The USA Network has slowly built up a reliable stable of original programming and in the process has developed an identifiable formula. This year’s summer lineup is probably the biggest it’s ever been, with new scripted dramas on four nights of the week. As the headline for this David Hiltbrand story notes: “With seven popular shows, USA Network’s having a good summer.” I thought it’s worth taking a look at what works and what doesn’t quite work on these shows.
USA Network shows aren’t just part of a consistent brand, but are the result of a mathematical equation. For example, there is a color scheme:
USA is so specific about the look and feel of its shows that it tells producers to make sure there is a “fruit bowl” in each potentially drab scene. This is metaphor: It could literally mean a bowl of fruit or, more often, a splash of color, as in a scene in “White Collar” with a red office chair in an otherwise monotone room or a bold-colored billboard outside a window, against an always-blue sky.
In fact, Margaret Lyons at the Vulture spelled out how to create a hit show for USA.
- Find a Catchy, Bland Title, Preferably Two Words, That’s Already a Phrase in the Lexicon
- Create an Unlikely Duo: One Rule-Bending, the Other Uptight
- Make Someone a Rookie With a Desirable Area of Expertise
- Add Will-They-or-Won’t-They Chemistry
- Add a Sunshine-y Locale…
- …So You Can Have a Poster With Characters in Sunglasses
These are the shows that are part of the formula:
- Psych (since 2006; set in Santa Barbara)
- Burn Notice (since 2007; set in Miami)
- In Plain Sight (since 2008; set in Albuquerque)
- Royal Pains (since 2009; set in the Hamptons)
- White Collar (since 2009; set in New York City)
- Covert Affairs (since 2010; set in Washington, DC)
- Fairly Legal (since 2011; set in San Francisco)
- Suits (since 2011; also set in New York City)
- Necessary Roughness (since 2011; set in Long Island)
(If you’re really interested in the USA brand strategy, I strongly urge you to read Cory Barker’s analysis.)
In 2009, I wrote a post about shows that were regular viewing options for me, but were also not nearly as good as they ought to be. Most of the USA shows fit in this category.
Burn Notice is the strongest of all of them, for me. It’s not a perfect show, and after five seasons, it’s running low on creative juices, but it’s the strongest execution of elements that are also repeated in other shows.
For example, the narration by Burn Notice’s protagonist Michael Westen works. It can set up the theme for the episode or give technical information about some tactic that is being employed. Necessary Roughness and In Plain Sight both use opening narration by the central characters, but the words don’t ring true. It sounds like what it is: the writer of that script trying to telegraph that episode’s message.
All of the USA shows I’ve listed are about a central character who is an expert in his or her field. Shawn Spencer in Psych has keen observational skills; Hank Lawson on Royal Pains is a gifted doctor; Kate Reed in Fairly Legal is a top mediator. But while Westen is very good at what he does, the show never makes it look easy for him to accomplish his feats. Frequently, the plan he has set up to take down a villain falls apart and Westen has to scramble to recover.
In contrast, Dr. Dani Santino on Necessary Roughness can cure anyone through her combination of talk therapy and hypnosis – all over the course of a single episode. Hank Lawson is an amazing physician whose specialty is apparently every medical condition anybody has ever had in the world; he can use a bendable drinking straw and a bottle of shampoo to cure an aneurism.
If you think in terms of storytelling, what is so interesting about a character that is very good at what they do and they perform their skill and then they win the day? Think about classic movies like Rocky or Star Wars. They’re about people who have to overcome incredible odds in order to triumph.
It’s not that you can’t do shows about people who are really good at their jobs. Think about TV detectives Lt. Columbo and Jim Rockford. They’re good at their jobs and they always win, but their looks are very unassuming. Columbo wears a rumpled raincoat and wanders around as if confused. Rockford lives out of a trailer and frequently gets beat up. Most of the USA shows’ experts are very attractive in appearance; they look like the winners they are.
In fact, some of these characters take it a step further. They know they’re good; they know they’re right. But as portrayed, they’re just arrogant. They spend a lot of screentime arguing with other characters about why things should be done their way; after they lose the argument, they go ahead and do it their way anyway.
I’m particularly thinking of Fairly Legal’s Kate Reed and In Plain Sight’s Mary Shannon. To put it plainly, these two are just rude and selfish. And because they’re the heroes, they always turn out to be right in the end. In particular, Shannon just pushes the boundaries of propriety, with both her family and her co-workers. Shawn Spencer is along the same lines, but the bigger problem I had with that show (I gave up on it in Season 3) was that it was clear that they mostly wanted to do a silly show rather than an actual mystery (I don’t know if things improved). For that matter, Dr. Dani also seems constantly plagued by episodes of righteous anger.
At the other end of the scale is Annie Walker, the 28-year-old CIA trainee at the center of Covert Affairs. Annie is whatever the script needs her to be at the moment: skilled one moment, naïve the next. She’s one of the Agency’s top field agents or a total wet-behind-the-ears greenhorn. (I should point out the real breakout character is Auggie Anderson, a special ops officer who was blinded on a mission.)
Could just one time, when everyone else is sure of something and only Annie wants to follow another path, could she turn out to be wrong? Just once?
(I should also point out that every episode of Covert Affairs is filled with moments that recall the TV show Alias, always to the detriment of Covert Affairs.)
The other shows that I think are fairly successful with their execution are White Collar and Suits. I think the biggest reason I like White Collar is because there’s an actual interesting conflict at the center of the show.
Neal Caffrey is a con-man, forger and thief. Peter Burke is an FBI agent dedicated to catching such people. Neal is congenitally dishonest. Peter is true & clean to his core, almost incapable of dishonesty. They’re thrown together, first as prisoner and warden, then as co-workers, then as friends. But Neal is constantly drawn to his former criminal life and Peter simply cannot look the other way.
The only real flaw to the show is the ongoing conspiracies that run through each season. Neal was chasing a music box that lead to stolen art that has now come into his possession, but must be disposed of discretely. There’s also the mysterious death of his girlfriend. This part of the story typically trickles out in drips and drabs over the season, often seeming needlessly complex. (This ongoing storyline element is typically one of Burn Notice’s few flaws as well; last year, Cory Barker also pointed out the pointlessness of ongoing arcs in USA series.)
That said, this season’s continuing story about some stolen art treasures that Peter and his friend Mozzie are in possession of paid off wonderfully in last night’s season finale, which was all about Peter having to decide whether to embrace his new legal life working for the FBI or to cash out and return to his criminal ways.
Suits also has two strong characters, but is based on a key premise that seems quite flawed to me, almost fatally so. Crack lawyer Harvey Specter hires Mike Ross to be his new associate; Ross must pretend to be a Harvard Law graduate, when he is actually a dropout.
The show’s creator Aaron Korsh explained that he changed the initial premise:
I wrote a spec piece that I originally intended to be a half-hour Entourage-type based on my experiences working on Wall Street… We went in and pitched to USA how we would take these same characters and put them into the world of law… It was interesting because when it’s Wall Street, he was only faking going to Harvard, he wasn’t faking a law degree. To work on Wall Street, to be a mathematical genius, there is no degree you need to have whereas to practice [law], you need to pass the bar.
This is a key point. Harvey and Mike are hiding a huge secret that can’t last forever and that will have huge repercussions if it’s ever exposed. What’s the eventual deus ex machina that solves this dilemma? Mike magically gets a law degree on weekends? How do they write their way out of this?
The next show to come from USA should be Common Law:
‘Common Law’ stars [Michael] Ealy as Travis Marks, partner to Wes Mitchell (Warren Kole), two police officers on the homicide team at the Los Angeles Police Department. In true USA Network format, these two partners have issues, and in effort to solve them, their captain sends the two to couples counseling.
Two other pilots have been cast, but not yet shot: Over/Under (A day trader with a gambling problem gets fired and has to start over in Brooklyn) and Wild Card (Two lawyers solve people’s problems in Las Vegas).
FOOTNOTE: Carrie Raisler reviewed last night’s Covert Affairs season finale and perfectly expressed my feelings about Annie Walker:
It’s beyond ridiculous that Annie can always follow her hunches with no consequences later, and it’s even more frustrating that her hunches all stem from her almost pathological idealism. It’s tiring, especially because she ends up being right every single time. (Once, she just needs to be horribly wrong and have her idealism thrown back in her face. It would do wonders for her character.)
I also think the A.V. Club’s Kenny Herzog nicely captured the dynamic of White Collar:
Man straddles both sides of the law, man thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room, man incites chain of consequences that effect other peoples’ lives and, as is the case for Neal in “Countdown,” man is forced to confront the dire results of his actions.