5 Elements of Serialized TV Drama

From Oz to The Sopranos… Mad Men to Boardwalk Empire… Here are five elements these epic Television shows have in common.

Subcultures

One of the great things about the Golden age of television is it’s ability to capture society through the lens of a specific subculture. It allows us to gain a broad perspective on our culture through the beliefs and actions of a web of characters. These characters clash over competing interests, desires for power and values they want to maintain or instill in the people around them.

Whether it’s a New Jersey mob family, a group of corrupt LA cops, the wild west, Prohibition era 1920`s, the Baltimore drug trade or an influential media conglomerate, the characters within these subcultures represent desires, beliefs and struggles that we can relate to, regardless of how far removed we may be from the culture in question. The subculture is the vehicle we use to navigate the complex nature of society.

Cinema can achieve this, yes, but not to the extent great serialized TV dramas can. These shows which belong to the golden age of television are the marriage of cinema and literature, both operating on the highest level. The depth found in The Wire has been compared to Tolstoy’s War and Peace in it’s depiction of societal complexities. It feels more appropriate to compare Walter White’s psychological transformation to Dostoyevsky’s protagonist in Crime and Punishment. The existential malaise Tony grapples with in The Sopranos feels akin to something you would read in the work of Albert Camus.

You do not need to be the nephew of a mob boss to understand Christopher Moltisanti’s desire for recognition, nor do you need to be a mob boss to understand the struggles of balancing work and family while feeling the overwhelm of existential dread. You do not need to be a player in the streets of Baltimore to understand what it is to be merely a cog in a cold and lifeless institution, ready to spit you out the moment you are no longer useful.

In society, we all play roles to a certain extent. We all have individual desires which can often come into conflict with the demands of the culture we occupy, from country to state, city to neighborhood, religion to race, school to work, town to family. We all must contend with our relationship to the groups we belong to. These shows illuminate the difficulties of finding our place in society. The endless network of tribes with their own hierarchies, customs and politics that individuals must traverse and adapt to is a struggle we all face. These shows, which allow us to gain a deeper understanding of various individuals with their own philosophical viewpoints, can help us find meaning in that shared struggle.

Moral Ambiguity

Since Oz and The Sopranos dropped on HBO in the late 90`s, we have been in what some critics have dubbed the age of the antihero. These shows depict a cast of characters which display a wide range of moral complications. There are no heroes or villains in these stories. As in life, these characters possess a combination of virtuous and sinful qualities, which make them more relatable and empathetic to the audience.

We all fall short of the ideal to various degrees. These characters provide insight into our own flaws, allowing us to examine and reflect on the psychological conflicts we grapple with as we navigate the complex world around us. These stories emerged long before this era of television, as far back as The Greeks to Shakespeare, film noir of the post World War 2 era to many iconic pieces of cinema.

Serialized TV has allowed these types of characters to make a resurgence in pop culture, as audiences have a demand for characters who reflect the moral conflict and complexities of the human condition.

Generational Clash

Often times, the best serialized dramas contain characters who represent the values of different generations. These beliefs often clash with one another in various ways.

Examples being — Tony and Chris in The Sopranos, Walt and Jesse in Breaking Bad, Don and Pete in Mad Men, Logan and Kendall in Succession, Nucky and Jimmy in Boardwalk Empire. The ideological clash between these anti heroes and their protégé's are often a manifestation of tradition versus change. This theme represents the human struggle to find the balance between maintaining valuable aspects of tradition while embracing the reality of change.

There will always be a clash between the old and the new as the older generation understandably wants to hold onto the customs which give their lives meaning and the new want to alter the landscape in such a way that accelerates their upward mobility. The never ending tug of war between these two opposing forces can be found littered through out the story lines of TV’s golden age.

No one escapes the reality that the world around us evolves, we grow older every day and we must all grapple with our own mortality. While we’re young, we’re eager to make our way in the world, to make a name for ourselves, to rise up. When we’re older, we understandably want to preserve some aspect of the customs which formed our beliefs and shaped our identity.

Identity

In the first season of The Sopranos, after sinking into a depression over the apparent lack of meaning in his life, Tony’s nephew Christopher Moltisanti laments to fellow mobster Paulie Walnuts that unlike characters in films, he is not undergoing any meaningful change. He questions why he doesn’t have a character arc and determines that; “I got no identity.”

The grappling with one’s identity is an element that is seamless throughout these TV dramas. With Walter White allowing his shadow to be fully integrated into the manifestation of his alter ego Heisenberg, to Don Draper’s literal identity having been stolen in an attempt to escape his past life and fully reinvent himself. Some characters define themselves too heavily in the eyes of others while some take on various forms in an attempt to discover who they truly are.

These characters are often struggling to attain something which they feel will make them complete and solidify who they are. Whether it’s the need to be respected or feared or worthy of love, to leave behind a legacy or to build an empire. This theme suits the golden age of television perfectly as these shows are classic American stories. There is no story more American than becoming who you want to be, embarking on the journey from a nobody into a somebody. However, along with the nature of progress and an abundance of opportunity, comes anxiety, overwhelm and questions such as “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose?” That’s one of the ultimate American struggles.

The classic anti hero protagonists often possess an unrelenting drive that propels them forward, unable to be at peace with themselves and the world around them. There is always an emptiness in them that they can never seem to fill. Given that serialized dramas unfold over the course of seasons, it serves as the perfect medium to explore this theme, as this is a struggle that never seems to resolve itself.

The desire to climb the social hierarchy, to embark on conquest, to leave a legacy behind, to make a mark on the world, to define yourself on your terms, are aspects of the human condition and the American spirit. These are undeniable qualities which, for better or worse, exist inside all of us.

Vice

Drugs and alcohol are an undeniable aspect of our cultural landscape and it’s only grown more abundant as our society has progressed. Substances provide a temporary escape from emptiness, from trauma, from pain. As the narrator of HBO’s first dramatic series, Augustus Hill stated; “Listen up America, you are never going to get rid of drugs… until… you cure… pain.”

America’s relationship with drugs and alcohol runs so deep that you would be hard-pressed to find an individual who has not been affected by it to one degree or another. The demand for drugs is perhaps rooted in the overlap of American excess and the lack of meaning so prevalent in today’s society. It only makes sense that the great TV dramas of this generation depict characters who struggle with some sort of substance abuse, or who are involved in the drug trade itself.

At this point, it is embedded into our cultural zeitgeist. From Breaking Bad to The Wire, The Sopranos to Boardwalk Empire, Snowfall to Narcos, The Shield to Sons of Anarchy, you will find that the sale or use of Narcotics plays a pivotal role in the story or in one of the characters’ lives. I don’t believe any of these shows intend to glorify drug trafficking or addiction, but instead provide a window into the collective psyche of our modern era. An era of abundance, of anxiety, of decadence.

Whether you’re the protégé to a mob boss, the son of a wealthy media tycoon, a homeless addict on the streets of Baltimore or the apprentice to a high school teacher turned meth kingpin, the psychological impulse to escape the memories of a traumatic past or numb the pain of a life without meaning, is relatable to most people. This desire for escape is not bounded by social class, ethnic background or age. It is an existential yearning that reaches every corner of society.