In the family way
This fall, television leaves the singles scene behind with a slate of shows that focus on domestic life
The end of the world, it turns out, was just a summertime thing. Despite great hysteria about the reality apocalypse and the death of scripted TV, there's not a single new reality candidate on the networks' fall ballot.
Instead, as three dozen series premiere in the coming weeks, you'll find the networks obsessively trying to create the next "Friends," "Frasier," and "Everybody Loves Raymond" as those blockbusters prepare to lay their weary heads to rest. They'll be working to delete from your memory cheap summer buzzes such as "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and "Boy Meets Boy" in order to build viewer interest in traditional, scripted, blue-chip-investment fare. Why do they bother with scripts? Because comedy and drama hits last longer than reality flash-in-the-pans, and the likes of "Friends" can buoy an entire network for the better part of a decade. The networks will always fill in gaps with reality TV, the genre that came of age alongside webcams, but they'll never let go of repeatable sitcoms and dramas and their attendant syndication and DVD profits.
This fall, you'll also find the networks very much obsessed with family. During the 1990s, TV comedy was a coffee bar of latter-day Mary Richardses with cellphones and gay best friends. But the "Seinfeld" sitcom mold has gotten old, and the "Friends" finale in May 2004 will be a symbolic ending to the entire singles genre that defined premillennial TV. This fall, we'll see only two new single-in-the-city-coms -- "Coupling" and "Eve," both of which are dated by their picky-single quips.
All of the other 18 new comedies are set in the family fold, that instant-coffee world where parents aren't merely one-guest-spot-a-year characters played by aging TV stars. Goodbye galley kitchens and skyscraper-scapes, hello front porches.
Sure, this big family push is an extension of the neo-"Leave It to Beaver" phenom by which retro domestic comedies such as "According to Jim" and "My Wife and Kids" have gained popularity since 9/11. But the 2003 dom-coms have a decidedly new-school feel to them. They depend on the dynamics of family life, but with less of the unreality and denial that characterized pre-1970s family imagery.
This isn't Mom, Dad, Bro, and Sis, and it's not the friendly breakfast-table banter of "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter." The new shows are about broken, refitted, awkwardly extended, and blended families. This season, it's Step-Mom, Half-Bro, and Estranged Son. It's the gay fathers on "It's All Relative," it's the ever-present ex-wife on "All of Us," it's the single dad moving into his parents' garage in "All About the Andersons." It's the twisted clan in the season's best new comedy, "Arrested Development," as Dad is arrested, Mom takes over the family business, and the wounded adult children trump one another in power plays.
Don't believe the sedate dom-com titles of the new season -- "Like Family," "Married to the Kellys," and, especially, "Happy Family." They're suffused with irony. "Happy Family" could be retitled "Family Feud," as aging parents stress over their three children's troubles, which include lying, cheating, and -- no kidding -- having an affair with a caged bird. "They're never really out of the house, are they?" moans John Larroquette as the dad.
The new dramas, too, are unusually tangled up in family ties. There are, as always, a few melodramatic family sagas -- the take-it-or-leave-it "One Tree Hill," for instance, about dueling half-brothers in high school, and the flaky "Skin," about star-crossed teen love. David E. Kelley's newest series, "The Brotherhood of Poland, N.H.," is an hour -- a long hour -- of brotherly angst.
But this season even the butch crime dramas contain a family element. While the "Law & Order" and "CSI" franchises have not given their detectives much family back story, Joe Pantoliano's excellent undercover series "The Handler" brings in his strained rapport with his ex-convict brother. Rob Lowe's noble lawyer in "The Lyon's Den" does battle with his difficult dad, played by Rip Torn. The hard-boiled "Karen Sisco" from Elmore Leonard's fiction catches fugitives with the help of her father, and the lead agents on "Threat Matrix" save the US from terrorists when they're not dealing with fallout from their former marriage.
These shows won't rely on soaplike ongoing story arcs, which have become bad words in TV drama since they make a series less appealing in its afterlife of repeats and syndication. The great success of "Law & Order" reruns is contingent upon the self-standing nature of each episode. But still, the 2003 class of heroes will face a goodly share of family dysfuction in the middle of their weekly adventures.
For the next few weeks, most of the people watching television will be eyeing these network newbies, as well as catching up with returning series. While cable continues to move in on the networks' share of TV audiences, especially during the summer with series such as FX's "Nip/Tuck," the networks are still the lords of the fall. Only the most confident of cable outlets will introduce a new series during the fall network glut, which is why HBO is premiering the improvised political series "K Street" and the David-Lynch-meets-John-Steinbeck drama "Carnivale" next Sunday.
And what viewers will find in the networks' 2003 fall line is a collection that's good ("Karen Sisco"), bad ("Luis"), and ugly ("The Mullets," about brothers with the same bad hair). It's a collection that, like every year, contains a few exciting pilots in the midst of many hours of filler. There's promise in the surveillance trickery of "Las Vegas," the cops-in-costume kicks of "The Handler," and the black comedy of "Karen Sisco" and "Arrested Development." And the supernatural family drama "Joan of Arcadia," in which a teenager talks to God, could also become worthwhile, if it can cultivate a sense of humor.
Ultimately, of course, most of the new series will fail, and they will fail quickly. The website Zap2it.com already has a "Dead Pool," where you can wager on which shows will be the first to go. Now who wants to bet that more than a few of those fast losers will also be critical favorites?
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.
