FX’s The Americans, and the Rise of Moral Ambiguity in Television
by Gregg Bothwell
When FX began promoting its new series The Americans, the ads were little more than ominous music playing over a generic suburban scene before a hammer-and-sickle appeared somewhere onscreen and the ad cut to the title of the show. Upon seeing these commercials, my friend’s reaction was: “Great, so now we’re re-igniting anti-communist paranoia?” And truthfully, that’s the impression the commercials gave: that this was a show about the evils of communism, and everyone better be afraid of the way it’s infiltrating American suburbia. But this turned out not to be the case. The show takes place in 1981, during the height of anti-communism in the U.S., and the show’s protagonists are long-term Soviet spies who have completely assimilated into America. The Americans’ setting is key, because if it were set in present-day America, it would be exactly the type of Neo-Red-Scare show that it seemed to be.
Instead, The Americans is another television show dealing in areas of moral ambiguity. The protagonists of the show, Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings, are actively working to undermine the U.S. government with the ultimate end-goal of destroying the culture of the same country that created this TV program. The fact that this show is on American television creates tension between the protagonists’ ideals and the audience’s, yet Phillip and Elizabeth’s loyalty to the USSR is never presented as good or bad. Rather, it is presented as a simple fact about these characters, who are nobly fighting for what they believe in, just as any American spy would. The moral ambiguity ultimately has less to do with Phillip and Elizabeth’s allegiances and more to do with the methods they use to accomplish their goals.
The Americans makes its audience ask these questions, while simultaneously asking the audience to still sympathize with its heroes. Phillip and Elizabeth kill, extort, and spy on people, but we still care about them because they are human. And the show drives this home through the other half of its narrative: Phillip and Elizabeth’s home lives. The two are married—as dictated by the Soviet government twenty years ago—and have two children together in the United States. Their home life is exceedingly boring, but relatable: they live the lives of the average middle-class suburban family, dealing with chores, children, work, and neighbors. This allows the viewer a way into the characters; it’s something one can recognize as distinctly human, and humanization is extremely important for creating a character. Oftentimes, a poorly-written character will feel like a construction, and this prevents the audience from ever really caring about them. In television, characters are the focal point of all programs, so it’s especially important to humanize a TV character. If we feel we are watching a real human being on TV, who shares the same general troubles we do, we starts to care about them as though they are real people whose lives we have a stake in.
The Americans seems to ask its audience to relate to these characters as much as possible outside of their spy lives in order to raise the stakes within their spy lives. When Phillip and Elizabeth are on a mission, one finds oneself conflicted about whom to root for. Genevieve Koski of The AV Club writes in her review of the show’s second episode [SPOILER]: “while Elizabeth and Phillip’s frantic scrambling in ‘The Clock’ is technically in service of obtaining information that could help the Soviet Union rain missiles down upon the United States, it’s hard not to cheer when they pull off the all-but-impossible task.” You might not agree with what the characters are doing, but you still care about them and want them to succeed.
But The Americans is simply one example of a rising trend in modern television. Ever since the breakout success of The Sopranos in 1999, the antihero has become more and more popular on TV, as has moral ambiguity in general. Every memorable character of the last fifteen years has been fatally flawed in some way, and despite being beloved in some ways, is still not the “good guy.” Tony Soprano, Gregory House, Walter White, Don Draper, Carrie Matheson, Nancy Botwin, Dexter Morgan—no viewer, no matter how much they love these characters, actually likes these characters. In a way, one watches these characters to see them get their comeuppance, even if one still roots for them. It’s that dichotomy that draws people in: if a character is crafted in such a way that they’re both good and bad, smart and stupid, kind and hurtful, and they still feel as though they’re consistent, then they become truly compelling.
And just as all stories require conflict to be compelling, so do characters. A television character who is at peace with him- or herself is boring; what audiences want is to see is a character who is at odds with him- or herself. Walter White is a family man and a criminal; Carrie Matheson is a skilled spy and a vulnerable woman with a mental illness; Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings are Soviet spies and American suburbanites. These conflicts create for compelling television, but they also tap into something deeper in the cultural psyche: moral uncertainty.
Everyone experiences these kinds of internal conflicts (though, admittedly, not usually at the same level of life-or-death stakes as on television), and the ‘dark side’ of a character is just as humanizing as the more ‘relatable’ aspects of that character. Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings are relatable not just because of their home life, but also because their private lives aren’t as simple as they seem. The conflict within their characters makes them feel more real than if they were simply happy American suburbanites. This is because, in modernity especially, morality is a gray area that one must determine for oneself. Where in the past, people may have relied on holy books or cultural norms to guide them into what’s “right” and “wrong,” now every individual has to figure that out for themselves. Most people second-guess themselves on this: did I make the wrong decision? Did I hurt someone else? Does it matter if I hurt someone else? Who is holding me accountable aside from myself? Can I live with myself?
These are the questions that TV anti-heroes are asking themselves too, though usually about more dramatic things than the comparably banal lives of viewers, but this is, again, what makes these characters relatable. Watching your favorite character screw up and struggle to come to terms with it can be cathartic, while at the same time being compelling to watch. Even if we look outside of television, this seems to be a trend in U.S. pop culture as a whole: in the superhero genre, Batman has become the most popular superhero of the last 15 years, in no small part because of how conflicted he is as a character. In the 1970s, Superman was the more popular superhero, but now his rigid moral compass makes him seem outdated and one-dimensional; he’s just a really good guy. Batman, on the other hand, makes mistakes, and deals in areas of moral ambiguity; he’s conflicted, confused, and multi-faceted. The public is no longer interested in seeing the good guy always be good; they want to see someone who’s trying to be good, but doesn’t always get there.
On TV, this is especially true. The amount of time the viewer spends with television characters allows deep, three-dimensional characterizations. With seasons between ten and twenty-four hours, writers have enough time to really explore a character and allow the audience to understand that character on a level that’s not possible in film. This has made television the flourishing medium of anti-heroes and moral ambiguity, where writers can explore the darkest parts of human nature. There are few, if any, TV shows in which the protagonist does not have some sort of dark past—Lost, in fact, was based almost entirely around that concept, outside of the supernatural stuff—because that’s what audiences want to see. Trying to figure out your own moral compass is difficult, but coming home from a hard day and watching your TV friends make mistakes can make you feel better. Here are people, just like you, who are trying to be good, but screwing up worse than you ever did. There’s something compelling and comforting in that, and for that reason, anti-heroes aren’t going to be leaving our TVs any time soon.
Ultimately, while The Americans originally seemed to be asking its audience to be afraid of its protagonists, the opposite turned out to be true: it asks us to sympathize with them in spite of, or because of, their allegiances. As the show continues, Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings may become names which we associate with morally ambiguous characters searching for redemption, and believing what they’re doing is still excusable. When one exists outside of the law, the boundaries between “right” and “wrong” are pushed further and further, until one can commit the most heinous crimes and still believe they are a good person. This is what modern television deals with, though in different ways. A show like Breaking Bad asks: how far can one person go before they’re irredeemable? A show like Dexter asks: how close can an irredeemable person come to redemption? The Americans asks: what if that person doesn’t believe there’s anything about them that needs to be redeemed? But all of these questions both aim toward a more central question, and one that both characters and viewers ask: am I a good person?
MTV’s Catfish: The TV Show, And Why Reality TV Is Also Part of Television’s “Golden Age”
by Gregg Bothwell
Every episode of MTV’s Catfish: The TV Show begins with Nev and Max, the show’s hosts, goofing around in a hotel room. They’re just waking up, or they’re cracking jokes at the other’s expense, or maybe just doing a bit for the camera, but the show always opens with an intimate moment between the two. Eventually, they’ll sit down at the computer and—well, let’s be honest—pretend to find an email from a concerned person in an online relationship. The theatricality of the scene doesn’t matter; we know they’ve selected this person before this moment, but they want to make the audience feel more involved. By showing us this moment, the audience feels like they just met up with their old friends Nev and Max, and they’re discovering things alongside the two.
On television, character becomes the most important aspect of a show. This is especially true on sitcoms or episodic dramas, because the only continuity between episodes is the characters—they’re the link between each separate story. Even the highly serialized dramas of the last 15 years have put a particular emphasis on building characters: what people remember of The Sopranos is Tony Soprano, not what happened in a given season. When people talk about Breaking Bad, they talk about Walter White and the way his actions affect and define his character. I personally have gotten into a number of heated arguments about whether or not Walter is a bad guy (by the way, he is), but I rarely talk about what actually happens on the show. With the exception of soap operas, the events that happen on a television show are rarely as important as the way those events affect the characters. Even now, when network shows (those on CBS, NBC, FOX or ABC) try to cash in on the success of cable television (AMC, FX, TNT, Showtime, HBO, etc.), they seem to forget that the characters are what hook people, not the plot or atmosphere. They’ll focus on the dark edge, or the twists and turns of a plot, but forget to flesh out the characters, and the viewers get bored. An audience is only going to watch a TV show for as long as they care about the characters.
On Catfish, this means that the viewers have to care about Nev and Max, who are the only consistent characters from one episode to the next. The show does a good job of making the concerned person of the week (CPOTW?) sympathetic and interesting, but Nev and Max have to be likeable too. As soon as the audience dislikes the hosts, they’re going to stop watching the show, no matter how interesting it is. (Nev and Max: you have to get better about talking about trans* issues or else I will start to dislike you).
This is true of all reality television: the characters are meant to shine, not the plot. The reason producers choose such crazy (perhaps obnoxious) people to be on their shows is because they’re well-defined and interesting. Even a show like Jersey Shore has great characters. I’ve hate-watched that show enough times to know that Vinny and Pauly D are hilarious together, JWOWW is surprisingly smart and responsible, and Snooki isn’t as dumb as she pretends to be. But I also know that in a given episode, all that’s going to happen is that they’ll get sloppy drunk, Ron and Sammi will get into a fight, and then maybe they’ll work at the Shore Shack for five minutes the next day. What happens isn’t interesting—what matters is who’s doing it. MTV seems to “get” this concept with its reality programming, which has been very popular for the network (people often complain that MTV doesn’t show music videos anymore, and it’s because no one wants to watch hours of music videos they can find on YouTube). Perhaps their biggest franchise, outside of Jersey Shore, is 16 and Pregnant and the spin-off/sequel Teen Mom.
These shows—along with the rest of MTV’s reality catalogue—have the added benefit of being relevant to a lot of young people, but at their heart, they’re also about the characters. The show’s titles are self-explanatory, but if you’re unfamiliar: 16 and Pregnant is about teen couples who get pregnant, and must decide whether they want to keep the baby or give it up for adoption. Teen Mom is the continuation of that show, following the mothers from 16 and Pregnant as they attempt to raise their babies (very few actually give up their babies for adoption). Teen Momwas created as a way for viewers to keep up with the characters (real people) they cared about from 16 and Pregnant, and it’s been very successful. Teen Mom and its sequel, Teen Mom 2 (which follows the lives of mothers from season two of 16 and Pregnant) have each run for four seasons, where 16 and Pregnant has only had four seasons altogether. MTV’s strategy—and what the viewers want—is to follow a continuing story involving the characters they already know.
That is precisely what critics are talking about when they talk about the “Golden Age” of television, or the rise in quality TV since The Sopranos began in 1999. The television that people want to watch is becoming increasingly serialized, sure, but what it really comes down to is that people want good characters—ones with whom they empathize in some sense, even if the character makes bad decisions. (The huge presence of antiheroes and moral ambiguity on television will be the topic for another post.) Catfish may not be serialized, but when friends talk about the show, it’s usually to speculate about whether or not Nev and Max are totally gay for each other, because they’re the characters we’ve come to know and love. MTV knows what it’s doing when it comes to creating watchable reality television, and that shouldn’t be overlooked. Networks like AMC, FX, Showtime, HBO, and now Netflix have been working to change the way stories are told on television, and their shows have resonated with audiences and critics, but reality television is often overlooked. It has a reputation for being trashy, but while the people on reality TV might not be as beautiful or well-mannered as Raylan Givens or Don Draper, they’re still well-defined and interesting. Reality TV isn’t written by smart, innovative storytellers either, but it can still be poignant and timely.
For instance, Catfish is examining a very modern problem, one that’s less than twenty years old: what if the person you love is not who they say they are? Before the internet, that problem didn’t exist—barring perhaps a few instances of pen-pal fraud—but now it’s relatively common. And the concept raises all kinds of philosophical questions: what does this say about love and sexuality? Just how important are looks and gender boundaries? What causes someone to lie about their identity? With the possibility to become anyone else, who chooses to do so? And whom do they choose to become? These questions aren’t simply implied in the show, either—they’re directly addressed. Catfish doesn’t simply lead up to the reveal of who the unseen party in the relationship is. It brings us to that moment, and stays to see what happens next. We get to see how the fraudulent parties explain themselves; we get to understand their lives and their motivations; we get to see how they react to finally meeting the other person. And on the other side, we get to see how the defrauded party reacts: how much are they willing to forgive? Is the intimacy between the two parties nullified by the dishonesty, or is there still some connection there? It’s different in every episode: sometimes the relationship survives, sometimes they become friends, and sometimes they never speak again. But that’s what’s so fascinating about the show: it comments on modern ideas of love and sexuality while remaining immensely watchable.
It’s easy to write off reality television as an inexpensive way for a network to boost its ratings (which it often is), but it would be just as easy to write off scripted television based on shows like Two and a Half Men or NCIS: Los Angeles. Reality television might not always be the smartest TV, but it often has the best characters. People talk about Janelle from Teen Mom 2 in the same way they talked about Tony Soprano. MTV’s reality shows may not be immortalized in the same way The Sopranos has been, but they’re perhaps more relevant to the current cultural paradigm, and they certainly shouldn’t be overlooked.
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