Is J.J. Abrams new show a revolution in storytelling?

One of the other shows that I got a chance to see this past weekend at FanExpo was the new J.J. Abrams show called Revolution. Anyone who knows anything about J.J. Abrams career knows that he has something of a strange reputation when it comes to his body of work. From Lost to Alias to Fringe and Alias, his TV work has been something to gawk at in terms of their popularity and the frustrations of its fans. Chief among the ideas that has frustrated fans is Lost, which seems to have lead many to believe that while he comes up with great ideas, the execution of those ideas leaves something to be desired and his involvement is often more of a detriment to the storytelling process.

Perhaps that is true, we certainly don’t know enough about what goes on behind the scenes to really make a determination of J.J. Abrams involvement and how much he has or hasn’t affected the storytelling process. What isn’t in question is that when people hear his name attached to a project, they tend to perk up and pay attention. He is a very high concept creator and people seem to appreciate his work for that, if nothing else. The new show Revolution is no exception in the list of TV shows that he has created. It’s very high concept and world building in its function as a TV show, but is that revolutionary in today’s TV landscape? A lot of shows have come to our screens in recent years with a high concept and a story worth telling.

Shows like Flash Forward and Terra Nova are quick to establish the world that their characters live in, but some of their lesser competition misses the mark in terms of the characters that ultimately drive the show. Unfortunately, I feel like this is the case for Revolution. The world is very clearly established and has a lot of potential to tell some interesting stories, but falls well short of establishing the characters that end up being the focus of the show. Without creating any serious spoilers, many of the characters which appear to be driving the show’s story forward are background characters in the opening scenes. It’s not until even half way through the first episode that it becomes clear who the main characters are, and in order to do that they have to dispense with numerous more interesting characters that could have just as easily been interesting in their own right and been the focus of the show. Why not do that instead?

A while back I watched a lecture that J.J. Abrams did in which he talked about his interest, or perhaps obsession, with mystery. He talked a lot about how he and so many other people are intrigued by mystery and that the unknown is such an interesting aspect of life and storytelling in general. But what wasn’t touched on was the importance of characters. They should never be a mystery. And by that I don’t mean that they aren’t allowed to have secrets or mislead people. I mean that we should always understand exactly who it is that they are. We should always know why they do the things they do or we should at least find out at some point. As the audience, we should never be uncertain why we care about the characters we are watching. In order to do that in television, your main character or characters need to take center stage. In Revolution, the event takes center stage. The reason why the world is the way it is drives the story and in many ways the main characters take a backseat even more so then they do in the first 10 minutes of the pilot.

Is J.J. Abrams new show a revolution in storytelling? Not really, but at least people will watch it.

Should Kevin Bacon’s new show find a Following?

“The FBI estimates that there are up to 300 serial killers operating on any given day in the United States alone.”

A phrase that has often been uttered in TV shows of a crime drama nature when faced with the more disturbing cases of that show, most often involving serial killers. By any means a staggering and disturbing statistic that highlights many other aspects of the world we live in today. One such aspect is the way in which many people develop an affinity for serial killers and the work they do, whether it’s copycat killers who try to emulate them, or the serial killer groupies who flock to such men (because by and large serial murder is committed by men), or just those who collect details about them out of some twisted affinity for the morbid or obscene. The Following, a new show that I had the fortune to see at a recent screening held at FanExpo, attempts to bring many of these tragic elements together to form a story worth telling.

There are a lot of things about this story that are interesting because of it. You have the tragic hero with the checkered past, the young upstart who wants to believe they know everything, and the driven professional who wants to believe that having a plan will result in everything working out. Where the story differs from a lot of what has been seen before is that at the center of what will most likely be driving the force behind the story is a serial killer who has managed to develop quite a fan base.

In a world that has become increasingly fan focused, it’s a worthy question to ask what if the person you’re a fan of isn’t so nice? What if what you’re doing to impress them isn’t a good thing? Are you still a fan or are you something worse? Are you just obsessive? To some extent I think that The Following is attempting to answer that question. The question of how far it is okay to go for what you love. However I think it also has another interesting element to it that at the very least as a writer I am very interested to see. One of the major hooks of the show seems to be that both main characters are writers, and part of the shorthand that is established in the beginning is the idea of storytelling as a metaphor for life.

The struggle, the heartbreak, the moral of the story, these appear to be one of the backdrops on which many of the future episodes will be based and it has certainly peaked my interest. Anyone who knows me is aware of how much I believe in the way that art imitates life and the importance of understanding and learning about the ideas and principals behind those stories. The Following appears to try to blend all of these elements together and at the very least I think it’s clear that the creator, Kevin Williamson, has a very clear understanding of that that is trying to be blended, which is interesting because I haven’t always felt that way about his work.

He can be somewhat hit and miss with the stories he is trying to tell, from his hits like Scream and Dawson’s Creek, to his stumbles like The Vampire Diaries which stumbled out of the gate before finding sure footing and The Secret Circle which never did. Taking a look at what he has done with The Following so far, I feel pretty confident in saying that he has the potential to make this one for the hit column.  And so...

Should Kevin Bacon’s new show find a Following? I think it should, but only time will tell if it will be a good following or a bad following.