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

[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.