It's easy to be drawn to a book because of its cover. We've all done it, and more times than not, it actually works out well for us. This is because of the fact that most of the time we know what we want: We want sleek and colorful. We want swords and magic. We want glamor and gossip. We want explosions and fight sequences. We want hot chicks. But no matter how long we've been reading, we can't see past the premise of the book, the cover. We cannot see past what it wants to be to get a glimpse of what it actually is.
It takes time to see what a television show is. It is so much more than its premise. It takes character arcs, story turns, and, most importantly, failure, to see what a show is. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a show with vampires and other supernatural creatures. But what it worked at week to week was giving a view of this particular world's high school social and personal life. Breaking Bad is a show with a chemistry teacher who cooks crystal meth. But what it's about is how far down the path to hell a man can go with, or maybe even because of, the best of intentions. The show is a litmus test of humanity's capacity for evil.
A pilot can give a good idea of the feel of a show, can give hints about how a basic episode will unfold, what subjects the show is concerned with, and a foundation for basic character wants and needs. But even the best shows need momentum. This doesn't mean that shows can't be good from the outset. But they don't know if they will continue to be good until they do something lousy, something that flops. The absolute best writers, the best show runners can immediately spot what works and what won't. But that's only the very best writers and show runners, because it's damn hard to tell what you've got when you're in the thick of it. The shows of Modern Family's ilk, which hit the ground running full speed in its pilot and kept going the whole season, are incredibly rare. The best shows I've ever seen have had some incredibly slow, lousy beginnings. The Wire took some incredibly laborious set-up to start to have an impact. One of my favorite shows(though less than a masterpiece) is Eureka. The pilot is one of the worst pieces of television I have ever sat through. It took some serious motivation to keep trying, but I trusted the promise, trusted the actors involved, trusted that the writers would see what they had.
Warehouse 13 is an excellent example of a show that started out existing solely on its premise. But then smart writers took ahold of the idea and made it smart and funny and fresh. The show centers on a group of Secret Service agents working in a warehouse that stores magical, historical devices and keeps them out of the reach of dangerous people. The two field agents were initially just your typical, run of the mill character molds. Pete was goofy, fast-talking, and had intuition(gut feelings) about things. Myka was your play-by-the-rules, straight-shooter. Their "handler", Artie was grumpy and frumpy, and they lived in a hotel with a somewhat psychic woman. This was the status of the first five episodes of the show. But, in the fifth episode, the writers introduced Claudia, a character that seemed like a passing guest star. She was a young, spunky, technological geek who was searching for her brother. But the star characters basically adopted her into their group. What was a work environment became family.
Once it was family, the characters started to reveal themselves, and suddenly the show is so much more than its premise. It's about a group of misfits who have to rely on each other, and whether or not they can survive as a family in such a stressful, crazy, and dangerous work environment. It's about how they will grow from week to week while going through this together. The writers are smart. They have a formula, but they stretch it to its limits, and they don't always obey it. They mix and match characters and always have a new dynamic popping up to keep things interesting. In a recent episode, the writers found a way to keep Pete at the warehouse with Artie, and Claudia went on a case with Myka. This resulted in some great moments for Claudia, trying to be an agent of Myka's ilk, as well as for Artie and Pete, who ended up giving each other advice about girls. The very next episode, it was mixed up again. Guest stars are brought in to let the viewers geek out, but they serve a purpose in our characters' arcs. The writers, actors, and show runners are all in sync, and the brilliance through most every episode is evidence of that.
However, a show can be propped up by premise, only to fail once the originality of that premise starts to fade. Heroes had everyone hooked through its first season. But it went too far, it gave the viewers and characters exactly what they wanted, so they had nothing to do in the next season except hope that the premise was still interesting enough to keep people watching. The quality plummeted. The idea was old now, and we weren't amazed simply by the idea that these normal-seeming people had powers. The same villains were now boring, the same heroes likewise. The writers made a mistake and they kept repeating it over and over. They simply didn't learn or never saw what the problem was in the first place.
A show needs skilled people in order to be consistently sharp. They need writers who want to see more facets of characters, need actors to become those characters, need producers and show runners to recognize who these characters are becoming and do everything in their power to help bring them out. It simply is not possible to do that until you've failed and gone beyond the limits of your characters or ideas, if only to see that you can only take your show to this point before it falls off the edge and into the abyss. Whether that failed attempt actually makes it to the air or not, failure is an incredibly important recipe for success.
So next time you're watching a pilot episode and you're thinking "UGH!", try to examine the possibilities of the characters and story before giving up. Chances are, the show runners haven't discovered where the characters need to go yet. Maybe they don't quite know what the show is yet. That doesn't mean they won't ever figure it out. But if you stop watching, you sure won't.
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