Television audiences today respect the outlining tenets proposed by a show's pilot, I think, I think they accept the interior logic of a show if that logic is conveyed persuasively and followed loyally. A show like Max Headroom could be done really well today. As it is, this episodic show - in its first four episodes, the ones I viewed - consistently commits self-betrayal and violates narrative and real world logic for the sake of cheap entertainment.
It's unfortunate, because the underlying concepts of the show are impressive. "Twenty minutes into the future" major network television stations compete for massive audiences (200 million at a time - assumably the world's population has continued on a precipitous path) and dire financial stakes. The leading network, Channel 23 XXIII, has an ace reporter named Edison who frequently risks personal and professional injury in order to expose corruption, scandal, exploitation, and the like. His show is very popular. It must be a cornerstone of the network because in the very first episode his critical eye turns on his own network: the episode is about him uncovering the tragic, body-exploding consequences of Channel 23's revenue generating blipverts (adverts shown in rapid montage, too quickly for anyone to turn the channel!). People explode because their nervous systems are underused and the accumulating energy from this stagnation is ignited by the mentally intense blipverts.
Max Headroom does an okay job of explaining the bullshit it makes up. A friend of mine recommended this show told me. He described it as prophetic, the way it depicts the pervasiveness of technology in everyday lives, but its representation is far removed from our present reality, and my friend should have told me that the show was prophetic about the way writers would use absurd technological imaginings in order to explain away plotholes in adventurous storylines. Anyway I watched the show because he used the word cyberpunk in his introduction, and there certainly is plenty of cyberpunk weirdness. According to Max Headroom, in the future people will be confused by places called Body Banks - they'll be clueless as to what goes on inside of them. There will be a thriving black market of human organ selling, safely concealed behind the impenetrable veil of the name Body Bank - what goes on in a Body Bank, who knows, the name is so misleading, life is complicated, there are so many people and such violence, no one can stop to figure out these Body Banks. Also, even though Edison's show is massively popular, he has no imitators. Everyone else is complacent, so it really is up to him.
I'm writing myself out of the idea that this show has a strong foundation. There are lots of glaring annoyances like I'm describing. In Episode 2 the youth strap engines onto their skateboards in order to move at the same speed they already do; there is apparently no advantage because the skaters continue to perform inside half-pipes. The magic of the show is that it even attempts to invent these things. Engines on skateboards - that's interesting, isn't it? I've never seen it before, but here it is in Max Headroom.
That's what I mean though, in the television days of Max Headroom you didn't have to think about these things, there was an uncanny suspension of disbelief. Or maybe not - the show only went fourteen or so episodes. Why underestimate the people of the past, why assume they bought this hook, line, and sinker? I doubt anyone thought Get Smart was an intelligent and penetrating expose into the world of spies. Yes, I'm missing the point, and the point is entertainment.
The lack of fixed rules and a sense of reality inhibits my ability to enjoy the show. Television, like film, is fundamentally manipulative, and almost always a lie, but when you misshape your show's design for the sake of a single episode, you betray your own set of lies, and destroy some of the bridges you've formed with your audience. Sometimes rules are betrayed for subversive means, but in Max Headroom it's always for dramatic purposes, and that cheapens the entertainment because it's hard for me to value what they themselves don't. For example, this spontaneous rule making applies also to Channel 23. It's headache inducing to examine how this station is supposedly run - the autonomous Max Headroom, whom I haven't even yet explained, and won't, supposedly goes live on the air at any moment, interrupting whatever else was on. According to this show, in the future there won't be television programming or scheduling, just whims and chaos.
In each episode Edison is put in a perilous situation, but in each episode he escapes. There's not much weight to his danger, then, and there certainly isn't an escalating sense of danger over a course of several episodes. Each episode has its little threats and its unique reasons with little communication between the episodes. These qualities do help keep the show fun. The dialogue is sometimes very snappy, and the camera is extraordinarily mobile for a television show. The characters are sharply defined, and the social backdrop is vibrant and compelling. Some of its central questions are meaningful, and its objectives are worthwhile. If only the created world of Max Headroom had been cherished. A great movie, with a little love and attention, could be made from the first episode alone.
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