newcritics

Let’s set the Mad Men natterings - high toned, upscale criticism - aside for moment, shall we? And let’s be honest - not everything about television is classy. That’s not (solely) why we watch.

I’m not too proud to admit that I watch popular entertainments, the kind sometimes known as “cheesy”. I take real issue with critics, especially movie critics (that means you, Manohla Dargis) who can’t admit to the sheer pleasures of popcorn entertainments with the intellectual heft of cotton candy. Or Eye Candy, if you prefer. Same for television - it’s not all The Sopranos and Weeds and Six Feet Under.

(And no, we won’t need to go so low as to insist on admitting that we’ve all watched a little reality television - if pressed, I will admit to knowing about I Love Money and Paradise Hotel… but they don’t just put the “guilty” in “guilty pleasures”; it’s more like the “wreck” in “train wreck.”)

All of which is to say… let’s kick off our Jimmy Choos and talk a little bit about the happy resurgence of the nighttime soap - and admit that enjoying Gossip Girl, 90210, and Dirty Sexy Money is not a sign of the apocalypse; just a little guilt-free pleasure for people who miss the golden (literally) days of Dynasty.

If one format has suffered most in the decline and splintering of the television audience - this year’s top ten shows would not make the top twenty of the seventies, from a ratings standpoint - it’s the death of the “continuing drama.” Across daytime television, the classic soaps of the genre are generally dying or dead, with only a few holdouts barely chugging along (this is where I share my best friend’s lament that one day Guiding Light, the longest story ever told, will soon cease to exist).

On nighttime television, the “golden age” of nighttime soaps came with the arrival of Dallas in 1978, followed by Dynasty shortly thereafter. At one point, some 10 or so hours of nighttime television were consumed by heavily painted women battling one another for handsome, feckless ne’er-do-wells, all dressed to the nines in luxurious settings (extra points if you realize I’m generalizing about Flamingo Road).

It’s become near legend that all of this can be summed up in Dynasty, the show which, more than the others, symbolized the best and worst of eighties excess. That’s not entirely fair - both Dallas and particularly its spin-off, Knot’s Landing, lasted longer, and had overall stronger ratings.

It’s Knot’s Landing, really, too, that also enshrined a simpler, more middle class notion of the kind of drama that fuels soaps - the interpersonal relationships and economic challenges that allow the audience to see themselves in the drama. It’s out of Knot’s Landing, really, that we get a lot of what followed in soaps - Melrose Place and the original Beverly Hills 90210, as well as The OC - which focused on the dramas in suburban tract housing and garden apartment style living. Upscale, sure… but hardly the life of mansions and furs.

For fans of the genre, much hope was pinned to The OC, which seemed poised to achieve success of Dynasty type proportions, but fizzled quickly over the usual problem plaguing soaps: writing. It’s hard to sustain the level of conflict needed, while not losing audiences, especially people who feel that “coming into the middle” will be confusing (the best daytime soaps have a unique form of tap dancing where you can tune, after months of missing it, and know who the main characters are, and follow the conflict).

By rights, Josh Schwartz, who presided over The OC, should not necessarily be trusted with Gossip Girl, which he is producing for The CW; he admits the show got away from him. But he also seems to have learned a thing or two: Gossip Girl is sharper, more focused, and more dramatic than The OC ever dreamed.

Based on the series of novels by Cecily von Ziegesar , Gossip Girl helped create a whole new genre of “tween fiction,” much of it centered on the doings of elite private schools (a high toned, more literary example of this is Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep), and the competitions, especially, of young girls. On TV, Gossip Girl began with renewing the rivalry of two former best friends, wild child Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf, good girl with a bad side. Serena, trying to escape her past, began a relation ship with Dan, a nice boy from Brooklyn also in their school, but clearly not in the elite set. Blair, meanwhile, struggled with her handsome, feckless boyfriend Nate and her attraction to the fairly louche Chuck Bass.

What adds layers of depth to the proceedings is that Gossip Girl folds in the doings of the parents as well - Dan’s father, a gallery owner and musician, and his longstanding fascination with Serena’s mother, Lily, has added layers to both the teen and adult relationships. Like Dawson’s Creek, there’s a “kids are 40, parents are 16″ ethos to it, but reversed: where Dawson’s tried to enshrine teen angst as some sort of iconic truth telling, Gossip Girl’s parents and adults meet in booze-fueled excess; in that way it reflects our odd cultural primness, by voicing disapproval of the “do whatever feels good” ethic of The Me Generation Boomers, while reveling in our loose living ways.

Gossip Girl’s phenomenal success - though low rated, it dominates pop culture, and is causing Nielsen no end of headaches in trying to evaluate the role of DVR and iTunes downloads on TV watching - leads directly to the revived 90210. The CW is staking its forunes this season on going young, wild and upscale (i’m consciously ignoring the other CW teen soap, Privileged, which also fits). It would be easy for 90210 to be Gossip Girl West, but the show, wisely, has revived not only the original’s premise, but also it’s quietly moralizing stance - there may be casual sex and drugs… but we’re not happy about it. The key early storyline has been young actress Adriana, who’s become a cautionary tale of drug abuse gone wrong.

90210 revives the old show’s basic notions: young, outsider family moves into the Beverly Hills scene and two young teens - in this case Annie Wilson and her adopted brother Dixon - must navigate an unfamiliar world of wealth, fame and privilege. Here, too the parents are flawed images of decency - Principal Wilson makes both dad mistakes and professional ones, his wife is being drawn into a high powered career as a professional photographer. But family, and the connections between relatives, remains paramount.

What will be interesting to see is how these shows navigate the zeitgeist of pop culture now that the bottom has fallen out of our financial system - none of the newest nighttime dramas really reflect anyone outside of the upper middle class. Even the Wilsons as the “new Walshes” of 90210 live more upscale than the last, in the house of Grandma (Dad’s mother), a washed up actress - brilliantly played, we should mention, by Julie Walters, who along with a fragile Jill Clayburgh on Dirty Sexy Money is helping to redefine notions of how women age. There’s little to reflect real working class living, even if Dad is the high school principal.

That may be the secret to success for these shows, though; at a time when being wealthy may seem villainous, it’s these dramas that can really touch on the mix of resentment and aspiration in the culture. All three of the shows rely on the oldest of tropes - that being rich does not make you happy, that you wouldn’t trade your life for these kind of problems, that simple traditional values are really best. Dirty Sexy Money, in that sense, probably lays out the moral components most sharply, with Peter Krause serving as family lawyer to the Darling(!!) family, a sprawling collection of wealth and excess. DSM goes further than the others to make its wealthy characters less likable, and the moral quandaries more pronounced. At its best, this disdain gives the show tremendous bite - Krause has always been a strong actor, but here he holds the center of the proceedings with a real verve, and top notch stars like Calyburgh (she’s still got it) and Donald Sutherland (in one of his best performances of his career) give the show tremendous luster. But the show has a pace and energy level that’s hard to sustain, and its hard to know what’s important when everything is pitched at the same high adrenaline, over the top wail. Dirty Sexy Money would probably have nice smaller moments… but it doesn’t seem to know how.

Still, it’s a minor quibble - when the storylines are this satisfying, it seems churlish to not leave room for these shows to continue to find their legs and mature. Though innocuous, these are dramas that are really pushing subtle cultural change, the way only popular entertainments can - both 90210 and DSM are featuring the first black man/white female romantic pairings on TV that are presented as simply normal, not noteworthy (as we mentioned back with Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, black man, white woman pairings are entirely rare, even in our supposedly integrated times). Much of what’s good on these shows can be attributed to stronger writing than many continuing dramas have had, especially lately, and actually taking advantage of the benefits of drawing out conflict and rounding out characters through longer story arcs. That, too, is probably a side benefit of the general movement towards more “quality television” - what is The Sopranos, really, beyond mob soap opera?

But then too, the other elements of TV production shouldn’t be slighted - these shows look terrific, with careful attention to sets and costumes, especially Gossip Girl, which would get nailed as entirely false were it not so au courant in its fashion stylings. These things matter (and it was one place where Esther Shapiro was probably right to nag Dynasty’s funders for the money to dress her characters accurately). It also matters that across these shows, the performers are not just pretty faces, but competent actors. The young stars on Gossip Girl and 90210 more than hold their own, and seem mindful of the opportunities these plum roles represent. And it’s a kick not just to see Shannon Doherty and Jennie Garth reunited on 90210, but to realize that both of them are capable, experienced actresses with a lot to offer.

It’s easy, of course, to dismiss all of this as justifying a guilty pleasure. Enjoyment, first and foremost, is a reasonable standard for entertainment, naturally, and we shouldn’t feel defensive about it. But the continuing drama holds our attentions and imaginations because it helps to illuminate who we are: not just good, but bad, not just high minded, but also shallow. I won’t pretend not to find meaning it. Wash me in those suds.