Ask Matt: NBA Bouncing Scripted TV Off of NBC, Will Trent’s Personal Crises & More
Welcome to the Q&A with TV critic — also known to some TV fans as their “TV therapist” — Matt Roush, who’ll try to address whatever you love, loathe, are confused or frustrated or thrilled by in today’s vast TV landscape. (We know background music is too loud, it’s the most frequent complaint, but there’s always closed-captioning. Check out this story for more tips.)
One caution: This is a spoiler-free zone, so we won’t be addressing upcoming storylines here unless it’s already common knowledge. Please send your questions and comments to [email protected]. Look for Ask Matt columns on most Tuesdays.
Why Did NBC Go So Big on Basketball?
Question: Did no one at NBC look at the ratings for regular-season NBA games before they paid a huge amount of money to broadcast them? Most of the shows they just canceled all draw bigger numbers. Playoffs ratings aren’t much better and keep declining as the NBA on-court product gets worse. They won’t even be showing the Finals or have the great Inside the NBA crew to attract viewers. At best, they are hoping for a 7-game series in the conference finals to include big market teams in hopes of drawing any kind of numbers to justify this horrible move. That is not a good ratio compared to full seasons of shows with higher ratings. I hope intelligence at the network can be found sometime soon. Available for network consultation … — Rob
Matt Roush: This discussion asks me to weigh in on two areas where I’m hardly an expert: TV sports rights and linear broadcast ratings. So instead of countering Rob’s arguments, I’ll confine my observations to the bigger picture that NBC’s 11-year commitment to the NBA in prime time is part of a larger trend of how the networks are moving ever further away from filling their schedule with modestly successful and increasingly expensive dramas and comedies. For NBC to turn over a weeknight (Tuesdays in the fall, Sundays at midseason) to a sports franchise is a reflection of how important sports are as an investment, and even if the ratings don’t always look great on paper, the demographics are almost certainly more appealing to advertisers than that of older-skewing procedurals, and sports programming tends to be watched in real-time as opposed to being time-shifted the way so many of us watch TV now.
And look what’s happening elsewhere on the fall schedule, where reality-TV competitions and game shows, as well as sports, are gobbling up time periods that once belonged to dramas or comedies. Even before basketball kicks in, starting in October, NBC is giving the 10 pm/9c Tuesday hour in the fall to a Jimmy Fallon reality show, On Brand, which also takes over the first hour on Fridays that once belonged to comedies and some dramas. Brilliant Minds after The Voice on Mondays, and The Hunting Party on Thursdays at 10/9c, are the only scripted shows on NBC’s fall lineup that aren’t part of Dick Wolf‘s One Chicago and Law & Order franchises.
On ABC, there’s Monday Night Football, Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday, Shark Tank moving to Wednesday (taking over the 10/9c hour that once showcased drama) after The Golden Bachelor, and Celebrity Wheel of Fortune in Shark Tank‘s old Friday slot, which means the scripted footprint on ABC’s fall schedule is reduced to one hour each on Tuesday (High Potential) and Wednesday (comedy), with Thursday the only night of all-scripted programming. Fox is even less committed to scripted in the fall, with one night of drama (Tuesday) and one night of animated comedy (Sunday), and the rest a mishmash of game shows, reality, and sports. CBS is the exception, still focused on scripted shows most nights, but even they’re turning to reality (The Road) on Sundays in the fall, with Tracker the sole drama remaining on the night.
Enough with the Will Trent Traumas
Question: What is happening with Will Trent? For a show about murder, it used to be fun and different, even with their past lives. Each character had its own unique quirky way about things. We enjoyed their pasts and how they weaved into their current lives. However, we’ve been doing a lot of eye-rolling this half of the season. Every character has had some sort of disaster or over-the-top personal problem in every single episode. There have been so many things that we are no longer surprised or entertained by the stories. They bring in new characters and then, a few episodes later, they are gone. Did they really think we wanted to see or experience Will killing a child and weeks of his tortured aftermath? I could go on.
Is it a case of the show becoming so popular that they think no matter what they do, we will like it? It feels as if now they are just sitting around a table and throwing out ideas to squeeze in a script. It’s not working. Thanks for listening. — Teresa
Matt Roush: “Sitting around a table and throwing out ideas” is pretty much how a TV show’s writers’ room works, and while quirky cases of the week are enjoyable, especially with characters like these, I understand why the writers want to shake things up from time to time. I mostly agree that it can feel like piling on when the show drops one melodramatic bombshell after another: Angie’s mom dies, Angie’s pregnant, her partner Ormewood has a life-threatening tumor, Will meets his long-lost biological father. (The latter would have been enough.) But I’ll push back on the storyline about Will’s accidental shooting of the young boy and his emotional response. That felt legitimate, especially for someone as sensitive and damaged as Will, and even the lighter procedurals deserve to deal with tough dramatic situations when warranted.
Question: I really like the show, but why is it even named Will Trent? The characters are nothing like those in Karin Slaughter‘s books. — Sandra R.
Matt Roush: This debate has followed the show from the beginning, when the casting of Ramón Rodríguez as Will veered so sharply, ethnically and otherwise, from the Will as presented in Karin Slaughter’s gripping best-sellers. (I always pictured Will as a tall guy with a folksy Henry Fonda quality.) Some elements of the literary Will carry over: his abusive upbringing in the foster-care system, his dyslexia, and Betty. And there are aspects of Angie, Faith, and Amanda that reflect the books, though they’ve taken the characters in different directions. And of course, there’s no Sara Linton (yet), who in the Slaughter timeline was introduced way before readers met Will. Given the success of the ABC series, now heading into its fourth season, I figure that most fans have come to terms that the TV and book series are entirely different creations. I’ll admit, though, that when a new Will Trent book is published, it can take a few chapters to reacclimate myself to that world.
The Optics of Cancellations
Question: I know this is a touchy subject in our current political climate. But it sure seems like shows with Black leads are being cancelled at a disproportionate rate. I know S.W.A.T. was on its last legs, but The Equalizer had plenty more stories to tell, and the spin-off looked pretty good. The Irrational and Found were both fairly interesting and a little bit different, and now they are gone too. We know CBS is trying to stay on the good side of the current administration because of the potential merger, but what is NBC concerned about? I hate to even consider that networks are deciding on programming depending on who is in office, but it sure makes me wonder. What are your thoughts? And thanks for the column. I have read it forever, and I always watch the new shows that you recommend. — Kim
Matt Roush: Thanks for the feedback. And yes, politics these days is something of a third rail in this column. (We could all use a break!) And while I can see that the optics of these decisions leave a lot to be desired, I’ll make the same argument as when I tried to explain the flurry of cancellations over the last few turbulent weeks, that I see most of these as driven almost entirely by economics and not by politics (or even ratings for that matter). As discussed earlier, NBC’s commitment to the NBA this fall meant more than usual had to give, and I would hope, even in an environment where diversity in some quarters has been demonized, that shows with minority leads weren’t seen as more expendable on that criterion alone.
What’s in a Name?
Comment: I remember a few years ago, I wrote to say how silly HBO Max was to drop the “HBO” name. I see they finally agree with me. :) — Paul
Matt Roush: Try finding someone who doesn’t agree with you on this ridiculous branding debacle — including John Oliver on Last Week Tonight as recently as Sunday night’s show. Removing “HBO” from the streamer’s identity, as if that would somehow limit its appeal, was a bone-headed decision then, and the reversal has occasioned much well-deserved “told ya so” schadenfreude.
And Finally …
Question: I’m trying to understand something. Wild Cards, granted it’s a Canadian show, hires Martin Sheen to shoot a few videos where he doesn’t interact with anyone in the cast, his character is supposedly dead, and The CW doesn’t publicize him guest-starring (I don’t know about Canada). Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to hire a respectable Canadian actor for the role? He did well, but what was the point? A great many actors could have done it. — Edward H.
Matt Roush: I don’t think you’re suggesting that a show like Wild Cards is somehow beneath someone with the stature of Martin Sheen. The way I look at it is: If you can get someone like Martin Sheen to do a cameo, why wouldn’t you? (Why this wasn’t better promoted is another question.) In terms of why Martin Sheen, consider that his character of Joseph Edwards, was touted as “the greatest con man of all time.” By having someone as recognizable as Sheen play the part underscores the fact that Edwards is something of a legend. If a lesser-known character actor had taken the gig, it wouldn’t have had the impact. And we certainly wouldn’t be talking about it.
That’s all for now—and because of the Memorial Day holiday, we’re taking a break until early June. We can’t do this without your participation, so please keep sending questions and comments about TV to [email protected]. (Please include a first name with your question.)
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