OK, so guys, more “Arrested Development” is on the way. It’s going to be here soon. It’s a big deal.
I know, it’s not technically “film” or “movies,” which is my usual thing, but it’s still really freaking cool. But because this new set of episodes has been described as the run-up to a feature-length “Arrested Development” film, I actually can tie it into movies and stuff. Pretty neat.
So this whole thing got me thinking about exactly how well “AD” can adapt into a new format (I refuse to believe it can be anything but fantastic), and what makes a great TV show different from a great movie.
Comparing “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”—one of my favorite broadcasted programs ever—with the films of one of my favorite storytelling teams—the Coen brothers—I managed, after many long, sleepless nights spent sipping Scotch beside the hearth, to come to a realization.
That realization was that in both feature and serial formats, there’s something intrinsic to the form that lends itself to a certain style of character, a certain presentation of those characters and certain types of stories being told about them.
So TV tends to take barely or not-at-all developed characters and tells stories revolving around them undergoing changes, while film takes characters that are already complex, complete and nuanced, and watches what happens when they collide.
Going back to my two examples, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is probably one of the more obvious instances of the “zero-to-hero” model, but it fits perfectly, so I’ll roll with it.
Take season one of the show: It attempted to run entirely on the premise of “slaying vampires in high school?!? Whack!” Or whatever it was teenagers said in the 90s.
And season one is really, really bad. Almost every character is a stereotype, none of them show more than the slightest flashes of originality, and it follows a painful “monster of the week” format.
Of course, it turned around in the space of a few episodes and became one of the best TV shows ever—making that first season totally worth it.
The characters grow, they mature, we connect with them and for much of “Buffy,” this development takes precedent over the actual plot.
While most shows don’t take a full season to find their footing, this system of the plot becoming subservient to the characters, their intensive growth and a strong personal investment in them is what most great TV shows do best, because it’s what the television format does best.
“30 Rock” did it, “Seinfeld” did it and even more serious, large scale shows like “Breaking Bad” or “The Sopranos” have done it. Even though their plots carry more of the show’s weight, the purpose is ultimately to further the characters they revolve around, which is why Walter White and Tony Soprano are two of the greatest figures to grace the small screen.
Compare this to the work of, say, the Coen brothers’ films, in which already fully complex characters run into each other for our amusement. Barton Fink doesn’t really learn anything, nor have any profound growth in, well, his movie, but he does arrive on the scene an already brilliantly written character and his interactions with the rest of the cast create an amazing movie.
The same can be said of Jeff and Walter in “The Big Lebwoski,” or Lancaster Dodd and Freddie Quell in “The Master,” or Jules and Vincent in “Pulp Fiction.”
Or take films like Tarkovsky’s “The Mirror,” or David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” which are entirely subjective, almost infuriatingly complex films devoted to the examination and complete understanding of a single character—a style that has created some of the greatest movies ever made.
In either case, the plot doesn’t overrule the character, but it isn’t totally secondary to them either. It’s just dependent on them, as it’s generated by the interactions of their quirks, nuances and depth.
It doesn’t exist for them, but because of them, where in TV the plot is just a vehicle for the progression of its characters.
And of course, there are some exceptions. For example “The Godfather” trilogy follows a very similar arc to the one that “Breaking Bad” has followed so far. However, it took three films for Michael Corleone’s story to unfold, allowing it to do some TV-style development work.
On the other side of this argument, Walter White’s tale could easily be told in a film or two, if you remove a lot of the mid-season stuff and leave the focus on interactions between him, Jesse and Gus. You know, removing most/all of the stuff that was just there to keep their characters moving.
With the line between the two media so fuzzy and growing fuzzier thanks to shows like “Girls,” “Game of Thrones” and Marvel’s serialization of the “Avengers” franchise, the forms that cinematic storytelling will take in the future remain uncertain at best, but it’s going to be fascinating to watch it all go down.
What isn’t uncertain, however, is that the “Arrested Development” movie is going to be off the freaking chain, if it ever happens.
Do you have any opinions about how characters differ between the big and small screens? Tell Austin at wellens@wisc.edu.
