A few weeks ago the Boston Globe ran an article about how deeply fans of Mad Men have gotten to know the drama’s lead character, Don Draper, over the course of four seasons.
We’ve seen him in all sorts of scenarios, dramatizing a wide spectrum of emotions and behavior. We’ve learned about his parents’ tragic back stories, about his personal shame over his family history and his lies about what he’s done, his immense insecurities, his creative arrogance, his fears, his devilish charm, his intelligence, his heart and his anger. We’ve seen Don through all manner of celebration and exhilaration, as well as through heartbreak, acts of brutishness and cruelty, as well as humiliatingly hitting rock bottom, something which turned the dashing rogue into an object of pity.
Writing in the Boston Globe, TV critic Matthew Gilbert noted that with the likes of characters like Don — as well as other similar anti-heroes like Tommy Gavin from Rescue Me, Walter White from Breaking Bad and Paul Weston from In Treatment — “… [W]e can analyze them in the way we might dissect real, autonomous individuals. They’re that vividly written and acted.”
I was nodding in vigorous agreement as I read the piece, particularly when I came to these lines: “I don’t recall understanding any movie character with quite the same amount of detail and dimension. These extended forays into characters are one of TV’s greatest narrative strengths, and more akin to books than the similarly visual medium of movies.”
Then it struck me: This is why movies over the past few years have felt so shallow to me (with a handful of exceptions), as though they were rushed video mash-ups of pivotal moments in a character’s life. With such a wealth of rich characters — largely appearing on small, critically acclaimed cable dramas — I’ve been spoiled by the way they deftly plumb the depth of these characters in ways movies just can’t do, or at least most of them don’t.
But it’s not just the stellar writing combined with great acting that makes watching these TV characters a different experience than it used to be. After the credits roll at the end of an episode, I join fans of these shows on blogs like this one and we all mull over the storylines and character motivations, the meaning of a look or a gesture. I feel as though I’m at a book club meeting with a group of fellow literature lovers who like doing the same kind of analysis as me, only at the book club gatherings I attend, there’s usually wine.
I went to see The Town recently — it was really entertaining by the way, I highly recommend it, not just because I live in the Boston area — and was struck by how much I had to take for granted about the hard-scrabble background of Ben Affleck’s character. If The Town were a good cable TV drama, viewers would gradually learn why Affleck’s character was a conflicted bank robber, how his family situation has affected what has become of his life and what tensions he experiences between the man he is and the man he aspires to be. And we’d learn it slowly, as layers were peeled away and fans chatted and hypothesized online about what might happen next. But in its 123-minute running time, The Town didn’t have sufficient time to provide more than a superficial glimpse of what made the film’s characters tick, especially the female characters.
Have you found that your enjoyment of dramatic films has been diminished by the fact that there are so many complex and vibrant characters on television?
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Nov 03, 2010 @ 14:00 EST5EDT
I could have written this post! I feel exactly the same way, and if I watch a movie these days, it’s something fluffy, with no expectations, like She’s Not All That Into You … and other heady issues. ;-)
I prefer to hang with my fictional friends … I guess I like the long-term relationships.
Oh, and I’m an avid reader and agree that the experience of a well done TV series is more like reading a book that a movie is.
As Ivey would say, “It’s all about the characters.”
I agree with this & I would extend it to mention that I feel that movies based on TV shows are never as good bas the shows they are supposed to be extending, especially as creating effects isn’t as expensive as it once was so (for instance) creating a season long recreation of the Pacific war can take its time to introduce multi-dimensional characters with all the graphical & High Definition impact of a Hollywood blockbuster.
I’m trying to imagine Lost as a movie – plane crashes, some people in the crash previously bad things. They meet local people who are bad, but some are good, but mostly bad. They travel through time a bit, some escape but come back then they’re all dead. Oh, and there’s a dog and some ship or other
Of course, the finances of the movie business mean that virtually everything is aimed at a teenage popcorn audience, so character development is already limited to a small handful of movies.
I remember once reading that episodic TV used to be written to leave all the characters exactly where they started–growth and change were anathema. Movies, on the other hand, were best when they focused on a pivotal period when someone’s life changed. Most movies still follow this. TV, on the other hand, has abandoned this policy, and the majority of shows do show characters growing and reacting to their circumstances–sometimes even referring to events that happened seasons ago. Television has the huge time advantage over movies. Well-written TV, especially with arcs planned in advance, is always going to have the advantage over feature films.
Even a film series (say, “Harry Potter”) is still only maybe 14-16 hours’ worth of material–not even a whole TV season.
I totally agree!
I agree that Mad Men (and other quality shows, like the Sopranos, my new favorite Boardwalk Empire, In Treatment and The Good Wife) are absorbing and provide wonderful character development for audiences to enjoy and discover over time. Most of the time, when I see a movie that really stays with me, it’s not a big studio movie, or even American. I’ve seen a couple of French movies recently that really stayed with me, including, “The Prophet”, and “The Secret of the Grain”. These films are very different, but they both revealed characters through skillful character development. Going back a few years, “Rushmore” was a wonderful foray into quirky, very unusual characters. It’s a movie I’ve enjoyed watching more than once, probably because the jokes don’t get old to me. It’s a great example of how repeated viewings of a well crafted movie can reveal the characters to us. I don’t re-read books very often, but I have re-watched some movies and have enjoyed catching nuances I missed the first time. The challenge for movies is to convey as much as possible about the characters and plot in that 2 hour timeframe.