Wild Card

Television Trends

Earlier this semester I did a segment on Binge-watching where I wrote about the TV show Ozark. In that piece, I shared an article from Vox where they were calling the show "Another White Guy Anti-Hero Show." Despite Vox's criticism, Ozark is one of the best-rated shows on Netflix according to rotten tomatoes. While the social justice warrior network of Vox really wanted to pull down viewership of Ozark they were right in their initial analysis. It is another white guy anti-hero show, and that's part of the reason why it is so good.

White Guy, Anti-Hero

Out of the shows within this category, the first that should be mentioned is The Sopranos. Its the father of the White Guy, Anti-Hero genre. The story follows Tony Soprano, an Italian-American mobster who is attempting to balance his family life with his role as the leader of his criminal organization. The show has a 92% tomato meter and a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Remember these things as we continue: White guy, illegal/secret activity, trying to do well for his family.

Next is Mad Men. Don Draper is the successful owner of an advertising company on Madison Avenue. However, Don has a secret past that haunts him and he doesn't want it to bring him down or come back to surface. He goes through all of this while simultaneously attempting to be a good family man. The show has a 94% tomato meter and a 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Here comes Breaking Bad, with lead protagonist Walter White as a High School chemistry teacher who works a side job at a carwash to help his family. Unfortunately, Walter finds out that he has cancer, and worries that when he dies his family will be unable to afford to live. Walter gets into the meth business, hoping that he can land in mass sums of money to keep his family afloat whenever he passes away. The show has a 96% tomato meter and a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, while personally being my favorite drama of all time.

It is more than obvious that this form of television is highly praised and that's not just by audiences either. A look at the Primetime Emmy's will show that The Sopranos won 21 Emmys with 111 Nominations through the years. Mad Men won 16 Primetime Emmys and Breaking Bad won 16 Primetime Emmys as well. It is incredibly clear that audiences and critics both love this genre on television and that it is not bland or unimportant. Each show listed above is more than a success story - these shows stand as the leaders in how to write a drama for TV.

This is where Vox's article makes me scratch my head. Ozark has an 81% on the Tomato meter and a 91% audience score. While having the lowest scores within this group, that doesn't make it a horrible show - Season 3 on Ozark scored a 97%, scoring higher than 5 out of 7 seasons of the Sopranos. It isn't an ugly show and it clearly has huge potential. I think that the real issue with Vox is finding any true material to cover and would much rather get their social justice warrior panties in a bunch with a show featuring a white male lead.

Adult Cartoons

More common now than ever is the appearance of adult cartoons. To clarify, I'm talking about shows like Rick and Morty, Big Mouth, and Bob's Burgers and not the kind of stuff that you would need to clear your browser history for after visiting. There are several shows that have found success in the genre while others get canceled shortly into their run. Its time to look at some of these new and successful Adult Cartoons and see how they compare to the shows which started the genre.

Rick and Morty is much different than most of the shows on this list, which makes it a great show to talk about first. Many adult cartoons use skits for each episode, with no episode affecting the series as a whole, while Rick and Morty is instead a chronological show. For American adult animation, this is an idea that falls completely out of the regular routine for a show, yet its something that is all too common in Japanese adult animation. Rick and Morty takes inspiration from Back to the Future with more of a vulgar twist - making it a feature show for Adult Swim. One of the most unique aspects of the show is that it has a fan base, such as their 1.7m members of the Rick and Morty Reddit page, while other cartoons are just simply enjoyed during the screen time. Rick and Morty fans were known to be incredibly toxic, however, it seems as though the long break between the last two seasons has quelled the fan base.

Big Mouth is a strange show right out of the gate. It is about a group of 7th graders who are going through the many struggles of puberty with the help (and sometimes interference) of a group of being invisible to adults known as hormone monsters. The show has a 100% tomato meter and a 78% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. While the show takes a subject that is relatable to everyone that should be within their target audience (as all adults have gone through puberty), the show has more of a cult following with many of my friends who have watched the show stating, "You either love it or hate it." While I'm no fan of the show, it is clear that it is easily digestible and holds no bars for the content that the characters will go through. It's a show that has broken the barrier, similar to South Park, in which the creative team was not afraid to put out a subject which could trigger some hate.


Bob's Burgers is the last show I will be talking about and it is certainly a strange one. Many shows use over the top events to trigger the start of the episode yet Bob's Burgers takes an approach similar to King of the Hill. Bob is simply a chef in his own burger joint, trying to make a living in an area reminiscent of Long Island, New York/North Jersey Shore, New Jersey area. Bob and Linda's children are much of the excitement within the show, as the three of them are strange and quirky children. The humor for the show is neither slapstick nor right in your face but offers a slightly disjointed look into a North Eastern American family's life. I found that if you enjoyed the kind of comedy that comes from shows like The Office or Letterkenny, you will most likely enjoy Bob's Burgers.

Conclusion

There are many trends happening within the scope of television and I certainly did not speak about every conveniently similar show, but I have enjoyed looking at two largely different groups of shows and analyzing how they affected their viewers and the importance of their genre. That's the largest part about looking into these trends because the idea isn't to look at shows that are subpar but to dive into the aspects that make a collection of shows great. Of course, this doesn't make anything easier for an individual to make an incredibly successful show, but it does offer up the facts in what today's viewers enjoy, and how you can capitalize on these trends.