Disney Is Bringing Back USA’s Mid-2000s “Characters Welcome” Era
“Life’s a beach.”
On Succession, the Murdoch-allegorical Roy family sees the villainous tentacles of their media empire embroiled in myriad industries. The Roys control cable news and local news, as well as print angles, but also theme parks and cruise ships (shoutout to Cousin Greg). When a company can embrace a wide range of media outlets, they can also help conjure new images for the dictionary’s definition of “synergy.”
Look to the real world, for example. If you’re waiting in line for the Rip Ride Rock It roller coaster at Universal Studios in Orlando, you’re liable to see billboards for The Voice, Today, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Park in the parking lot at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and feel consumed by ads for Muppets Haunted Mansion and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. (“Get’cha head in the game,” they claim.) That’s synergy. And if you’re the kind of person who loves being in a theme park environment (aye), then you’re already predisposed to enjoy the things being advertised to you by the same company. I’m a stupid nerd who loves Disney too much, but yes my experience at Studios is enhanced by seeing E.J. in a Letterman's jacket. What am I supposed to do about that?
In a way, seeing those ads have become as much a nostalgic part of my youth as Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo calling Red Sox games has or even just the billboards for the Orlando theme parks you can see on I-4. (Good thing they photographed Daniel Radcliffe early.) Maybe I don’t really care that Ariana Grande joined The Voice, but whenever I think of The Voice now, I’ll be inclined to think of the memories I shared at the park with my loved ones. The companies know how to market to me. It’s like the Universal executives are Don Draper using a Kodak carousel. Except instead of being rope-a-doped by children playing on the weekend, I’m sold by the mere concept of Al Roker returning to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
It’s that sort of commercially-driven nostalgia that I recall when I think about the “Characters Welcome” era (also known as “Blue Skies”) that defined the cable network, USA, from the mid to late 2000s. Psych, Monk, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, White Collar, Suits, Necessary Roughness. These were the shows USA built its brand on while every other network began to more strongly embrace serialization. Yes, these shows had some overarching plots (Psych’s Yin-Yang killer, the loss of Adrian Monk’s wife, the question of who burned Michael Westen, the possibility of Mike’s fake law degree on Suits being uncovered). But for the most part, they were episodic stories with a clear beginning, middle, and end that were always light-hearted, always had happy endings, and always had middlingly witty repartee between the show’s characters to demonstrate that no one was ever in any real danger. (Psych, to me, was the only one to go beyond middling.)
In an era of Tony Soprano going to therapy all the way to Kendall Roy assembling a dream team, there’s less and less space for the episodic television dramedy. Even Hawaii Five-O’s reboot eventually went all in on big bads. So USA’s “Characters Welcome” era was a singular moment in television history. A pantheon one? No. A particularly memorable one? Not especially. But one that can remind its former fans and audiences of nothing but positive, pleasant memories? Absolutely.
For some, that may be the TV Guide Summer Preview covers, which almost always featured a titular Character before television became year-round. For others, that may be the simple DVRing of the episodes that sporadically filled out the schedule. For me, it’s whenever I’d walk through Universal CityWalk with my family, thrilled at the prospect of being out of school for a week during the holiday season with my loved ones and spending time at one of my favorite places. The main focus was on the Hulk roller coaster or the new Harry Potter lands. But part of the experience was seeing those kitschy, levity-laden posters for the latest crop of USA shows that defined the “Characters Welcome” era.
The posters (and the titles) almost always gave the exact right impression as to what the shows would be about. See Michael and Fiona in warm-colored sunglasses and Pitbull-esque suits? Seems like a fun, forty-five minute spy romp in Miami. See Hank from HankMed walking down the beach with a medical bag? Let’s go spend some time in the Hamptons with wealthy patients. We always understood it. And when I saw those shows on the DVR or the TV Guide, I’d remember that I saw them, as well, in the Universal theme parks. And they became that much more special, even if I was never invested in any of them. So, yes, I may joke that Meghan Markle brought “Characters Welcome” to Buckingham Palace. But the nostalgia I harbor for it is wholly sincere.
That’s why I felt somewhat euphoric to realize that over on Disney Plooos, the streaming service is attempting to exactly replicate the “Characters Welcome” era for themselves. So euphoric, in fact, that I teased this piece in my Snapchat story with the caption, “I’m finally writing the thing I was put on this planet to write.” No one else could write this. I feel that in my soul.
For the past decade, we’ve known where Disney operates. They keep the animation department alive with one banger every year. They let Pixar do their thing while occasionally forcing a sequel out of them. They focus on massive, billion-dollar blockbusters from the live-action remake department, the theme park movie department, Star Wars, and the MCU — to the point where releasing Dumbo to (give or take) $300 million can seem like a failure that shuttles off the assuredly-perfect Peter Pan and Wendy to the streamer. There’s Disney merchandise everywhere, there’s cruise ships that sail the world, there’s over ten theme parks around the globe. Disney’s brand was clear. So clear that Disney Plooos is still the only viable Netflix competitor because it’s a lot easier to say “Disney. Marvel. Star Wars” than it is to say, “Well, we’ve got DC movies, but also The Sopranos, but also Friends, and don’t forget about Comedy Central.” But two years ago, our conception of Disney didn’t yet factor in what the Plooos would bring.
When it debuted, it debuted with two original movies and (more importantly for this piece) television shows like The Mandalorian, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, The Imagineering Story, Encore, and The World According to Jeff Goldblum. As far as I can see, these each occupy a different path that the Plooos could’ve aimed to focus on. It could just cash in everything for Marvel and Star Wars and go after the biggest fan bases of the biggest IPs. (This is probably what Bob Chapek wants.) It could pump up the Disney Channel style shows a bit more and perhaps continue generating stars (Olivia Rodrigo). It could become a synergistic outlet for theme park revenue. It could become the Disney version of Netflix’s reality television/“be all things to all people” mantra. Or it could become a vessel for everyone’s favorite celebrities on the Internet two years after that popularity peaks.
The only path I see them abandoning by now is that fifth one. The Goldblum show is back and Chris Hemsworth might have one, too, but Disney knows the IP matters more than the stars these days. (See Venom: Let There Be Carnage crushing The Last Duel at the box office because audiences just care more about name recognition than Ben Affleck fucking going for it.) Disney will always embrace that first strategy for streaming (so many more people care about Hawkeye’s adventures than they do Gina Rodriguez as the president), but they’re leaving space for the other ones to be as well-rounded/family-friendly as can be. There’s just one additional avenue that they weren’t yet ready to explore when they launched. But boy, have they embraced it fully now. Disney is recreating the “Characters Welcome” era.
Let’s look to Big Shot first. Back in the spring, Disney Plooos decided to concurrently run two sports series when The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers and Big Shot dropped new installments every Friday. While the Don’t Bothers fought for the avian moniker, John Stamos took on the role of Marvyn Korn, a hot-tempered, washed-out college basketball coach who’s forced to take a job managing a girls’ basketball team at a private high school. He butts heads with the assistant coach and the dean while also getting a bit angry with the competition on occasion. But he’s still Uncle Jesse and this is still Disney. He’s written lovably about halfway through the second episode. They’d never commit to Stamos as the anti-hero.
Of course, along the way, Korn has to learn how to juggle coaching his team with coaching (read: “raising”) his daughter. Throw in a few romantic flings and the temptation to return to Division One and it’s an innocuous series that ponders if one, flawed man can truly make like Jason Mraz’s fourth hit and “have it all.” But everyone always goes home happy. The baskets fall, the forgiveness is shared, the hugs are tight. Hugging, learning. This is still the mold of the San Francisco town home and not the Upper West Side apartment.
But consider USA’s Necessary Roughness, which aired from 2011 to 2013, certainly at the tail end of “Characters Welcome.” It starred Callie Thorne as Dani Santino, a therapist who is forced to work with a football team to help sustain a living after she gets a divorce. She’s reluctant, but the team wins her over. The team is reluctant, but her skill and prowess and “below her pay grade” capabilities win them over. And just as Korn was attempted to be poached by the big universities, so too was Santino poached by bigger sports organizations with higher statures. One of those agencies? A company named V3, which is headed by Connor McClane in season three of Necessary Roughness. Who portrayed McClane? Well, John Stamos, of course.
Sure, there’s one coincidence. I understand what you mean; there’s sports shows all the time. Hell, I just mentioned the pre-anti-vax Emilio Estevez one! So let’s take a look at Disney’s latest episodic “drama,” Doogie Kameāloha, M.D., mined from ABC’s old Neil Patrick Harris series. It’s a similar concept to the first Doogie: a child prodigy ascends to medical stardom, but still has to learn to be okay with being wrong sometimes and to balance the life of a normal teenager, as if Doogie is the doctoral Spider-Man. It may seem like a stretch to draw a line between Doogie Kameāloha, M.D. and Royal Pains. After all, we’ve had ER, Scrubs, Grey’s Anatomy. The medical genre is just that: a genre. There’s always overlap.
But when you watch Peyton Elizabeth Lee’s Lahela kiss her crush on the beach after losing a beloved patient or when you see her posing on the beach with a confident smirk just like HankMed did a decade ago, one is inclined to wonder, Why set it in a beach-side community at all if there was not an exact vibe that the show was yearning for? It’s a lot closer to Royal Pains than it is to Doogie Howser. (Hardly knew her, etc.) And it gives Disney Plooos the ability to say, “If you like medical dramas, we have one for you. If you like sports shows, we have those, too.” They’re occupying the sub-genres the way USA used to.
And there will always be those who love the detective/cop/procedural/crime dramas. I’m not talking about the crime drama like Breaking Bad, but rather the formulaic, reset-it, never-drop-the-bag Law & Order/Hawaii Five-O types. Disney was more than happy to unearth the Turner & Hooch IP as a sequel/reboot hybrid property. They gave up on the potential of a Tom Hanks return almost immediately and instead enlisted Josh Peck (and Kevin from The Haunting of Hill House) to re-up with the iconic, slobbering mastiff. Turner & Hooch follows Peck as Hanks’ son with a new crime to be solved in every episode.
Granted, the entire police department never catches onto the notion that when Hooch “misbehaves,” he’s actually demonstrating the path forward for solving the crime. And granted, there is a lingering sub-plot about the last case Hanks’ Turner version worked on before he died. But for the most part, it strives to be a high-octane thriller of a detective series with canine-driven laughs for the family and no real sense of danger. I admittedly checked out of the series halfway through when I realized I only cared if Peck began dating Vanessa Lengies’s dog trainer character, Erica. But I couldn’t help but notice a parallel to another series every time the episode would flex its “money shot” for the episode with a bunch of different angles of an explosion or backflip or what have you. (Keeping in mind that the show’s budget allows for sparse money shots like these even when The Falcon and the Winter Soldier had about six per episode.) I noticed that the series’ visual vocabulary and half-hearted style (Bourne movies, these are not) was highly evocative of Burn Notice, the USA drama that also loved to show the same explosion four times, as if directed by Michael Scott and starring Michael Scarn.
Perhaps the best embodiment of what “Characters Welcome” meant, Burn Notice began every episode with, “My name is Michael Westen. I used to be a spy until — .” With a narrator like that, you always knew that nothing earth-shattering would transpire in the installment. The only time a main character even died was in the series finale. It was a carefully managed tone by creator Matt Nix, who — wait. What’s that? Matt Nix also created Disney’s Turner & Hooch re-quel? Well, Michael Westen, HankMed, Dani Santino. They fit right in with Scott Turner, Marvyn Korn, and Doogie Kameāloha. If Disney wants to go after the cable TV demographic, they’re not off to a bad start. So long as they don’t expect Marvyn Korn to trend above Loki or Boba Fett on Twitter on Wednesdays.
The only time “Characters Welcome” seemed to double dip was when they had Psych and Monk on at the same time (the Psych finale does mention a fastidious San Francisco detective, though). Aside from that, they had their lawyer show, their detective show, their doctor show, their spy show, their sports show. They wanted one of everything and they wanted them all to have the same over-arching tone, so they wouldn’t seem out of place when advertised next to the Hogwarts Express and Bubba Gump. There should be no surprise that Disney, the company with the most carefully-managed tone in the entire world, would want a slice of that “Characters Welcome” nostalgia. Just another day at the office.
