TCA Awards and "The Fosters"
Monday, August 10, 2015 at 8:40AM 
Here's a little 'In Your Face, Emmys!' news. The Television Critics Association has handed out its awards and all three of its big winners (Empire, The Americans, and Inside Amy Schumer) are NOT actually nominated for the Emmy top categories of Best Drama and Best Comedy. (To be fair, Inside Amy Schumer is not eligible for the Comedy category at the Emmys because it competes in variety series. But still...)
It's also worth noting that only one of its winners also won the same category last year (The Fosters for "Youth Programming"). Let that be another reminder that Emmy needs a quality control Executive Committee type panel since their top categories are usually unmoveable from year to year as if nothing ever changes on TV when we all know it is quite an evolving artform.
This news provides the perfect opportunity to talk about The Fosters. Do any of you watch it? It's my guilty pleasure. I say "guilty" because even though I admire much of it, enough of it embarrasses me to feel guilt. At heart it's a weirdly overemphatic treacly progressive lesbian utopia series painted with way too broad strokes but it's also damn addictive and a super warm family drama with moments of incredible charm, organic humor, and even insight. It works.
Everyone says this is the golden age of television but I personally think the opinion is overstated. Certainly it's the golden age of premiere channel television but one genre of TV that I think is still leagues behind 1990s television is the regular people/family drama genre. Certainly none of them approach the amazing quality of 1990s shows like My So Called Life or Once & Again. And that's largely because today's family dramas are really obsessed with DRAMA in all caps -- is it the desperation from knowing their are 500+ more channels you could flip to? -- and feel the need to have every character have some major life crises or decision in each 45 minute episode. I call this The Brothers & Sisters Efect. That show became more and more unwatchable each season despite so many winning elements. It wasn't content to dramatize the fascinating details of basic human interaction and family role dynamics. Instead, it always had to be Life or Death in each episode. The Fosters has the same exact problem. You'll be really into some simple conflict that is beautifully truthful and then they'll gild the lily by constantly returning to deeply aggravating storylines (the less said about the incest storyline the better but the writer's room relies on it so much over two seasons now that you'd think they think it's the best thing they've ever come up with when it's actually the worst) or throwing up some ridiculous gotcha! "danger" like shootings or car accidents.
Amy Schumer, Empire, TV, The Americans, The Fosters
Reader Comments (6)
"The Chair" was really compelling, but a season two looks sadly unlikely - it's a big budget and complicated shoot for something with such a niche audience. Was hoping an Emmy nomination might help rescue it, but no luck.
Go Jon!
I can't believe the Emmys ignored The Affair. I mean, not even the opening sequence?
I feel pretty much exactly the same way about The Fosters. I honestly think, though, that the show would be better packing Brandon off to college at this point. He’s often the source of the show’s less compelling storylines and the performance doesn’t really ground the big dramatic moments in the same way that, say, the actress playing Callie is able to. I wish the show would recognise that it’s strength is in its smaller storylines, which are often beautifully observed. Switched At Birth suffers similar problems, but, again, is such a warm and inviting world and is so inquisitive about its characters, that it’s become a guilty pleasure in the exact same way.
The closes we’ve had in terms of low-key family dramas is probably Parenthood, which could do incredibly interesting things (I still maintain that building an entire season largely around one couple’s protracted separation was wonderful), but also had several characters that it had no idea what to do with and all of a sudden you’re stuck with numerous poorly thought-out B- and C-plots.
ben1283- glad to hear a similar feeling is out there. I dont know anyone who watches the show so I didn't know if i was alone in the universe with this "calm down!" feeling each week. I love so much of it but at least one element each episode is completely aggravating. And, yes, it's usually Brandon.
Hooray for John Oliver! I know he gets a lot of praise but I think it is well-deserved. He does a great job at explaining why the subject of any given show is troubling and/or fucked up, and he's funny while doing it.
I don't watch The Fosters, but I had the same feelings about - ahem - Hart of Dixie, a show that was content to just be nice and lovely for the most part and entire episodes could go by where I guess not much happened, but it still felt like I'd gotten enough out of those characters to be satisfied. It's a feeling that goes back through time with shows like The Gilmore Girls and so on. Even Mad Men was like that, actually, and people were tearing that show apart for it in the final season where they expected every episode to be ABOUT something or someone in a big, grand, epic way when the show was never like that, but rather about the happenings of life where the big wide world occasionally interferes and forces its characters to interact with it (famous deaths, events, social movements).