The problem with "Primetime America"

PBS's smart series takes a fresh way in TV history, but often miss the forest for the trees VIDEO.
The evolution of American television is such a rich topic that it is a wonder that it resulted in better documentaries. Too much effort to the subject feels like the Wikipedia entry with clips attached to address - a few scenes, a couple of dates, some pithy observations, a soundbite from someone who was there, and zip on the following thing ... "Prime Time America," which debuts tonight at 08:00 / 7 central, find a fresh and refreshing way. But the advance raves for the series oversell its virtues and ignore their weaknesses. Both are good and bad qualities is bound in what is admittedly a very clever format.

Rather than fixate on a particular show, performer, producer or era, "America Prime Time" - a co-production of the documentary group and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation - building its episodes for durable TV archetypes, stir in quotes from the producers, writers and artists. David Chase, Roseanne Barr, Mary Tyler Moore, Matthew Weiner, Vince Gilligan, Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner, Shonda Rhimes, Larry David, David Simon, Norman Lear, Diane English, the list of expert witnesses is a long and impressive. And because all the smart people asked smart questions, their answers to rise above the PR blather often fragrant in this type of doc.

Tonight's debut, "independent woman," begins with "I Love Lucy" in the 1950s, then takes us through Mary Tyler Moore's pioneering characters in the '60s and 70's by Murphy Brown in the 80's, finishing in the present with "Sex and the City," "Weeds," "Nurse Jackie," "Desperate Housewives" and "Grey's Anatomy." The sketches of the individual performances and their heroines double as a not-too-stealthy documentary of modern feminist thinking and images of the 1950 through the present. Next week's episode, "man of the house" playing like a response, or partner, the premiere, tracing a line from "Father Knows Best" and "The Honeymooners" by "The Cosby Show," "The Bernie Mac Show , "" The Sopranos "and" Modern Family "as the pilot, and all the episodes in" Prime Time America, "the second installment is only apparently" over "his shows and characters. It behaves mainly as reflections of what happened in the culture in general - in this case, the crisis of American masculinity. Future episodes deal with the "impoverished" ("The United States of Tara" Curb your enthusiasm, "Beavis and Butthead" and the like) and "The Crusader" ("M * A * S * H," "The X -Files, "" House ").

The filmmakers' format is an unusual and exciting, but it is also difficult. This makes for some problems that plagued other TV docs history while creating others. And there are times when it is so wrapped up in his enthusiasm about a particular show or performer that briefly left the episode's rhetorical by-line - not a bad thing if the input does not indicate a more compelling set of than the one you're watching.

For example, next week's "Man of the House" is very off the rails in a good way when it gets to Tony Soprano, a suburban gangster whose internal crowd was so large unruly that they can not be constrained by the episode's thesis Gender Studies 101. For a few minutes to stop the episode about male self-image as reflected and shaped by TV, and turned into a "Sopranos" worship festival, with pretty much every expert witness (including "Twin Peaks" creator David Lynch) rhapsodizing about how great the show was, and what a great feeling to have made them as artists and people.

I loved "The Sopranos" also. But this segment points by accident how this documentary's greatest asset, its fresh form, concludes potentially rich areas of study, and create a "forest for the trees" problem. There was more "I Love Lucy," "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "Murphy Brown" as images of a dependent or independent woman, and there was more to Andy Taylor, Cliff Huxtable, Tony Soprano and Walter White as images of breadwinning fatherhood and masculinity in crisis. There are times when you feel the show happened to be inverted in some cases all demonstrate his thesis only.

This is especially noticeable in tonight's opener, the history of the women characters on TV sounds a lot less messy (and more inspiring) than it is. The treatment of people in "Man of the House" is more complicated - at once more rigorous and compassionate - if tonight's portrayal of women and feminism, which often fall into a "You go, girl!" Vibe, and overlooks the lake problematic aspects of the investigation show that. "Desperate Housewives" and "Sex and the City", for example, milestone that deserves to be called, but you could easily an hour to fill with complaints that feminist-minded critics against them filed, starting with the hold that the heroines are basically campy drag queen fantasies of actual heterosexual woman. "Prime Time America" ​​does not even go there, according to this show, when Mary Richards threw her hat in the air, television history was a victory for the representation of women to another.

Things become looser and more contentious in the coming weeks. Among others, we get to hear Michael C. Hall price of his "Dexter" character, a sweet serial killer in the same episode with David Simon ("Homicide," "The Wire") and Tom Fontana ("homicide," "Oz") talk about why they do not of the show. To be honest, I would not have minded a more free-associative, freewheeling series - one that, for example, an entire episode discussing surrealism and horror on TV, from "The Twilight Zone" and "The Outer Limits" by " Twin Peaks "and" The Sopranos, "or the cop and hospital dramas as mirrors of modern urban life, with detours into the archetypes that the series was so in love. Yes, I realize that I ask for a different series than the one I'm reviewing, and believe me, this one is good - worth watching and arguing about. But if it was completely satisfactory, my mind wandered in other directions.