The second episode of Bates Motel’s second season is titled Shadow of a Doubt after the 1946 Hitchcock film. This episode, written by Kerry Ehrin, features four storylines drawn from the characters and actions of the film.
If you need a refresher: In Shadow of a Doubt, young Charlie reunites with her beloved Uncle Charlie when he visits Charlie’s family in Santa Rosa. Charlie believes that no one in the world could be greater than her uncle, until Charlie catches him trying to get rid of a newspaper clipping about the search for a murderer and identifies an engraving on his gifted ring that matches that of one of the murdered women. When two detectives show up, her suspicions are confirmed — her uncle is the “Merry Widow Murderer”. Uncle Charlie convinces his niece that it is in her best interest to keep his secret, protecting their family’s weak hearts. Charlie keeps quiet, but cooperates with the detectives, until a second suspect is killed while running from the police. That man is assumed the killer and Uncle Charlie is presumed innocent. Young Charlie remains the only one who knows her uncle is the true killer. She forces him to leave town, but, in a final showdown, throws him into the path a moving train. With her uncle dead, Charlie alone knows the truth and she keeps it to herself.
No one got thrown in front of a train, so how does the episode relate? In more ways than you’d think.
Norma and young Charlie question their “other halves” for being different than what they thought. Norman and Uncle Charlie try to deflect the confrontations. The bar scene from Shadow of a Doubt and the scene outside the community theater from Bates Motel are key scenes where the characters are on the tipping point of reality. Everything is at stake during these confrontations. Norman reassures Norma, but Uncle Charlie isn’t so successful.
First in this episode, Norma is facing her doubts about Norman’s innocence in the murder of Blair Watson. She asks her gynecologist about blackouts, checks out topical books at the library and even finds familiar evidence: a newspaper clipping of the murder and a piece of the victims jewelry (Watson’s pearl necklace). No matter how obvious the evidence, Norma refuses to accept the signs and instead distracts herself with an effort for normalcy — her and Norman will audition for the community theater’s musical. She is much like the young Charlie of the first half of Shadow of a Doubt, naively facing the incriminating evidence of the newspaper article and inscribed ring. She refuses to accept the reality that her Uncle could be a dangerous and dark man.
Incriminating MacGuffins include jewelry and newspaper clippings.
Meanwhile, Bradley has come to Norman to hide out after she has murdered Gil Turner. Norman doesn’t turn her in, but keeps her hidden in the basement while getting her ready to run away to Boston. In this storyline, Norman is the young Charlie of the second half of Shadow of a Doubt. This Young Charlie has accepted that her Uncle Charlie is the Merry Widow Murderer, but rather than turn him in, she is primarily interested in keeping this information from her fragile mother, who would be devastated if she found out. In the same way, Norman’s dilemma is not whether or not to turn Bradley in, but to keep her hidden from his own mother who would definitely not permit his involvement. It’s perhaps more so Norman’s rebellion to have something truly his own, apart from his mother, like his taxidermy, also in the basement, a place for repressed passions.
Dylan is dealing with a different reverberation of Gil Turner’s murder. Dylan has a suspicion that Bradley may be involved, first because he’s the one that revealed Turner is likely her father’s killer. He refrains from sharing this with Sheriff Romero, but he becomes increasingly likely upon overhearing the phone call to Norman that Bradley is missing. Meanwhile, the drug family that Dylan works for believes that Turner has been killed by the other operation as a declaration of war for stealing their business. Dylan asks his work partner if it’s up to him to decide what to do. “Let’s see who they bring in. It’ll be his problem,” says Rune. The problem is passed on to Turner’s replacement, Zane, and Dylan keeps his suspicions to himself. His silence has deadly consequences when Zane kidnaps and shoots an innocent man from the rival family.
Dylan aids Norman in helping Bradley escape so that his doubts can be confirmed at the end of the episode. Norman tells him that Bradley was the killer. With this confirmed, Dylan absorbs responsibility for the rival family man’s death. In the film, young Charlie’s silence leads to death of the second suspect, who is chased by police when he runs into an airplane propeller and is killed. In the same way, the man’s death is the result of her silence.
Realized outsiders depart: Bradley and Uncle Charlie each leave after admitting their crimes to those most trusted.
Finally, Sheriff Romero arrests Kyle, a man with a criminal record whose semen sample matches one of two found in Blair Watson. Because Kyle has a drug record and likely got away with murdering a past girlfriend, Romero decides to charge him with Watson’s murder. This follows the unseen storyline in Shadow of a Doubt, in which the second Merry Widow Murderer suspect is assumed guilty because he ran from the police before he was killed.
After Norma’s winning audition, Emma runs out of the office to tell Norma and Norman that another man has been arrested for Watson’s murder. Norma is overjoyed with the information and gladly accepts any liklihood that her son is innocent, but her doubt lingers in the puncturing shot in which the camera rises from Norman on the stairs outside the house to Norma looking down at him from her window. Like young Charlie at the end of the film, she is the only one who knows the truth. That guilt is unresolved in the film, but luckily we have at least a whole season to go.
Young Charlie and Norma suppress the truth to maintain normalcy. Guilt and doubt linger.
For each of their wins in this episode, the characters carry new guilt. Not only has Ehrin managed to reimpose the the relationships that exist in Shadow of a Doubt onto the Bates Motel characters, she has emulated the transference of responsibility that comes from withholding secrets for loved ones.
“I don’t think I can do this now,” says Norma, when her name is called to sing her audition piece. “You can to it,” Norman reassures her. “It’s just pretending. You can pretend.”
The characters of all four storylines have gained layers of repressed truths and we anticipate the consequences and unravellings .
That is great TV.
Be on the look-out for more Shadow of a Doubt in this show. Ultimately, Norma and Norman are a double very much like Charlie and Uncle Charlie — their telepathic connection, incestuous affection, twin names and all. Their bond is so strong that they refuse to face each other’s darker sides, but eventually these suppressed conflicts will destroy them. Charlie and Uncle Charlie’s affair ended with Uncle Charlie being thrown off a speeding train. I don’t need to remind you how Norman and Norma’s ends.
The final cliffhanger might appear off-putting, since we don’t know what threat Norma’s brother will pose in the forthcoming episodes, but it is a perfect ending to the Shadow of a Doubt episode in which, only at the end, a literal “Uncle Charlie” arrives in town.
In 1957 Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer, each writers for the Cahir du Cinema, published a study of Hitchcock’s films to that point. Two years later, Chabrol wrote and directed his first film Le Beau Serge (1958) and another year later Les Cousins (1959). After the deep study of his films, it seems clear that Chabrol directly turns to his knowledge of Hitchcock in adopting a method of structuring the characters and events of his stories, particularly to recreate complex scenarios of guilt transference. Le Beau Serge and Les Cousins each portray sequences of guilt exchange between their two leading characters but spin out webs of guilt amongst each of their key characters so that ultimately each character involved holds some kind of direct causal responsibility for the devastation at the films conclusion. Hitchcock’s key films that correlate to this pattern are Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Strangers on a Train (1951) which best showcase Hitchcock’s methods of “doubling” his characters and separating the characters’ intentions from their causal function. Chabrol recognizes the method and adopts it for his early work to create complex relationships of shared guilt, but their diverging conclusions suggest opposing moral struggles.
In his analysis of Shadow of a Doubt, Chabrol quotes Truffaut’s analysis for Hitchock’s all-around portrayal of “doubles” in the film (not just between characters, but in times returned to locations and repeated actions—the more extensive side I don’t have space to focus on here). Charlie and Uncle Charlie share a name, a literal telepathic connection, and, ultimately, share guilt for disrupting their seemingly idyllic family. Even though Uncle Charlie is the murderer on the run, he is able to turn Charlie into an accomplice of his secret. Their special bond is a result that they share qualities to separate them from everyone else and it is this bond that leads Charlie to compromise otherwise commonsense signs not to trust or protect him. Charlie’s idealization for her Uncle causes her to misread the seriousness of his suspicious behavior. When Charlie does learn his murderous secret, Uncle Charlie is able to ward off his niece’s efforts against him again by convincing her that they have a shared objective to protect the family, particularly her weak-hearted mother. (Further, he is able to justify his beliefs to her in a chilling dinner speech about widows’ undeserved livelihoods.) The manipulation that is revisited is one character’s power over the other to convince them that they have a shared objective, when in fact they do not want exactly the same thing. In the end, Uncle Charlie is thrown before an oncoming train and Charlie is now causally responsible for his death. It was not her intention to kill her uncle, only for him to leave, but it is by her circumstance of being there and involvement in his secret that has lead to his death.
The set-up is familiar in Strangers on a Train. Bruno and Guy are “doubled” this time for a shared attraction to one another (seriously, the way Guy eyes Bruno’s lips—almost a match for the end of Le Beau Serge between Francois princely rescue of sleeping Serge) but also the shared desire and objective of “loved-ones” wished dead. Their cosmic bond is emphasized by Bruno’s serious knowledge of Guy’s tennis stats and personal relationship gossip—true, this is news that he’s read, but it functions in the same way of Charlie and Uncle Charlie’s shared telepathic call for one another. When Bruno kills Miriam, Guy becomes complacent in his wife’s murder for the fact that had he not interacted with Bruno, she would not have been killed. Bruno’s manipulation is familiar again when he is able to convince Bruno that they wanted the same thing, Guy is benefitting from the murder after all, and Bruno is able to use the guilt as blackmail—Guy even breaks into the house prepared to murder Guy’s father. When Bruno is killed in the end, Guy should be left with guilt for the victims. Although he wished Miriam and Guy dead at different points, he never took decisive action to kill them.
Strangers On A Train (1951)Le Beau Serge (1958)
In Le Beau Serge Chabrol adopts Hitchcock’s model for developing these leading doubles with reunited friends Francois and Serge. Although the structure is not as closely aligned to Hitchcock’s as it is in his second film Les Cousins, the elements are still present. Francois returns to his home village after years away to find his once-close friend, Serge, an alcoholic in an unhappy marriage. Francois at first feels guilt as he claims that if he had not left he would’ve ended up in similar circumstances, but that if Serge had left instead would’ve been better off. “They are two sides of a coin.” His interference leads to new guilt as he believes that his presence has caused Serge to be agitated by his wife—Serge treats her abusively for he his embarrassed of their image before Francois. Serge’s rage and his wife’s unhappiness are on him. Similarly, his quarrel with Yvonne’s father figure causes Yvonne to be raped, because Francois reveals to him that he is not actually her father. Instead of resolving this trouble, tensions only get worse. In the end, Francois is struggling with this responsibility in attempt to hold together Serge’s family as best as he can—retrieving the doctor from the aide of Yvonne’s father-figure to deliver Serge’s baby, then dragging a drunken Serge through a blizzard so that he may be present for the child’s birth. In the end, no one dies (except maybe Yvonne’s father figure). The genius in the ambiguous ending of Serge’s laughter is that Francois guilt will be entirely dependent on Serge—Francois has absorbed guilt from Yvonne and her father, as well as Serge’s wife and even the village priest to bring Serge’s family together but it will not be up to Francois to keep it together. Serge is responsible for the outcome of Francois redemptive goals.
In Les Cousins Chabrol turns to a more Hitchcock-like sequence structure between similar characters. (The same actors Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy play the duo again.) This time, Charles has traveled to Paris to stay with his cousin Paul while he attends classes. Charles quickly falls in love with and recites a silent love poem to Paul’s friend Florence, but just as the couple is being established, Florence ends up in a relationship with Paul instead. Paul is greatly responsible for this manipulation of Florence, (as is the older “Id” figure) but Paul is able to manipulate Charles into seeing things his way in a very Uncle Charlie-like manner. Instead of taking action, Charles channels his anger into studying harder for his examinations; meanwhile Paul is distracted with the love affair. Charles holds off his retaliation on Paul at first, similar to the way Guy stays quiet about Bruno’s involvement in the murder or as Charlie maintains her uncles secret. When Charles fails his examination, however, he blames Paul for all that is wrong and his desire to kill him is a thought translating into part action—he takes 1/6 the effort to kill his cousin when he places just one bullet into a six-round pistol and fires it at sleeping Paul. Paul is lucky, but it is this bullet that in turn kills Charles when Paul fires a jesting shot at him that kills him. Both Charles and Paul share causality for this death. In the final shot (pun-intended), Paul paces around the apartment before resting on seat for contemplation of his action before moving to answer the door buzzer. It seems as though he will be honest about the shooting, moving toward the door and keeping a hold of the gun (empty of bullets). The length of this final shot suggests that Paul is accepting the weight of his responsibility in the matter. Although he did not actively intend to kill his cousin, it is true that he did wish him out of the way for his romantic desires and out of jealousy or irritation of his studiousness. In each pair of films, the protagonist is tested with the situation that although they did not intend to cause such harms upon their double, they in fact wished the harms upon them and ultimately had a direct causal influence on their destructive outcomes.
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)Les Cousins (1959)
In structuring the endings however, Hitchcock’s films have a clear draw to provide an ending for the popular audience. In Shadow of a Doubt, Charlie is left with her detective lover and keeps her uncle’s secret to herself. (I’ve thought that possibly Charlie has no guilt left, but has actually adopted the values that justify her Uncle’s murders—much like the Chan-wook Park revision of this story, Stoker (2013), which ends with the Charlie-character, India, a graduated serial killer. She kills her uncle and abandons her mother [Nicole Kidman], who in Park’s version embodies the merry widows that Uncle Charlie despises.) Hitchcock, however, frames it much in the way that Charlie is left to her future husband in front of the church, while any of her doubts are only light thoughts by the audience. The same “happy ending” occurs in Strangers on a Train as Guy rides off happily having won the Senator’s daughter. Hitchcock shows the couple avoiding the introduction by a stranger on another train, a gag suggesting they have learned a lesson to avoid these kinds of situations, when in fact this beat is off-putting for Guy’s emotional outcome. Guy ought to be left with a lot of guilt for having won the girl and his freedom in such a destructive dishonest manner. This ending is odd in that it doesn’t punish Guy for having perverse thoughts of murder, adultery, and don’t forget that homosexual gaze!
Chabrol, on the other hand, uses endings to reinforce the guilt of the character. Paul is left in a long final shot to absorb the consequences of his collective actions against his cousin. Francois’s efforts to make up for his guilt are meaningless for it will always be dependent on Serge. (Later, in Le Boucher (1970) Chabrol ends with a long reflective shot of Hélène by the river contemplating her own role of intention and guilt for Popaul’s death.) Chabrol’s vision for the outcomes of these cinematic tests is more realistic than Hitchcock’s. Chabrol recognizes that the nature of causality requires a binding responsibility for those affected by our actions. Guilt is both a product of intention and causality. Regardless of intention, causality cannot be undone, but at least it is finite. Intention is no less dangerous. Unresolved desires will provoke unexpected action. A single bullet left in a gun will make a kill.
Alfred Hitchcock and Michelangelo Antonioni each have an affinity for featuring love triangles in their films. For Hitchcock, each reincarnation of the love triangle features a variation on the characters involved and the motivation for their relationships, but each holds on to an established narrative structure to present the displacement of a protagonist into a foreign environment, develop a love triangle, then consequentially destroy of one of its members and inflict harm on the environment. After several films, Vertigo (1958) is the first to extend beyond Hitchcock’s standard format for triangular relationships. Italian director Antonioni is influenced by Vertigo to portray a Hitchcockian love triangle in L’Avventura (1960) that holds true to the same narrative elements, but abandons Hitchcock’s cause and effect structure. Antonioni’s revision inspires Hitchcock to make a further deviation from a traditional love triangle structure in The Birds (1963) and finally Antonioni pushes a further deviation in Red Desert (1964). While each director presents cosmic “punishment” for the triangular affairs of its characters, Hitchcock portrays displacement and destruction in explicit consequence sequences while Antonioni paints the forces of displacement and destruction as symbolic circumstantial “punishment”. Antonioni’s films challenge Hitchcock to reconsider the cinematic nature of punishing those wandering into triangular affairs.
Hitchcock’s love triangles appear in early works The Lodger (1927) and The Ring (1927), but which I will not discuss here and assume that Hitchcock’s love triangles have reached a mature narrative form by Rebecca (1940). In Rebecca, “the second Mrs. de Winter” is whisked away from a demanding assistantship job to live in Manderlay, her new husband’s monstrous estate. Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, as well as the other staff, echo fond memories of the late Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca, who drown in the lake. The new Mrs. de Winter feels vulnerable and disliked in the shadow of Rebecca’s memory and begins to emulate Rebecca in hopes to become a more satisfactory wife and worthy master to the staff. As an initial example, Rebecca illustrates a structure that Hitchcock will come to revisit several times over. First, the protagonist must be displaced to become a foreigner in a new setting. In this case, it is the new Mrs. de Winter’s move to Manderlay. Next, the love triangle takes form. In this case, Mrs. Danver’s is the representation of Rebecca’s memory in competition with Mrs. de Winter for the affection of Mr. de Winter. To conclude each love triangle, one of the competing parties must be destroyed and the impact must also inflict harm on the environment. In Rebecca, Mrs. de Winters is able to affirm her husband’s affection but Mrs. Danver’s is ultimately burned to death along with the entire Manderlay estate—harsh consequences for involvement with a widower.
Rebecca (1940)
Hitchcock’s next incarnation of a love triangle occurs in new and unusual form in Shadow of Doubt (1943) when Uncle Charlie competes with a young detective for the affection of Charlie. The same relationship beats are present. Uncle Charlie is displaced from the East Coast to Santa Rosa, positioned against the detective in competition for Charlie’s trust, and when he loses it and turns murderous, he is ultimately thrown in front of a speeding train leaving Charlie and the detective to be together. For Charlie, the events have destroyed her idyllic family environment although she keeps her Uncle’s murderous secret to herself to avoid a larger family devastation.
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
In Notorious (1946), Alicia and Devlin are displaced to Brazil where they align to spy on Nazi efforts. Although, Alicia and Devlin fall in love, Alicia must engage in a relationship with Alexander, a Nazi leader, in hopes to extract nuclear secrets. She marries Alexander, but her continued rendezvouses with Devlin are in part responsible for exposing her cover and her near deadly poisoning. Devlin rescues her from the Alexander’s home in the end, but not without destructive consequence for Alexander who is left to be killed by the Nazi organization for having an American spy infiltrate. Deadly consequences for Alexander are result of being a competitive lover, rather than as Nazi member, I would argue. (This also leaves us unsure of any nuclear consequence pertaining to the ownership of uranium samples at center of their mission. The impact could be nuclear!)
Vertigo (1958)
Jumping ahead to Vertigo, Hitchcock complicates his basic structure and introduces layer of complexity to his earlier love triangles. To begin, the inciting displacement is only mental. Scottie’s traumatic opening scene results in his vertigo diagnosis and a newfound discomfort for San Francisco’s elevations. More importantly, the triangles in this film are threefold. First there is the illusionary competition between Scottie and Gavin Elster for the affection of possessed Madeline. (You might even consider a fourth to the three, if Carlotta is considered a force competing against Scottie for Madeline.) Next there is competition for Scottie between Midge and Madeline. Finally, Scottie faces a ghostly triangle (more like the memory of Rebecca) between the dead/illusionary Madeline and Judy. There is a personal loss resulting from each of these groupings, wherein Madeline doesn’t exist, the real Madeline is murdered, and Judy is killed. Hitchcock maintains the destructive punishment for such triangular involvements, but for the first time, no characters come out winning each other as a prize. The illusion is broken, but not even Scottie and Midge end up together.
Cue Antonioni, who makes L’Avventura featuring influence from Hitchcock’s more ghostly triangles. In L’Avventura, Anna is unhappily engaged to Sandro. The two accompany a group of friends on a yacht cruise to the Aeolian Islands, Anna’s close friend Claudia included. When Anna goes missing, Claudia and Sandro spend the rest of the film following leads on a search for Anna while developing an intimate relationship of their own. Claudia makes subtle imitations of Anna, wearing her clothing and trying on a dark wig. They are reflective not just of Judy’s complicity to appear as Madeline, but also Mrs. de Winter’s effort to become more like Rebecca. Antonioni recreates Hitchcock’s elements of displacement and destruction—the threes are first displaced to barren rocky island, but then Claudia, (and Sandro, too) are displaced to search for Anna in small villages to which they are foreigners. Even though their affair begins later, Anna’s disappearance seems to be destructive consequence of their relationship and their search has an environmentally disruptive nature for the places they go. Careless damages along the way include breaking and entering the island shack, the smashing of an ancient vase, a trashed hotel lobby, the ruin of a young architect’s work, the crushing of artworks under lovers as a young painter seduces attached friend Giulia in front of Claudia. Adulterous passion is presented with destructive outcomes. Antonioni keeps these elements, but they are not packaged in Hitchcock’s explicit cause and effect structure. Rather, as if manifested, the displacement and the destruction seem to happen in reverse order. Anna is first gotten rid of to make way for the couple and then the Claudia becomes displaced by an interruption of her travel plans. In this way, Antonioni uses the design of circumstance to replace consequential structure.
L’avventura (1960)
In “Hitchcock and the Wandering Woman: The Influence of Italian Art Cinema on The Birds”, one of the influential elements of L’Avventura on The Birds, as pointed out by Richard Allen, is the ambiguous nature of why the birds attack. Hitchcock and the writers “sought to intimate but not to cement an explanation that linked the bird attacks to the human story,” Allen writes, before emphasizing the excessive length given to Melanie’s “wandering” sequence preceding to the first bird attack, which occurs just after Melanie successful recaptures Mitch’s attention. “If the bird attack does seem to be an ‘answer’ to a provocation induced by Melanie’s sexual presence and in particular her gaze, it is wholly at the level of symbolism or connotation.” Ambiguity aside, Hitchcock does maintain elements of his existing consequence structure. Melanie is first displaced from San Francisco to Bodega bay where she is a foreigner and introduced into a competition for Mitch’s affection with Annie, the schoolteacher and an ex-lover of Mitch. (Allen also points out that there is also a competitive nature between Melanie and Mitch’s mother, which echoes another category of maternal rivals such as Sebastian’s Nazi mother in Notorious or Norman’s mother in Psycho, each valid additions but no time for them here). Ultimately, the birds attack in a circumstantial form of punishment rather than for an explicit consequence of Melanie’s interference. Annie is killed (without much of a competitive need) as a circumstantial byproduct of Melanie’s pursuit of Mitch, although Hitchcock does not allow the audience to explicitly assume that it is Melanie’s fault that the birds are attacking. This is attribute of circumstance rather than consequence is very “Antonioni-like”.
The Birds (1963)
Antonioni draws from and challenges Hitchcock again in his next love triangle film. Red Desert portrays Giuliana as the mentally ill housewife of an industrial manager, Ugo, as she entertains an affair with her husband’s coworker, Corrado. In Red Desert, Antonionireturns to elaborate on a different ghostly love triangle from Vertigo, this time resembling the early triangle between Scottie, Gavin Elster, and suicidal Madeline. (Elster’s shipyard management role included.) Giuliana is the “Carlotta-possessed” protagonist recovering from a suicide attempt and her serious depression is her cause to see Corrado as a last chance for happiness and life. The wandering affair occurs across an industrial wasteland of smoke, fog, and machinery—perhaps, each form of pollution is a symbolic circumstantial punishment for Giuliana’s adulterous desire. As The Birds ends on a bird-infested Bodega Bay, Red Desert begins and ends on a comparable gasping void. Giuliana doesn’t become displaced because she begins displaced. To further differentiate, no one of the three involved die or disappear. Giuliana contemplates another suicide attempt and even tries to hop a ship to escape altogether (This may be a transferable clue to Anna’s disappearance!) but she doesn’t follow through with either plot. While this film maintains Hitchcock’s influence on character’s and circumstance, it departs from any of Hitchcock’s traditional consequential elements, even those rearranged and reformed in L’Avventura—no act of displacement and no death or disappearance of a rival lover. In fact, none of the threats in Red Desert are fully realized. When Giuliana’s son is paralyzed, he is feigning it; when Giuliana tries to escape, she is stopped. The most prominent realization is Giuliana’s sexual engagement with Corrado for which there is not an initiating but an end to their relationship, not because death or disappearance, but only a lesson learned.
This may be the most sophisticated of all the love triangle films I’ve mentioned in that it doesn’t suggest that the agency behind a love triangle circumstance as deserving of a disappearance or destruction of one of its members. It operates as fear and indulgence do more often in the real world. The threat of a punishable outcome is suffice for a punishment. And there is a trace of hope, or at least a realization, in the end. Giuliana emerges (in a Vertigo-green coat that evokes both Judy and Madeline at once) with a lesson learned. Her son looks to an industrial exhaust tower and asks,
“Why is that smoke yellow?”
“Because it’s poisonous.” Giuliana answers.
“You mean if a little birdie flies there, it’ll die?”
“The little birdies know by now. They don’t fly there anymore.”
If this film knows itself as a response to The Birds, then Antonioni could be suggesting that he has had enough with dramatized punishments for adulterous affairs and that eventually our wanderers can adapt from the mistakes of those before them or learn for themselves without having drive the value home with a death or disappearance of everyone caught adrift.
Drama for Broadcast Television’s Future (Written March 2013)
“You clearly don’t know who you’re talking to, so let me clue you in,” says Walter White to his concerned wife. “I am not in danger. I am the danger.”
In the sixth episode of Breaking Bad’s fourth season, Walt leaves his wife in paralyzed terror after he steams out the secret he has keeping from her—revealing to her just how powerful and threatening of a position he holds in his in his illicit methamphetamine business. Walt is no longer vulnerable to the authorities of the dangerous industry he had stumbled into—this industry has become subjugate to Walt. A high school chemistry teacher became so powerful how? Because he cooks the best crystal meth. The show’s home network, AMC, could say the same for itself in the ruptured future of television.
The past month has proven one of the worst ever for mid-season premieres on broadcast networks. Taking the hardest hit, NBC averaged a 1.2 rating, a record low coming in below below Univision’s 1.5. If that weren’t embarrassing enough, it also broke a record for the lowest-rated broadcast drama premiere—Ever. “Do No Harm” opened to just 3.1 million viewers and a 0.9 rating. It’s not alone in facing cancellation—NBC is snuffing out its new shows like a CBS “Survivor” marathon. Not without reason—these are not good shows, but with “30 Rock” and “The Office” ending and few dramas being renewed, NBC is at risk of losing primetime shows that remain identifiable to its long-lived brand shaped by comedy hits like “Seinfeld” and “Friends” and dramas like “Law and Order” and “ER”. Hopefully, the struggle will be taken as a seriously needed opportunity for the broadcast network to begin anew.
ABC, while holding on to a few of its reasonably successful women-centric dramas (i.e. “Scandal” and “Grey’s Anatomy”), faced a similar disaster with its mid-season premieres last month. “Zero Hour” premiered to a 1.3 rating, which was the lowest in ABC history, followed by the two-hour premiere of “Red Widow” which nearly matched it coming in with a 1.4 rating. “Zero Hour” has been cancelled and “Red Widow” is on the edge with an uncertain future.
What’s wrong with these shows? I watched “Red Widow” as something of a quick case study in understanding was going wrong with these pilots. “Red Widow” was an all right ABC drama pilot I thought. In the first hour, a San Francisco mother is faced with the murder of her husband just before he makes his move to exit his involvement in the cocaine trade—against her will, the mother is going to have continue her husbands illicit line of work in order to protect her family. “Kind of like Breaking Bad!” I thought, but with a woman because it’s ABC… and a first couple seasons-worth of character development condensed in one episode because it’s broadcast. Although “Red Widow” was adapted from a successful Dutch drama “Penoza”, the show’s writer Melissa Rosenburg has answered a question of “Breaking Bad” influencing her adaptation in an interview: “If I can emulate it in any way, I would,” she says. “They set the bar very, very high and it is certainly the model for it, absolutely”. Knowing the kind of immoral crimes Walter White comes to commit in later seasons and the lack of complex relationships introduced in this pilot, I question whether Rosenburg will be able to emulate “Breaking Bad” in an effective way on broadcast television. This show, despite its successful influencers, will not be benefitting its network in any way similar.
ABC’s Red Widow. 2013.
When a show breaks out that does something new and does it very well, it has a great influence on the pilots that will be ordered in following season. “Breaking Bad” is not AMC’s first show with such influence on shows developed for ABC. AMC’s first success in drama is acclaimed “Mad Men” which centers around an advertising agency on Madison Avenue in 1960’s New York City. In 2011, ABC premiered its drama “Pan Am” centered on four flight attendants flying in and out of 1960’s New York City. The show performed okay in its first few weeks, but quickly dropped ratings and was cancelled. If ABC hadn’t learned a lesson in emulating AMC then, maybe it has now. They’ve had the wrong idea of what it is that makes these shows successful. ‘1960’s’ and “New York City” didn’t become key ingredients to a successful show. Nor, now, have “desperate parent” and “coercive drug trafficking” become key ingredients. It isn’t about creating a match of AMC’s subject matter; it is about matching the way in which AMC makes it happen—originality and risk required.
AMC’s Mad MenABC’s Pan Am. 2011.
The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever is a book by Alan Sepinwall that describes how dramas evolve from one game-changing show to the next. The last and most recent of the twelve revolutionary shows Sepinwall identifies are “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad”. Sepinwall gives us insight to the conditions at AMC to first create a show like “Mad Men”. AMC CEO Josh Sapan approached executive Rob Sorcher with this demand: “We need a Sopranos.” Sapan hoped to move the cable channel from airing only ad-supported movie classics to introducing its own original programming. Sapan was worried that AMC was in a bad position to remain a necessary part of the cable package while standing vulnerable without affiliation to large cable empire empires like Viacom. Comcast could easily launch their own movie channel with offerings above AMC’s second-tier movies. “My boss [had] told me that ratings, in that moment, don’t matter,” said Schorcher. “What AMC needs is a show, a critically-acclaimed and audience-craved show that would make us undroppable to cable operators.” Schorcher and Sapan tested the waters with an original movie first. A Western, “Broken Trail”, was selected to match a genre that was most popular amongst their classic offerings and was considered a success. In choosing a series to continue original programming, they decided that to simply match a genre from their library again would not give them “something of real distinction and quality.” A smart script that had been deemed unmarketable, “Mad Men” was chosen.
The first season averaged less than 1 million viewers weekly, but received the acclamations it had hoped for. The executives noticed a quick increase in time-shift viewing and that it quickly became the networks “greatest friend” Charlie Collier, the network president, said. “We had a show on a network that people didn’t know to come to for scripted dramas.” The show was offered for catch-up viewing by means of DVR, DVD, On-Demand and online streaming services each and in each returning season the live ratings increased—the latest season premiered to an audience of 3.5 million, more than 3 times their first season average.
AMC followed this model again with “Breaking Bad” which became another slow-grown success as a result of time-shift viewing. My personal viewing habits reflect the effectiveness of this strategy. I had never had access to AMC’s cable service, but had binged on the first three seasons of “Breaking Bad” on Netflix after hearing friends rave about the show. As the fourth and fifth season premiered, I bought Season Passes on iTunes. I recommended the show to my parents who, rather than watch online or pay more for premium cable package, bought the first two seasons on DVD. A quick search online now, I could access the show with a Netflix subscription of $8.99 a month, on YouTube for $1.99 per episode, on iTunes for $2.99 per episode or in a variety of Season Pass packages incentivized by original webisodes, deleted scenes and behind the scenes content. I could download episodes or order the DVDs on Amazon or I could watch on Xbox Live. The show is certainly made available to anyone who wants to get started, catch-up, or re-watch the series in time for this summer’s premiere of final episodes—guaranteeing “Breaking Bad” to have its highest ratings yet.
The most successful show at AMC yet has been “Walking Dead”. Which in this most recent week (ending March 10) topped cable ratings with 10.458 million same-day viewers. This number of viewers would rank within the top ten list in viewership on the broadcast list—only coming in below the several top shows of CBS and FOX’s “American Idol”. This is significant considering NBC’s shows are nowhere in the top lists. “Walking Dead” is not the only cable show bringing in these broadcast-level ratings this week—History channel’s “The Bible” was received by 10.8 million viewers and A&E’s two episodes of “Duck Dynasty” was received by 8.2 and 8.1 million viewers—coming just below ABC’s highest rated of the week, “The Bachelor”, with 8.5 million viewers.
AMC’s top three shows have risen to become some of the most talked-about shows on television. This is because these shows feature three distinct and different story worlds—1960’s Madison Avenue, New Mexico drug trade, and a zombie apocalypse. In competition against broadcast dramas, which alternately order and schedule shows similar to their current offerings in order to continue flow and hold viewers through the primetime hours, the cable networks have grown shows out of the need todistinguish their networks.
While the shows like “Walking Dead”, “The Bible” and “Duck Dynasty” are celebrated among the highest rated on cable this week—it’s also true that their networks are not necessarily receiving as high of ratings on their other offerings. The shows attract large audiences because of the complex characters involved—the universalities of the stories take place in unique settings with definitive themes. Viewers who hold particular interest in the subject matter or themes presented in the show may be drawn in by the other programming offered on these networks. For example, AMC hits were grown from the niche audience of “classic movies”, The History Channel from an audience valuing historical knowledge, and A&E which (since leaving its prestigious “Arts and Entertainment” origins behind) has grown as a place to host quick-fix reality shows—that now premiere on primetime nights filled by single shows like “Duck Dynasty” and “Storage Wars” for binge viewing. These hits promote their networks on smaller scales, but it remains significant that the cable hits are competing with the hits of broadcast.
There is a serious change happening in the usual differentiation between broadcast and cable ratings. Broadcast continues its history of shows designed for the “greatest common factor” of audience interest and has given them top-rated viewership while the expanse of cable networks worked to create shows catered to niche demographics and interests. Now, however, the top ranking shows of broadcast are being challenged by the rise in ratings of cable successes. Cable networks no longer stay confined to one format or type of show either. AMC has moved to distinct reality show programming such as “The Pitch” and “Freakshow”—following their brand theme of shows that are smart and abnormal. Even A&E is about to the enter the world of scripted drama with “Bates Motel”, a “Pyscho” prequel about the murderous and lightly incestuous mother-son duo, that will likely continue to represent the network theme of unusual but important family values from which “Duck Dynasty” has grown. Creating shows for broadcast networks is now the toughest job, when ordering shows for the broadest audience possible and continuing programming flow from current shows clearly oppose the need to create shows that are both distinct and remarkable.
A&E’s Bates Motel. 2013.
Remarkable is an important word that stuck in my head last year when my boss at a start-up was sneaking me into private speaker events for employees at Google. One week, Seth Godin, an author, speaker and advertising/marketing expert, was giving a presentation in which he explained that the approach to every advertising spot today absolutely needed to be making it “remarkable”—“As in worth making a remark about.” His point was that traditional campaigns are becoming practically useless while creating word-of-mouth and digital shares have become the most effective methods of attracting consumers. In terms of TV shows, successful ratings don’t grow unless there is something to be talked about after a viewing or a way to talk about it. With these pressures to distinguish themselves, cable networks are the ones today that make TV show experiences worth making remarks about, but “remarkable” content is also appearing from a new batch of creators—the third and newest competitor in television: anybody. In the online world of viral videos as a result of easy digital sharing, one could recognize that thriving networks like AMC operate much more like the Internet than they do a cable channel. Marketing efforts don’t grow an online hit, the audience does when they share it.
Chris Anderson’s book “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More” explains the trend as it pertains to every industry affected by the relatively new access to niche content on the Internet. Entertainment industries previously held power by means of “limited shelf space”—as in only so many top-selling books on a Wal-Mart shelf, only so many top-rented VHS and DVD’s fit into a Blockbuster, and only as many TV shows as primetime blocks and networks. The “Long Tail” refers to the niche content previously lacking distribution means to reach an audience of too specific and therefore, too few, consumers. The first challenge to broadcast networks “hit market” were cable networks—rather than a few broadcast channels, viewers have a remote control and the ability to select from one to two hundred channels with a premium cable package. The limitations of shelf space expanded but only in the comparison of choosing to go to a Barnes & Noble store for a broader selection of books than the top-sellers you have found at your local to a Wal-Mart. Now consider the choices made available for readers at a Wal-Mart or Barnes & Noble as compared to books on Amazon.com. EVERYTHING is available and in any form—hardcover, paperback, e-book, and on your laptop, e-reader, tablet, or smartphone. Shelf space restrictions have disappeared completely in online markets. The solution, Chris Anderson gives to businesses struggling to compete amongst the explosion of all this niche content is to “1) Make everything available” and “2) Help me find it”.
Not everyone can be Amazon, but a serious threat to the traditional broadcast and cable bundle is the growing competition to become the go-to online distributor who can make all video available and help consumers navigate it in regards to their niche interests. These are reasons for such companies as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and YouTube, but also their reasons for pursuing original content to be free from licensing restrictions. New companies have everything to gain in entering content streaming, while traditional broadcast networks and the cable networks linked to their corporations are in an inherently bad position to release their content to streaming distribution.
Broadcast channels have managed to position themselves to keep the greatest profits from cable subscriptions even though they were originally created as free signals. Their profits today must be coming from the fact that they are sold to bundles as the most valuable part of cable package—even though they should or could be free. Huge profits are made for broadcast networks by overcharging consumers for more content than they actually consume. At the same time, consumers are finding a cable package less and less valuable, while knowing they don’t watch most of the 200-300 channels they are paying for (and from which broadcast is overpaid). Consumers are tempted to spend their money more efficiently to pay only for what they actually watch as more quality content is made available independent from a bundle online. Even if broadcast were to unravel the bundle of channels and shows from the bundle into a la carte offerings of smaller or individual channels, in attempt to keep cable subscribers—they will inevitably lose money. Therefore, broadcast networks can only lose in an unbundled future and every reason to keep it together as long as they possible can.
Meanwhile, cable networks like AMC operating without affiliation to the predominant corporations tied to the traditional bundle have been in the best position to follow the advice of Chris Anderson. With nothing to lose, AMC has been able to make its shows available to anyone who wants to watch, helping them discover it by hosting it on a variety of streaming services and incentivizing payment with a variety of formats and price points. This is the key to success during the forthcoming unbundling of television. Without being held down by major corporate affiliations to a declining industries, networks like AMC that don’t have these investors to answer to can dip into the best of both worlds with audiences watching on cable and online.
All hail the king. AMC has managed to provide “king” content and grow audiences with accessibility while other networks are held back by creative and corporate restrictions. Digital distribution moves by new streaming companies are all focused on providing great content—think of Amazon Prime’s purchase to exclusively release “Downtown Abbey” or Netflix’s original “House of Cards”. Serious digital moves only happen with great content.
Hollywood Reporter writer Tim Goodman gives NBC entertainment chairman, Bob Greenblatt, some advice in an article titled Can NBC Save Itself From Being NBC? Goodman claims that Greenblatt’s termination is inevitable because investors will not be pleased no matter what. Goodman’s advice for Bob? “Look at the number around you –not just NBC’s numbers (don’t stare at those!) but those of ABC or Fox or The CW. Do you know what those numbers are, Bob? They’re cable numbers. So be a cable channel. But run it like you would run the cable channel you’ll get offered to run when NBC fires you. Do it now.” It’s good advice. NBC is screwed either way, but the best thing they could do is create a few distinguished and unique shows, so that when the unbundling happens—they’ll have an “audience-craved” show to keep them alive. A terminal diagnosis inspired a chemistry teacher to cook his best meth — it can inspire NBC.
Strangers On A Train 