The summer has generally been considered a TV wasteland—a kind of breeding ground for bad programming that fills the empty space left by everyone’s favorite year round shows. With the exceptions of cable hits and critical darlings like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and more recently FX’s Louie, that view of the summer has held true. When America’s Got Talent is consistently the highest rated summer show (edging out such artistic luminaries as Bachelor Pad, Big Brother 13, and not one, not two, but three different versions of NCIS), it may be time to question the quality of primetime programming.
This is not to say that the summer of 2011 didn’t bring any surprises to the world of TV. While cable networks like AMC and FX continued to crank out quality episodes of Breaking Bad, Louie, and newcomer Wilfred, a little network called MTV tried some scripted TV of its own.
Now, MTV might not be the zeitgeist defining force it seems to want to be, but every so often the former music video network pulls out some good programming. Though MTV is defined now by its reality programming, in the past year it has started to develop a slate of scripted series. In this respect, they have had a few swings and misses.
There’s the already cancelled The Hard Times of RJ Berger, a high school coming of age story centered around a geek with certain….anatomical advantages. There is Teen Wolf, MTV’s utterly humorless reboot of the cult classic 1985 Michael J. Fox film. Apparently, the producers of Teen Wolf thought that replacing all the comedy of the original film with really good-looking people pouting at each other would do the trick. Then there was the already cancelled reboot of the popular UK series Skins which gained much notoriety for its graphic nature, but really didn’t do much to build off of the original series and connect solidly with an American audience.
MTV’s scripted slate for the most part has been a disappointment. But developing scripted programming takes time and patience. Scripted shows are much harder to get off the ground than, say, the run of the mill MTV reality show. MTV has reached large heights of success with infamous shows like Jersey Shore, The Real World etc. But one new scripted show on MTV has broken away from the pack in terms of quality.
MTV’s new coming of age sitcom Awkward. has developed into a really clever, smart take on the chaotic pace of the modern high school. The show centers around a smart female protagonist who is unexpectedly vaulted into the spotlight when an accident leads everyone to believe that she attempted suicide. Nothing groundbreaking, the show has an admittedly dark premise; but somehow, that does not stop it from being very light-hearted and fun. Whatever damage hackneyed storytelling devices (the main character, Jenna communicates with the audience via a voiceover as she writes her blog) may do is counteracted by the central performance of Ashley Rickards. She’s a truly charming lead in a show that is not afraid to keep all of its characters grounded despite the absurdity of high school.
The key to the success of Awkward. is its treatment of its characters. Jenna is involved in a classic high school love triangle, but series creator Lauren Iungerich doesn’t make either love interest into a villain as she could easily do. Every character and their circumstances are treated with fairness. Awkward. combines the surreal humor of Mean Girls with the gentle character development employed in a series like Freaks and Geeks.
MTV’s reputation as a bastion of exploitative reality TV will probably hold strong for many years to come, but bright spots like Awkward. give hope to a network known for filming drunk people yell at each other. Reality shows started out at MTV with the advent of the first season of The Real World. In the very first episodes of The Real World, the whole exercise seems like a very innocent experiment in filming the day to day lives of young people. As the years have gone by, reality TV has gotten more and more exploitative and pessimistic. It’s a bit sad that we as a country seem to enjoy rolling our eyes at each other rather than celebrating something or being told a story. So here’s to Awkward. and the return–even just for a little while– of story time.
