Brand Integration, 30 Rock, and the "Responsible" Point of View

I tend to keep a few magazines piled up on my desk at work—ones that feature stories I want to read, but aren’t so pressing that I take them home. I had about four that were there for months, and finally decided, since they were at that point where no one else would want them either, to take them home.

I was looking through the newest one, a New York with David Patterson on the cover, dating from October that I had plucked to read a Times story, when I came across a hidden treasure: “What Tina Fey Would do for a SoyJoy”, written by a fave of mine, Emily Nussbaum. It’s about brand integration in television shows, and specifically discusses 30 Rock and MadTV, two shows that have been on my mind recently.

Television is expensive to produce, and ratings are going down, down, down. So what are TV execs to do to make money? Introduce brands inside the programming. This has gone on for some time—dating back to the early days of TV—and it’s been controversial for nearly all that time, too. But advertising is hot property (just look at shows about advertising, Mad Men and the forthcoming Trust Me), and stories about ads also enable the producers to use real products to tell those stories.

Websites and magazine features connect viewers with the brands their favorite characters wear, so why not just have the characters say what they’re wearing? But that’s hard to do well. A big deal was made a few years ago when Alias and Ford struck a deal requiring the characters to constantly call attention to the vehicle. It made a mockery of the program, taking everyone out of the action; it was so obviously an ad that had an expensive budget and story tied to it that the idea of a television show seemed besides the point.

30 Rock is a case study here; Nussbaum frames the show as the tension between art and commerce, exemplified by Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy. This is also where the set up for many of the jokes come from, all meant to give double the laughs since they’re satirizing many things at once:

In the show’s fifth episode, Donaghy talks with Lemon about integrating brands. “I’m sorry, you’re saying you want us to use the show to sell stuff?” Liz asks.

JACK: Look, I know how this sounds.

LIZ: No, come on, Jack. We’re not doing that. We’re not compromising the integrity of the show to sell—

PETE: Wow. This is Diet Snapple?

LIZ: I know, it tastes just like regular Snapple, doesn’t it?

30 Rock has done this a few times, notably with Verizon. But while it’s a wink-wink to the audience and the advertisers, it still leaves a somewhat queasy aftertaste—yeah, you’re shilling, you’re just being tongue-in-cheek about it. Fey has said that she wants to point it out to her audience always, but as the article makes clear, that isn’t always possible, and in fact, one brand prominently displayed was widely believed to be a fake: SoyJoy. The integration didn’t really work, since no one actually realized it was a brand, and the brand itself didn’t get the boost it was looking for, since it wasn’t placed within the series as they wanted it. They were an afterthought, squeezed into the story for the sake of commerce. Not always the best way to get a brand mention.

But these kinds of jokes get old quickly, as Joss Whedon points out: “You can’t do it again and be cute, because then it’s a different type of shilling. Eventually you realize the reason they’re making a joke is because there’s something abhorrent going on.”

I don’t mind brand integration it as long as it works within the story. I am a story purist. It’s all about verisimilitude. The problem is, whether or not a brand is used in storytelling it tends to be noticed if it’s prominent enough in the scene. I’ve seen Seinfeld episodes where Jerry has a box of generic corn flakes on his counter, and that looks just as weird as seeing Sprite cans in front of a bunch of writers on 30 Rock, one because the absence of a recognizable brand is bizarre, the other because it’s so obvious that it’s product placement. It made perfect sense for Dwight to temp at Staples, for Don Draper to wax eloquent on Kodak cameras, for Lorelai Gilmore to express shock when Christopher bought a Volvo; all of these times I was fully following the story, with no thought about companies buying airtime and the deals that were exchanged. If it makes sense for a character to have a Mac, then no one will wonder how much money it cost for Apple to have the computer in the scene.

Interstitials, extras—things like webisodes, blog posts, and other interactive elements that make up the rest of a television show’s official site—have also become a battleground. Actors often aren’t paid extra for them, which of course causes problems. It can also cause confusion deciphering the actor from the character. Most NBC shows have a “Chime In” promo that airs right before the cold open; this is to prompt viewers to stick around for the show and to generate excitement. For The Office promo, Jenna Fischer taps the microphone three times, mimics the “ba ba ba” of the NBC jingle in a fun, flirty way, and John Krasinski, who is standing beside her adoringly, responds, “Boy, you’re cute.” How sweet. Except they are identified by their real names—“Chime in with John & Jenna” appears onscreen—not as Jim and Pam, who would actually do an exchange like this. John and Jenna aren’t dating; it is their characters who are in love with each other, not the actors themselves. It’s not cute, or endearing; this forced element (no matter how natural it appears onscreen) takes the audience out of the show. If they shill for NBC, they should do it as themselves; if it’s a funny bit in-character, then they should be identified as being in character. Of course, it’s Joss Whedon (interviewed in this article on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog), who sums it up: “We invest in the reality of the show! And this is one of the ways they’re picking apart the idea of the narrative, keeping you from knowing if it’s a show or not…. They want to take the story apart so they can stuff it with as much revenue as they can. And ultimately what you get is a zombie, a stuffed thing—a non-show.”

Exactly. I understand a network and a show has to make money. And webisodes and blogs and podcasts can be fun—as long as they don’t mess with the core product.

So what about the Responsibility Project?

Liberty Mutual runs ads every week in the New York Times magazine, framing "The Ethicist" column, posing a scenario and offering several ways of solving it, asking which is “the responsible point of view”. Liberty Mutual’s campaign is the Responsibility Project, a series of films that pose thorny situations and the choices the characters face. Liberty Mutual also struck a deal with NBC as part of the Responsibility Project to offer television that offered “responsible viewpoints” and to help develop scripts that featured this mindset.

Liberty Mutual is an insurance company, and they, like Dove, are marketing themselves based on a feel-good principle. Having television that explored ethical viewpoints could be interesting, if the show doesn’t get preachy and bogged down by company objectives. But what exactly is the responsible point of view? Isn’t the point to explore the options, that sometimes what one person thinks is right is completely wrong and immoral for another? Mandating a mindset doesn’t work; the Family Friendly Programming Forum tried to make family-friendly programs, working on the pilot of several shows, most notably Gilmore Girls. Most shows that are labeled family-friendly tend to be anything but—The Secret Life of the American Teenager, 7^th Heaven—even Gilmore Girls, especially as the show continued, made a mockery out of marriage and fidelity, two important values when discussing family. Too many people are leery of corporations watching and controlling our every move; even when they try to do good (and many do), it’s hard to shake the notion of ulterior motives (money money money).

Pretty much everyone interviewed for the New York article is a 30 Rock fan. I am not. I’ve seen maybe about half a dozen episodes, a few from this season and last. I do not find the show funny, though I concede I haven’t seen many of the “best” episodes, as I’ve understood them to be. According to Nussbaum, “What makes the show funny, and timely, and terrifying, is that on 30 Rock, Liz Lemon always loses.”

Which is exactly my problem.

Liz Lemon (a terrible, self-defeating name…which is probably the purpose) is supposed to be the Neurotic Single Woman. She’s supposed to follow in that long line of 30ish single women who worry about their singleness—Mary Tyler Moore, Ally McBeal, Carrie Bradshaw. She babbles, she’s awkward, she’s often the sanest one amidst the crazies. Not only does Liz never win, even the smallest battles, but she’s constantly made a fool; no one at her job respects her. They walk all over her, but she has to corral her castmates together to make sure they can function, while she can barely function herself. Tina Fey has said that Liz Lemon is her single alter-ego, that if she didn’t meet and marry her husband she would be just as pathetic as Liz Lemon. For what bugs me most of all is that Liz Lemon is pathetic. She is fake-perky, always trying to hide those tears of shame and embarrassment by starting another ill-advised endeavor, failing at that, and then doing something shameful to get over her feelings. She never has any pride. She doesn’t stand up for herself. She’s not funny, she’s sad.

I welcome a real discussion on 30 Rock, why people think it’s funny, why Liz Lemon is the complete opposite of how I characterized her. As I’ve said, I haven’t seen enough episodes (nor have the notes), to write a real review of her character, why I don’t find her as appealing as she should be. I enjoyed her immensely on Saturday Night Live, but I find her strikingly unfunny—and sometimes insulting—on 30 Rock.

Love Stories

A couple weeks ago, I wanted to write about how the success of House gives me faith in America. House is a complex show that deals with philosophical issues, about medical ethics, of right and wrong, connecting with people, of how to live. The fact that it is one of America’s top-rated shows—and one that is well-acted, generally well-written, and both a critical and fan favorite—makes me very happy. But I also realized that House does something that is very rare on television shows: two of the main characters, Gregory House and Lisa Cuddy, are both single for a long time.

As most people know, these are two characters who flirt and argue with each other, and often their scenes are fun to watch. They are the standard couple that fans are suppose to root for, and of course they’ll get together at the end of the series, as is television convention. What is notable is that their relationship obstacles are themselves—their own stubbornness, expectations, beliefs, habits, and personality quirks—and not other people. House does not date. Cuddy does not date. This is pretty big for television; most shows have boyfriends and girlfriends and affairs and would-be suitors that rotate out of the main characters’ lives, with various missed chances and misunderstandings. But as House has continued the past few weeks, with Cuddy and House kissing and acknowledging their attraction to each other, there have been those classic television misunderstandings, most notably in last week’s episode, “Let them Eat Cake”, where House is off flirting with a woman he hired to play a prank on Kutner and Taub. Cuddy sees this just as she’s about to forgive him for an earlier incident, since House had done something special for her.

Last weekend, I saw three movies that revolve around “grand” love affairs: Twilight, Australia, and a Bollywood hit titled Fanaa, which means “Destroyed in Love” in English. While it’s true that love stories follow similar arcs—there’s a meet cute, often involving a misunderstanding or a dislike, a gradual time of becoming friends, then really good friends, periods of crisis that draw the two together, the requisite confusing/scared emotions, the obstacles that keep the two apart (whether external or internal, or a combination)—it doesn’t mean that they are particularly interesting, victorious, or that they work at all. A formula does not mean success.

This is why most love stories aren’t good. They just aren’t. They’re everywhere, and that’s one of the problems—love stories are supposed to be special, exciting, meaningful, infused with pain, yet there’s an unbreakable sense of connection, friendship and yes, love, that underscores it all. That’s what the good ones do. You can follow all the rules, and still not have the story matter. Twilight, Australia and Fanaa had many of the standard elements, but none of them were particularly good. What struck me and my compatriots in watching the movies, though, was that there were thematic and tonal similarities: while all of them were over-the-top, the drama was ridiculous in Twilight and Fanaa. There was too much back-and-forth, too much “I can’t live without you!” hysterics. There was too much talk of dying for each other, of “You can’t be with me, because I will get you killed! I will ruin your life! And therefore we must STAY AWAY from each other!” In both Twilight and Australia, there was a scene where one of the leads doesn’t know how to dance and is shy. The genders were reversed, but the dialogue was practically the same in both movies, despite that one dealt with cowboys and the other vampires.

Love stories are overhyped, fit into any story because it’s considered a necessary element of success. Upping the ante by introducing politics, death, illness and other catastrophes is often considered another requirement of epic romances, but it’s not necessary and often takes away from the central story. That’s what happened in Twilight and Australia (although Australia's story wasn’t really about the romance, but was a substantial part of it). These elements are usually so over-the-top that they obscure the real romance and move it into parody, drawing out the movie so we just don’t care any more. That occurred in all three movies.

What’s missing in the movies, and in most love stories, is the friendship behind the leads. In Roger Ebert’s review of Twilight, he says, “They’re in love with being in love.” Bella and Edward spend the movie giving each other smoking, lustful looks and discussing why they can’t be together (he wants her blood too much), but there’s nothing else besides attraction that hold them together.

The central question of any love story should be: why do these two love each other? Why them? The audience needs to see why each cares for the other, why each genuinely likes the other. Most treat this question superficially, glossing over it for the more exciting romantic tension that awaits. But tension is meaningless and not as much fun if the fundamentals aren’t there, if the reason for the tension is perfunctory and silly.

I’m convinced that Michael Patrick King wanted to create a great love story in Big and Carrie in Sex and the City, and that’s the overwhelming feeling I’m left with whenever I see the finale. (I’m excusing the movie here because I feel it retreads a lot of the same ground, but it could work within this framework, since their love ends happily after a massive screw-up.) Here we see why Carrie and Big just have this overwhelming affection for each other—that they can laugh and flirt and just be fun with each other, and each likes the other’s playful attitude, that person’s love of New York City. Despite all their problems, they go back to each other—a controversial point in most romantic relationships, because this tendency can be destructive, hampering the necessity of moving on. Carrie and Big’s epic love story is one thing I take away from the show, and I think he succeeds in creating a lasting, captivating story, one with many believable, heart-wrenching turns.

One of the reasons The Office is such on shaky ground this season is that it doesn’t know what to do with its central couple, Jim and Pam. The show was phenomenal in its second and third seasons partly because it was powered by the unrequited love between those two, and the second season finale “Casino Night”, where Jim confesses his love to Pam and then kisses her, is considered by many to be the best episode of the series. Watching the friendship between the two, Jim’s longing and confusion followed by Pam’s longing and confusion, was at times exhilarating, heartbreaking, and frustrating, and garnered lots of fans of both the show and the characters. By coupling the characters early enough in the series, considered a radical move by many, the show set us up to watch their relationship grow. But the lack of romantic tension, sad to say, was not replaced by genuinely interesting and compelling storylines, but ones that had the potential to be so and then written off. Romantic intrigue was passed onto other characters, poorly, as if one great love story can be substituted for another.

While The Office can and hopefully will bounce back from the stupidity this lackluster season has brought, it could show what many want to see: a full-fledged, real relationship, without the excessive drama that plagues most television and movie romance. It can be done, and it can be done well—it just takes imagination and a real commitment to write a story based around interesting and compelling characters. But too often it just doesn’t seem palatable. After all, it’s very hard to write about a relationship in television or in the movies that’s about the after part of “happily ever after.” The joke is that it doesn’t exist.

As Emily Gould put it recently, when discussing Gossip Girl:

It’s rare to watch a tv show’s writers basically confess that they’ve hit a wall. Imagine if, somewhere around the third season of Friends, Ross had sat Rachel down and said, “You know, we’ll never stay together, because there would really be nothing to hang the misunderstanding-based hijinx of this show on.” When Chuck told Blair that “the game” is “what we like,” he might as well have been staring into the camera and addressing the audience directly. ‘When we finally get together,’ he’s saying, ‘you’ll know that Gossip Girl’s writers have finally gotten that memo from CW headquarters that they’ve got another episode or two to wrap things up.’

But less cynically, or maybe more cynically: the audience basically never gets to watch the ever-after part of romances – it’s boring, we’re given to understand, all that moviegoing and hand-holding. Love affairs have three acts, we know from tv, and even, a little, from our own experience. There’s the thrilling beginning, fraught with obstacles and delicious suffering. And then there’s the middle, the happy normalcy phase that actually maybe doesn’t even exist and is just a slow slide into the mediocrity and boredom that signals the end. Maybe there are just two acts, then.

And when act two is running its course, it’s back to the drawing board again.

On Tonight's TV

I’ve had a feeling since the premiere of The Office three weeks ago that season five was going to be a rough one for the show, a time of transition. This was only strengthened by tonight’s episode. Erratic, psychopathic Jan needs to leave. Michael is increasingly becoming stupid and mean, just like the show. Dwight spent most of last week worrying about how much time he wasn’t working; this week he spent an hour or so wrecking an expensive stroller. Pam and Jim keep missing each other; we hear bits of cell phone conversations, just like in an episode of Gilmore Girls. Michael did the right thing though and finally asked Holly out on a date.

This might be a historic election, but it is not a historic year for Saturday Night Live in terms of quality. Their first sketch with Sarah Palin was the best. Weekend Update is still the highlight. I was very disappointed in tonight’s debate sketch—they should have had John McCain go off the deep end with his anger instead of his imaginary Joe the Plumber friend. The writing just wasn’t there, but I guess that’s to be expected, with the cast so crunched. Weekend Update, as usual, was the best; their lines on the debate, especially about plumbers and McCain, were great. Like their “Really?!?!” sketch last week, the “Things We Liked” portion was eviscerating, pointed, and hilariously funny. Kristen Wiig’s portrayal of the nutty woman practically made Seth Myers break (and he’s no Jimmy Fallon). I had no problem with their trashing of McCain. They’ve gone quiet political this year, but I love it. I suspect non-Obama fans probably won’t.

SNL will have a new episode Saturday and another Thursday night special next week.

Just for the record:

I really, really hope the Office makes some sort of reference to the April 22 Pennsylvania primary. It would be so, so awesome.

Bound to happen?

The news broke last week that The Office is going to have a spinoff.

Details are nonexistent, except for the fact that it will be produced by the same people behind The Office and will air after that show. Allegedly something major is set to happen soon (eeeee!), which will undoubtedly take us into spinoff territory.

Hypothesis: The Office can’t really part with any of the main guys: Michael is the show. Dwight will follow Michael anywhere; he’s Mr. Loyalty. No point in Oscar, Angela, Toby, Kevin, Creed, Stanley, Phyllis or Meredith…those characters are either too small or don’t have the requisite background to sustain a separate series. As much as people love Kelly, she’s a girl that’s good in small bursts. A whole show would be grating.

What about the warehouse? Then we can see a greater scope of the wackiness on the other side of Dunder Mifflin, plus cameos to boot. It’s perfect for crossovers…except they might feel they’ve done that already.

Staying in the building, there’s Vance Refrigeration and Bob Vance. If they made selling paper funny, imagine what they can do to refrigerators!

Following Jan would be interesting, but it depends on how her and Michael’s relationship pans out. She’s nutty, but she’s great to watch and has the background and the temperament to be a main character. It also makes perfect sense for her to completely change her life.

There’s also corporate, with Ryan the Boss and David Wallace. It would basically be an excuse to watch Ryan be an ass, which could be fun.

We could follow Karen and the Utica branch, but as she put it in “Branch Wars”, “It’s a pretty easy gig when your boss isn’t an idiot and your boyfriend’s not in love with somebody else,” so that means Utica is boring.

So that leaves the other main characters, the ones we relate to, the ones whose choices we agonize over. Although Jenna Fischer says she knows nothing, bets are on that the spinoff would revolve around her character and John Krasinski’s Jim. I’ve said this before, but as much as I want both of those characters to leave Dunder Mifflin, the show would be over if they left. Would it be like House, new hires we’re supposed to suddenly care for, missing our requisite cute couple? Like Cheers, with a spitfire receptionist in the manner of Rebecca? Jim and Pam are the everycouple in a way, except with a dramatic backstory...how realistic would it be that they would see Dwight and Angela and Michael again? You know they would in televisionworld. Would their story be just another pleasant family comedy? NBC hasn’t had one of those (in the traditional mold) in, well, forever. It’s not their thing.

Sooner or later, whatever surprises that come our way will seem natural, linear. It’s the nature of reruns, and now things are rerun so much quicker. It used to be that a show had to reach 100 episodes before being considered for syndication, but The Office, which started airing on TBS before season four started, doesn’t have nearly that many partly because its first season was a measly six episodes. But the show was a critical fave and consistently buzzworthy, and so seemed a worthwhile investment, especially considering that there are few big comedies in the pipeline now. Thursday’s episode, “The Dinner Party”, will give us a hint to where the show is heading. Even though the show’s coming back, it’s time to start preparing for good bye.