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TV — Chasing the prime time plague |
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Written by asap
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Thursday, 01 March 2007 |
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Once again, February was bloody on prime-time television.
Simone Deveaux was shot on “Heroes.” Meredith Grey drowned on “Grey’s Anatomy.” Sheriff Don Lamb was bludgeoned with a bat on “Veronica Mars.” And Jack Bauer’s evil brother suffered a cardiac arrest on “24” — induced by their father! — just to name a few. (You can pay tribute by watching the video.)
The mass slayings have become a seasonal tradition. Come sweeps, that time of year when Nielsen Media Research goes all out to count viewers, oh-so-familiar characters on broadcast shows start biting the dust more frequently in order to induce shock, create buzz and, hopefully, boost ratings.
Case in point: Michael Keppler, played by Liev Schreiber, shot and killed on the Feb. 8 episode of “CSI.” The character was introduced for a four-episode stint while actor William Peterson took time off. Instead of sending Keppler into the sunset, Schreiber preferred to have the troubled soul killed off.
“He felt it would be really interesting to play into a classic character arc but end it in a shocking way,” says “CSI” co-executive producer Naren Shankar. “It was planned from the very beginning.”
The homicide marked the first time “CSI” has killed off one of its investigators since the pilot. The same can’t be said for its Miami-set spin-off, who pronounced Eric Delko dead before he was brought back to life this February sweeps.
In a TV landscape littered with the passing of regular and recurring characters, Shankar insists sparing the CSIs’ lives is a conscious decision because the show tackles death so frequently.
“You get the sense that every show on television now is going to end with a death,” says Shankar. “We didn’t want that to happen to us. It’s like literally every promo you see now is: ’One of them will die!’ It’s almost become a dramatic crutch.”
Of course, death on television isn’t necessarily final. There’s always dream sequences, twin siblings, cryogenics or flashbacks to help resurrect characters.
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Derrik J. Lang is an asap reporter for blogger for The Slug (http://asapblogs.typepad.com/theslug). | Only registered users can write comments.
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