The Rise of the Dark Side

[thefourthvine]

Okay, so a few months ago I made a playlist for Best Beloved (based around the theme of heroes and saving the world, additions still gratefully accepted) featuring the song Michael (Jump in), which is actually written (Jumpin) in the version I bought, but I refuse to believe that. Anyway, what I didn't realize when I put the song on the mix is that it is, at least according to BB, a song written by a car to David Hasselhoff.

Best Beloved spent some time explaining this concept to me - apparently, the car was an artificial intelligence, and together he and Michael (played by David Hasselhoff) fought crime. And then I asked her about the line in the song that goes:

"It's not like you/To turn your back and let the dark side win"

Obviously, this gave me a mental image of the show as a kind of Star Wars crossover, where Michael was a Jedi and the car was his - trusty, um, whatever. Racer-thing, maybe. Basically, I was sort of envisioning David Hasselhoff as Anakin Skywalker, which made my brain hurt.

BB explained to me that, no, it wasn't about Michael's dark side. "Because I don't think he really had one," she said.

"But without angst, what do you write about in the third season?" I asked her.

She didn't know. Apparently her television knowledge is not that encyclopedic.

Thinking about it, though, I'm not sure I can imagine this concept. He's a lone wolf white guy out to save the world with just his car (and, I'm guessing, his fists or maybe a gun, although BB did not go into that part)! Surely he must have:

1. Angst, including a tragic back story.
   
2. A dead wife or girlfriend or kid something, or maybe just one who left him with prejudice after she found the photos of him with a puppy on his dick. (Warning for a dude with a puppy on his dick. NSFW, is what I'm saying. Also possibly not all that safe for your brain.)
   
3. A constant struggle with the dark side, whether it be his alcoholism or his desire to eat people or his evil twin or his general dickishness or whatever.

You can't have TV without those things, is my understanding. Even in Sports Night, a half-hour comedy show, Danny had a dead brother, a bad relationship with his parents, and some kind of major emotional breakdown including acting out on air. He had plenty of angst! He had a dark side! He was a news anchor on a half-hour comedy show. So I really don't see how a crimefighter with an intelligent car could get out of this. (BB does recall that the car apparently had some angst. And an evil twin.)

Except, as previously documented extensively in this space, my understanding of TV is limited and narrow. So - can you have TV without those things? I mean, are these the actual requirements, or am I just confused? And if those are the requirements, was it always that way? Can you pinpoint an era as the Rise of Main Character Angst? What about Main Character Dark Sides?

Tell me about angst and dark sides on TV, is what I'm saying!

Comments

[apatheia_jane]

I'm trying to think of an example of a show that does not have Main Character Angst/Dark Side, & I'm struggling.

Lost girl has angst, but the audience is usually too caught up in the fluff to care. Rizzoli & Isles does not have much. Community is pretty low on it.

All I'm doing is coming up with examples of main character angst driving plot. Angel, Dr Who, Starbuck, Xena (omg Xena so much), ranma 1/2 (actually a female or panda, rather than a dark side, House.

I feel sure that it is possible. And yet, I can't really think of a good example of it being done.

[eleanorjane]

Off the top of my head, the only one I can think of is Castle.

[rheanna]

TOS James Kirk was a character who had virtually no dark side, which probably reflects the era in which he was created. TOS Kirk was basically a guy who was really, really good at being a starship captain and really, really liked his job, and didn't need much in life except to fly around the galaxy, bed the female guest star of the week, and spend a LOT of time with his Vulcan first officer. Any angst he did experience was generally resolved by the end of the episode. The later movies tried to give him Leading Man Angst in the form of David Marcus, but it never quite stuck. The only trauma you really *believed* Kirk experienced was over Spock's death and the destruction of the Enterprise, and both those things tied back into his original 1969 characterisation rather than the backstory that was added later in the movies. Reboot Kirk, otoh, has Major Angst about the death of his father, and a few anger management issues thrown in: in 2010, Kirk can't be just a guy who's really good at his job and is a success within the system (youngest starship captain ever), he has to be a rebel who succeeds almost in spite of himself.

The ST:TNG characters were pretty angst-free, weren't they? Picard accumulated increasing amounts of angst as the series and movies went on; although he went through his share of traumatic events, the only one which was referenced as having had a deep and abiding psychological impact on him was his time as Locutus of Borg -- famously, he had to face up to the immediate emotional aftermath in 'Family', and after that his feelings about the Borg affected his judgment on several occasions.

[pocketmouse]

This. Actually, a lot of the TNG characters had angst in their past, but usually it was used for an episode or two and that was it. Tasha and Worf both had some variation on Troubled Childhood, Dr. Crusher's husband had died, etc. But those things came up probably twice a season at a laaaarge stretch.

[st_aurafina]

Michael Knight had angst, didn't he? Wasn't he repenting for some dark deed in his past? Or am I mixing this up with the Equalizer? (KITT and the Equalizer... woah, I just invented the best crossover ever!) Also, I think the car had a dark side. It went evil this one time.

Oh, wait, this was a serious discussion, wasn't it. Um.

[malnpudl]

*giggling helplessly*

I sort of love your brain.

[staranise]

This is not what you asked for, but I had to share. The Wikipedia page on the TV series has been vandalized:

Self-made hundredaire Felix Scott rescues puppies and police detective ALF after a near fatal kitten lick to the face, giving him a new identity (via plastic surgery) and a new name: Michael Knight. Felix selects ALF to be the primary puppy caretaker in the pilot program of his Knight Industries-funded public justice organization, the Foundation for Cute and Adorable (FLAG).

[happydork]

*laughs* I think what I like best is how few words have been changed!

Notes from the days of 3 channels and B&W

[wordweaverlynn]

I've missed a great deal of TV, but when I stopped watching in about 1975 it was possible to be a TV character without angst. Mary Tyler Moore, anyone? How about the characters on Bonanza? Gilligan's Island? I Love Lucy? They had dilemmas but no angst.

TV is a different world now. MASH and All in the Family changed it. Then the X-Files (yeah, I did watch some TV in the 1990s) changed it again. I stopped watching again around 1997 and was astonished.

I'm sure there are flip, empty-headed sitcoms still, but you don't have to choose between them and PBS.

Re: Notes from the days of 3 channels and B&W

[thefourthvine]

MASH and All in the Family? Weren't those - um, sitcoms? I mean, MASH was about a war, but still - comedy, right?

(And all I really know about Gilligan's Island, I have to admit, is that BB watched it in her youth and much admired a musical version of Hamlet that they did, and that in Galaxy Quest, the aliens said, "Oh, those poor people." But I admit that "musical version of Hamlet" does not exactly equal dark and angsty in most cases.)

[greenygal]

Hmm. Michael has an angsty backstory (and to some degree an angsty present), no question, but I don't remember a lot of dwelling on the angst--you'd have the occasional episode where he broods about What Could Have Been, but mostly he seemed happy to be out there fighting crime with his car. (Which I was totally with him on; I adored that car. Snarky artificial intelligences get me every time.) And while he's certainly got his fair share of hotheadedness and impatience with The Rules--you know the type--I honestly don't remember anything I would class as a Dark Side.

The show I always remember in connection with KR (because I watched them together) is MacGyver, and that took place on a similar angst model--the hero definitely has angst, mostly the deaths of family members plus a tragic gun-related incident in his past. But while these things are important issues to the character, they're not important to the show, which only brings them up occasionally. (Well, I mean, the doesn't-like-guns thing comes up a lot, but more in a "put that away" manner rather than staring hauntedly and having flashbacks.) And he spectacularly fails to have a dark side.

I wonder if the rise of continuity had something to do with it? I mean, you can have a main character who is Driven By Angst by just having him be angsty a lot, but you can definitely work with it more if you're doing emotional arcs and ongoing storylines, something the above shows were really not given to.

Drive-by commenter

[pepper]

I wonder if the rise of continuity had something to do with it?

I would bet money that's the reason. Knightrider, MacGyver, The A-Team, all those kind of shows were episodic - they rarely worried about much continuity of character (this week Mac is an archaeologist! This week he's a physicist! This week he's teaching hockey! This week he's observing eagles!). Mac's friends kept popping their clogs, and he lost more than one potential Love Of His Life - and then next week it's back to wacky hijinks with his crazy neighbours, or whatever.

Someone explained it to me once as those shows being before everyone had a video: you could miss a week and it didn't really matter because basically the same stuff happens again next week. Once you get rid of the weekly reset button, characters in TVland have to be a bit screwed up, with everything that happens to them.

But also, angst is partly in the eyes of the viewer. The A-Team is pretty tragic if you think about it seriously, but I mostly watched it for when they welded armour onto a truck and painted it to look like an ice-cream van. *g* They didn't take mental trauma seriously - shows like Farscape did.

[sassbandit]

Does Richard Castle have angst? Beckett certainly does but I don't think Castle does, really. Is it just one angsty character per show that's required? How major does the character have to be?

Just mentally going through the shows I've watched recently... Community is moderately free of Dark Angsty Pasts.

[paxpinnae]

They don't have Dark Pasts, but the folks on Community have plenty of angst. The show just deals with it in a very light-handed manner. The whole debate about Pierce being in the study group, Annie's anxiety about having too much of her life planned out, Jeff's shitty relationship with his father, Britta's struggle between living her ideals and trying to become a responsible job-holding adult - all of them have dealt with some pretty angsty issues.

[eleanorjane]

Regarding that picture - OH GOD WHY DID I CLICK AUGH AUGH AUGH.

Which is to say, BRB, inflicting it on everyone I know.

[laurajv]

I know, right? I IM'd it to 15 people IMMEDIATELY.

[sage]

Okay, this is going back before TV, but I've been listening to the old Gunsmoke radio show, which is super-dark and desperately angsty. Matt Dillon is openly lonely and depressed, his only love interests are the madam of the local house of ill repute, he can't trust any of his acquaintances because odds are he'll have to arrest them, and he frequently doesn't save the day at all.

It's a far cry from the made-for-television Gunsmoke, which tended to be much more light-hearted and typically had a happy ending where justice was done. The radio version was a lot grittier and more "western noir" -- it was totally aimed at fans of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, and it was normal for all those protagonists to have a mysterious, aloof, and vaguely tragic past...although they didn't generally reveal too much of it. Pre-1950s, there was a lot more male emoting, but 1950s media -- maybe a cold war thing? -- told the men to be stalwart where ten years before they could cry on screen.

What's interesting to me is that the radio show really holds up...and it might be because Marshal Dillon is such an angst-muffin. You feel for the guy.

[musesfool]

I think the rise of the angsty main character started in the 80s with Hill Street Blues, and possibly Cheers - Sam was a recovering alcoholic and they did occasional episodes where he was in danger of falling off the wagon. Before that, I think it was mostly the mainstay of daytime soaps.

[kellyfaboo]

I seem to remember a goatee'd Micheal as an evil version. Wasn't he an evil clone or brother or something?

Thanks. You've gotten me to think about Knight Rider far more than I have wanted to since I caught 60 seconds of a USA re-run a few years back. *shudders*

Sometimes I have to wonder what I was thinking when I was a kid making my entertainment choices.

But in short, I think TV had all these things when it was episodic, it just didn't have the narrative through line until it was decided to be a motivating factor for an episode.

[greenygal]

Michael's evil twin was the son of the guy who'd arranged Michael's whole crimefighting-with-car thing, and the reason they were twins was that when Michael was being given reconstructive surgery at the beginning of the show, the guy evidently said "Hey, let's make him look exactly like my son, who is in prison for life! I may have very obvious psychological issues!" Sensibly he did not explain this reasoning to Michael at the time.

[lydiabell]

As others have mentioned, TV has changed a lot. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the rise of continuity, but it's also a question of our tastes changing as the nation (talking U.S. here) has gone through economic and social stresses. I watched this TED Talk recently in which Lauren Zalaznick showed the correlations between what was on TV and what was going on in society at the time. I'm not sure I buy everything she's saying, but the correlations are interesting.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/lauren_zalaznick.html

Even in Sports Night, a half-hour comedy show, Danny had a dead brother, a bad relationship with his parents, and some kind of major emotional breakdown including acting out on air. He had plenty of angst! He had a dark side!

Most of that didn't really do the show any favors, either. I've heard that Danny's storyline in the second season came about due to a falling out between Josh Charles and Aaron Sorkin, but I don't know if that's true.

[brownbetty]

My extensive knowledge of Dark Rider canon (ie, I once read a fanfic) indicates his dark side is his tragic and unconsummated desire for his car to turn into a dude so he can be fucked by K.I.T.T.

[murklins]

AHAHAHAHAHAHA. Of course it is.

[thingswithwings]

First of all, it is one thing to warn for a picture of a dude with a puppy on his dick, and it is QUITE another thing to warn for David Hasselhoff with a puppy on his dick. I wish I had known it was the latter before I clicked. /o\ Puppies on dicks are fine by me, but seeing David Hasselhoff's thighs is NOT. ;)

I have this sort of nebulous set of beliefs about political conservatism and the way it tends to create the ground for cop dramas and police procedurals - there are tons of American police procedurals in the 50s, almost none in the 60s, lots in the 70s and 80s, dropping off again in the early 90s (except for Law and Order) and now you can't spit without hitting one. And I think cop-related dramas tend to foster the kind of angst narratives you're talking about - it all comes from the hard-boiled detective with the gritty past and the quasi-legal relationship to "his" city which he has to save "from itself." I think the link between angst and crimefighting of whatever kind (whether it's the Winchesters or CSI) is pretty strong - a serial killer killed my wife etc., now I have to track him down, blah blah, and its political conservatism is grounded in the idea that crime needs to be punished (not 'criminals need to be rehabilitated') and that we have to ignore the rules to do it.

For example, Batman is an incredibly accurate predictor of the way these portrayals of angst move in cycles, often with the political climate. 40s/50s Batman, all dark knight angsty. 60s Batman: Adam West, camp, bright colours. The 80s sees the reboot of the Dark Knight, now Darker and Knightier, and then the Tim Burton Batman. Late nineties, the movie franchise starts moving camp and colourful again with Batman Forever/Batman and Robin (both amazing films which I love) and then it springs back again with the new Christian Bale films. (Someone who knows more than I do about the animated series and the non-flagship comic series could maybe say more about this). If America ever sees another era of liberalism and revolution, you might see more TV where angst isn't required. Till then, I dunno - right now the crimefighter-angst is so prevalent that those storylines spread out and infect pretty much all the other genres as well.

[paxpinnae]

I also could have done with knowing that the puppy was a Shar-pei. THAT'S an association I never wanted to make in my life.

[pointysparkles]

What about Psych? For a long time the closest thing Shawn had to angst was his not entirely ideal relationship with his dad and the fact he couldn't get Juliet to date him.

Of course, then they had to go and do emergency angst-injections every season finale, but they're usually resolved fairly quickly and I kind of like to pretend they didn't happen. ;)

[out_there]

Anyway, what I didn't realize when I put the song on the mix is that it is, at least according to BB, a song written by a car to David Hasselhoff.

Hee! It took me a few sentences later to realise you were talking about Knightrider. I don't remember much, but I think BB's right: like Charlie's Angels, it was an action show where the angst was minimal and the hero was good and most things got sorted at the end of an hour.

I think there are certain shows that still have this lightness factor these days. Most of ABC's work, really -- I mean, Psych is a fun, upbeat show where the angst may pop up briefly, but it's very quickly solved. (White Collar isn't much darker, really, although it tries to pretend it has some ongoing angst I don't think the audience buys it or cares.)

Mind you, shows that want to emotionally invest the audience seem to need the angst. Shows that are there to be fun and entertaining -- drop-in, drop-out watching, really -- can et away with snark, humourand action instead.

[innocentsmith]

The above discussion about ST: TOS makes me wonder about the 90s-era Star Treks. Of course there you've got ensemble shows, not so much main characters. But some characters are main-er than others, and get more development of all kinds.

It's sort of interesting to think about it in terms of who the writers might have been thinking of as the main character. Picard doesn't really have a Tragic Past early on, but then at the start the intention was to have him be the wise, sedate father-figure, and have Riker handle the action stuff and seducing of hot alien ladies and whatnot. But then, surprise surpise, the audience LOVED Patrick Stewart and in some cases were not at all opposed to him having romantic plots, so they started doing that more. And then midway through you get the HUGE trauma of his assimilation by the Borg, and the guilt of Wolf 359. He's massively well-adjusted, so he takes an episode to get his shit together and deals with it like a grownup and it doesn't really go into manpain territory (well, except in First Contact). But it's an underlying thing for the rest of the series (and other series as well).

Data is probably the other most popular TNG character. And he had a tragic past (the colony where he was built and grew up was massacred) and an evil twin (responsible for said massacre)!

In DS9, Sisko has a classic Tragic Past - dead wife killed in the battle Picard was responsible for when Borgified. Kira is pretty open and okay with her past as a terrorist, though. In Voyager, I don't remember if Janeway has a tragic past, but when Seven of Nine shows up and is immediately hugely popular, she's got dead family angst and Borg assimilation angst.

So I guess the lessons to take away from this, if you ever find yourself in the Trekverse, are:

1. Do not ever be a colonist or an independent explorer, especially if you've got an adorable spunky kid or newly built android you're taking along. Because you will die horribly.

2. Fucking Borg, man. *shakes head*

[archersangel]

In Voyager, I don't remember if Janeway has a tragic past

he father died when she was a teen. other than that, i don't think she did.

while we're on the subject of star trek, in enterprise archer's father died when he was young (don't know how much of a tragic past that is) and t'pol once killed a man in self-defense, couldn't handle the guilt & had to have the memory suppressed.
and since the show got canceled after just 4 years who knows what issues the other crew members might have had.

[cuda]

Sorry, just... um. You listen to No More Kings. At least one song!

*helplessly happy squee*

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

I guess you could have them but why would you? EVERYONE needs an evil twin. (Or the Sorkin land equivalent of a dead sibling and GUILT.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

...Should I feel left ou,t, then, because I don't have an evil twin?

[tinx_r]

Oh, Michael has a total tragic back-story! For starters, he has a new face and is dead as far as the rest of the world is concerned. His partner was shot down beside him (pre-series), he was a Green Beret and was in Vietnam as a spy or intelligence or something like that. The angst potential is endless... hence his partner is a car, not a human :)

(There is guy/car slash for this fandom.)

[tinx_r]

Oh! I forgot to mention! He totally has an evil twin in a couple episodes!!

[loriel-eris.livejournal.com]

Years, since I've seen Knightrider, but Michael totally had angst! I think Michael was actually dead (not in zombie way!). Michael Surname-I-Can't-Remember was this ordinary guy, and then one day there was an accident? (attempted) murder? something involving fire? involving Michael and everyone thinks he died, but he's actually rescued by ythe Knight Foundation. Michael wakes up hours? days? months? years? later and discovers that his previous life has gone and he's now Michael Knight. (And I think there was some sort of plastic surgery - he doesn't look like his old self - which is why I think there was fire (and a badly burned Michael) involved.)

I can't remember how Devon (the Guy In Charge Of Knight Foundation) got Michael to start Fighting Crime; whether Michael agreed because he didn't have anything better to do, or if there was A Vendetta (see above re: murder?).

Also. I think Michael had a Love Of His Life when he 'died' which was also cause of some angst.

And all of this is what I remember of the proper Knightrider. I know nothing of the new one.

[jeanniewal.livejournal.com]

And didn't said "Love of Life" reappear some time and have to saved from some bad guy, by Michael, and he couldn't tell her who he really was?? Oh, the heartbreak!

(It was the 80s, ok??)

[vardoger.livejournal.com]

You COULD have TV without those things, as long as it was back before about 1995 or so. Then they released an upgrade and now TV no longer functions without the angst plug-in.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Man, someone needs to make an instant TV hero generator. Here's his tragic back story! Here's his angst! Here's his dark side! Now give him a common name and an uncommon job and you are ALL SET.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Even the mention of the puppy/Hasselhoff picture is giving me flashbacks. I now have to go and be a responsible adult at work, and all I can see is that image, burnt into my brain. (Hee!)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

It is one of those things that you can never forget. I mean, before last night it had been years since I'd seen that picture. And yet, as soon as BB mentioned that Michael was played by David Hasselhoff, my brain went to the Puppy Place.

*shivers*

[jeanniewal.livejournal.com]

OMG that picture :( Those puppies look like they'd stretch out all those wrinkles if they got aroused - yuck!! David Hasselhoff has ruined wrinkled puppies for me!

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

David Hasselhoff has ruined wrinkled puppies for an entire generation. In nursing homes in forty years we'll all be talking about David Hasselhoff with puppies on his dick.

[salambander.livejournal.com]

I'm intrigued... You should share the playlist on 8tracks.com (and link us to it).

:D

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

If I can figure out 8tracks - it is currently fighting me - I will do so!