How Episodic Inconsistencies in the 80s Transitioned to Continuity Obsession in Early 21st Century
by James Albert Barr
"Nothing happened to me, Agent Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences. You've given up good and evil for behaviourism. You've got everybody in moral dignity pants - nothing is ever anybody's fault." - Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs novel by Thomas Harris (1988)
Over the last couple of years I've been belatedly making my way, gradually, through the first three seasons of the 1980s TV crime drama phenomenon, Miami Vice, which I purchased on DVD for fairly cheap prices - about five dollars a season, secondhand. During its original run, from 1984-1990, I was only an occasional viewer, because I was, at the time, a busy teenager who kept himself occupied with a lot of out-of-the-house activities: girlfriend, sports, high school plays/rehearsals, neighborhood/mallrat hangouts with buddies, etc.
I quite enjoyed the first two seasons and am now making my way through season 3. Just recently I watched episode 6 titled, "Shadow in the Dark". In this episode, which aptly aired on Halloween night in 1986, Detective James "Sonny" Crockett becomes obsessed, to the near-point of madness, with a cat burglar who is brazenly breaking into peoples' homes and strangely performing OCD-like acts, like spreading flour around his mostly female victim's kitchens and eating their raw meats, while his face is covered with flour, and he defaces the walls with disturbing drawings using red lipstick he's pilfered from a lady's bedroom as she sleeps. We learn immediately, during the ep's opening scene, what an utterly unhinged character this wack-job is, as he gesticulates to the night skies while approaching his next victim's home, like he's performing a ritual of some kind, wearing white surgical gloves but no mask, and constantly opening his mouth wide, in a bizarre, sensual manner, crazily enough.
Working with a completely strung-out cop named Ray Gilmore, who's eventually committed to an asylum because his mind finally cracks trying to "get into the head" of the prowler, Crockett guesses the right house, and at last, catches the lunatic just as he is about to murder someone for the first time. Sitting in the back-seat of a police car, we see the night-prowler, face all white with baking flour, still "in character", like he's not totally aware that he's been caught and arrested; he even seems like The Joker from Batman, particularly Heath Ledger's Joker from 2008's The Dark Knight, over 20 years later, during the now iconic scene with the Joker's head hanging outside of the backseat window of a car he's riding in, soaking up the diegetic atmosphere, taking it all in in all its "darkly existential sensuousness."
After watching the "Shadow in the Dark" episode, I immediately went to IMDb to check-out its reviews and other relevant notes on the ep. Reactions, either recalling its original airing or seeing it years later through a cultural lense at least two decades removed from the 80s, were relatively divided down the middle it seemed: it was either loved or hated, with only a couple middling reviews, or, as I would designate them, "liminal perceptions", which is where I would place my opinion of the polarizing episode. Ultimately, it received a 7.9 rating out of 10.
Those that loved the episode were impressed by its dark and disturbing tone, intense performances, especially Don Johnson's, and willingness to explore new areas hitherto only hinted at or marginally evinced, such as the sudden, "no exit" climaxes to some episodes, with its "undercurrent of cynicism and futility", from the first two seasons. And those that were disappointed with, or outright despised the "Shadow in the Dark" episode, took great pains to point out the egregious inconsistencies observed and befuddlement it provoked within them. Their issue with the episode was just how "out of character" it was compared to previous seasons, particularly, let alone the previous five episodes to season 3, given the discernible changes to the show that were obviously instituted for the start of the season during the early Fall of 1986.
Initially, during its first two seasons, Miami Vice was what Lee H. Katzin (who directed two episodes in Season 1) described as: "[A] show written for an MTV audience, which is more interested in images, emotions and energy than plot and character and words." In an evermore superficially stylised presentation through seemingly all mainstream and popular culture by the mid-80s, those easily digestible elements made the show an instant hit with viewers, particularly young viewers between the ages of 15-25, who were effectively enamoured with recent films of the time like Scarface, Trading Places, and especially Risky Business. The underlying, neoliberal, capitalistic message in the latter film being: "The 80s are gonna be a dog eat dog war of economic and materialistic supremacy with huge sexual rewards for the insatiably successful, so get it while you're young and hungry!"
But there was a dark, existential pall that subtly swaddled the entire postmodern milieu of much of the 80s, particularly from 1983 onwards, both in film (especially) and television (occasionally and exclusively with some shows not filmed before a studio audience). Miami Vice was undoubtedly one of those shows evincing "semiotic shadows". These "shadows and existential pall" were brought to a fever pitch of abyssal revelation from "semiotic evasiveness", as contemporary social critic John David Ebert calls it, when David Lynch's haunting, yet initially very popular, TV show Twin Peaks premiered on ABC on April 8, 1990. Television drama would never be the same afterwards (most missing the intensity-relieving levity that Twin Peaks provided), and would become ever more darker, disturbing and, quite frankly, nihilistic, from The Sopranos to Mad Men to Fringe to True Detective to Westworld to Severence, zeroing in on all the tawdry details and excruciating minutiae of seemingly shameful, but ambiguous, behaviour from not just the supposed villainous/conniving characters ("Reality TV" was all the rage, afterall, following The Sopranos 1999 debut) but even the lead protagonists!
I may expand on these "semiotic shadows" that permeated through the 1980s in a future article, but for now let's put the focus back on the truly "episodic" nature and specific tropes of 80s television, both for dramas and especially for comedies, and how that changed during the 90s and into the new millennium; a time, shortly after 9/11, that became fixated on continuity and expanded universes, as well as the now very popular "multi universes".
As mentioned regarding the 3rd Season Miami Vice episode, "Shadow in the Dark", in particular, being such a seemingly out of character vagary for Sonny Crockett's behaviour depicted in said episode, another interesting trope that was a regular fixture in 80s sitcoms was the one-off: "disappearing/absent-new-friend" guest-star. One personally memorable example of this was a Season 4 episode of Family Ties - one the 80s' most popular and beloved sitcoms that enjoyed a very successful 7-season run on NBC from 1982-1989.
The episode in question was titled, "You've Got a Friend", and it aired on Dec 19, 1985. In this episode Alex Keaton is visiting his sister Mallory at her place of employment, an upscale clothing store. While Mallory is busy with her job, Alex catches a young girl attempting to shoplift a few clothing items. He cuts her off before she can bolt from the store. Mallory then calls for security, and she's then taken into custody by authorities. We learn that the young girl, who's only around 12 years of age, is named Jessie (played by a then 15 year-old Martha Plimpton). She has an aggressive, snarky and cynical disposition. we also learn that she's from a foster home, and that she's been estranged from her parents for some time. Mallory feels great sympathy for her and tries to befriend Jessie, but she initially rejects Mallory's olive-branch attempt at friendship.
Eventually, Jessie's understandable defences begin to soften and she finally lets Mallory in, socially and personally. Later on in the episode, Jessie has a relapse of distrust and anger, and detaches herself once again from Mallory. In the final scene, Jessie suddenly appears at the Keaton family's backdoor. Mallory lets Jessie in and they "have a talk" in the family kitchen, where Jessie comes clean about her feelings. Mallory reassures her that she needn't be so bitter, defensive and withholding about their blossoming friendship, because Mallory genuinely values friendship and is loyal, despite what Jessie had gone through regarding the separation she experienced with her own family, and the volatile nature of living in a foster home where friendships/bonds can be suddenly truncated. When an understanding is reached between the two, Mallory and Jessie hug each other and the episode ends.
After this episode we, the week-by-week viewing audience, never see Jessie again, nor is she ever even mentioned again. What kind of short or longterm psychological effect was incurred, however subtle and mostly unnoticed by the Gen-Xers, younger and older, who watched these kinds of TV shows in the 80s, specifically? It's interesting, just a few weeks before Martha Plimpton's guest-turn on Family Ties, her future real-life, long-term boyfriend, the now-late River Phoenix, also appeared in a one-off episode of the sitcom titled, "My Tutor". Only in this episode, it's Alex who befriends the younger kid; have a brief fallout before reconciling by the end of the episode, only to never be seen nor heard from again in future eps.
Family Ties was hardly the only television show that featured such-like guest-stars. You would have seen them on sitcoms like The Cosby Show, Silver Spoons, Alf, Cheers, Punky Brewster, Different Strokes, Growing Pains, etc, etc. And in dramas of the time, a similarly typical trope ensued, not the least of which was the case in Miami Vice, wherein in-show fashion, said guest-star would tragically die at the end of their particular episode, thus exasperating, usually, Crockett's existential angst. The common denominator among all these shows in the 80s, however, was "moral genuineness". And with sitcoms, an utter lack of pronounced cynicism overall, nor much, if any irony. It was, after all, the Ronald Reagan era of general conservatism and its conjunctional "family values and tradition maintenance." That all changed during the vastly more liberal 90s.
With the aforementioned, and highly influential, Twin Peaks and its newly cinematic (literally and symbolically dark) aesthetic, as well as its soap opera-like continuity from episode to episode, sitcoms, too, began to change, both narratively and tonally. Arguably the biggest and most influential sitcom of the 90s was, unquestionably, Seinfeld. By its 4th season, the show had already integrated separate plot-points to intersect by episode's end, but now it had introduced season-long narratives and consistent call-backs to events from prior episodes, usually involving some social iteration of petty, selfish behaviour. One of the shows/sitcoms that Seinfeld had an immediate influence on was The Larry Sanders Show, and it too featured much story and narrative continuity.
Another key component that was typical of 90s shows, both dramas and comedies, was a very postmodern sense of "cynicism and irony", which began to darken and jade the general milieu of early 90s culture. These societal concepts were everywhere in the 1990s, though some of the 80s tropes overlapped into the new decade in shows like Full House and Quantum Leap. They were in music, especially in "alternative rock", "hip-hop", "post-rock" and the exploding "electronic/house music" scene. Like the popular rock music of the time, movies like The Silence of the Lambs, Presumed Innocent, Goodfellas, JFK, New Jack City, A Few Good Men, Basic Instinct, Unforgiven and Reservoir Dogs, were evincing a pronounced cynicism and accusatory attitude towards our institutions, establishments, traditions, social norms and our very nature itself, as if to unveil and expose our alleged true nature and motives in this world, this life. At the time, I, and many of my Gen-X brethren, were completely onboard for this grand expose of what we collectively felt was the neoliberal capitalist lie of the Reagan era, but were we ultimately duped in the end? Was there, as has been incrementally evident in the ensuing two or more decades, a carefully orchestrated "controlled opposition" for counter-cultural anti-establishment types, social rebels, political orphans, true poets/artists and honest philosophers/cultural theorists?
Because it seems very suspicious to me, and sundry others, that we have not only become, in all societal aspects, let alone in pop-culture, helplessly transfixed by the apparently necessary, emotionally-relieving and consumer-obsessed notion of "explaining everything away". Whether it be the seemingly endless array of sequels, prequels, spin-offs, fan fiction, expanded universes, multi universes, etc., in true "Dino De Laurentiis fashion", or watching/self-policing each other's activity, on-line and IRL, we appear to have, since the millennium (and especially after 9/11, crucially so), and the ubiquitous advent of social media, an insatiable appetite, nay demand, to "know everything about everything" about our pop-culture products, for its own sake, sans any real progression, knowledge, awareness and understanding. Why is that?
Returning to renowned film producer, the now-late Dino De Laurentiis, for some much-needed context, the screen-writer for 1991's The Silence of the Lambs, Ted Tally (who won an Academy Award for that film's script), once said, back in 2016, in an interview for Rolling Stone magazine: "No, it's the Hannibal Lector industry now. I think, good for them and good for Thomas Harris [the author of the novel, The Silence of the Lambs]. My feeling, though, goes back to when the late Dino De Laurentiis also tried to get me to adapt the 'Hannibal Rising' book. And I said, 'Dino, the more you explain this character, the less he is'. I don't want to know that somebody hurt his puppy when he was 8 years old. I don't want him to be conventionally motivated. Less is more with this character. But you can't convince anybody when there's profit to be made that that's true."
We currently live in a world, a culture, a society, that does want (like Rene Girard's concept of "mimetic desire"), nay demands, to know, in every minute detail, the more grisly the better, in fact, that "some serial killer's puppy was hurt by someone when he was 8 years old, and, thus, put him on track to lash-out at society in the most sick and disturbing way possible", because it satisfies our morbid curiosity and consumer addiction, and not because we could use such knowledge to resolutely prevent this from happening to other would-be murderers and their victims. The bottom-line is actually this: market profit, consumer profit, ego profit, primordial profit, and a kind of social control, ultimately, and nothing less it seems.
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