A 2009 Television Wish List

Everyone agrees that 2008 was a difficult year for TV, which isn't too surprising when you consider that in late 2007 and early 2008, there were no writers on the job for three months. (It would be more depressing if they'd been gone three months and it didn't matter.)

So will 2009 be better? One would hope. How does it get there? Five things I'd like to see:

1. Learn the lesson that if a storyline sounds stupid, it probably is. There are exceptions to the general rule that where there's silliness smoke, there's preposterousness fire — I have been an outspoken defender of, of all things, VH1's Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew — but on the whole, a little more skepticism wouldn't hurt. Someone on the Grey's Anatomy staff could have simply said, "Sex with a ghost doesn't sound like a good idea," and it would have saved everyone a lot of heartache. In fact, "No sex with ghosts" wouldn't be a bad rule.

Four more choices, after the jump...

 

2. Fix the franchise-reality casting. Most of the really stupid, bottom-feeding network reality shows have fizzled out, leaving the ones with the actual potential to be interesting. The top two are probably CBS's Survivor and The Amazing Race, both of which can be utterly fascinating or complete bores, depending almost entirely on the cast. Throw a bunch of chest-waxing weasels and vapid bartenders up there, and it's just a lot of nothing. Pit a few actual wily nerds against each other, and it's surprisingly entertaining. The last couple of seasons of both shows have been disappointing, and it would be awfully encouraging to see them recover.

3. Rediscover comedy. There is surprisingly little comedy on television right now — NBC has Thursday night comedies, CBS has Monday night comedies, ABC has Samantha Who? and has now nabbed Scrubs from NBC, and Fox has Sunday night comedies. But that's about it for the networks, and while cable has a few popular entries — notably FX's It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Entourage on HBO, if those are up your alley — cable has not dramatically improved the comedy landscape as it has with drama. We're primed for a comedy revival, what with the dismal news everywhere, and while I wouldn't presume to suggest where the time to show more comedies could come from, I do think I could get by without fifteen hours of network crime/mystery-solving per week. (A number I did not make up.)

4. Give Neil Patrick Harris his Emmy, already. Neil Patrick Harris, the onetime teenage star of Doogie Howser, M.D., has elevated his How I Met Your Mother character, Barney Stinson, from a typical oversexed buddy sidekick — think Larry from Three's Company — to a guy who is, convincingly, both a total sleazebag and a stupendously devoted friend. His performances during the supposedly invulnerable Barney's estrangement from "bro" Ted were masterpieces of saying one thing and feeling another, and the wallop of his besotted stare when he realized he had feelings for his female "bro" Robin was considerable.

So why can't he get an Emmy? Because he works on a show that's a straight-up, crowd-pleasing sitcom in a world where all the love is going to supposedly "edgier" material, like Entourage. Entourage is the home of Jeremy Piven, who has stolen the Emmy that should have been Harris's for three years (one when Harris wasn't even nominated, and then two when he was). The fact that The Wire was endlessly neglected was depressingly predictable; the fact that Neil Patrick Harris can't get an Emmy from a group that gave three to Brad Garrett from Everybody Loves Raymond is just crazy.

5. Keep reaching. It's a famous story now that HBO, which has developed many of the most respected dramas of the last ten years, turned down Mad Men, which went on to help transform AMC from the butt of jokes about which movies are actually "American Movie Classics" to a serious drama supplier. I bring up that story not to slam HBO, but to point out that even people with a lot of experience simply don't know what's going to work until they try it, no matter the good faith with which they're working to pick the Next Great Show.

It's critically important that particularly cable networks, which have more wiggle room both creatively and financially than broadcast networks, continue to try a lot of different things to see what sticks. Chasing someone else's successes is not the answer; the success of Mad Men doesn't mean everyone else should make advertising-themed period pieces, any more than The Sopranos meant that everyone should make endless gangster shows. It means that everything is a gamble, so you might as well gamble on things you actually think are good, and not pretend that it's an exact science, because if it were? We'd be in the third triumphant season of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.