was obvious to audiences familiar with her work and was therefore highlighted in the program’s marketing. Thus, if tokenism was impor­tant in the legitimation of the miniseries, it was less her status as a w ­ oman writer/director, something becoming more common in shows of the period, than her status as a renowned w ­ oman filmmaker, a combination still relatively rare to tele­vi­sion. In some ways, then, her foray into tele­vi­sion at this point in her distinguished ­career becomes its own legitimizer; Campion is packaged as the ­grand dame of art­house cinema bestowing her blessings upon tele­vi­sion and in par­tic­u­lar the miniseries form at this specific time in their respective histories. As Seth Friedman’s study of Steven Soderbergh and The Knick (2014–2015) in this anthology makes clear, Campion was not the only established auteur with links to art cinema to apply her pedigree to tele­vi­sion during the period. Such

Legitimating Top of the Lake • 177

involvement had become more common and was consequently addressed in several trade press articles from 2013 and 2014. According to ­these sources, the migration of talent from indie film to tele­vi­sion was largely attributable to the continuing difficulties in financing and selling in­de­pen­dent films; this was particularly consequential in contrast to the increased availability of funding from pay-­T V channels and streaming ser­vices seeking to develop original content, often as a key piece of their branding strategies.27 Some TV executives at that time, such as Showtime’s Gary Levine, explic­itly noted the economics under­lying such prestige-­building efforts. “In premium cable,” he stated in 2014, “we have the same artistic ambition as indie film, but we have the money to make it and do it right.”28 This transfer of creative reputations from cinema to tele­vi­ sion and other media was even the topic of a special filmmakers panel at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Dubbed “Power of Story: In­de­pen­dence Unleashed,” the panel included Campion alongside three other credentialed in­de­pen­dent filmmakers “making forays into TV and web-­based serialized works”: Mike White, Justin Lin, and Richard Linklater.29 Campion’s media migration, then, was part of a larger shift of indie directors employing their credibility in the arena of film, and particularly art cinema, to open doors in other media. This displacement of directorial talent from film to tele­vi­sion was created by what Baumann refers to as an “opportunity space,” or a new form of market latitude determined by external conditions such as changes in the nature of the competition or the emergence of commercial substitutes.30 Such endeavors are typically symbiotic, as the chance afforded indie filmmakers to create new work in a dif­fer­ent medium was matched by the opportunity that courting such “name” talent offered tele­vi­sion channels seeking greater degrees of legitimation. Returning to ideas of convergence culture, h ­ ere specifically in relation to the value of authorship in audiovisual media, Newman and Levine argue that “the importance of authorship . . . ​has been central to tele­vi­sion’s rising status through the ‘showrunner’ writer-­producer whose agency is constructed in ways analogous to the film director’s.”31 Arguably, the ambiguity of the term “showrunner,” which gained ac­cep­tance in the 1990s and early 2000s as a “marker of distinction” for tele­vi­sion authorship, opens it to other legitimized creatives, including filmmakers like Campion.32 Moreover, the miniseries was a particularly amenable vessel for such convergence as the pro­cess of producing and the nature of authorship in that form are closer to filmmaking than to series tele­vi­sion; Top of the Lake’s production schedule, for example, ran just eigh­teen weeks.33 While this may be longer than that of most modestly bud­geted art films, it is much shorter than the vast majority of fictional TV series. It is apparent, however, that Campion and her producers did not consider her auteurist credentials nor the art cinema characteristics of the work fully sufficient to legitimate the move into tele­vi­sion. In the “Production Notes” provided by the show’s producers to the Sundance Film Festival, Campion energetically justifies her media migration, stating: “I love crime mysteries and I wanted to

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write one that had room to expand like a true novel so the idea of ­doing a six-­ hour long story was very exciting to me.”34 Trade press articles appearing at the time and early reviewers picked up on this connection. By comparing the experience of viewing the miniseries “to reading a novel,” ­these writers built around the miniseries what Baumann calls a discourse of “intellectualization,” which in this case is associated with the so-­called novelistic range of long-­form tele­ vi­sion.35 This comparison to the highly regarded literary form of the novel as a means of legitimation is a generally respected if well-­worn rhetorical strategy. It is, moreover, a recognizable version of a familiar validation strategy, which works “by elevation of one concept . . . ​at the expense of another.”36 Such discourses are often built on comparisons that are both intramedial, such as elevating “Quality” tele­ vi­ sion through comparisons to real­ ity tele­ vi­ sion, and transmedial, such as denigrating films in relation to lit­er­a­ture, diminishing tele­ vi­sion in comparison to cinema, and so on.37 Inverting the dynamic, articulations of resemblances across media can also offer culturally debased media a legitimizing potential, as the comparisons of tele­vi­sion miniseries to novels demonstrate. Such links to the novel have been a reliable aspect of arguments elevating the miniseries over conventional tele­vi­sion series since the miniseries first ­rose to prominence on the medium in the 1970s. The miniseries initially resembled prime-­time serialized tele­vi­sion programs like Peyton Place (1964–1969) in the United States and The Forsyte Saga (1967) in the UK.38 Stuart Cunningham differentiates the miniseries from other serial tele­vi­sion, defining it as “a limited-­ run program of more than two parts and less than the thirteen-­part season or half-­season block associated with continuing serial or series programming, with episodes that are not narratively autonomous . . . ​[and] move ­toward narrative resolution.”39 Employing the same rhetorical logic of transmedial comparison already noted, in 1974 the directors of the American network ABC attempted to bolster their poor ratings by announcing the introduction of semi-­regular “Novels for Tele­vi­sion” into their prime-­time programming.40 In contrast to conventional series tele­vi­sion, the esteem associated with the miniseries, including its higher bud­gets and production values, the “emotional wallop,” and its event-­ like programming, was deployed by the free-­to-­air channels to bolster their brand identity.41 For ABC specifically and American tele­vi­sion generally, this association was solidified in the latter half of the 1970s with the broadcast of Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) and especially Roots (1977), which “burst to the top of the all time ratings.”42 In the United States, the networks developed such original, prestige programming through the 1970s and into the 1980s to differentiate and compete with each other as well as with PBS’s British tele­vi­sion imports and the upstart HBO, which had already begun to attract affluent viewers.43 In relation to Australian tele­vi­sion, Cunningham notes the high point occurred in the early 1980s with fifty separate miniseries, including A Town Like Alice (1981) and The Last Bastion (1984), produced in the first six and a half years of that de­cade.44

Legitimating Top of the Lake • 179

Interestingly, this periodization aligns with the New Zealand–­born Campion’s time in film school in Australia and her first filmmaking efforts ­there. Although the miniseries never fully dis­appeared, its elevated costs and poor per­for­mance in reruns ultimately led to its significant decline.45 A return to the form occurred around the beginning of the new millennium, as brand-­conscious tele­vi­sion executives, particularly at U.S. cable channels, sought original programming with an aura of prestige to build both quality name brand associations and viewer loyalty. TNT’s se­nior vice president of original programming, Michael Wright, employed the analogy of a “light­house” in 2006 to describe the kind of programming tied to original miniseries. Viewers, he claimed, “notice you in a way they might not other­wise. It communicates quality to p­ eople; your care and enthusiasm for [the miniseries] says so much about the network and what viewers can expect from the other programming.”46 HBO’s production of prestige-­bearing miniseries, including Band of ­Brothers (2001), John Adams (2008), and Mildred Pierce (2011), indicates that t­ hese legitimatization strategies w ­ ere not l­ imited to successful long-­running series, such as Sex and the City (1998–2004; 2021–) and The Sopranos (1999–2007), but also included a substantial investment in the miniseries form.47 When the Sundance Channel’s new leadership similarly looked to shift from a well-­regarded but “occasional-­use” destination into a prestigious “habitual-­use” channel around 2010, it modeled its efforts on successful competitors like HBO by producing both traditional series such as Rectify (2013–2016) and original miniseries like Top of the Lake.48 Looking beyond ­these rhetorical strategies, the physical site of exhibition has also long been a consequential legitimizer for the entertainment industries.49 Film festivals, especially premier fests like Sundance and Berlin, regularly serve as LALs for new films. Importantly, beyond the awards that festival play may offer, the ­simple act of se­lection and an officially sanctioned screening at such prestigious fests is a “value-­adding pro­cess” and in and of itself a status prize.50 Surveying the field of film exhibition in the early 2000s, Thomas Elsaesser stated: “The festival cir­cuits hold the keys to all forms of cinema not bound into the global Hollywood network.”51 In addition to the legitimizing power of a festival screening, being programmed at t­ hese events also offers publicity, or “subsidized exposure,” through reviews and trade press articles as well as popu­lar media coverage.52 Festival play, unlike other status prizes such as Oscars or Emmys, generally precedes the theatrical release of a film or the broadcast premiere of a tele­vi­sion program. As such, ­these fests provide an opportunity to create “buzz,” which producers and marketers can then administer as they think best. Speaking to Variety specifically about Top of the Lake, Sundance Channel president Sarah Barnett demonstrated this logic when she noted that Campion’s miniseries “­really built up a good head of steam” as a result of its Sundance premiere and then “gain[ed] further momentum with an appearance at Berlin” where it had enjoyed a “rapturous reaction.”53 This publicity and the attendant buzz, then, are indirect examples of “institutional arrangements”—­the final aspect of

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Baumann’s tripartite legitimating framework—as they are practices activated through the institution of the film festival.54 When tele­vi­sion series such as Top of the Lake premiered at t­ hese fests, the previously established bound­aries between media—­determined by LALs and other institutional structures more than technologies—­were traversed. The delineation between festival films and tele­vi­sion programs has been, since the ascendance of both ­after World War II, substantial if not absolute. Despite arguments such as t­ hose indicated at the beginning of this essay that t­ hese media fields are blurring in certain re­spects, they are nonetheless still distinct in a number of key ways.55 Such discrimination has been especially true for the elite fests, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and Sundance, and was clearly connected, for most of their history, to broader efforts at cultural legitimation. In seeking out screenings at this prestigious festival level, Top of the Lake’s producers looked beyond the LALs traditionally associated with tele­vi­sion. In d­ oing so, they made a decisive bid to appropriate a degree of prestige only available on a traditionally higher rung of the media hierarchy ladder. Film festivals—­and particularly the premier fests—­can now easily be recognized as cultural intermediaries, serving as both legitimizing institutions and market actors. Writing in the buildup to Sundance and Top of the Lake’s premiere ­there in 2013, Alison Willmore echoed Elsaesser but also pointed to a form of media convergence that she saw beginning to emerge. “A festival screening,” she noted, “is a way to position a TV property as worthy of the same serious consideration as a potential art­house film while getting it on the radar of high-­end audiences who might not other­wise keep up with what’s ­going on on the small screen.”56 While film fests have long been cultural intermediaries for art cinema and in­de­pen­dent films, positive appraisals of a steadily growing number of tele­ vi­sion programs at ­these fests at the beginning of the 2010s prompted a similar elevation of their cultural and artistic value. This transitional moment for prestige tele­vi­sion can be attributed, in some small part, to the competition that exists between festivals. Such rivalry facilitated a desire on the part of festival leadership to court emerging, promising filmmakers and then to nurture a regular, if not wholly exclusive, long-­term relationship with t­ hose directors.57 It was t­ hese relationships that tele­vi­sion producers as well as film festival programmers recognized could be exploited as ­these filmmakers moved into tele­vi­sion; early forays on the part of film festivals to program tele­vi­sion, not surprisingly, came directly through t­ hese connections. The initiation of the trend is generally credited to the Cannes screening of Olivier Assayas’s miniseries Carlos (or Carlos the Jackal) in 2010. Assayas had screened three films in a row in competition at Cannes at the beginning of the millennium. He was thus able to draw on his established association with the fest and his stature with its organizers and audiences in programming the miniseries, just as the fest was able to benefit symbiotically from his reputation and cachet with their viewers/consumers.58

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Carlos and other tele­vi­sion miniseries that screened at premier film fests that year—­such as In Face of the Crime (2010) and a repertory screening of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s World on a Wire (1973)—­were described in their festival programs with only the total run times listed and no mention of their tele­vi­sion origins.59 Consequently, this was also true of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival’s program description of Top of the Lake.60 As a result, festival programmers ­were conscientiously placing ­these works within specifically high-­end cinematic contexts rather than the middlebrow cultural context of tele­vi­sion. ­These cinematic contexts included the auteur status of the writer/director, as has been noted, but also the festival history of extremely long films, such as Bela Tarr’s seven-­hour Sátántangó (1994) and the six-­hour The Best of Youth (2003).61 Based on the consistency of both the programming strategies and the festival program descriptions of the works, the prestige status of t­ hese elite film festivals required, up through at least the beginning of the 2010s, such a distinction. As a result, festival audiences at the time would have almost certainly understood all of ­these works of long-­form tele­vi­sion as cinematic works within the context of a festival screening. Nonetheless, u­ nder t­ hese par­tic­u­lar circumstances of festival play, previously stratified media converged. When Top of the Lake premiered, its contribution to this fest-­driven media convergence also constituted a kind of media disruption for the prestigious festival where it debuted. According to John Cooper, the festival’s director, it was the “first long-­form scripted tele­vi­sion proj­ect” to play at Sundance.62 Even so, Campion’s work was not the first series ­after Carlos to follow the miniseries-­at-­ the-­fi lm-­fest exhibition trajectory. Todd Haynes’s miniseries version of Mildred Pierce, starring Kate Winslet, had already screened at the Venice Film Festival in 2011. As with Campion, Haynes to this point had been primarily associated with art cinema. Similarly, his foray into a tele­vi­sion miniseries was characterized as fulfilling a desire to work in a storytelling medium that allowed him “[to] do something where he could ­really take the time to explore characters and narrative.”63 Again, like Campion, with Haynes accustomed to painting on the cinematic canvas, his miniseries was, for some, “a test case in how a highly developed cinema language and style cedes no ground to the supposedly limiting TV confines.”64 Unlike Campion and Top of the Lake though, Mildred Pierce’s fest screening fell several months a­ fter its March U.S. premiere on HBO.65 Emphasizing again the importance of the fest–­auteur relation, the festival play was built around their long-­standing relationship, as Haynes was sitting on that year’s Golden Lion jury ­a fter his previous successes at Venice with Far From Heaven (2002) and I’m Not ­There (2007).66 Additionally, Janet Pierson at SXSW had worked with festival favorite Lena Dunham to premiere the first three episodes of her then new HBO series Girls (2012–2017) at that Austin-­based fest in 2012, and 1,000 festivalgoers turned out for a Monday after­noon screening. Ten months l­ ater Sundance lent its own significant credibility to this new programming direction with Top of the Lake, and

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Top of the Lake’s description and a representative image from the 2013 Sundance Film Festival program. Reproduced with permission of Sundance Institute Archives & Collection and See-­Saw Films.

from ­there it quickly snowballed. The SXSW Film Festival built on its previous year’s success and premiered the pi­lot for Bates Motel (2013–2017) at its 2013 iteration. That fest’s directors then inaugurated a new Episodic section in 2014 with premieres of two series by popu­lar local filmmakers with successful SXSW track rec­ords: Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series (2014–2016) and Mike Judge’s Silicon Valley (2014–2019).67 As t­ hese artists shifted to tele­vi­sion in the early 2010s, festival programmers ­were interested in the association of prestige they carried. This was true even to the point that festival directors ­were willing to risk the reputation built on their fest’s medium specificity in exchange for the aura of distinction that they might

Legitimating Top of the Lake • 183

claim through an association with t­ hese auteurs. The efforts of Campion and her producers to leverage the prestige connected with renowned film fest screenings in the buildup to their miniseries’ tele­vi­sion premiere can be recognized as part of this developing form of media convergence. As tastemakers, the decisions and opinions of film festival directors and their programmers informed and influenced the mea­sure of cultural and artistic value accredited to Top of the Lake and ­these other tele­vi­sion programs. Such valuation then translated to the trade press, the reviewers, and the broader ele­ments of media culture that interpreted the cachet of elite festival status prizes as signifiers of prestige, regardless of the media form. If prestigious festivals have always been valuable for in­de­pen­dent filmmakers ­because they potentially garner cultural and economic capital, the same accreditation was effectively transposed in the early expansion of such fests into tele­vi­ sion. However, once the leading film festivals began to embrace works of tele­vi­sion and their sanctioned screenings of episodic programs became increasingly normalized, ­these acts of legitimation no longer required the symbiotic exchange of prestige linked to elite cinematic auteurs like Jane Campion. Following SXSW’s introduction of an official Episodic sidebar in 2014, the Toronto, Berlin, and Tribeca film festivals quickly made the shift as well with their own respective programs devoted to tele­vi­sion and web-­based series: Primetime (2015–), Berlinale Special Series (2015–), and Tribeca TV (2016–). Sundance added its official Episodic Short Form program in 2018. In adding tele­vi­sion programs and then, particularly, special sidebars devoted to televisual or episodic programs, ­these gatekeeping festival directors and programmers began to apply a concept of value assignment that explic­itly placed tele­vi­sion alongside films. At the same time, however, t­ hese festival programmers juxtaposed the quality of the tele­vi­sion programs they selected implicitly with other, assumedly lesser forms of tele­vi­sion. This is the same intramedial legitimatization that film festival programmers had long applied in their curating of art films in comparison to more commercially popu­lar forms of cinema and that tele­vi­sion executives interested in channel branding had employed to promote the miniseries against other forms of tele­vi­sion. With ­these new initiatives in place, the heads of traditionally film-­focused festivals began to broaden their se­lection criteria for tele­ vi­sion and series programming, endorsing tele­vi­sion shows no longer attached to auteur directors but that the programmers still believed would appeal to their established fans and expand their audience. In ­doing so, ­these LALs recalibrated media hierarchies, redefined cultural perceptions of value for an array of new tele­ vi­sion programs, and supported a new manifestation of media convergence that continues to be utilized by tele­vi­sion creatives and executives seeking to accrue prestige. In 2017, Jane Campion returned to the world of elite film festivals with her miniseries follow-up Top of the Lake: China Girl. As with Sundance, she was once again part of a historic programming shift, but this time at Cannes. A ­ fter

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holding out for longer than the other major fests, Cannes that year screened Top of the Lake: China Girl and the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks (1990–1991). But unlike Carlos seven years ­earlier, Cannes’s series-­resistant chief Thierry Fremaux openly acknowledged the televisual source of both works in the festival program.68 My consideration of Top of the Lake has examined this key period of media convergence, between 2010 and 2017, when principal decision makers of premier film festivals began to grant prestige to certain tele­vi­sion programs by showcasing them on the same stage as their acclaimed films. Such actions, though still largely superintended by the cultural intermediaries of the festival cir­cuit, precipitated a more pervasive reevaluation of tele­vi­sion’s cultural and artistic value by festival audiences and other viewers who paid close attention to the opinions of ­these LALs. In addition, I have shown that for Top of the Lake it was no single attribute that constituted prestige, nor was prestige bound up in the innate qualities of the work. Rather, it was the activation of rhetorical, institutional, and industrial strategies of legitimation on the part of the production and marketing personnel that ultimately resulted in the miniseries’ accumulation of accreditation and the attribution of cultural and artistic value.

Notes 1 ​Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006); Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2012); Dal Yong Jin, De-­Convergence of Global Media Industries (New York: Routledge, 2013), 17–76. 2 ​Christopher Anderson, “Overview: Producing an Aristocracy of Culture in American Tele­vi­sion,” in The Essential HBO Reader, ed. Gary R. Edgerton and Jeffrey P. Jones (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 23–41. 3 ​Alison Willmore, “The Buzziest ­Thing at Film Festivals? It Might Just Be TV,” IndieWire, January 17, 2013, https://­w ww​.­indiewire​.­com​/­2013​/­01​/t­ he​-­buzziest​-­thing​ -­at​-­fi lm​-f­ estivals​-­it​-­might​-­just​-­be​-­t v​-­241626​/­; A. J. Marechal, “Sundance Gets Serious about Series,” Variety, April 16, 2013, 35. 4 ​“Top of the Lake,” BBC, accessed January 15, 2020, https://­www​.b­ bc​.­co​.­uk​/­programmes​ /­p01bzxx0; Pip Bulbeck, “Top of the Lake Trailer Gives First Look at Jane Campion’s Haunting New Murder Mystery,” Hollywood Reporter, January 10, 2013, https://­w ww​.­hollywoodreporter​.­com​/­news​/­top​-­lake​-­trailer​-­g ives​-­first​-­411184; Colin Delaney, “Top of the Lake to Air in Australia in March as First Look Trailer Is Also Released,” Mumbrella, January 11, 2013, https://­mumbrella​.c­ om​.­au​/­first​-l­ ook​ -­top​-­of​-­the​-­lake​-1­ 33199. It premiered March 24 in Australia and one day ­later in New Zealand. 5 ​Kathleen A. McHugh, “Giving Credit to Paratexts and Parafeminism in Top of the Lake and Orange Is the New Black,” Film Quarterly 68, no. 3 (2015): 18. 6 ​McHugh, “Giving Credit,” 17; Patricia White, ­Women’s Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Con­temporary Feminisms (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 34. 7 ​Marijke de Valck, “Film Festivals, Bourdieu, and the Economization of Culture,” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 23, no. 1 (2014): 78.

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8 ​De Valck, “Film Festivals,” 83. 9 ​Toby Brooks, “Top of the Lake,” Sundance Film Festival 2013 Cata­log, 157. Courtesy of Sundance Institute Archives & Collection; See-­Saw Holdings Proprietary ­Limited, “Top of the Lake Production Notes,” 2012, 16, submitted to the Sundance Film Festival but likely compiled to serve as a general press kit. Courtesy of Sundance Institute Archives & Collection. By my count, all but three of the first twelve scenes of episode one include extreme long shots that showcase the landscape. For more on the significance of the landscape to New Zealand national cinema, see Alfio Leotta, “ ‘100% Pure New Zealand’: The Tourist Gaze in Niki Caro’s Memory and Desire,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 29, no. 5 (2012): 440–449. 10 ​David Bordwell, “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Practice,” Film Criticism 4, no. 1 (1979): 59. 11 ​Raphaëlle Moine, “From Antipodean Cinema to International Art Cinema,” in Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity, ed. Hilary Radner, Alistair Fox, and Irène Bessière (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2009), 200–201. 12 ​Geoff King, Positioning Art Cinema: Film and Cultural Value (London: I.B. Tauris, 2019), 2. 13 ​King, Positioning Art Cinema, 2–3. 14 ​Alistair Fox, Jane Campion: Authorship and Personal Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011). 15 ​Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 323–325. 16 ​Jennifer Smith Maguire and Julian Matthews, “Are We All Cultural Intermediaries Now? An Introduction to Cultural Intermediaries in Context,” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Cultural Studies 15, no. 5 (2012): 551–552. 17 ​Smith Maguire and Matthews, “Are We All Cultural Intermediaries Now?,” 552. 18 ​Shyon Baumann, Hollywood Highbrow: From Entertainment to Art (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2007), 174. 19 ​Baumann, Hollywood Highbrow, 14–18. 20 ​“Top of the Lake: Production Story,” BBC Media Centre, http://­w ww​.b­ bc​.­co​.­u k​ /­mediacentre​/­mediapacks​/­topofthelake​/­production​-­story. 21 ​Sundance Channel, https://­w ww​.­imdb​.c­ om​/­video​/­vi3334055449​/?­​ ­playlistId​ =­tt2103085&ref​_​= ­ ­vp ​_­r v​_­1; BBC Two, https://­youtu​.­be​/­TujPm45jhLw. 22 ​Kathleen McHugh, “The World and the Soup: Historicizing Media Feminisms in Transnational Contexts,” Camera Obscura 24, no. 3 (2009): 139; italics in original. 23 ​See-­Saw, “Production Notes,” 15; Justin Chang, “Top of the Lake,” Variety, January 20, 2013, https://­variety​.­com​/­2013​/fi ­ lm​/­markets​-f­ estivals​/­top​-­of​-­the​-­lake​-­1117949033​/­; Gregg Goldstein, “Can TV Save the Indies?,” Variety, November 4, 2014, 96. 24 ​Paul Casserly, “Accent Alert: Top of the Lake,” The New Zealand Herald, March 27, 2013, http://­w ww​.­nzherald​.­co​.­nz​/­entertainment​/­news​/­article​.­cfm​?­c​_­id​ =­1501119&objectid​=1­ 0874167, cited in Hilary Radner, “No Country for W ­ omen? The Place of Top of the Lake and Perfect Strangers in New Zealand Cinema,” in Con­temporary ­Women’s Cinema, Global Scenarios and Transnational Contexts, ed. Veronica Pravadelli (Milan-­Udine: Mimesis International, 2018), 112. 25 ​See-­Saw, “Production Notes,” 15. 26 ​Elizabeth Alsop, “Sorority Flow: The Rhe­toric of Sisterhood in Post-­Network Tele­vi­sion,” Feminist Media Studies 19, no. 7 (2019): 1026–1042. 27 ​See, for example, Willmore, “The Buzziest ­Th ing”; Robert Abele, “Indie Spirit Stirs Up TV Territory,” Variety, June 4, 2013, https://­variety​.­com​/­2013​/­t v​/­news​ /­indie​-­spirit​-­stirs​-­up​-­t v​-­territory​-­1200490967​/­; Paula Hendrickson, “Stars Power

186 • W. D. Phillips

Minis,” Variety, August 16, 2013, 52; and Goldstein, “Can TV Save the Indies?,” 95–98. ­Earlier examples include Leo Barraclough, “Smallscreen Lures Big Filmmakers,” Variety, October 4, 2010, 13; and Robert Koehler, “Big Dreams on Small Screens,” Daily Variety, August 17, 2011, 11. 28 ​Goldstein, “Can TV Save the Indies?,” 96. 29 ​Willmore, “The Buzziest Th ­ ing”; “Power of Story: In­de­pen­dence Unleashed,” Sundance Film Festival 2013 Cata­log, 234. Campion’s tokenism is arguably on display ­here, as is Lin’s minority status. 3 0 ​Baumann, Hollywood Highbrow, 14–15. 31 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 9. 32 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 39; Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 95, 98. 3 3 ​Mittell, Complex TV, 88; Dade Hayes, “A Day of Watching TV at Sundance,” The New York Times, March 3, 2013, 18. The five-­part miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011) had a similar seventeen-­week shooting schedule. 3 4 ​See-­Saw, “Production Notes,” 16. Italics added. 3 5 ​Anne Thompson, “Campion Embraces TV over Film with Moodily Misogynistic ‘Top of the Lake,’ ” IndieWire, February 1, 2013, https://­w ww​.­indiewire​.­com​/­2013​ /­02​/­campion​-­embraces​-t­ v​-­over​-­fi lm​-­with​-­moodily​-­misogynistic​-­top​-­of​-­the​-­lake​ -­review​-­roundup​-1­ 99696​/­. See also Chang, “Top of the Lake,” 15; and Baumann, Hollywood Highbrow, 16–18. 36 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 5. 37 ​Anderson, “Producing an Aristocracy of Culture,” 28–29. 3 8 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 84. 39 ​Stuart Cunningham, In the Vernacular: A Generation of Australian Culture and Controversy (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2009), 75. 4 0 ​Malgorzata J. Rymsza-­Pawlowska, “Broadcasting the Past: History Tele­vi­sion, ‘Nostalgia Culture,’ and the Emergence of the Miniseries in the 1970s in the United States,” Journal of Popu­lar Film and Tele­vi­sion 42, no. 2 (2014): 85; Paul Kerr, “The Origins of the Mini-­Series,” Broadcast, March 12, 1979, 16. 41 ​Kerr, “The Origins of the Mini-­Series,” 17. 42 ​Kerr, “The Origins of the Mini-­Series,” 17. 4 3 ​Bart Mills, “Washington ­behind Closed Doors,” Stills, April/May 1984, 26–28; Rymsza-­Pawlowska, “Broadcasting the Past,” 85–87. 4 4 ​Cunningham, In the Vernacular, 74. 45 ​Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik, Watching TV: Six De­cades of American Tele­vi­sion, 2nd ed. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 273. 4 6 ​Elizabeth Jensen, “Miniseries Find New Niche ­a fter Nets Flee,” Tele­vi­sionWeek 25, no. 30 (2006): 46. 47 ​Kim Akass and Janet McCabe, “HBO and the Aristocracy of Con­temporary TV Culture: Affiliations and Legitimising Tele­vi­sion Culture, Post-2007,” Mise au Point 10 (2018): 4–5; Avi Santo, “Para-­television and Discourses of Distinction: The Culture of Production at HBO,” in It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-­ Television Era, ed. Marc Leverette, Brian L. Ott, and Cara Louise Buckley (New York: Routledge, 2008), 25. 4 8 ​Marechal, “Sundance Gets Serious,” 35; Andrew Barker et al., “­Women’s Impact List: Sarah Barnett,” Variety, October 1, 2013, 53. The quoted language h ­ ere is from Chris Albrecht, former chairman and CEO of HBO—­cited in Anderson, “Producing an Aristocracy of Culture,” 33.

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49 ​The picture palace in contrast to the nickelodeon is a canonical example. 50 ​White, ­Women’s Cinema, World Cinema, 33; Baumann, Hollywood Highbrow, 54–55; de Valck, “Film Festivals,” 76–77. 51 ​Thomas Elsaesser, Eu­ro­pean Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005), 88. 52 ​Dina Iordanova, “The Film Festival Cir­cuit,” in Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Cir­cuit, ed. Dina Iordanova with Ragan Rhyne (St. Andrews: St. Andrews Film Studies, 2009), 25. 53 ​Andrew Barker, “Broadcast MUSE,” Variety, August 16, 2013, 51; Brannavan Gnanalingam, “Berlinale Dispatch (2013) #1: Top of the Lake,” The Lumière Reader, February 18, 2013, https://­lumiere​.­net​.­nz​/­index​.­php​/­berlinale​-­dispatch​-­2013​-­1​/­. 5 4 ​Baumann, Hollywood Highbrow, 15–16. 55 ​For such proclamations of blurring or disappearing bound­aries, see Barker, “Broadcast MUSE” and Willmore, “The Buzziest Th ­ ing.” 56 ​Willmore, “The Buzziest Th ­ ing.” See also Hayes, “A Day of Watching TV at Sundance.” 57 ​Iordanova, “The Film Festival Cir­cuit,” 26. 5 8 ​Barker, “Broadcast MUSE”; Willmore, “The Buzziest ­Th ing.” 59 ​“Carlos,” Festival de Cannes 63rd edition 2010, accessed July 28, 2020, https://­w ww​ .­festival​-­cannes​.­com​/e­ n​/­fi lms​/­carlos; “Im Angesicht des Verbrechens Teil 1” and “Im Angesicht des Verbrechens Teil 2,” Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin: Annual Archives, accessed January 16, 2020, https://­w ww​.­berlinale​.­de​/­en​/­archive​ /­jahresarchive​/­2010​/­02​_ ­programm​_­2010​/­02​_­fi lmdatenblatt​_­2010​_­20105843​.­html; “Welt am Draht,” Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin: Annual Archives, accessed January 16, 2020, https://­w ww​.­berlinale​.­de​/­en​/­archive​/­jahresarchive​/­2010​/­02​ _­programm​_­2010​/­02​_ ­fi lmdatenblatt​_­2010​_­20106608​.­html. Notably, however, the listing for Todd Haynes’s Mildred Pierce at the 2011 Venice Film Festival reproduced the organ­ization of its original pre­sen­ta­tion on HBO several months e­ arlier and divided it into episodes one and two, episode three, and episodes four and five; that fest’s cata­log listed the run times for each of ­these three screening blocks: 121’, 63’, and 148’ respectively; Programma: 68. Mostra Internazionale D’Arte Cinematografica (Venice: La Biennale di Venezia, 2011). 6 0 ​Brooks, “Top of the Lake,” 157. 61 ​ The Best of Youth, along with Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1982), are ­earlier examples of tele­vi­sion miniseries that played at premier film festivals. Neither, however, was part of a larger shift in film fest programming policies in relation to tele­vi­sion, as we observe with Top of the Lake. 62 ​Willmore, “The Buzziest Th ­ ing.” 6 3 ​Haynes’s producer Christine Vachon, quoted in Barraclough, “Smallscreen Lures Big Filmmakers.” 6 4 ​Koehler, “Big Dreams on Small Screens.” 65 ​John Hopewell, “ ‘Mildred’ in Venice: Fest Turns to TV,” Daily Variety, August 31, 2011, 5. Hopewell notes that it was timed, in part, to coordinate with its international rollout. 66 ​Roderick Conway Morris, “Venice Film Festival Goes Back to the ­Future,” The New York Times, August 30, 2011, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2011​/­08​/­31​/­arts​/­31iht​ -­venicefest31​.­html. 67 ​Dana Harris-­Bridson and Eric Kohn, “SXSW Film Head Janet Pierson Says This Year’s Films Take Risks,” IndieWire, February 1, 2012, https://­w ww​.­indiewire​.­com​ /­2012​/­02​/s­ xsw​-­fi lm​-h ­ ead​-­janet​-p­ ierson​-­says​-­this​-y­ ears​-­fi lms​-­take​-r­ isks​-­49310​/­; Eric

188 • W. D. Phillips

Kohn, “Lena Dunham’s Breakthrough and the Evolution of Joe Swanberg: Janet Pierson Looks Back at 10 Years of SXSW Film,” IndieWire, March 9, 2018, https://­w ww​.i­ ndiewire​.­com​/­2018​/­03​/­janet​-p­ ierson​-­interview​-­sxsw​-­2018​-­10​-­years​ -­lena​-­dunham​-­joe​-­swanberg​-­1201937369​/­. 68 ​Stewart Clarke, “Small Screen Fest Fare Stirs Debate on Croisette,” Variety, May 22, 2017, 1, 55.

10

Specters of Serling Authorship, Tele­vi­sion History, and Inherited Prestige in The Twilight Zone (2019–2020) JOSIE TORRES BARTH “Blurryman,” the final episode of the first season of the 2019 reboot of The Twilight Zone, the classic tele­vi­sion anthology program that first aired on CBS from 1959 to 1964, self-­referentially dramatizes the difficulties of rebooting one of the most prestigious shows in the medium’s history for a con­temporary audience. The program’s co–­executive producer and host Jordan Peele, playing a version of himself, says to Sophie Gelson (Zazie Beetz), the diegetic screenwriter of an episode-­within-­that-­episode, “Our show is sci-fi, right?,” to which Sophie skeptically replies, “Yeah, but . . . ​it’s The Twilight Zone.” Throughout “Blurryman,” which focuses on Sophie’s strug­g le to write her teleplay and maintain control of her authorial voice in the face of both industrial and super­natural challenges, she clashes with producers and is haunted by a mysterious ghostly figure. In the season’s final moments, this man is revealed to be a spectral Rod Serling, the famed writer/producer and host of the original program and an archetypal tele­vi­sion auteur. The episode’s narrative demonstrates the inherent tensions between originality and nostalgia that underlie the act of rebooting a beloved show in a very dif­fer­ent industrial and cultural context. The reboot’s producers thus had to consider a number of questions: What should the relationship 189

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be between their show and the original program? What makes a story a Twilight Zone episode? Should they defer to Serling’s original vision of the show, or update it to fit modern conceptions of prestige TV? What forms of cultural cachet does this reboot inherit from its precursor’s role in tele­vi­sion history, and what expectations go along with this inheritance? As my analy­sis of The Twilight Zone’s critical reception shows, ­these questions ­were not satisfactorily answered. While some genres and formats of tele­vi­sion have consistently been elevated above the rest of the medium, the specific narrative, formal, and thematic characteristics that constitute prestige TV are historically contingent b­ ecause they are linked to a variety of industrial and cultural ­factors. In tele­vi­sion’s original “golden age” of the 1940s and 1950s, the epitome of prestige programming was the stand-­alone anthology teleplay, which was shot live, emphasizing theatrical ideals of immediacy and presence over par­tic­u­lar formal and narrative attributes specific to the new medium. In its so-­called current golden age, from the late 1990s to the pre­sent, prestige tele­vi­sion is instead characterized by high (or “cinematic”) production value, dark and mature subject m ­ atter, as well as the specific combination of episodic and serial storytelling that Jason Mittell terms “narrative complexity,” which is often accompanied by transmedia storytelling strategies that encourage practices like “forensic fandom.”1 In spite of ­these differences, critical notions of prestige in both periods emphasize identifying an author as the ultimate arbiter of meaning and artistry. The 2019 The Twilight Zone reboot used this author figure as a link between the past and the pre­sent by putting up-­and-­coming genre auteur Peele in Serling’s producer and narrator role.2 The dialogue and plot of “Blurryman” show a clear anxiety about Peele’s ability to fill Serling’s shoes fully and, by extension, the reboot’s capacity to live up to the weight of its cultural inheritance. In this chapter, I examine how the connection between the 2019 The Twilight Zone and the original show is understood by both the program’s producers and con­temporary critics. To accomplish this objective, I analyze intertextual references to its pre­de­ces­sor in both the reboot’s content and its marketing campaign. I also chart how evaluations of the program’s most recent iteration by critics relate to their memories of the original show. Both creative choices on and critical appraisals of this reboot are strongly influenced by its associations with the original’s place in the golden age of tele­vi­sion and its subsequent position in the culturally constructed canon of “heritage TV.” As the example of The Twilight Zone w ­ ill show, culturally specific conceptions of prestige that emerged from contingent industrial conditions cannot necessarily transcend the era of origin. It is useful, therefore, to deploy a dif­f er­ent analytical lens when studying the concept of prestige in a reboot, as notions of prestige from the medium’s first golden era shape how critics, audiences, and the producers themselves assess the newer version. The creators of the latest The Twilight Zone reboot make constant, self-­ conscious references to the original program while adopting more modern

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characteristics of the genre in an attempt to balance the demands of both versions of prestige tele­vi­sion. In ­doing so, the show ultimately disappoints both sets of expectations. Caught between competing historical ideas of prestige tele­vi­ sion and meanings of The Twilight Zone itself, the show fails for two key reasons. First, the reboot’s creators employ quin­tes­sen­tial markers of prestige that they also interrogate, rendering t­ hose very signifiers incoherent. Second, b­ ecause the program is in­effec­tively positioned as fan ser­vice and si­mul­ta­neously designed to capture new viewers, the creators failed to attract their desired audiences. This latest reboot was not the first attempt to resurrect The Twilight Zone. ­A fter the moderate success of a 1983 film adaptation, the first tele­vi­sion revival aired on CBS from 1985 to 1987 before moving to syndication from 1988 to 1989, and a second new iteration aired on UPN in the 2002–2003 season. The announcement of the most recent reboot was met with excitement by critics. Many reviewers lauded the involvement of Peele, who had a reputation as an emerging horror auteur a­ fter the success of his 2017 film Get Out, and critics noted the show’s potential po­liti­cal relevance in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. election.3 The reboot was promoted with a large advertising bud­get; an eye-­ catching first promotional spot aired during the CBS broadcast of the 2019 Super Bowl, the same day as the release of a new trailer for Peele’s highly anticipated Get Out follow-up film, Us (2019). In April 2019, the first two episodes w ­ ere made available to viewers exclusively on the streaming ser­vice CBS All Access followed by weekly releases on that platform. The decision to release the 2019 The Twilight Zone reboot exclusively to paying CBS All Access subscribers was part of a larger strategy to drive new subscriptions to the ser­vice in order to compete with established streaming behemoths such as Netflix. When the reboot was announced in late 2017, CBS All Access executives ­were aiming to expand the platform’s original programming ­after the success of Star Trek: Discovery (2017–), a previous spin-­off of a cherished CBS/Paramount property that, like The Twilight Zone, formed part of the canon of heritage TV.4 The release strategy for Discovery gave viewers a taste of the new show to entice them to subscribe. The series premiere episode aired as a CBS broadcast, while the first two episodes ­were si­mul­ta­neously made available on CBS All Access, with all following episodes released exclusively on that platform. The Discovery premiere was followed by a rec­ord number of new CBS All Access subscriptions, demonstrating the effectiveness of this tactic.5 However, unlike Discovery and The Good Fight (2017–2022), the flagship CBS All Access original (also based on an existing CBS property) The Twilight Zone reboot did not receive a broadcast premiere. The strategy of a streaming-­ only premiere hinged on the belief that The Twilight Zone name and Peele’s reputation would be enough to sell viewers on the subscription ser­vice. Critic Meghan O’Keefe referred to this ploy as “a risky gambit that banks on the strength of The Twilight Zone fandom,” asking, “Is love for the classic series enough to sell the average viewer on all of CBS All Access?”6

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Despite ­those concerns, the strategy was initially successful, as the first episode of The Twilight Zone reboot drew a rec­ord number of unique viewers to the platform, according to CBS All Access.7 However, as reviews would indicate, interest in the show could ultimately not be sustained—­the program failed to live up to the network’s hype and the high standards established by its pre­de­ces­ sor’s reputation. Reviews of the first season tended to be lukewarm; review aggregator site Metacritic gave the season a 60 out of 100, a score denoting “mixed or average reviews” by critics, and many of the reviews the site tags as “positive” ­were heavi­ly qualified. Fans w ­ ere even more critical. While Metacritic counted twenty positive, fifteen mixed, and two negative reviews by professional critics, the first season’s viewer reviews w ­ ere poor, adding up to thirty-­five positive, sixteen mixed, and fifty-­one negative.8 Reviews of the second and final season, for which all episodes ­were released on CBS All Access on June 25, 2020, ­were hardly better. As CBS All Access strug­gled to compete with larger streaming ser­vices with content from broader brand bases, The Twilight Zone reboot’s tepid reception meant that it ultimately failed as a tentpole property.9 When the platform was rebranded as Paramount+ in 2021 with the goal of reaching younger audiences, the show did not make the transition.10 Nearly all of the reviews, both professional and amateur, evaluated the reboot relative to the original Twilight Zone, demonstrating the property’s cultural weight and its connection to a specific moment in tele­vi­sion history. Critics and fans alike assessed the reboot by gauging its fidelity to the original. Positive reviews declared it to be an excellent update, while mixed or negative reviews framed it as ­either insufficiently or overly similar to its progenitor. Favorable reviews positioned this similarity as an homage; unfavorable reviews referred to it as derivative, formulaic, or unable to live up to the prestige of the original. The Chicago Sun-­Times described the first season as “­g reat, but not Twilight Zone ­g reat,” comparing the reboot to a cover band, and a review in The Atlantic described the first four episodes as “anthology storytelling by the numbers.”11 Salon writer Matthew Rozsa had anticipated the reboot in March 2019 with an article describing the po­liti­cal significance of the original, headlined “Amer­i­ca Needs Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone Now.”12 But by the time the second season became available in June 2020, a CNN headline declared: “The old Twilight Zone speaks to the strange times w ­ e’re living in better than the new one.”13 The show’s writers and producers clearly saw the program’s history as a draw for potential fans. The form and content of the reboot’s episodes constantly cited aspects of the original, from a version of the iconic opening credit sequence with the same ­music to several episodes that are near remakes. The reboot’s marketing leaned heavi­ly on viewers’ knowledge of the original, which was rebranded strategically as “Twilight Zone Classic” on CBS All Access. The episodes made consistent references to the original, using the names of characters and places or making visual allusions in a manner that resembles the kind of transmedia storytelling common in much of con­temporary tele­vi­sion and film. Henry Jenkins

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argues that this form of storytelling, in cases such as The Matrix (1999) universe, “add[s] value” by allowing fans to engage more deeply with a film or tele­vi­sion program.14 Social media ad campaigns for The Twilight Zone reboot asked viewers to find “Easter eggs” from the original show, encouraging a form of “forensic fandom” that Mittell identifies for programs such as Lost (2004–2010).15 However, unlike the clues provided by small textual details in Lost, which ardent fans in online forums interpreted to extend the show’s my­thol­ogy or get hints of ­future narrative developments, The Twilight Zone callbacks provided l­ittle narrative or symbolic meaning. The mask placed on Eve’s (Ginnifer Goodwin) face in the season one episode “Point of Origin,” for example, resembled the piglike features revealed on all the characters at the end of the fan favorite 1959 episode “Eye of the Beholder”—­but ­there w ­ ere no other clear links between the two episodes. This kind of gamified recognition was meant to allow viewers to feel like true The Twilight Zone fans, but it did ­little to increase their engagement. For CBS, however, t­ here was a clear industrial motivation for t­ hese intertextual references—­this fan engagement created an opportunity for synergistic cross-­promotion for existing CBS properties, such as the original Twilight Zone. A page on the CBS All Access blog that explained the references, referring to the Easter eggs as the way creators “show[ed] reverence for the classic episodes that came before,” also linked to the original episodes, which could be streamed through the same portal.16 The viewer interface linked to The Twilight Zone merchandise page of the CBS Store, which sold items such as DVD box sets, mugs, and T-­shirts that winkingly reference specific episodes. Similarly, a special feature from the season one DVD box set identifying the references ended with an advertisement for the original program on DVD. ­These Easter eggs ­were an attempt to include the program in the broader industrial move ­toward what Ivan Askwith calls an “engagement medium” that is “capable of generating a level of viewer attentiveness and emotional investment that restore[s] tele­vi­sion’s status as an advertising medium.”17 Critics, however, recognized the hollowness of ­these references: The Atlantic’s Sophie Gilbert said the reboot was “more concerned with Easter eggs . . . ​than with trying to emulate what the original show did so well—­making audiences see the world with more clarity.”18 According to many critics like Gilbert, such commercial and fan ser­ vice ele­ments diminished the show’s artistry and hollowed out its pre­de­ces­sor’s social commitment. ­These references to the original program as a kind of trivia game also expressed the strug­gle executive producers experienced with the weight of adapting the legacy property for the pre­sent. In a Vulture interview, executive producer Simon Kinberg epitomized ­these difficulties by saying that they had considered making the reboot in black-­and-­white, “­because we ­were so obsessed with the original show. . . . ​But we de­cided we wanted to do something to honor the essence and sensibility and style of the original without ­going so overboard that we ­were

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d­ oing a karaoke version of the original.”19 While the program was ultimately filmed in color, a pivotal scene in “Blurryman” used a fade to grayscale, and a CBS All Access feature gave viewers the option to watch the full first season in black-­and-­white, making the new program experientially continuous with the original. In 2019, Peele tweeted: “Starting May 30th @TheTwilightZone w ­ ill be available in black and white. ’Cause . . . ​come on.”20 As descriptions such as Variety’s “flavorless homage” and the producers’ own concerns about “karaoke” illustrate, it is pos­si­ble to be too worshipful of Serling’s fabled auteur status in a way that effectively detracts from this legacy.21

The Anthology Format, Authorship, and Prestige Tele­vi­sion As both Sophie’s “Blurryman” dialogue and the critical reception cited above suggest, the original Twilight Zone was seen as distinct from, and elevated above, the rest of early tele­vi­sion. In a 1961 speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minow brought rhetorical closure to the first golden age of tele­vi­sion by referring to a majority of the medium’s output as a “vast wasteland,” but he excepted The Twilight Zone as one of the few programs that “enriched” the lives of its viewers.22 For cultural critics, tele­vi­sion’s technical characteristics could potentially support a new style of dramatic realism. The anthology format, in which each installment told a new story with a fresh set of characters, was considered the most artistic of t­ hese forms. In a 1952 manual for tele­vi­sion writers, writer and critic Gilbert Seldes referred to the hour-­long original teleplay in an anthology program as the “top of the prestige pyramid of all tele­vi­sion drama.”23 Shows such as Play­house 90 (1956–1960), Kraft Tele­vi­sion Theatre (1947–1958), and The United States Steel Hour (1953–1963) routinely tackled topics such as addiction, conformism, social alienation, and the Holocaust. Live tele­vi­sion was seen as a writer’s medium, in which the “artist-­playwright” could dramatize “eternal and infinitely variable h ­ uman conflicts . . . ​[and] lay bear [sic] the ­human heart and spirit,” in the words of one con­temporary professional.24 This Romantic view of the au­then­tic, individual tele­vi­sion writer in control of their personal artistic output was contrasted to the Hollywood screenwriter, who was framed by contemporaneous discourses as a faceless contract writer, toiling away “in confining genres at the whim of autocratic and philistine moguls” to churn out identical, impersonal commercial products.25 In contrast to this anonymous com­ pany drone, the writer of live tele­vi­sion was a recognizable figure with cultural capital second only to that held by the so-­called legitimate playwright of the theatrical stage.26 In the context of postwar anx­i­eties about the deleterious effects of commercial mass culture on supposedly susceptible viewers, the association of the anthology drama with the televisual auteur played a large part in the format’s prestige elevation. Such authorial positioning marked ­these teleplays as both enriching

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cultural experiences and as the work of an individual artist with a recognizable personal stamp.27 In their study of the cultural pro­cesses of the legitimation of tele­vi­sion, Michael Newman and Elana Levine identify “the author as guarantee of art” as a primary form of this discourse.28 While Newman and Levine focus their argument on the current tele­vi­sion showrunner as auteur, The Twilight Zone and its promotional materials foregrounded Serling’s star power and his authorial status as both head writer and producer in a way that anticipated con­temporary prestige tele­vi­sion, which privileges individual creatives as instrumental to programming quality. Newman and Levine argue that “this trope protects the artistic productions in a debased commercial medium like tele­vi­sion . . . ​from association with run-­of-­the-­mill trash: of course most TV is not conspicuously authored, but artistic TV must be, and this is precisely what allows it to be labeled as dif­fer­ent and better.”29 Public relations and marketing campaigns place emphasis on the authorial autonomy of creators as a mark of artistry and quality. ­These efforts situate the author as an artistic individual in total control of their output. As Newman and Levine put it, the effect is that “the culture of Quality TV distinction . . . ​obscures the conditions of industrial media production and substitutes for collaborative notions of authorship a Romantic vision of the autonomous individual.”30 This framing is similar to the way that postwar cultural discourses around the anthology tele­vi­sion writer differentiated them from the Hollywood screenwriter by marking the former as in some way above market demands. Serling was perhaps the most famous of ­these figures, having established his reputation writing live anthology teleplays in the 1950s. CBS used Serling’s status as an original televisual auteur to market The Twilight Zone, giving it a veneer of respectability and artistry. Along with this use of his public persona, Serling required an unpre­ce­dented degree of authorial control for anthology tele­vi­sion. Unlike the large pools of writers who produced the weekly plays of anthology tele­vi­sion, Serling is ultimately credited with penning ninety-­five of the 156 episodes of the program’s original run. As the show progressed, Serling found it hard to keep up with a schedule that demanded an entirely new script each week, causing him to rely on adaptations of existing stories. His haphazard and chaotic adaptation pro­cess, however, led directly to several charges of plagiarism from the original authors of ­those stories. The lengths to which CBS went to maintain the integrity of Serling’s image as a writer in the face of ­these plagiarism accusations demonstrate how closely the program’s prestige status was tied to Serling’s persona as a liberal intellectual, and to cultural understandings of The Twilight Zone as a text authored by a single individual.31 Even more than many past or pre­sent showrunners, Serling is strongly identifiable as the author of The Twilight Zone largely ­because of his role as the program’s on-­screen host. Anthology hosts like Serling set the scene and tone of their respective programs, as film director Alfred Hitchcock also did on the show Alfred Hitchcock Pre­sents (1955–1965). They guide viewers to a preferred or

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official interpretation of the episode’s events. ­These figures imbue their respective programs with a unifying sense of authorial control that exploits the viewer’s misunderstanding of the ­actual roles of their on-­screen hosts ­behind the scenes. While their level of involvement varied—­Hitchcock, in fact, only directed seventeen of the 268 episodes of his eponymous program—­the on-­screen presence of ­these figures as authorial narrators lent thematic continuity and the sense of a unified voice to the disparate episodes.32 Well beyond the original run of The Twilight Zone, Serling remains the most identifiable of ­these writers; he is, as Jon Kraszewski describes him, “a metonym for the era of anthology writing,” and perhaps for the first golden age of tele­vi­sion as a w ­ hole.33 The televisual auteur is a rhetorical construction that allows the viewer to make coherent sense of a program, and the figure enables a network to market the show to audiences while disguising the conditions of tele­vi­sion writing and production.

The Twilight Zone’s Afterlives and the Anthology Program as Heritage Tele­vi­sion Before its return to tele­vi­sion, the property was first revived twenty years ­after its end in the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie.34 The film was made up of a prologue and four story segments based on or inspired by an original Twilight Zone episode. In the prologue, a driver (Albert Brooks) and his passenger (Dan Aykroyd) entertain themselves while cruising along an empty highway at night by playing a game in which one hums the theme song to a classic tele­vi­sion program and the other guesses the show. They reference a number of familiar tele­ vi­ sion programs, including Bonanza (1959–1973), The Beverly Hillbillies (1962–1971), Gilligan’s Island (1964–1967), and Hawaii Five-­O (1968–1980), before ending with The Twilight Zone theme. From this opening scene of the first new iteration of The Twilight Zone in nearly a generation, audiences can already see how the program’s cultural meaning had changed in its twenty-­year absence from popu­lar culture (except, importantly, in reruns and syndication). Many of the shows that the men associate with The Twilight Zone in their memories of a bygone era are exactly what Minow would have considered to be part of the TV “wasteland.” The nostalgic memories and trivial recollection of viewers who watched the program in their youth pre­sent a stark contrast to the presumed sophistication of Serling’s adult audience. Film critic Roger Ebert observed that the beauty of Twilight Zone: The Movie was “the same as the secret of the TV series: It takes ordinary ­people in ordinary situations and then (can you hear Rod Serling?) zaps them with ‘the next stop—­the Twilight Zone!’ ”35 Ebert, like the film’s viewer surrogates in Brooks and Aykroyd, ties the appeal of the film to a shared cultural memory of the original show, and specifically to Serling’s voice as both writer and host. The film received mixed reviews but succeeded in reigniting interest in the property, demonstrating that the appeal of The Twilight Zone for new audiences lay in nostalgic references for the knowing viewer.

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The 1985 tele­vi­sion reboot was part of what may be called the “second wave” of the tele­vi­sion anthology format. Many of t­ hese programs ­were based on existing cultural properties from the 1950s and 1960s, including explicit reboots like Alfred Hitchcock Pre­sents (1985–1989) and The Outer Limits (original, 1963–1965, reboot, 1995–2002), shows based on 1950s horror comics such as Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) and Tales from the Darkside (1983–1988), and shows aimed at ­children and families, including Amazing Stories (1985–1987), and the horror show Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1990–1996). The beginning of this second wave of anthology programming coincided with the moment when, as Derek Kompare has argued, the American conception of past tele­vi­sion changed from viewing it as an ephemeral, commercial entertainment product to a kind of “tele­vi­sion heritage.” This “new validation of the popu­lar,” Kompare writes, was seen through “an unpre­ce­dented and highly mediated nostalgia” for the supposed halcyon days of Amer­i­ca in the 1950s and for that period’s cultural output.36 Distinct from e­ arlier conceptions that tied this format to artistic prestige, the prominence of explicit reboots of golden age properties and retro-­tinged programming directed at ­children aligns the anthology format in this period with this growing conception of past tele­vi­sion as a kind of cultural heritage with a nostalgic appeal. The 2019 The Twilight Zone reboot is part of what can be called the “third wave” of anthology programming. Beginning in 2011 with American Horror Story (2011–), this wave is made up of shows like Black Mirror (2011–), a blend of horror and science fiction that, like The Twilight Zone, embodies an animating concern with culture’s anxious relationship to modern technology. As in the previous wave, anthology programs in this period are strongly associated with horror and science fiction genres. However, in its con­temporary form, anthology means something dif­fer­ent in relation to narrative expectations. In the first and second waves of this format’s popularity, the term anthology described a program that was episodic: each new installment would take place in a dif­fer­ent story world, with dif­fer­ent characters; t­ here was no assumption that ­these episodes would be narratively linked. In the de­cades since the original conception of the anthology program, seriality has become a major indicator of tele­vi­sion prestige. In the 1940s and 1950s, continuous narratives ­were generally found in cultural forms such as the daytime radio or tele­vi­sion serial, which ­were seen as lowbrow fare primarily for audiences of ­house­wives and ­children. Over the next few de­cades, serialized narratives became more culturally acceptable for a variety of cultural and economic reasons, to the extent that seriality, especially in complex narrative form, has now become a reliable marker of prestige.37 The anthology format has changed alongside ­these cultural connotations of serialized narratives. Anthology programs such as True Detective (2014–), Fargo (2014–), and The Haunting (2018–) have taken on the format, pioneered by American Horror Story, of what might be labeled as the “serialized anthology.” In this format, a show’s story is told over the course of a single season. Each

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successive season contains a new narrative, sometimes with the same actors appearing in consecutive seasons playing new characters. This repertory cast creates a semblance of implied continuity between distinct story worlds, with hints of potential cross-­season seriality notable to the loyal viewer. The creator of Black Mirror, one of the few truly episodic con­temporary anthologies, has even gestured at a form of seriality in that program, dropping hints that the stories take place in the same world or in a kind of multiverse.38 Similarly, “Blurryman” may allude to some form of seriality in a scene where Sophie is shown images of previous episodes, and she and the viewer need to use this accumulated information to make sense of what is happening to her. The industrial imperatives of narrative complexity and its con­temporary association with prestige are thus strong enough to impact even the anthology format. Of all the reboot’s executive producers, only Peele is recognizable to most viewers. Peele originally made his name as an actor and comedian, first as a cast member on the comedy sketch program Mad TV (1995–2009; 2016) and ­later on Key & Peele (2012–2015), a sketch show that he created with Keegan-­Michael Key, who served as a head writer along with Peele. Like the original Twilight Zone, Peele’s most critically acclaimed work, such as Get Out and Us, uses meta­ phor and allegory to address social issues, especially racism.39 As with Serling, Peele is also strongly identifiable with his reboot b­ ecause of his role as on-­screen host. In contrast to Peele’s on-­screen prominence in his iteration of the show, the two previous The Twilight Zone reboots did not attempt to fill Serling’s shoes so explic­itly. Instead, the 1985 version had an anonymous voice-­over narrator played by two dif­f er­ent actors throughout its run, while the 2002 reboot was hosted by actor Forest Whitaker, who appeared on-­screen but in a much more l­ imited fashion than Serling. In both versions, the narrator or host had no implied role ­behind the scenes in the program’s production. The choice of Peele, a recognizable auteur figure, as host is thus impor­tant. Peele deliberately references Serling’s on-­screen presence in his per­for­mance, wearing a slim-­cut, early-­sixties-­style suit and adopting Serling’s characteristic speech cadence, especially in his enunciation of the words with which Serling ended ­every appearance: “. . . ​in The Twilight Zone.” The latest version of the program recalls the prestige of the anthology format through a similar version of its auteur figure, and it alludes to the second golden age of tele­vi­sion in which a prestige program is frequently defined by its relationship to a showrunner. “Blurryman” takes as its themes authorship, prestige, nostalgia, and tele­vi­sion heritage through its reflexive attempts to answer questions about what it means to make The Twilight Zone in the pre­sent industrial and cultural landscape. Throughout the episode, screenwriter Sophie, while struggling to write an episode of the 2019 Twilight Zone, is terrorized by the aforementioned enigmatic blurry figure who, it is revealed, has appeared in the background of ­every previous episode of the season. As the man chases her throughout the studio lot, Sophie discovers that she is herself the protagonist of an episode of The Twilight

Specters of Serling • 199

The eponymous “Blurryman” is revealed to be an apparition of The Twilight Zone’s (2019– 2020) original creator, Rod Serling.

Zone. ­A fter a journey through the studio lot and a flashback to her own childhood as a fan of The Twilight Zone, the episode ends in black-­and-­white on a dilapidated, post-­apocalyptic version of the set from the 1959 fan favorite episode “Time Enough at Last.” It is ­here that Sophie discovers that the blurry man is actually a ghostly Serling, who has returned from the dead to teach her the episode’s customary lesson and that of the w ­ hole season, a divine intervention that ­will then help her overcome her writing difficulties. Through this plot, the episode implies a relationship between nostalgia and the tele­vi­sion author’s social responsibility to educate audiences. However, the narrative and logical links between ­these concepts are unclear in a way that demonstrates the larger incoherence of the episode and, by extension, the reboot itself, as the lesson Sophie must learn is not evident even at a plot level. Before Sophie is terrorized by the ghostly Serling, the episode’s dramatic conflict begins with the clash of competing ideas regarding tele­vi­sion’s social responsibility. The episode starts as the ­others did, with Peele (referred to in the diegesis as Jordan) as narrator, delivering a monologue to the camera about the episode’s themes. He stops in the ­middle of his delivery to express his dissatisfaction with the narration, and in a classic Twilight Zone frame shift, the scene audiences have just watched is exposed as an episode of a tele­vi­sion show being shot. As Jordan asks Sophie to rewrite the monologue, their discussion reveals a conflict over the meaning and message of the episode and the program overall. “I think we might just be saying something we ­don’t actually want to be saying,” Jordan says, “the art versus entertainment stuff . . . ​why do we need to make it an either/or?” With the hesitant tone of one who recognizes the precarious place of a screenwriter in the con­temporary tele­vi­sion industry, Sophie replies: “But

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Jordan Peele delivers what appears to be a standard opening monologue to introduce the “Blurryman” episode of The Twilight Zone.

Jordan Peele suddenly stops his “Blurryman” opening narration, precipitating a quin­tes­sen­ tial frame shift associated with The Twilight Zone franchise.

i­sn’t that what the episode is about?” The dialogue excerpted at the beginning of this chapter derives from Sophie’s larger explanation of her intended message ­behind the episode: “I guess I just thought the ­whole point was the slippery slope . . . ​the path from superhero movies or like stupid sci-fi crap to Idiocracy,” referencing the 2006 film in which centuries of rampant consumerism produce an anti-­intellectual dystopia. Throughout the conversation, Sophie distinguishes the program for which she writes from the rest of the genre and, implicitly, from

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Sophie Gelson asks Jordan Peele how the message of The Twilight Zone distinguishes the property from the rest of tele­vi­sion in “Blurryman.”

the rest of tele­vi­sion. “The Twilight Zone ­isn’t just monsters on a plane wing,” she says, referencing the 1963 episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”40 “If t­ here’s nothing being said of importance, then it’s just campfire stories.” Sophie defends this position through an appeal to the program’s original auteur: “What Rod Serling did was he took this silly genre kid stuff and he elevated it . . . ​Rod Serling had to come in to e­ very show to remind us that The Twilight Zone ­isn’t this sci-fi, alternate dimension. What’s good about the show ­isn’t this genre bullshit, it’s the message.” The message Sophie refers to was a regular ele­ment in a plot formula common to many episodes of the original Twilight Zone. The episode’s protagonist, and thus the viewer, would learn something during their journey through the titular space, and this message would be hammered home by Serling’s closing narration, which at times bordered on didactic. According to Sophie, this takeaway for the main character and the viewer is part of what distinguishes both versions of the program from the rest of tele­vi­sion, playing into a long history of potentially elitist desires for “uplifting” or “educational” tele­vi­sion.41 While it is clear that the program’s prestige status stems from its moral takeaway, the message that both Sophie and the viewer must learn in “Blurryman” is cloudy. It is unclear how viewers are supposed to interpret Jordan’s rejection of “the art versus entertainment stuff,” or where their allegiances are supposed to lie: With Sophie, the episode’s protagonist, or with Jordan, the show’s star and sole recurring character? The plot is convoluted, seeming to resolve several times before its ultimate end, and the episode’s message is vague and muddled; it is uncertain what Sophie was meant to learn from her adventure. Sophie voices ­these doubts as the Blurryman continues to terrorize her: “Did I

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learn the wrong lesson?” Even the return of Serling from the dead, reclaiming his position as narrator and reprising his role as the ultimate arbiter of an episode’s meaning, does not shed light on the intended takeaway. The closing monologue, Sophie’s words blessed by Jordan and spoken by Serling, provides very ­little clarity: Sophie Gelson has just awoken to the fact that when we put away childish ­things, we may be closing our eyes instead of opening them. And that perhaps our only hope is to face all real­ity, a multitude of truths, not shrinking from that vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant “X” beyond imagination, but to embrace it. To open ourselves to the unknown. Not the end of the story, but a new beginning . . . ​for The Twilight Zone.

As he speaks ­these last words, the program’s logo appears on-­screen, giving the faux Serling the last word on the first season of the reboot while gesturing, if somewhat incoherently, ­toward its f­ uture. Criticism of the latest reboot’s first season recognized this absence of a commanding, all-­encompassing authorial voice and the corresponding lack of a clear moral takeaway. In anticipation of the new reboot, Gilbert said: “What makes The Twilight Zone so rich, and so necessary . . . ​[is] the moral framework Serling was able to disguise in stories about faraway worlds that somehow exactly reflect our own.”42 In her subsequent 2019 review of the program’s first four episodes, ominously titled “What the Twilight Zone Reboot Is Missing,” Gilbert struck a tone of resignation: “Oddly enough, t­ hese morals are missing from the new series . . . ​it’s hard to conceive that an artist as prodigiously talented and thoughtful as Peele is creatively involved at all.”43 In a Vanity Fair review, Sonia Saraiya describes the similarly unclear ending of the season one episode “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet,” in which a journalist played by Adam Scott boards a plane to discover an MP3 player loaded with a podcast that foretells his own role in that plane’s ensuing crash. Rather than explaining the moral or even the plot, “the episode waves its hands a ­little, pointing to its loose ends with the same shrug: it remains a mystery, ­because the airplane, and the podcast, and Adam Scott, are all in . . . ​the Twilight Zone.”44 Saraiya also connects the program’s failure to live up to its pre­de­ces­sor to Peele’s lack of involvement b­ ehind the scenes: “But unlike the unassuming Serling,” Saraiya writes, “Peele seems self-­conscious and posed when delivering his narration; his voice does not r­ eally sound like his own. . . . ​Where is Peele’s singular, racially conscious vision?”45 While critics expressed hope that Peele’s involvement might increase in the show’s second season, the issues they identified ­were not fully remedied. The Guardian describes a season two episode as “an inauspicious continuation of an already mildly disappointing series,” deducing that “it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Jordan Peele’s involvement begins and ends with his narrator role.”46 According to the program’s critical reception, Peele fails as the

Specters of Serling • 203

authoritative, all-­controlling figure in the Serling model b­ ecause his involvement ­behind the scenes was actually too l­imited. In spite of the show’s framing of Peele as a producer in the model of the showrunner-­auteur, his only writing credits are a shared “story by” credit on “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet,” itself an adaptation of an original Twilight Zone episode, and a single writing credit in the second season for “Downtime.” The overall uncertainty about the episode’s message seen in “Blurryman” thus goes beyond that episode and the first season, becoming a larger symptom of the reboot’s missing auteur. Through its lack of clarity, “Blurryman” performs not karaoke, but instead a kind of ventriloquism, putting words into the mouth of a dead man that do not entirely reflect his work during his life. Serling—­perhaps unlike Kinberg, who directed the episode and had made his name working on the kind of superhero blockbusters Sophie derides—­did, in fact, see a distinct line between art and commerce, and between “genre bullshit” and his own work. If anything, the episode’s closing narration seems to embrace ambiguity, including its own inability to be about anything definite. This narration gestures at a few t­ hings—­the benefits of an open mind, ac­cep­tance of the entertainment role of tele­vi­sion, and a fresh start in the form of a new, and newly renewed, reboot—­but as a final, impor­tant takeaway, it is fairly contentless. The lack of definitive closure in this closing narration recalls dialogue from ­earlier in the episode, when Sophie says, hesitantly, “­Isn’t that what the episode is about?,” to which Jordan replies, “Is it?” By its own standards of what makes con­temporary prestige TV—it has a message, which is conveyed by an author—­the episode, and the program overall, seem to fail. The author and the host are no longer the same person, allowing creative differences to ­water down the message. In the era of the showrunner, tele­vi­sion’s status as a writer’s medium has been reinforced. However, neither of the auteur stand-­ins in the episode can fully step into Serling’s shoes. Sophie, the fictional writer, lacks the gravitas, and her gender would appear to make her ineligible to replace the show’s always male host. Peele, on the other hand, can serve only as a presenter and not as an au­then­tic writer-­auteur. Based on t­ hese twin failures, the program acknowledges its own lack and compensates by restoring an uncanny, undead Serling, whose image is required to earn its bona fides. But as long as his persona haunts the production, neither Sophie nor Jordan can fully assume his diegetic authorial role. The tension revealed in this episode is not just between Jordan and Sophie in their strug­gle for control over the program’s meaning. It is also between their competing ideas of what a Twilight Zone episode is, and, therefore, what prestige tele­vi­sion was and should now be. As the episode’s reincarnation of Serling highlights, cultural prestige inherited through a name and a patriarchal author figure can also be a form of baggage that must be dealt with, if not exorcised. In its first incarnation, anthology meant prestige tele­vi­sion ­because of the author’s message. When anthology l­ ater came to mean both genre and nostalgia, in an environment where the primary purpose of tele­vi­sion was to provide

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entertainment along with its cultural heritage, The Twilight Zone could offer its audiences stories without the baggage of the original program. In the so-­ called current golden age, where much of tele­vi­sion is once again intended for sophisticated audiences—­but also is now convergent, narratively complex, and transmedial—­the show’s creators attempted to reincarnate the original author figure, first in Peele’s imitation, and then as a ghost of Serling himself. The creators of the most recent Twilight Zone reboot grappled with t­ hese legacies as they strug­gled to find its place in the crowded tele­vi­sion marketplace, and with the sense of prestige that carried through the original program’s afterlives. However, if the ­factor that united disparate stories and gave them a sheen of prestige and social importance was once Serling, now that he is gone, all that remains is his ghost.

Notes 1 ​Robert J. Thompson, Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997); Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015). 2 ​Throughout this chapter, I refer to Jordan Peele as “Peele” when discussing his role ­behind the scenes as a producer, and “Jordan” when describing the version of himself he plays on-­screen. 3 ​Matthew Rozsa, “Jordan Peele Is Bringing The Twilight Zone Back, And Not a Moment Too Soon,” Salon, March 30, 2019, https://­w ww​.s­ alon​.­com​/­2019​/­03​/­30​ /­america​-­needs​-­jordan​-­peeles​-­t wilight​-z­ one​-­now​/­. 4 ​For more on the release of Star Trek: Discovery, see Murray Leeder’s analy­sis of the show in chapter 3 of this anthology. 5 ​Anthony D’Alessandro, “Star Trek: Discovery Fuels Rec­ord Signups for CBS All Access,” Deadline, September 24, 2017, https://­deadline​.c­ om​/­2017​/­09​/s­ tar​-­trek​ -­discovery​-­cbs​-­a ll​-­access​-­record​-­sign​-­ups​-­1202176110​/­. 6 ​Meghan O’Keefe, “Why ­Didn’t CBS Premiere The Twilight Zone on Their Linear Network, Like They Did with The Good Fight and Star Trek: Discovery?,” Decider, April 1, 2019, https://­decider​.­com​/­2019​/­04​/­01​/w ­ hy​-­the​-­t wilight​-z­ one​-­isnt​-­on​-­cbs​/.­ 7 ​Elaine Low, “CBS All Access’ The Twilight Zone Not Returning for Third Season,” Variety, February 24, 2021, https://­variety​.­com​/­2021​/­t v​/­news​/­t wilight​-z­ one​ -­canceled​-­jordan​-­peele​-­simon​-k­ inberg​-­1234914754​/­. 8 ​“The Twilight Zone (2019),” Metacritic, https://­w ww​.­metacritic​.­com​/­t v​/­the​-­t wilight​ -­zone​-2­ 019. 9 ​Alison Herman, “It’s Better Late Than Never for Paramount+, Even If It Was Actually First,” The Ringer, March 3, 2021, https://­w ww​.­theringer​.­com​/­t v​/­2021​/3­ /​ ­3​ /­22310170​/­what​-­is​-p­ aramount​-­plus​-­cbs​-­a ll​-a­ ccess. 10 ​According to The Hollywood Reporter, the decision not to continue the show was made by Peele and Kinberg. Lesley Goldberg, “The Twilight Zone Not Moving Forward at CBS All Access (Exclusive),” February 24, 2021, https://­w ww​ .­hollywoodreporter​.­com​/­t v​/­t v​-­news​/­the​-­t wilight​-­zone​-­canceled​-­at​-­cbs​-­a ll​-­access​ -­exclusive​-4 ­ 138186​/.­ 11 ​Richard Roeper, “Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone Plays G ­ reat, If Not Quite Twilight Zone ­Great,” Chicago Sun-­Times, April 1, 2019, https://­chicago​.­suntimes​.­com​/­2019​

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/­4​/­1​/­18356360​/­jordan​-­peele​-­s​-­reboot​-­plays​-­great​-­if​-­not​-­quite​-­t wilight​-­zone​-­great; Sophie Gilbert, “What the Twilight Zone Reboot Is Missing,” The Atlantic, April 3, 2019, https://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­entertainment​/­archive​/­2019​/­04​/­jordan​-­peeles​ -­t wilight​-­zone​-­reboot​-­missing​-­something​/­586396​/­. 12 ​Matthew Rozsa, “Jordan Peele Is Bringing The Twilight Zone Back.” The original title of this article was “Amer­i­ca Needs Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone Now,” but the title was changed sometime a­ fter publication. The original title remains in the URL for the article, https://­w ww​.s­ alon​.­com​/­2019​/­03​/3­ 0​/­america​-­needs​-­jordan​-­peeles​ -­t wilight​-­zone​-­now​/­. 13 ​Brian Lowry, “The Old Twilight Zone Speaks to the Strange Times ­We’re Living in Better Than the New One,” CNN Entertainment, June 25, 2020, https://­w ww​.­cnn​ .­com​/­2020​/­06​/­25​/­entertainment​/­t wilight​-­zone​-r­ eview​/­index​.­html. 14 ​Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press), 124, 95–134. 15 ​Jason Mittell, “Lost in a G ­ reat Story: Evaluation in Narrative Tele­vi­sion (and Tele­vi­sion Studies),” in Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Tele­vi­sion Show, ed. Roberta Pearson (London: I.B. Tauris and Co., 2009), 128–130. 16 ​“Can You Find All the Easter Eggs in The Twilight Zone Season 1?,” CBS​.­com, April 4, 2019, https://­w ww​.­cbs​.­com​/­shows​/­the​-­t wilight​-z­ one​/­news​/­1009155​/­can​ -­you​-­find​-a­ ll​-t­ he​-­easter​-e­ ggs​-­in​-­the​-­t wilight​-­zone​-­season​-­1​-­​/.­ 17 ​Ivan Askwith, “TV 2.0: Reconceptualizing TV as an Entertainment Medium,” (master’s thesis, MIT, 2007), 12. 18 ​Gilbert, “What the Twilight Zone Reboot Is Missing.” 19 ​Devon Ivie, “Why The Twilight Zone Revival ­Isn’t Black-­and-­W hite,” Vulture, March 27, 2019, https://­w ww​.­vulture​.­com​/2­ 019​/­03​/­the​-­t wilight​-­zone​-­revival​-­black​ -­and​-­white​.­html. 20 ​Jordan Peele (@JordanPeele), Twitter, May 11, 2019, https://­t witter​.­com​ /­JordanPeele. 21 ​Daniel D’Addario, “TV Review: The Twilight Zone,” Variety, March 27, 2019, https://­variety​.­com​/­2019​/­t v​/r­ eviews​/­t wilight​-­zone​-r­ eview​-j­ ordan​-­peele​-­1203174137​/­. 22 ​Newton Minow, “Tele­vi­sion and the Public Interest” (speech, Washington, DC, May 9, 1961), American Rhe­toric, https://­w ww​.­americanrhetoric​.­com​/­speeches​ /­newtonminow​.­htm. 23 ​Gilbert Seldes, quoted in William Boddy, Fifties Tele­vi­sion: The Industry and Its Critics, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 85. 24 ​Boddy, Fifties Tele­vi­sion, 87. Ann Howard Bailey quoted in Boddy, Fifties Tele­vi­sion, 81. 25 ​Boddy, Fifties Tele­vi­sion, 85–86. 26 ​Boddy, Fifties Tele­vi­sion, 88. 27 ​On this discourse of mass culture and the “tele­vi­sion prob­lem,” see Laurie Ouellette, Viewers Like You? How Public TV Failed the ­People (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). 28 ​Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge, 2012), 45. 29 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 45. 3 0 ​Newman and Levine, Legitimating Tele­vi­sion, 53. 31 ​Jon Kraszewski, The New Entrepreneurs: An Institutional History of Tele­vi­sion Anthology Writers (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2010), 168–171. 32 ​Curt Hersey, “The Televisual Hitchcockian Object and Domestic Space in Alfred Hitchcock Pre­sents,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 31 (2014): 724.

206 • Josie Torres Barth

3 3 ​Kraszewski, The New Entrepreneurs, 176. 3 4 ​The film was produced by Steven Spielberg, who is renowned for evoking baby boomer nostalgia. 3 5 ​Roger Ebert, “The Twilight Zone: The Movie,” June 24, 1983, accessed January 30, 2021, https://­w ww​.­rogerebert​.­com​/­reviews​/­t wilight​-­zone​-­the​-­movie​-­1983. 36 ​Derek Kompare, Rerun Nation: How Repeats In­ven­ted American Tele­vi­sion (New York: Routledge, 2005), 101–105. 37 ​Mittell, Complex TV. For more on the ways that expectations of tele­vi­sion narrative have changed over the second half of the twentieth c­ entury, see Michael Z. Newman, “From Beats to Arcs: ­Toward a Poetics of Tele­vi­sion Narrative,” The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall 2006): 16–28. 3 8 ​Kayla Cobb, “Black Mirror ­Doesn’t Exist in a Connecting Universe—­It’s a Multiverse,” Decider, January 11, 2019, https://­decider​.­com​/­2019​/­01​/­11​/­black​-­mirror​ -­bandersnatch​-­multiverse​/­#:~:text​=­During%20a%20recent%20interview%20 with,exist%20in%20the%20same%20multiverse. 39 ​Peele has named the 1960 Twilight Zone episode “Mirror Image” as inspiration for Us. Brian Hiatt, “The All-­A merican Nightmares of Jordan Peele,” Rolling Stone, January 29, 2019, https://­w ww​.r­ ollingstone​.­com​/­movies​/­movie​-­features​/­director​ -­jordan​-p­ eele​-­new​-­movie​-­cover​-­story​-­782743​/­. 4 0 ​This episode was remade with some changes as the second episode of the reboot, “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet.” 41 ​See Ouellette’s critique of this framing in Viewers Like You?, 23–35. 42 ​Sophie Gilbert, “Reimagining The Twilight Zone for the 21st ­Century,” The Atlantic, December 20, 2017, https://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­entertainment​/­archive​/2­ 017​/­12​/­a​ -­21st​-c­ entury​-­t wilight​-­zone​/5­ 48618​/­. 4 3 ​Gilbert, “What the Twilight Zone Reboot Is Missing.” 4 4 ​Sonia Saraiya, “Review: A Tepid Journey Back to The Twilight Zone,” Vanity Fair, April 1, 2019, https://­w ww​.­vanityfair​.c­ om​/­hollywood​/­2019​/­04​/­t wilight​-z­ one​-­new​ -­remake​-r­ eview​-­jordan​-­peele. 45 ​Saraiya, “Review: A Tepid Journey Back to The Twilight Zone.” 4 6 ​Ellen E. Jones, “The Twilight Zone Review—­Like a Leisurely Ride on the Hogwarts Express,” The Guardian, November 3, 2020, https://­w ww​.­theguardian​.­com​/­t v​-­and​ -­radio​/­2020​/­nov​/­03​/­the​-­t wilight​-­zone​-­review​-­like​-­a​-­leisurely​-­ride​-­on​-­the​-­hogwarts​ -­express.

Acknowl­edgments In addition to thanking our contributing authors for writing the stellar essays that complement our chapters to comprise this anthology, we want to highlight the other collaborators who ­were instrumental to bringing the proj­ect to fruition. The staff at Rutgers University Press, particularly Daryl Brower, Kimberly Guinta, William Rarich, Nicole Solano, and Sonia Tam, helped get the proj­ect over the finish line despite pandemic-­related disruptions. Lisa Banning should also be recognized for accepting the proj­ect at Rutgers in the first place. We are especially pleased that she secured Jason Mittell, who waived his anonymity ­after reading the book proposal, as a peer reviewer of that original proposal and the full manuscript. His highly astute feedback considerably bolstered the quality of the final product. Seth wants to articulate his deep appreciation that Kris and Linda Elftmann endowed the faculty fellowship that he was awarded by DePauw University’s Faculty Development Committee, which provided the funds and time that w ­ ere integral to completing the proj­ect. He also wants to thank Crystal Salyer for her loving support throughout the long writing and publishing pro­cess. Amanda is grateful for the ongoing support and encouragement from her f­ amily, friends, and her colleagues at Marquette University. Fi­nally, we want to express our gratitude to Daniel Murphy for generously lending us his graphic design expertise to assist with the preparation of the illustrations.

207

Selected Bibliography Abbott, Stacey, ed. The Cult TV Book: From Star Trek to Dexter, New Approaches to TV Outside the Box. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2010. Akass, Kim, and Janet McCabe. “HBO and the Aristocracy of Con­temporary TV Culture: Affiliations and Legitimatising Tele­vi­sion Culture, Post-2007.” Mise au Point 10 (2018): 1–12. Allen, Robert C., ed. To Be Continued . . . : Soap Operas around the World. New York: Routledge, 1995. —­—­—­, ed. Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Tele­vi­sion and Con­temporary Criticism. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). Alsop, Elizabeth. “Sorority Flow: The Rhe­toric of Sisterhood in Post-­Network Tele­vi­ sion.” Feminist Media Studies 19, no. 7 (2019): 1026–1042. Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. London: BFI Publishing, 1999. Askwith, Ivan. “TV 2.0: Reconceptualizing TV as an Entertainment Medium.” Master’s thesis, MIT, 2007. Atwood, Margaret. Strange ­Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Lit­er­a­ture. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Báez, Jillian M. In Search of Belonging: Latinas, Media, and Citizenship. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018. Baker, Aaron. Steven Soderbergh. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Banet-­Weiser, Sarah, Cynthia Chris, and Anthony Freitas, eds. Cable Visions: Tele­vi­sion Beyond Broadcasting. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Baumann, Shyon. Hollywood Highbrow: From Entertainment to Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Bebout, Lee. Whiteness on the Border: Mapping the U.S. Racial Imagination in Brown and White. New York: New York University Press, 2016. Becker, Christine. “Acting for the Cameras: Per­for­mance in the Multi-­camera Sitcom.” Mediascape (Spring 2008): 1–11. Benson-­A llott, Caetlin. “Made for Quality Tele­vi­sion?” Film Quarterly 66, no. 4 (Summer 2013): 5–9. Bernardi, Daniel, and Julian Hoxter. Off the Page: Screenwriting in the Era of Media Convergence. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. 209

210 • Selected Bibliography

Bignell, Jonathan. An Introduction to Tele­vi­sion Studies. New York: Routledge, 2004. Blum, Hester. The News at the Ends of the Earth: The Print Culture of Polar Exploration. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. Boddy, William. Fifties Tele­vi­sion: The Industry and Its Critics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Bordwell, David. “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Practice.” Film Criticism 4, no. 1 (1979): 56–64. —­—­—. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1992. Bottomley, Andrew J. “Quality TV and the Branding of U.S. Network Tele­vi­sion: Marketing and Promoting Friday Night Lights.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 32, no. 5 (2015): 482–497. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Lit­er­a­ture. Edited by Randal Johnson. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1993. —­—­—. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. —­—­—. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Britton, Wesley. Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005. Buonanno, Milly, ed. Tele­vi­sion Antiheroines: ­Women Behaving Badly in Crime and Prison Drama. Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2017. Butler, Jeremy G. The Sitcom. New York: Routledge, 2020. —­—­—. Tele­vi­sion Style. New York: Routledge, 2009. Caldwell, John Thornton. Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Tele­vi­sion. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Castleman, Harry, and Walter J. Podrazik. Watching TV: Six De­cades of American Tele­vi­sion. 2nd ed. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003. Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. Chisholm, Brad. “Difficult Viewing: The Pleasures of Complex Screen Narratives.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8, no. 4 (1991): 389–403. Choueiti, Marc, Stacy L. Smith, and Katherine Pieper, eds. “Critic’s Choice: Gender and Race/Ethnicity of Film Critics across 100 Top Films of 2017.” Los Angeles: Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 2017. —­—­—. “Critic’s Choice 2: Gender and Race/Ethnicity of Film Reviewers across 300 Top Films from 2015–2017.” Los Angeles: Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 2018. Connelly, Sherilyn. The First Star Trek Movie: Bringing the Franchise to the Big Screen, 1969–1980. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2019. Coon, David. Look Closer: Suburban Narratives and American Values in Film and Tele­vi­sion. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014. Creeber, Glen. Serial Tele­vi­sion: Big Drama on the Small Screen. London: BFI Publishing, 2004. Cunningham, Stuart. In the Vernacular: A Generation of Australian Culture and Controversy. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2009. Currie, Mark. About Time: Narrative, Fiction and the Philosophy of Time. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Dávila, Arlene, and Yeidy M. Rivero, eds. Con­temporary Latina/o Media: Production, Circulation, Politics. New York: New York University Press, 2014.

Selected Bibliography • 211

Davis, Glyn, and Kay Dickinson, eds. Teen TV: Genre, Consumption and Identity. London: BFI Publishing, 2004. Davis-­Fisch, Heather. Loss and Cultural Remains in Per­for­mance: The Ghosts of the Franklin Expedition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. de Valck, Marijke. “Film Festivals, Bourdieu, and the Economization of Culture.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 23, no. 1 (2014): 74–89. Delwiche, Aaron, and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson, eds. The Participatory Cultures Handbook. London: Routledge, 2012. Dunleavy, Trisha. Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Tele­vi­sion. New York: Routledge, 2018. Edgerton, Gary R., and Jeffrey P. Jones, eds. The Essential HBO Reader. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008. Elsaesser, Thomas. Eu­ro­pean Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. Fear, David. “A Shot in the Arm.” Film Comment 50, no. 6 (November/December 2014): 76. Feuer, Jane, Paul Kerr, and Tise Vahimagi, eds. MTM ‘Quality Tele­vi­sion’. London: BFI Publishing, 1984. Fox, Alistair. Jane Campion: Authorship and Personal Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Gallagher, Mark. Another Steven Soderbergh Experience: Authorship and Con­temporary Hollywood. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. Garin, Manuel. “Truth Takes Time: The Interplay between Heroines, Genres and Narratives in Three J. J. Abrams’ Tele­vi­sion Series.” Communication & Society 26, no. 2 (2013): 47–64. Gaspar de Alba, Alicia. [Un]Framing the “Bad ­Woman”: Sor Juana, Malinche, Coyolxauhqui and Other Rebels with a Cause. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014. Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980. Gerrold, David. The World of Star Trek. 2nd ed. New York: Bluejay, 1984. Gray, Jonathan, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, eds. Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Gwenllian-­Jones, Sara, and Roberta E. Pearson, eds. Cult Tele­vi­sion. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. Hadas, Leora. “A New Vision: J. J. Abrams, Star Trek, and Promotional Authorship.” Cinema Journal 56, no. 2 (2017): 46–66. Hammond, Michael, and Lucy Mazdon, eds. The Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion Series. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Hassler-­Forest, Dan. “Game of Thrones: Quality Tele­vi­sion and the Cultural Logic of Gentrification.” TV/Series 6 (December 2014): 160–177. Hersey, Curt. “The Televisual Hitchcockian Object and Domestic Space in Alfred Hitchcock Pre­s ents.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 31 (2014): 723–733. Hilmes, Michele. “The Bad Object: Tele­vi­sion in the American Acad­emy.” Cinema Journal 45, no. 1 (2005): 111–116. Hilmes, Michele, and Jason Jacobs, eds. The Tele­vi­sion History Book. London: BFI ­Publishing, 2003. Howell, Charlotte E. Divine Programming: Negotiating Chris­tian­ity in American Tele­vi­sion Production 1996–2016. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

212 • Selected Bibliography

—­—­—. “Legitimating Genre: The Discursive Turn to Quality in Early 1990s Science Fiction Tele­vi­sion.” Critical Studies in Tele­vi­sion: The International Journal of Tele­vi­sion Studies 12, no. 1 (2017): 35–50. Hugo Benavides, O. “Narconovelas: The Po­liti­cal Evolution of a Telenovela Genre.” ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin Amer­i­ca 17, no. 1 (Fall 2017): 29−32. Hutcheon, Linda. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980. Hutcheon, Linda, with Siobhan O’Flynn. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2013. Iordanova, Dina, and Ragan Rhyne, eds. Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Cir­cuit. St. Andrews: St. Andrews Film Studies, 2009. Irwin, Walter, and G. B. Love, eds. The Best of Trek #14. New York: Signet, 1988. Jacobs, Jason, and Steven Peacock, eds. Tele­vi­sion Aesthetics and Style. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Jaramillo, Deborah. “The F ­ amily Racket: AOL Time Warner, HBO, The Sopranos, and the Construction of a Quality Brand.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 26, no. 1 (2002): 59–75. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Jin, Dal Young. De-­Convergence of Global Media Industries. New York: Routledge, 2013. Johns, Andrew L., and Mitchell B. Lerner, eds. The Cold War at Home and Abroad: Domestic Politics and US Foreign Policy Since 1945. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2018. Johnson, Derek. “Devaluing and Revaluing Seriality: The Gendered Discourses of Media Franchising.” Media, Culture & Society 33, no. 7 (2011): 1077–1093. —­—­—­, ed. From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels. New York: Routledge, 2018. —­—­—. Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Johnson, Steven. Every­thing Bad Is Good for You: How ­Today’s Popu­lar Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005. Jones, Gerard. Honey, I’m Home! Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream. 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1992. Kackman, Michael. “Quality Tele­vi­sion, Melodrama, and Cultural Complexity.” Flow TV: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture (October 31, 2008): https://­w ww​ .­flowjournal​.­org​/­2008​/­10​/­quality​-­television​-m ­ elodrama​-a­ nd​-­cultural​-­complexity​/­. Kalviknes Bore, Inger-­Lise. “Laughing Together? TV Comedy Audiences and the Laugh Track.” The Velvet Light Trap 68 (Fall 2011): 24–34. Kaufman, Anthony, ed. Steven Soderbergh: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015. Keeler, Amanda. “A Postapocalyptic Return to the Frontier: The Walking Dead as Post-­Western.” Critical Studies in Tele­vi­sion: The International Journal of Tele­vi­sion Studies 13, no. 4 (2018): 422–437. —­—­—. “Visible/Invisible: Female Astronauts and Technology in Star Trek: Discovery and National Geographic’s Mars.” Science Fiction Film and Tele­vi­sion 12, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 127–150. King, Geoff. Positioning Art Cinema: Film and Cultural Value. London: I.B. Tauris, 2019. —­—­—. Quality Hollywood: Markers of Distinction in Con­temporary Studio Film. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015.

Selected Bibliography • 213

Kmet, Michael. “Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Vision of the F ­ uture’: The Creation of an Early Tele­vi­sion Auteur.” Networking Knowledge 5, no. 2 (September 2012): 55–74. Kompare, Derek. “Publishing Flow: DVD Box Sets and the Reconception of Tele­vi­ sion.” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 7, no. 4 (December 2006): 335–360. —­—­—. Rerun Nation: How Repeats In­ven­ted American Tele­vi­sion. New York: ­Routledge, 2005. Kozloff, Sarah. Invisible Storytellers: Voice-­Over Narration in American Fiction Film. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Kraszewski, Jon. The New Entrepreneurs: An Institutional History of Tele­vi­sion Anthology Writers. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2010. Lavery, David, ed. The Essential Cult TV Reader. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010. Leotta, Alfio. “ ‘100% Pure New Zealand’: The Tourist Gaze in Niki Caro’s Memory and Desire.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 29, no. 5 (2012): 440–449. Leverette, Marc, Brian L. Ott, and Cara Louise Buckley, eds. It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in the Post-­Television Era. New York: Routledge, 2008. Levine, Elana. Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Tele­vi­sion History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020. Llamas-­Rodriguez, Juan. “Mapping the Narco-­Televisual Universe.” Flow TV: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture, February 26, 2018, https://­w ww​.­flowjournal​.­org​/­2018​ /­02​/­mapping​-­the​-­narco​-­televisual​-u­ niverse​/­. Lotz, Amanda D. Cable Guys: Tele­vi­sion and Masculinities in the 21st ­Century. New York: New York University Press, 2014. —­—­—. The Tele­vi­sion ­Will Be Revolutionized. New York: New York University Press, 2007. —­—­—. The Tele­vi­sion ­Will Be Revolutionized. 2nd ed. New York: New York University Press, 2014. —­—­—. We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Tele­vi­sion and the Internet Revolutionized It All. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018. Magaña, Lisa. “SB 1070 and Negative Social Constructions of Latino Immigrants in Arizona.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 38, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 151–161. Maguire, Jennifer Smith, and Julian Matthews. “Are We All Cultural Intermediaries Now? An Introduction to Cultural Intermediaries in Context.” Eu­ro­pean Journal of Cultural Studies 15, no. 5 (2012): 551–562. Martin, Bradford. The Other Eighties: A Secret History of Amer­i­ca in the Age of Reagan. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011. McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass, eds. Quality TV: Con­temporary American Tele­vi­sion and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. McHugh, Kathleen. “Giving Credit to Paratexts and Parafeminism in Top of the Lake and Orange Is the New Black.” Film Quarterly 68, no. 3 (2015): 17–25. —­—­—. “The World and the Soup: Historicizing Media Feminisms in Transnational Contexts.” Camera Obscura 24, no. 3 (2009): 111–150. McNutt, Myles. “­Limited Series Are a Product of Brand Management, Not Innovation.” Carsey-­Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara: Media Industries Proj­ect, 2014. Mills, Brett. “Comedy Verite: Con­temporary Sitcom Form.” Screen 45, no. 1 (2004): 63–78. —­—­—. The Sitcom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. Mills, Nicolaus, ed. Culture in an Age of Money: The Legacy of the 1980s in Amer­i­ca. Chicago: I.R. Dee, 1990.

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Minow, Newton. “Tele­vi­sion and the Public Interest,” speech, Washington, DC, May 9, 1961, American Rhe­toric, https://­w ww​.­americanrhetoric​.­com​/­speeches​ /­newtonminow​.­htm. Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion Storytelling. New York: New York University Press, 2015. —­—­—. “Narrative Complexity in Con­temporary American Tele­vi­sion.” The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall 2006): 29–40. —­—­—. Genre and Tele­vi­sion: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge, 2004. Morreale, Joanne, ed. Critiquing the Sitcom: A Reader. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003. Naremore, James, ed. Film Adaptation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012. —­—­—. More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Navar-­Gill, Annemarie. “From Strategic Retweets to Group Hangs: Writers’ Room Twitter Accounts and the Productive Ecosystem of TV Social Media Fans.” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 19, no. 5 (2018): 415–430. Neale, Steve, and Frank Krutnik. Popu­lar Film and Tele­vi­sion Comedy. New York: Routledge, 1990. Newcomb, Horace, and Paul M. Hirsch. “Tele­vi­sion as a Cultural Forum: Implications for Research.” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 8, no. 3 (1983): 45–55. Newman, Michael Z. “From Beats to Arcs: T ­ owards a Poetics of Tele­vi­sion Narrative.” The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall 2006): 16–28. —­—­—. Indie: An American Film Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Newman, Michael Z., and Elana Levine. Legitimating Tele­vi­sion: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. New York: Routledge, 2012. ­ uture of Latino In­de­pen­dent Media: A NALIP Sourcebook. Noriega, Chon, ed. The F Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, 2000. Nygaard, Taylor, and Jorie Lagerwey. “Broadcasting Quality: Re-­centering Feminist Discourse with The Good Wife.” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 18, no. 2 (2017): 105–113. —­—­—. Horrible White P ­ eople: Gender, Genre, and Tele­vi­sion’s Precarious Whiteness. New York: New York University Press, 2020. Olson, Scott R. “Meta-­television: Popu­lar Postmodernism.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 4, no. 3 (1987): 284–300. Ouellette, Laurie. Viewers Like You? How Public TV Failed the ­People. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Pallister, Kathryn, ed. Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand. New York: Lexington Books, 2019. Pearson, Roberta. Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Tele­vi­sion Show. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. Pearson, Roberta, and Máire Messenger Davis. Star Trek and American Tele­vi­sion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. Perlman, Allison. “Deadwood, Generic Transformation, and Televisual History.” Journal of Popu­lar Film and Tele­vi­sion 39, no. 2 (2011): 102–112. Petruska, Karen. “Tele­vi­sion Beyond the Networks: First-­Run Syndication of Original Content in the 1970s.” The Velvet Light Trap 75 (Spring 2015): 38–57. Piñón, Juan. “Ugly Betty and the Emergence of the Latina/o Producers as Cultural Translators.” Communication Theory 21, no. 4 (2011): 392–412. Pravadelli, Veronica, ed. Con­temporary ­Women’s Cinema, Global Scenarios and Transnational Contexts. Milan-­Udine: Mimesis International, 2018.

Selected Bibliography • 215

Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology. Rev. ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987. Purse, Lisa. Con­temporary Action Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. Radner, Hilary, Alistair Fox, and Irène Bessière, eds. Jane Campion: Cinema, Nation, Identity. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2009. Ramírez Berg, Charles. Latino Images in Film: Ste­reo­types, Subversions, & Re­sis­tance. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Rincón, Omar. “New Tele­vi­sion Narratives: Entertainment, Telling, Citizenship, Experimental.” Comunicar 18, no. 36 (2011): 43–50. —­—­—. “Our Telenovela, Ourselves.” ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin Amer­i­ca 17, no. 1 (Fall 2017): 2–6. Rodríguez, Clara E., ed. Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media. New York: Routledge, 2018. Rymsza-­Pawlowska, Malgorzata J. “Broadcasting the Past: History Tele­vi­sion, ‘Nostalgia Culture,’ and the Emergence of the Miniseries in the 1970s in the United States.” Journal of Popu­lar Film and Tele­vi­sion 42, no. 2 (2014): 81–90. Schneider, Molly. “A ‘Solution to an Ongoing TV Prob­lem’: The ‘­Limited Series’ as Quality TV Format.” Pre­sen­ta­tion, Annual Meeting of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Toronto, Canada, March 17, 2018. Schubert, Stefan, and Katja Kanzler, eds. Poetics of Politics: Textuality and Social Relevance in Con­temporary American Lit­er­a­ture and Culture. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015. Shaw, Deborah. “ ‘You Are Alright, But . . .’: Individual and Collective Repre­sen­ta­tions of Mexicans, Latinos, Anglo-­A mericans, and African-­A mericans in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 22, no. 3 (2005): 211–223. Smit, Alexia. “Visual Effects and Visceral Affect: ‘Tele-­a ffectivity’ and the Intensified Intimacy of Con­temporary Tele­vi­sion.” Critical Studies in Tele­vi­sion: The International Journal of Tele­vi­sion Studies 8, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 92–107. Smith, Anthony N. “Pursuing ‘Generation Snowflake’: Mr. Robot and the USA Network’s Mission for Millennials.” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 20, no. 5 (2019): 443–459. —­—­—. “Putting the Premium into Basic: Slow-­Burn Narratives and the Loss-­Leader Function of AMC’s Original Drama Series.” Tele­vi­sion & New Media 14, no. 2 (October 2013): 150–166. Smith, Greg M. “Plotting a TV Show about Nothing: Patterns of Narration in Seinfeld.” Creative Screenwriting 2, no. 3 (Fall 1995): 82–90. Smith, Stacy L., Marc Choueiti, Ariana Case, Katherine Pieper, Hannah Clark, Karla Hernandez, and Jacqueline Martinez. “Latinos in Film: Erasure on Screen and ­behind the Camera across 1,200 Popu­lar Movies.” Los Angeles: Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, 2019. Spigel, Lynn, and Jan Olsson, eds. Tele­vi­sion ­after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Squires, Catherine, ed. Dangerous Discourses: Feminism, Gun Vio­lence, and Civic Life. New York: Peter Lang, 2016. Stringer, Julian, ed. Movie Blockbusters. New York: Routledge, 2003. Sugg, Richard P. Jungian Literary Criticism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1992. Takacs, Stacy. “Entertainment Uncertainty: The Role of the 9/11 Shout-­Out on U.S. TV.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 31, no. 2 (2014): 161–179.

216 • Selected Bibliography

Telotte, J. P. Science Fiction TV. New York: Routledge, 2014. Thompson, Ethan. “Comedy Verite? The Observational Documentary Meets the Televisual Sitcom.” The Velvet Light Trap 60 (Fall 2007): 63–72. Thompson, Ethan, and Jason Mittell, eds. How to Watch Tele­vi­sion. 2nd ed. New York: New York University Press, 2020. Thompson, Robert J. Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997. Trotzke, Claudia. “ ‘Modern Medicine Had to Start Somewhere’: Performing Health and White Privilege in The Knick.” Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies 17, no. 1 (2016): 1–24. Troy, Gil, and Vincent J. Cannato, eds. Living in the Eighties. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Tulloch, John, and Henry Jenkins. Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek. London: Routledge, 1995. Vogan, Travis. ESPN: The Making of a Sports Media Empire. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. White, Patricia. ­Women’s Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Con­temporary Feminisms. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.

Notes on Contributors JOSIE TORRES BARTH is a teaching assistant professor of film studies at North Carolina State University. Her research examines how forms of audience address in tele­vi­sion, film, and radio demonstrate changing conceptions of public and private spheres, with a par­tic­u ­lar focus on anx­i­eties surrounding the ambiguous position of w ­ omen in the growing consumer economy of the postwar United States. Her work has been published in Camera Obscura.

is an assistant professor of media studies at SUNY Oneonta. He is the author of Sound Streams: A Cultural History of Radio-­ Internet Convergence and the co-­editor (with Michele Hilmes) of the forthcoming The Oxford Handbook of Radio Studies. His research has been published in numerous journals, including Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Tele­vi­sion, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Journal of Radio and Audio Media, and Popu­lar ­Music and Society. ANDREW  J. BOTTOMLEY

is an associate professor of film and media studies at the Uni­ versity of Washington Tacoma. He is the author of Turning the Page: Storytelling as Activism in Queer Film and Media and Look Closer: Suburban Narratives and American Values in Film and Tele­vi­sion. He has published essays in Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Film and Video, The Journal of Homo­sexuality, and The Journal of Popu­lar Film and Tele­vi­sion. DAVID  R. COON

is an associate professor of communication and theatre at DePauw University where he teaches courses in Media Studies. He is the author of Are You Watching Closely? Cultural Paranoia, New Technologies, and the Con­temporary Hollywood Misdirection Film. His essays have been published in SETH FRIEDMAN

217

218 • Notes on Contributors

numerous journals, such as Film History, Journal of Film and Video, The Journal of Popu­lar Culture, and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. is an associate professor of digital media in the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University, where she teaches courses in aesthetics, radio and tele­vi­sion history, and scriptwriting. Her scholarship has appeared in several journals, including Critical Studies in Media Communication, Critical Studies in Tele­vi­sion, Journal of Radio & Audio Media, Science Fiction Film and Tele­vi­sion, and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. AMANDA KEELER

teaches En­glish and film studies at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of Horror Film: A Critical Introduction, The Modern Super­ natural and the Beginnings of Cinema, and Halloween. He is also the editor of Cinematic Ghosts: Haunting and Spectrality from S­ ilent Cinema to the Digital Era and ReFocus: The Films of William C ­ astle. MURRAY LEEDER

is a visiting assistant professor of media studies in Denison University’s Department of Communication. Her book proj­ect expands on her dissertation, You D ­ on’t Have to Be a Bad Girl to Love Crime: Femininity and ­Women’s ­Labor in US Broadcast Crime Programming, 1945–1975, to interrogate the intersection of gender, race, and power in post–­World War II repre­sen­ta­ tions of crime on U.S. radio and tele­vi­sion. Her work has appeared in Journal of Radio & Audio Media, Radio Journal, and The Velvet Light Trap. CATHERINE MARTIN

is an associate professor of film and media studies in the En­glish department at Texas Tech University. His work primarily engages questions of the po­liti­cal economy of media production and circulation. He has published in Film History, Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Tele­vi­sion, and The Journal of Popu­lar Tele­vi­sion. His book proj­ect considers the historical relationship between turn-­of-­the-­century business culture and the significance of genre in Hollywood and mass media of the twentieth c­ entury. W.  D. PHILLIPS

earned his PhD in communication and culture from Indiana University, Bloomington in 2019. He is a full-­time instructor in the En­glish and Humanities Division at Lee College. His current experimental film series explores the policing and erasing of h ­ uman and nonhuman materials along the Texas-­Mexico border. JAVIER RAMIREZ

is an assistant professor of media studies and film studies at the University of Tulsa. His current book proj­ect explores the reception—­and subsequent historical revisionism—of Method screen per­for­mance. His work has been published in Celebrity Studies, FLOW, Journal of Film and Video, Media Industries, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and The Velvet Light Trap. JUSTIN O. RAWLINS

Index Note: All titles refer to tele­vi­sion programs u­ nless other­wise specified. Page references in italics indicate illustrations. ABC: Latinx viewership for, 100–101; miniseries of, 178; network system of, 7; post-­network era and, 7–10. See also specific programs abortion: on The Knick, 167; on Ros­well, New Mexico, 85 Abrams, J. J., 38, 46, 58. See also Fringe Acevedo, Nicole, 86 Adalian, Josef, 77 Addams ­Family, The, 133 Aitken, Charles, 161 Alfred Hitchcock Pre­sents, 53n16, 195–196, 197 Ali, Lorraine, 117 Allen, Robert C., 161–162 Almeida, Joaquim de, 97 Alsop, Elizabeth, 63, 176 Altman, Rick, 2 Amatangelo, Amy, 85 Amazing Stories, 197 Amazon/Amazon Prime, 4, 9, 34 AMC, 10, 33, 51, 113–114, 119. See also specific programs American Crime Story, 33 American Gods, 59 American Horror Story, 33, 197–198 Americans, The, 11, 21–37; auteur status of showrunner, 28; authenticity and

accuracy of, 27–29; awards and nominations for, 34, 35; “­B ehind the Red Door,” 24; brand relationship with FX, 11, 22, 32–35, 34; CIA background of showrunner, 27–28; commercial value of, 34–35; consumerism in, 31–32; “Echo,” 24–25, 25; genre mixing in, 22–27; greenlighting of, 25; “In Control,” 23; “New Car,” 30; as period piece, 28–29; po­l iti­cal and cultural perspectives of, 29–32; ratings for, 11, 21–22, 33–34, 35n1; “Safe House,” 31; streaming rights for, 34; suburban setting of, significance of, 26–27, 27; “Yousaf,” 30–31 Amer­i­ca’s Next Top Model, 76 Amiel, Jack, 154–155 anachrony: definition of, 136; in How I Met Your ­Mother, 136–137, 140–143. See also flashbacks; flash-­forwards analepses, 136; in How I Met Your M ­ other, 136, 138, 140–143; as narrative digressions, 138; in Oliver Beene, 148n35 Anderson, Christopher, 158, 171 Andrews, David, 107 Andy Griffith Show, The, 133 Angarano, Michael, 164 Angel at My T ­ able, An, 175

219

220 • Index

anthology programs, 194–198; association with auteur, 194–195; in original golden age, 57, 190, 194–195; prestige of, 118, 194–196; second wave of, 197; seriality in, 197–198; The Terror as, 113–114, 118; third wave of, 197; The Twilight Zone (2019– 2020) as, 189, 192, 197–198 Appleby, Shiri, 75, 86 Arredondo, Rosa, 84 Arrested Development, 134, 138, 143 art cinema. See international art cinema Asian characters, in The Knick, 163 Askwith, Ivan, 193 Assayas, Olivier, 180–181 Atanasio, Annabelle, 166 AT&T, 76–77, 158 Attallah, Paul, 133 Atwood, Margaret, 113, 115, 126 audience: Black, attracting, 8; demands of, vs. prestige aspirations, 12, 15–16, 55–56, 75–76, 190–191; Easter eggs and, 193; fragmentation of, 4, 9, 13; “good” vs. “bad,” 116; Latinx, attracting, 96, 98, 100–101; male, catering to, 4–5, 79; narrative complexity and engagement of, 135; niche, targeting of, 8–9; White, catering to, 4–5, 101 auteurs, 4–5, 14–15, 56, 176–177; association with anthology format, 194–195; association with film festivals, 181; authorship by, 155–156; Campion and Top of the Lake, 15, 171, 172, 175–177; Chabon and Star Trek: Picard, 66–67; Chase and The Sopranos, 88; Lynch and Twin Peaks, 40, 86, 157; MacKenzie’s lack of status as, 88; McMahan and Star Trek: Lower Decks, 68–69; Peele and The Twilight Zone, 190, 191, 198; Roddenberry and Star Trek, 56; Scott and The Terror, 117, 119; Serling and The Twilight Zone, 15, 56, 189, 195–196; Soderbergh and The Knick, 14–15, 154–155, 176; Weisberg and The Americans, 28 authorship, in tele­vi­sion, 156–157, 177, 194–196. See also specific programs Avengers, The, 23 Aykroyd, Dan, 196 Báez, Jillian M., 103–104 Baker, Aaron, 155, 160 Baker, Max, 46

Baker and The Beauty, The, 101 Band of B ­ rothers, 179 Banshee, 158 Barnett, Sarah, 179–180 Barr, Merrill, 85 Barrett, Majel, 60 Bates Motel, 182 Batman Begins (film), 79 Batman & Robin (film), 79 Battlestar Galactica (1978–1979), 80 Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009), 43, 56, 80 Baumann, Shyon, 6, 174–175, 178, 179–180 Bays, Car­ter, 148n35 BBC, 175–176 BBC Two, 171, 175, 176 Bebout, Lee, 102, 105 Beetz, Zazie, 189 Begler, Michael, 154–155 ­Behind the Candelabra (film), 159 Behr, Jason, 75, 86 Bell Media, 59 Benson-­A llott, Caetlin, 159 Berg, Gretchen J., 60 Bergman, Ingmar, 160–161, 187n61 Berkshire, Geoff, 39, 42 Berlin Film Festival, 15, 170–171, 179–180, 183 Berman, Rick, 58–59, 60, 67 Bernardi, Daniel, 156 Best of Youth, The (film), 181, 187n61 Big Bang Theory, The, 145 Big Miracle (film), 154 Bixby, Jerome, 57 Black audiences, attracting, 8 Blackburn, Tyler, 88 Black Mirror, 57, 197–198 Black protagonists/characters: Latinx, in Queen of the South, 103–104; in Soderbergh’s work, 163; in Star Trek: Discovery, 61–64 Bloch, Robert, 57 Blum, Hester, 113 Bobb, Jeremy, 166 Bonanza, 196 Bordwell, David, 141, 157, 173 Bourdieu, Pierre, 6, 163, 174 Braga, Alice, 95, 98, 101, 103, 103–104 Breaking Bad: brand-­enhancing value of, 33; genre mixing in, 22; melodrama in, 77; as prestige tele­vi­sion, 39, 42, 51, 118; protagonist of, 61; Queen of the South vs., 99

Index • 221

Brenes, Michael, 30 Briones, Isa, 68 Brooke, Sian, 121 Brooks, Albert, 196 Broussard, Mitchel, 98–99 Brown, Alex, 85–86 Brown, Blair, 38, 44, 49 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 48, 75 Burnett, Molly, 108 Burn Notice, 109n110 Bury, Rhiannon, 116 Butler, Jeremy, 134 cable tele­vi­sion: basic, prestige tele­vi­sion on, 11; multi-­channel transition phase and, 7–9; niche audiences of, 8–9. See also specific networks and programs Cable Tele­vi­sion Report and Order of 1972, 7 Campion, Jane, 15, 170–188; auteur status of, 15, 171, 172, 175–177; media migration by, 177–179. See also Top of the Lake Campos, Joseph T., 106 Cannes Film Festival, 155, 175, 180, 183–184 Canning, Iain, 175 Captain Marvel (film), 71 Captain Video and His Video Rangers, 56 Carlos (Carlos the Jackal), 180–181, 184 CBS: network system of, 7; post-­network era and, 7–10. See also specific programs CBS All Access, 12, 15–16, 59, 66–69, 191–194. See also specific programs CBS Corporation, 59, 70, 76–77 Cerveris, Michael, 46 Chabon, Michael, 66–67 Chaidez, Natalie, 102 Champion, John, 55 character narration: definition of, 136; in How I Met Your M ­ other, 136–140 Charmed (2018–), 78 Chase, Bailey, 103 Chase, David, 88 Chatman, Seymour, 148n44 Chavez, Danette, 86, 99 Chieffo, Mary, 62 Chinatown (film), 3 Chisholm, Brad, 135 Choueiti, Marc, 99, 110n22 cinematization, 14, 117, 131, 156, 162, 167–168, 172–183. See also auteurs; specific programs

Cinemax, The Knick and branding of, 154, 158–159 Cloverfield (film), 38 Collier, Charlie, 33 colonialism: in prestige tele­vi­sion, 125–127; in The Terror, 13–14, 119–125 comedies. See sitcoms Compean, Carlos, 82 consumerism, in The Americans, 31–32 Cooper, John, 181 Courage, Alexander, 62 Cowles, Lily, 85 Crave (streaming ser­vice), 59 Crazy Ex-­Girlfriend, 76–77, 86 Creeber, Glen, 157 Criss Cross (film), 157 criticism, tele­vi­sion: as discipline, 6; racial and gender bias in, 98–100, 108 Crozier, Francis, 114–115. See also Terror, The Cruz, Wilson, 62–63 CSI, 44–45 cult tele­vi­sion, 39, 42–43; Fringe as, 12; How I Met Your M ­ other as, 146; Star Trek as, 42 cultural diversity/repre­sen­ta­tion: on creative teams, 83, 100–101; on The CW, 75, 77–78; in HBO programs, 162; in The Knick, 163, 167; on Queen of the South, 13, 84, 95–112; on Ros­well, New Mexico, 13, 75–76, 82–88, 100; in Soderbergh’s work, 163; on Star Trek: Discovery, 61–64; in The Terror, 13–14, 115, 119, 123–127; in TV criticism, lack of, 98–100; White, male critics and perception of, 98–100; White protagonist as “Trojan Horse” for, 78 cultural intermediaries, 174, 180 “Culture of Triumph,” 31 Cummings, Howard, 161 cumulative narrative, 147n14 Cunningham, Stuart, 178 Curb Your Enthusiasm, 135–136, 139, 158 CW, The: audience demographics of, 76, 77; diversity on, 75, 77–78; niche strategies of, 12, 77; owner­ship and business of, 76–77; prestige aspirations of, 12–13, 76–78; reputation of, 75; social media engagement of, 87–88; stakeholder conflict over Ros­well, New Mexico, 74–76 Davis, Garth, 171, 175 Davis-­Fisch, Heather, 126, 127n5

222 • Index

Dawson’s Creek, 8, 38 Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, The, 38 Dead Like Me, 59 Deadwood, 117 deaths, unexpected character, 63, 117, 161 Dexter, 39, 42, 136 diversity. See cultural diversity/ repre­sen­ta­tion domestic melodrama: feminization and devaluing of, 23; mixed with espionage thriller (The Americans), 22–27. See also melodrama Dunham, Lena, 181 Dunleavy, Trisha, 22 DVDs, 8, 157 Easter eggs, in The Twilight Zone (2019– 2020), 193 East Los High, 100 Ebert, Roger, 196 Ecker, Jon-­Michael, 98 Ellison, Harlan, 57 Elsaesser, Thomas, 179, 180 Emmerich, Noah, 26 engagement medium, 193 Enlightened, 6 episodic format: in anthology programs, 197–198; in Fringe, 45–48; in How I Met Your ­Mother, 14, 136; vs. serial content in prestige tele­vi­sion, 45–48, 57; in Star Trek, 57; in Star Trek: Discovery, 65, 69 Epsicokhan, Jamahl, 68 ER, 8, 161 Erin Brockovich (film), 155, 163 Espenson, Jane, 43 espionage thrillers: history of, 22–23; mixed with domestic melodrama (The Americans), 22–27; suburban settings in, 26–27 Eurocentric narrative: indigenous perspectives vs., 115, 125–127; indigenous perspectives in The Terror vs., 115, 123–127; of prestige tele­vi­sion, 115 Expanse, The, 56 Falcón, Veronica, 97, 103–104, 104 Falcon and the Winter Soldier, The, 70 Fallen Angels, 157 ­Family Guy, 138 Fanny and Alexander (film), 187n61 “fan-­tagonisms,” 76

fantastic genres, 56. See also science fiction; specific programs Far From Heaven (film), 181 Fargo, 33, 40, 70–71, 125–126, 197 Fassbinder, R. W., 160–161, 181 Fear, David, 167 Feige, Kevin, 59 Feldman, Ben, 21 female critics, underrepre­sen­ta­tion of, 98–100, 108, 110n22 female protagonists: on The CW, 75; in Fringe, 12, 42, 43, 47–50; in The Knick, 163; “Latin look” of, 103–104, 104; in Queen of the South, 96–99; in Star Trek: Discovery, 61–64; on streaming ser­vices, 162 Femme Nikita, La, 9 Ferrera, Amer­i­ca, 21 Ferrin, Jennifer, 165–166 Feuer, Jane, 29, 32, 162 Fields, Joel, 25–26 Fierro, David, 161 film festivals: association with auteurs, 181–183; competition among, 180; inclusion of prestige tele­vi­sion in, 15, 179–184; programs devoted to TV and web-­based series, 183; Top of the Lake premieres in, 15, 170–171, 179–180, 182 film noir, 2–3 Financial Interest and Syndication Rules of 1970, 7 Flash, The, 75, 81 flashbacks, 136; in How I Met Your M ­ other, 136, 138, 140–143; in The Knick, 164, 166; as narrative digressions, 138; in Oliver Beene, 148n35; in The Terror, 14, 114, 121–123, 122; in The Twilight Zone (2019–2020), 199 Flashforward, 51 flash-­forwards, 136; in How I Met Your ­Mother, 136, 138, 140–141; as narrative digressions, 138; in Oliver Beene, 148n35 Flynn, Gillian, 45 forensic fandom, 141, 190, 193 Forsyte Saga, The, 178 Fortin, M. A., 101 Fox: emergence of network, 8; Fringe, 11–12, 38–54 Fox 21 TV Studios, 102 Frain, James, 61 Franich, Darren, 129n34

Index • 223

Franklin, Sir John, 113–115. See also Terror, The “Frankliniana,” 113 Freeform, 78 Fremaux, Thierry, 184 Frewer, Matt, 153 Friday Night Lights, 22 Friendly, David, 101 Friends, 145–146 Fringe, 11–12, 38–54, 43, 48, 49, 58; “Ability,” 49; challenge to male-­centric TV, 12, 42, 43, 47–50; comparison to cultural pre­de­ces­sors, 50–51; as cult tele­vi­sion, 12; as disrupter of prestige tele­vi­sion, 12, 42, 47–51; episodic and serial combination of, 45–48, 50; “Forced Perspective,” 46, 47; genre mixing in, 44–45; “The Ghost Network,” 48; “The Observers,” 46–47; “Os,” 46, 47; pedigree of, 12, 38–39; “Power Hungry,” 46, 47; ratings for, 50, 51; “The Same Old Story,” 49; “White Tulip,” 47 From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, 182 Frost, Mark, 40, 157 Fukunaga, Cary Joji, 160 Fulcrum Media Finance, 176 Fuller, Bryan, 59–60, 60 FX: brand building by, 11, 22, 32–35, 34; “Fearless” slogan of, 32; Landgraf as public face of, 32–33; prestige tele­vi­sion on, 10–11, 33. See also specific programs Gadiot, Peter, 103 Game of Thrones, 1–2, 29, 39, 62, 71, 105, 118 Garrigan, Liam, 121 Gaspar de Alba, Alicia, 102 gay characters: in Ros­well, New Mexico, 85–86, 88; in Star Trek: Discovery, 62–63 Geller, Sarah Michelle, 48 gender bias, of critics, 98–100, 108 gender diversity: on The CW, 75; in Fringe, 12, 42, 43, 47–48; in Star Trek: Discovery, 61–64; in TV criticism, lack of, 98–100, 108, 110n22 gender politics: in Ros­well, New Mexico, 74, 80, 84–85; in Top of the Lake, 172, 174 General Hospital, 161 Genette, Gérard, 136 genre: as cultural category, 40, 42; semantics, syntax, and pragmatics of, 2–3. See also specific genres

genre mixing: in The Americans, 22–27; in Fringe, 44–45; in The Knick, 162–163; in prestige tele­vi­sion, 22, 45; in The Sopranos, 25–26; in The Terror, 113–114 George Lopez, 100 Gerrold, David, 57 Get Out (film), 191, 198 Get Smart, 22 Gewirtz, Howard, 148n35 Giacchino, Michael, 38 Gilbert, Matthew, 145–146, 202 Gilbert, Sophie, 193 Gilligan’s Island, 196 Gilmore Girls, 76 Girlfriend Experience, The, 160 Girls, 181 Godfather, The (film), 167 Goldblatt, Henry, 145 golden age of tele­vi­sion, current (second), 56, 131, 190, 198, 204; comedies in, 39; post-­network era and, 7; Quality TV in, 3, 41, 131 golden age of tele­vi­sion, original: closure of, 194; Serling’s status in, 196; teleplays of, 57, 190, 194–195 Goldman, Arielle, 164 Goldsman, Akiva, 69 Good Fight, The, 59, 191 Good Wife, The, 3–4, 22 Goodwin, Ginnifer, 193 Gossip Girl, 79 Goyer, David S., 79 Grey’s Anatomy, 136, 161 Guzmán, Joaquín “El Chapo,” 103, 112n43 Gwenllian-­Jones, Sara, 42 Hagedorn, Roger, 164 Hale, Mike, 95, 117, 129n29 Handmaid’s Tale, The, 9 Hannibal, 59, 117 Hannigan, Alyson, 133 Harberts, Aaron, 60, 63 Harrington, Delia, 85 Harris, Jared, 114, 118, 120, 129n34 Harris, Neil, 135 Harris, Neil Patrick, 133, 139 Hart, Cory, 107 Hassler-­Forest, Dan, 1–2, 105 Haunting, The, 197 Hawaii Five-­O, 196

224 • Index

Hawley, Noah, 70–71 Haynes, Todd, 181 HBO: branding campaign of, 1, 3, 41, 79, 162; disproportionate attention on, 4; miniseries of, 179; move to scripted, original programming, 9; Netflix model based on, 4, 39; prestige vs. popularity of programs, 6; programming defined as Quality, 78–79; Soderbergh and, 158–159; White, male protagonists of, 162. See also specific programs heritage tele­vi­sion, 15, 189–191, 196–204. See also specific programs Herrera, Alfonso, 106 Hewson, Eve, 165–166 Hill, Logan, 1, 40 Hill Street Blues, 40 Hiltbrand, David, 158–159 HIMYM. See How I Met Your M ­ other Hinds, Ciarán, 114, 118, 129n34 Hines, Grainger, 161 Hirsch, Paul, 13 historical contingency, of prestige tele­vi­sion, 190–191 historical drama: The Americans as, 28–29; as ­imagined past, 115; The Knick as, 163–164; mixed with horror (The Terror), 113–114; as prestige tele­vi­sion, 115 Hitchcock, Alfred, 53n16, 195–196 Holland, André, 166 Hollier, Chris, 83 Hollywood Highbrow (Baumann), 6 Hom­i­cide: Life on the Street, 8 horror: anthology programs, 197–198; mixed with historical drama (The Terror), 113–114 House, 161 House of Cards, 9 How I Met Your M ­ other, 14, 131–149; “Bagpipes,” 144–145; “The Bracket,” 142; ­children’s perspective in, 145, 149n66; critical reception of, 145–146; as cult classic, 146; “Disaster Averted,” 139; “The Duel,” 140, 142; “The End of the Aisle,” 139; “How I Met Every­one Else,” 144; inside jokes of, 139, 142–146; interior visions in, 141–142, 143; intertextuality in, 142–143, 143; “Last Cigarette Ever,” 141, 149n66; as “love story in reverse,” 133; mix of multi-­cam and single-­cam styles in, 132, 132–133, 145; narration in,

character voice-­over, 136–140; narration in, unreliable, 144–145; narrative complexity of, 14, 131–133, 136–145; “N.Y.C. ­Lawyer Captures ‘Nessie,’ ” 141; operational aesthetics of, 138, 141, 144; self-­consciousness of, 139–143, 145; serial and episodic mix of, 14, 136, 138–139, 139, 146; short scenes and scene-­cutting in, 143; “Slap Bet,” 138–139; “Slapsgiving,” 139; “Slapsgiving 2: Revenge of the Slap,” 139; “Stuff,” 139; “Ted Mosby, Architect,” 144–145; temporal hierarchy in, 136–137; temporal structure of, 136–137, 137, 140–143, 146; “­We’re Not from ­Here,” 141 Hoxter, Julian, 156 Hulu, 4, 9–10 Hunter, Holly, 172, 175, 176 Hunter, Jeffrey, 65 Hutcheon, Linda, 145 hybridity. See genre mixing Idiocracy (film), 200 I Love Lucy, 143 I’m Not Th ­ ere (film), 181 imperial narrative, in The Terror, 13–14, 114–115, 119–123; indigenous perspectives vs., 13–14, 119, 123–127; outsider perspective vs., 13, 120–124, 124 Incredibles, The (film), 27 indigenous perspectives: in prestige tele­vi­sion, 14, 115, 125–127; in The Terror, 13–14, 115, 119, 123–127 In Face of the Crime, 181 institutional arrangements, 174–175, 179–180 intellectualization, 174–175, 178 interior visions: definition of, 141, 149n50; in How I Met Your M ­ other, 141–142, 143 international art cinema, signifiers in Top of the Lake, 15, 172–174 intertextuality, 135; in How I Met Your ­Mother, 135, 142–143, 143; in The Twilight Zone (2019–2020), 15, 190, 192–193, 198–199; in Twilight Zone: The Movie, 196 Irwin, Walter, 57–58 Isaacs, Jason, 61–64, 64 I Spy, 23 Issaluk, Johnny, 115, 120 Jackson, Joshua, 38, 43, 44 Jane the Virgin, 77–78, 86, 100

Index • 225

Jaramillo, Deborah, 78–79 Jenkins, Henry, 15, 192–193 Jensen, Jeff, 44–46 Jersey Shore, 69 Joe, Jacqueline, 171 John Adams, 179 John Car­ter (film), 66 Johnson, Catherine, 8, 43 Johnson, Derek, 76, 79 Johnson, Eric, 166 Johnson, Lyndon B., 17n32 Johnson, Steven, 134–135 Jones, Doug, 64 Juana la Virgen, 77 Judge, Mike, 182 Jung, Carl, 149n50 Justified, 39, 42 Kackman, Michael, 13 Kajganich, David, 127n7 Kazan, Ma­ya, 166 Kelvin Timeline, for Star Trek, 58–59 Kerr, James Austin, 107 Key, Keegan-­Michael, 198 Key & Peele, 198 Kieślowski, Krzysztof, 160–161 Kinberg, Simon, 193–194, 203 King, Geoff, 3, 6, 173–174 King of Queens, 146 Kingsnorth, Alfie, 130n47 King’s Speech, The (film), 176 Kirshner, Mia, 61 Knick, The, 14–15, 153–169; cinematography of, 163–164, 165; Cinemax branding and, 154, 158–159; cultural politics in, 163, 167; genre mixing in, 162–163; historical setting of, 163–164; homage to The Godfather in, 167; planned season three reboot of, 159, 164; prestige markers of, 117, 160–168; romantic melodrama in, 165–167; series finale of, 153, 154, 159, 161, 166–167; Soderbergh’s auteur status and, 14–15, 154–155, 176; Soderbergh’s authorship of, 153–154, 158–161; Soderbergh’s reputation revived with, 158–161 Kohan, Jenji, 78 Kompare, Derek, 8, 197 Korine, Rachel, 166 Kotierk, Apayata, 114 Kraft Tele­vi­sion Theatre, 194

Kraszewski, Jon, 196 K Street, 158 Kurtzman, Alex, 38, 45–46, 58, 59–60, 60, 70 Lagerwey, Jorie, 3–4, 41–43, 47, 51, 101 LALs. See legitimate authorities of legitimation Lama, Sofía, 107 Landgraf, John, 10–11, 25, 32–33 Langan, Christine, 175 Lanyon, Charley, 163 Last Bastion, The, 178 Last Best Hope, The (McCormack), 68 Latif, Shazad, 61–63 Latin American content, adaptation for U.S., 96–100, 101, 108 “Latin look,” 103–104, 104 Latinx audiences, attracting, 96, 98, 100–101 Latinx repre­sen­ta­tion: on The CW, 77–78; on Queen of the South, 13, 84, 95–112; in reboots, 75, 78, 80, 100; on Ros­well, New Mexico, 13, 75–76, 82–88, 100; in Soderbergh’s work, 163; White, male critics and perception of, 98–100 Lawless, Lucy, 47–48 Lear, Norman, 156 Lee, Gerard, 171, 175 Legion, 71 legitimate authorities of legitimation (LALs), 174–175. See also legitimation framework Legitimating Tele­vi­sion (Newman and Levine), 4 legitimation framework: institutional arrangements in, 179–180; intellectualization in, 174–175; opportunity space in, 174–175, 177; for Top of the Lake, 174–184 Levine, Elana: on auteurs and authorship, 28, 156, 177, 195; on cinematization, 14, 117, 156; on legitimation of TV, 4–5, 14, 40, 116; on masculinization of TV, 4; on sitcoms, 134 Levine, Gary, 177 liberal perspective: and The Americans, 29–32; and prestige tele­vi­sion, 29 ­limited series, 117–118 Lin, Justin, 177 Lindelof, Damon, 58 Linklater, Richard, 177 Lipin­ski, Tom, 167

226 • Index

Lobato, Benjamin Daniel, 102, 111n41 Logan Lucky (film), 159–160 Loki, 70 Long Goodbye, The (film), 3 Lopez, Kristen, 86 Lord of the Rings, The: The Return of the King (film), 38 Lost, 22, 38, 43–44, 46, 50–51, 58, 63, 193 Lost in Space, 56 Lotz, Amanda: on changing business of TV, 7–8, 10, 156–157; on male (White male) protagonists, 4, 42, 47, 97, 100; on masculinization of TV, 4 Louie, 160 Louis C. K., 160 Lowry, Brian, 6, 39, 146 Lynch, David, 40, 86, 157 MacKenzie, Carina Adly, 74–76, 79, 80–88, 102. See also Ros­well, New Mexico Madera, Hemky, 103 Mad Men, 9, 22, 33, 51, 61, 118 Mad TV, 198 Magic Mike (film), 155 Magic Mike XXL (film), 155 male audiences, catering to, 4–5, 79 male creative team, for Queen of the South, 100–101 male critics, overrepre­sen­ta­tion of, 98–100, 108 male protagonists: Fringe alternative to, 12, 47–50; prestige tele­vi­sion characterized by, 4–5, 13, 41–42, 51, 100, 162; Queen of the South alternative to, 97–98; Star Trek: Discovery alternative to, 61–64 Man from U.N.C.L.E., The, 23 Married . . . ​with ­Children, 51 Martinez, A., 105 Martinez, Cliff, 164 Martínez, María Paula, 109n6 Martin-­Green, Sonequa, 61–64, 64 Marvel Cinematic Universe, 70 Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The, 9 Marvel Studios/Cinematic Universe, 59, 70 Mary Tyler Moore Enterprises, 40 masculinization, of prestige tele­vi­sion, 4–5, 41–42, 51, 79, 116, 117, 162 Mason, Jeanine, 81, 82, 82, 83, 87 Matheson, Richard, 57 Matrix, The (film), 192–193

McClarnon, Zahn, 125 McFarland, Melanie, 100 McGrath, Conor, 158 McMahan, Mike, 68–69 McNutt, Myles, 80, 118 McQuarrie, Ralph, 60–61 media convergence, 9–10, 14, 170–171, 180, 181, 184 medical series: as prestige tele­vi­sion, 161–168; as reliable subgenre, 161 Meese, Edwin, III, 30 melodrama: on The CW, 77; dismissal in The Terror, 122–123; domestic, mixed with espionage thriller (The Americans), 22–27; feminization and devaluing of, 23, 77, 116; paranormal, on The CW, 75; romantic in The Knick, 165–167 Menzies, Tobias, 118, 122, 129n34 metatextuality, 135; in How I Met Your ­Mother, 132, 135–136 Metz, Melinda, 75 middlebrow milieu, 6, 13, 163, 167, 181 Mildred Pierce, 179, 181 Millennium, 38 Miller, Joshua John, 101 Mills, Brett, 133 Mills, Nicolaus, 31 miniseries: definition of, 178; light­house analogy for, 179; prestige status of, 117–118, 171, 177–179; production schedule of, 177; return to form, 179; rise to prominence, 178; The Terror as, 117–118; Top of the Lake as, 171, 177–179 Minow, Newton, 194, 196 “misery porn,” 116–117 Mittell, Jason: on comedy, 139; on cultural construction of genres, 40, 42; on evaluation of TV, 52; on forensic fandom, 141, 190, 193; on genre mixing, 22; on narration, 145; on narrative complexity, 14, 22, 56, 135, 139, 147n14, 190; on operational aesthetic, 135; on pragmatics, 2; on social and identity hierarchies, 100 mockumentary format, 133 Modern ­Family, 134 Moesha, 8 Mollà, Jordi, 103 Moodie, Andrew, 65 Moore, Ronald D., 80 Mosaic, 160

Index • 227

Moss, Elisabeth, 171–173, 175, 176 Moss-­Bachrach, Ebon, 46 Mount, Anson, 65, 69–70 Mr. & Mrs. Smith (film), 27 Mr. Robot, 98, 99 Mullan, Peter, 171, 175, 176 multi-­camera sitcoms, 132, 132–134, 145 multi-­channel transition phase, 7–9, 156–157

Nicole, Jasika, 38, 43, 44, 48, 48 Nielsen, Nive, 115 Noble, John, 38, 43, 44, 48 novel, miniseries link to, 177–178 Nurse Jackie, 161 Nussbaum, Emily, 78 Nygaard, Taylor, 3–4, 41–43, 47, 51, 101 NYPD Blue, 8

narconovelas, 109n5 Narcos, 98–99 Naremore, James, 3 narration: character, 136; in How I Met Your ­Mother, 136–140, 144–145; in The Twilight Zone, 198, 200, 201–202; unreliable, 144–145 narrative complexity, 13–16, 56–57, 116, 131–136, 147n14, 190, 197; and audience engagement, 135; and forensic fandom, 141, 190, 193; gender bias and, 41–42; metatextuality in, 135; operational aesthetics and, 135; seriality and, 57, 197; in sitcoms, 14, 131–136. See also specific programs Navar-­Gill, Annemarie, 87 NBC: network system of, 7; post-­network era and, 7–10. See also specific programs NBCUniversal, 101, 108 Negrón-­Muntaner, Frances, 100–101 neo-­noirs, 3 Netflix, 9–10; CBS All Access vs., 191; cultural diversity on, 80; disproportionate attention on, 4; female protagonists on, 99–100, 162; HBO as model for, 4, 39. See also specific programs network system, 7 network tele­vi­sion: changing industrial and technological contexts for, 7–10; emergence of new networks, 8; prestige TV on, 3–4, 8–9; Quality TV on, 3, 40–41. See also specific networks and programs Newcomb, Horace, 13, 147n14 Newman, Michael: on auteurs and authorship, 28, 156, 177, 195; on cinematization, 14, 117, 156; on legitimation of TV, 4–5, 14, 40, 116; on mainstream indie films, 155; on masculinization of TV, 4; on sitcoms, 134 Nickelodeon, 70

OA, The, 62 Oberoi, Karan, 85 Obi, Chris, 63 Ocean’s Eight (film), 160 Ocean’s Eleven (film), 155 Office, The, 62, 134 O’Keefe, Meghan, 191 Oliver Beene, 148n35 One Day at a Time (2017–2020), 80 One Tree Hill, 76 operational aesthetics, 135; of How I Met Your ­Mother, 138, 141, 144 opportunity space, 174–175, 177 Orange Is the New Black, 78, 87 Orci, Roberto, 38, 45–46, 58 Orlando, Christine, 110n22 Orth, Zak, 48 Outer Limits, The, 197 Out of Sight (film), 155 Owen, Clive, 153, 154, 162, 166 Owen, Rob, 99–100 Oz, 9 Paradise, Michelle, 60 Paramount+, 12, 59, 69–70, 192. See also specific programs Paramount Pictures, 59 Parks and Recreation, 134 Parsons, Nathan, 81, 82, 84 Party of Five (2020), 78 Pastore, Vincent, 63 PAW Patrol, 70 Pearson, Roberta, 42–43, 50 Peck, Ethan, 65 Peele, Jordan, 15, 189–203; auteur status of, 190, 191, 198; comparison with Serling, 15, 198, 202–204; films of, 191, 198, 206n39. See also Twilight Zone, The (2019–2020) Pérez-­Reverte, Arturo, 96–97, 99 period piece. See historical drama Perlman, Allison, 115

228 • Index

Peyton Place, 178 Piano, The (film), 173, 175, 176 Pierson, Janet, 181 Planet of the Titans (film), 60–61 Play­house 90, 194 Polan, Dana, 162 politics: and The Americans, 29–32; and The CW, 77–78; and prestige tele­vi­sion, 29; and Queen of the South, 105–106, 106; and Ros­well, New Mexico, 74–76, 80, 84–88; and Star Trek: Discovery, 63; and Star Trek: Picard, 66; and The Twilight Zone (2019–2020), 191, 192 post-­network era, 7–10, 156–157 pragmatics, of film/TV genres, 2–3 prestige tele­vi­sion: ambivalence ­toward, 1–2; cinematization of, 14, 117, 131, 156, 162, 167–168, 172–183; critic bias and, 98–100, 108; economic functions of, 34–35; evaluation of, importance of, 51–52; exclusion of real­ity TV from, 5; fan demands vs. aspirations to, 12, 15–16, 55–56, 75–76, 190–191; historical contingency of, 190–191; inclusion of network programming in, 3–4; indigenous perspectives in, 14, 115; industrial and technological contexts for, 7–10; liberal perspective and, 29; masculinization of, 4–5, 41–42, 51, 79, 116, 117, 162; middlebrow milieu of, 6, 13, 163, 167, 181; naming and distinction of, 2–7, 39–44, 51–52, 56, 116; pervasiveness and tactic of, 10–11; popularity vs., 5–6, 11, 21–22; Quality TV vs., 3; repre­sen­ta­tional complexity of, 13; science fiction as, 11–13, 42–44; semantics, syntax, and pragmatics of, 2–3; sitcom as, 14, 39, 131–136; White protagonists and audiences of, 4–5, 13, 100, 162. See also specific characteristics and programs Prime Time Access Rule of 1970, 7 prolepses, 136; in How I Met Your M ­ other, 136, 138, 140–141; as narrative digressions, 138; in Oliver Beene, 148n35 Psych, 109n110 Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, 17n32 Purge, The, 98 Pushing Daisies, 59 QOTS. See Queen of the South Quality TV, 3–4, 39, 40–41, 78–79

Queen of the South, 13, 95–112; “Amores Perros/Love’s a B*tch,” 102–103, 107; “Bienvenidos a Nueva Orleans/Welcome to New Orleans,” 106–107; comparison with Breaking Bad, 99; creative team of, Latinx and female, 101; creative team of, White and male, 100–101; critical reception of, 98–102; “La Fuerza/The Strength,” 105–106, 106; gangster genre conventions in, 95–96; “Latin look” on, 103–104, 104; Latinx identities, themes, and tropes on, 13, 84, 96, 102–108; “Secretos y Mentiras/Secrets and Lies,” 108; source material for, adaptation of, 96–100, 108; USA rebranding strategy and, 95, 98, 105 Queer Eye, 5 racial bias, of critics, 98–100, 108 racial politics: in Queen of the South, 105, 105–106, 106; in Ros­well, New Mexico, 74–75, 80, 84–84; in Soderbergh’s work, 163. See also cultural diversity/ repre­sen­ta­tion Radnor, Josh, 133 Raich, Alexis, 46 Raising Helen (film), 154 Rapp, Anthony, 61–63 Ray, Ken, 55 Reagan, Ronald, 29–32 real­ity TV, 5 reboot(s): concept of prestige in, 190–191; criticism of, 79–80; “fan-­tagonisms” over, 76; Latinx cast, 75, 78, 80, 100; origins of, 79; as presold commodity, 80; as reimagining, 80; status of Ros­well, New Mexico as, 12–13, 75–76, 79–80, 86–88; status of The Twilight Zone (2019–2020) as, 189–191 Rectify, 179 Red Dawn (film), 30 Reddick, Lance, 38, 44 Reiher, Andrea, 86 reina del sur, La, 96–97 reina del sur, La (Pérez-­Reverte), 96–97, 99 Reservation Dogs, 125–126 Revolution, 51 Rhys, Matthew, 21, 25, 25, 34 Rich Man, Poor Man, 178 Rick and Morty, 69

Index • 229

Rincón, Omar, 109n6 Ringer, 76 River, The, 51 Rivero, Yeidy M., 97 Roberts, Gillian, 163 Robertson-­D woret, Geneva, 71 Rocky IV (film), 30 Roddenberry, Eugene Wesley “Rod,” Jr., 60 Roddenberry, Gene, 42, 56, 57–58, 61 Roddenberry Podcast Network, 60 Rodríguez, Clara, 103 Rodriguez, Dailyn, 102 Rodriguez, Gina, 77–78 Rodriguez, Robert, 182 Romijn, Rebecca, 65 Ronin, Costa, 30–31 Roots (1977), 178 Ros­well, 12–13, 80 Ros­well, New Mexico, 74–92; aesthetics of, 81, 81; authorship of, 74–76, 82–84, 88; critical and fan reception of, 85–88; The CW’s niche strategies for, 12; financial interests in, 77; gender politics in, 74, 80, 84–85; “Good M ­ other,” 85; immigration twist in, 84–85; Latinx repre­sen­ta­tion on, 13, 75–76, 82–88, 100; marketing and promotion of, 80–82, 81, 82; popu­lar ­music in, 86, 87; prestige aspirations of, 82–84; racial politics in, 74–75, 80, 84–84; reboot status of, 12–13, 75–76, 79–80, 86–88; showrunner’s departure from, 74–76, 88; social media engagement and, 87–88; stakeholder conflict over, 74–76 Ros­well High (book series, Metz), 75 Rozsa, Matthew, 192 Ruck, Alan, 46 Russell, Keri, 21, 25, 25, 34 Russo, Jeff, 62 Rutherford Falls, 125–126 Ryan, Maureen, 118 Rylance, Juliet, 161 Sackhoff, Katee, 80 Saget, Bob, 136 San Pedro, Jean Paul, 107 Santo, Avi, 41, 162 Saraiya, Sonia, 39, 98–99, 202 Sátántangó (film), 181 Schilling, Taylor, 78

Schizopolis (film), 155 Schmidt, Wrenn, 30 Schneider, Molly, 118 science fiction: anthology programs, 197–198; as cult tele­vi­sion, 12, 42–43; decline on network tele­vi­sion, 51; as prestige tele­vi­sion, inclusion vs. exclusion, 11–13, 42–44; Star Trek version of prestige tele­vi­sion, 56–57. See also specific programs SciFi channel (US), 51 Sci-­Fi channel (Canada), 59 Sconce, Jeffrey, 134, 135, 141, 147n14 Scott, Ridley, 117, 119 Scott ­Free Productions, 113–114, 119. See also Terror, The Screen Australia, 176 Screen NSW, 176 Segel, Jason, 133, 139 Seinfeld, 135, 139 Seitz, Matt Zoller, 116–117, 128n21, 128n28, 160 Seldes, Gilbert, 194 self-­consciousness: of How I Met Your ­Mother, 139–143, 145; in narrative complexity, 135–136 Sellati, Keidrich, 24, 25 semantics, of film/TV genres, 2–3 seriality: in anthology programs, 197–198; aversion to, 45–46; in Fringe, 45–48; of HBO programs, 4; in How I Met Your ­Mother, 14, 136, 138–139, 139, 146; male vs. female audience and attitude ­toward, 79; in prestige tele­vi­sion, 14, 45, 57, 61, 134, 197; in sitcoms, 134, 138–139; in Star Trek: Discovery, 61, 65, 69; in The Terror, 113–114, 123 Serling, Rod: as apparition in reboot, 199, 199–204; as auteur, 15, 56, 189, 195–196; authorship by, 195–196; comparison of Peele with, 15, 198, 202–204; narration and message from, 201–202; on-­screen presence of, 195–196 sex, lies, and videotape (film), 155 Sex and the City, 136, 179 Seymour, Cara, 166 Shakman, Matt, 71 Shales, Tom, 146 Sharma, Rekha, 63 Shaw, Deborah, 163

230 • Index

Sherman, Emile, 175 Shield, The, 11, 33 showrunners: auteurs as (See auteurs); authorship by and status of, 156–157, 177 Showtime, 76, 162, 177. See also specific programs Silicon Valley, 182 Silva, Julian, 107 Simonini, Ross, 138 Simpson, Gary, 167 Simpsons, The, 51 single-­camera sitcoms, 132–136, 145 single-­director productions, 160–161 Sinner, The, 98 sitcoms: episodic vs. seriality of, 134, 137; marginalization of, 14, 133–136; mockumentary format, 133; multi-­cam vs. single cam, 132–134, 145; as prestige tele­vi­sion, 14, 39, 131–136. See also specific programs Smallville, 75 Smith, Anthony, 11, 33, 98 Smulders, Cobie, 133 social media, 87–88, 193 Soderbergh, Steven, 14–15, 153–169; authorship of The Knick, 153–154, 158–161; cultural politics of, 163, 167; forays into TV, 155–160; mainstream indie reputation of, 154–158; relationship with HBO/ Cinemax, 158–159; revived reputation with The Knick, 158–161; tinted cinematography of, 157, 163 Sonnenburg, Chuck, 63 Sopranos, The: cultural sensation/dominance of, 5, 58; genre mixing in, 22, 25–26; HBO branding/strategy and, 1, 158, 179; melodrama in, 77; as miniseries, 179; origins of prestige TV in, 1, 9, 22, 56, 158; showrunner credentials and, 88; template of, 51; unexpected death on, 63 Soup, The, 143 Spider-­Man 2 (film), 66 Spielberg, Steven, 206n34 Spy Next Door, The (film), 27 Star Trek (film), 58 Star Trek Beyond (film), 58 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9), 58, 59, 61, 66 Star Trek: Discovery, 12, 55–73; alignment with prestige tele­vi­sion, 61–64; creative revolving door on, 59–60; cynicism vs. optimism in, 64, 64; darkness of first

season, 55, 63–64; distribution tactic for, 12, 59, 191; diversity in casting choices for, 61, 62–63; episodic format vs. serialized content in, 61, 65, 69; fan demands vs. prestige aspirations for, 12, 55–59, 75–76; lighter tone of second season, 55, 65–66; “New Eden,” 65; opening credits of, 60, 60, 62, 62; po­liti­cal and cultural perspective of, 63; profanity and sexual content in, 61; retroactive continuity in, 61; retro approach of third season, 69; ship redesign for, 60–61; thematic fidelity expected from, 56 Star Trek: Enterprise, 58, 59, 61 Star Trek franchise, 12, 56–59; auteurs involved in, 56, 66–69; Berman-­era, 57–59, 67; corporate control of, 59, 70; films of, 58, 70–71; ­f uture of, 68–71; “Gene’s vision” for, 56, 57; Kelvin Timeline in, 58–59; Marvel as model for, 70; Paramount+ branding and, 69–70; proliferation of shows, 66–71. See also specific programs Star Trek into Darkness (film), 58 Star Trek: Lower Decks, 68–69, 70 Star Trek: Nemesis, 58 Star Trek: Picard, 12, 55, 66–70, 67 Star Trek: Prodigy, 70 Star Trek: Short Treks, 66–67 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, 69–70 Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), 51, 57–58, 61, 66 Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS), 12, 42, 56–57 Star Trek: Voyager, 58, 59 Stephenson, Ben, 175 St. Elsewhere, 40, 161 Stewart, Patrick, 67, 67–70 Stranger ­Things, 39 streaming ser­vices, 9–10. See also specific ser­vices Strike Back, 158 Sturgeon, Theodore, 57 suburban setting, of The Americans, 26–27, 27 ­Sullivan, Chris, 166 Sundance Film Festival, 15, 170–171, 177–183, 182 Sundance TV (Sundance Channel), 15, 171, 175, 176, 179 Supergirl, 76–77

Index • 231

Super­natural, 75, 76, 81 Superstore, 21, 35 Survivor, 5 Sutton, Richard, 121 SXSW, 181–182, 183 SyFy channel, 43, 51 syntax, of film/TV genres, 2–3 Tales from the Crypt, 197 Tales from the Darkside, 197 Tallerico, Brian, 118 Tarr, Bela, 181 taste, concept and classification of, 6 Taylor, Holly, 24, 25 Telecommunications Act of 1996, 7, 10 Telemundo, 96–97, 101, 108 telenovelas: adaptations of, 13, 77–78, 101; Mexican, explanation of, 109n6; narco, 13, 97, 109n5 teleplays, 57, 190, 194–195 tele­vi­sion: changing industrial and technological contexts of, 7–10; as cultural forum, 13; elevation of status, 6–7; time-­shifting of, 7–10, 157; “vast wasteland” of, 194, 196. See also prestige tele­vi­sion; specific genres and programs Tele­vi­sion’s Second Golden Age (Thompson), 3 Telotte, J.P., 45 Terrones, Terry, 117 Terror, The, 13–14; as anthology series, 113–114; casting/acting prestige for, 118, 129n34; cold open of, 115, 120, 120; critical reception of, 115, 116–118; dismissal of melodrama in, 122–123; flashbacks in, 14, 114, 121–123, 122; gender binary and, 118; genre mixing in, 113–114; “Go for Broke,” 115, 120–123, 130n47; “Gore,” 123; imperial narrative in, 13–14, 114–115, 119–123; indigenous perspectives in, 13–14, 115, 119, 123–127; “The Ladder,” 117, 130n48; “A Mercy,” 130n46; my­thol­ogy and monster of, 114–115, 127n7; narrative complexity of, 116–118, 123; outsider perspective in, 13, 120–124, 124; power relations in, 115; prestige signifiers of, 116–119; Scott’s auteur status and, 117, 119; season-­long narratives of, 114; vio­lence and gore of, 116–117, 128n21; “We Are Gone,” 124 30 for 30, 5 30 Rock, 134, 135–136, 143

Thomas, Craig, 148n35 Thompson, Robert, 3, 8, 40–41, 45 Thurm, Eric, 1, 39, 40, 98 Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, 5 time-­shifting, 7–10, 157 Time Warner, 158 TNT, 179 Top Gun (film), 30 Top of the Lake, 15, 170–188; authenticity in, 172–173; Campion’s auteur status and, 15, 171, 172, 175–177; casting/acting prestige for, 175–176; channel branding and, 171; cinematography of, 171–173, 172, 173, 185n9; courting of BBC for, 175; film festival premieres of, 15, 170–172, 179–180, 182; gender politics in, 172, 174; global scope of production, 175–176; intellectualization and, 174, 178; legitimation framework of, 174–184; local identity in, 172–173, 173, 185n9; media convergence and, 170–171, 180, 181, 184; miniseries prestige of, 171, 177–179; signifiers of international art cinema in, 15, 172–174; tele­vi­sion premieres of, 171 Top of the Lake: China Girl, 183–184 Torv, Anna, 38, 43, 44, 45, 47–48, 50 Town Like Alice, A, 178 Traffic (film), 155, 157, 158, 163 transmedial comparisons, 178 transmedia storytelling, 15, 192–193, 204 Travers, Ben, 98–99, 154 Trek Nation (film), 60 Trevino, Michael, 84 Trier, Lars von, 160–161 Trotzke, Claudia, 167 True Blood, 61 True Detective, 29, 63, 83, 160, 197 True Lies (film), 27 Trump, Donald, 63, 67, 84, 103 Tucker, Ken, 45 21st ­Century Fox, 34 Twilight Zone, The (1959–1964): cultural memory of, 196; elite status of, 56–57, 194–196, 201–202; message and moral takeaway of, 201–202; “Mirror Image,” 206n39; “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” 201, 206n40; rebranding as Classic, 192; revivals and reboots of, 191, 196–197; Serling as auteur and, 15, 56, 189, 195–196; “Time Enough at Last,” 199

232 • Index

Twilight Zone, The (2019–2020), 15–16, 56–57; anthology format of, 189, 192, 197–198; black and white vs. color for, 193–194; “Blurryman,” 189, 194, 198–204, 200, 201; critical reception of, 192, 202–203; cross-­promotion of, 193; distribution of, 191–192; “Downtime,” 203; end (cancellation) of, 192, 204n10; fan demands vs. prestige aspirations of, 15–16, 190–191; as heritage tele­vi­sion, 15, 189–191, 196–204; intertextuality in, 15, 190, 192–193, 198–199; Peele’s auteur status and, 190, 191; “Point of Origin,” 193; potential po­liti­cal relevance of, 191, 192; prestige signifiers of, 15–16, 191; reboot status of, 189–191 Twilight Zone: The Movie (film), 196, 206n34 Twin Peaks (1990–1991), 40, 43–44, 86, 157 Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), 86, 157, 184 Twitter, 87–88 Two and a Half Men, 145, 146 Tyler, Aisha, 83 Ugly Betty, 100 UKTV (Australia), 171, 176 Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, 39 Under­g round, 100 Under­neath, The (film), 157 United States Steel Hour, The, 194 Universal Cable Productions, 102 unreliable narration, 144–145 Unsane (film), 160 Unscripted, 158 UPN, 8, 76 Us (film), 191, 198, 206n39 USA Network: adapting Telemundo content for, 96–97, 101, 108; “blue skies” vs. “grey skies” programming of, 98, 109n110; rebranding strategy of, 95, 98, 105. See also specific programs Valck, Marijke de, 172–173 Valles, Idalia, 105 Valley, Mark, 44 VanArendonk, Kathryn, 1 “vast wasteland,” 194, 196 VCRs, 7–8, 157

Venice Film Festival, 180, 181 Viacom, 59, 70, 76–77 video on demand, 9–10 Vlamis, Michael, 88 Vogan, Travis, 5 Walking Dead, The, 10, 51, 62 WandaVision, 70, 71 Warner Bros. Tele­vi­sion, 74–77 WarnerMedia, 158 Watchmen, 61 WB, 8, 76; Dawson’s Creek, 8; Ros­well, 12–13 Weisberg, Joe, 27–28, 33 Weller, Peter, 47 Wenham, David, 172, 175, 176 Westworld, 63, 125–126 Whitaker, Forest, 198 White, Mike, 177 White audiences, catering to, 4–5, 101 White creative teams: and Queen of the South, 100–101; and Ros­well, New Mexico, 83 White critics, overrepre­sen­ta­tion of, 98–100 White protagonists: alternatives to (See cultural diversity/repre­sen­ta­tion); prestige tele­vi­sion characterized by, 4–5, 13, 100, 162; as “Trojan Horse” for diversity, 78 Willmore, Allison, 180 Wilson, Rainn, 62 Winslet, Kate, 181 Wire, The, 38, 58 ­women: as critics, underrepre­sen­ta­tion of, 98–100, 108, 110n22; exclusion from prestige tele­vi­sion, 4–5. See also female protagonists Won­der Years, The (1988–1993), 136 World on a Wire, 181 Wright, Alison, 24 Wright, Michael, 179 Xena: Warrior Princess, 47–48 X-­Files, The, 8, 38, 43–45, 50–51 Yanders, Jacinta, 80 Yeoh, Michelle, 61–62, 70 Zalben, Alex, 98