Everything old is new again in 'quarterlife'
Blogging: That's not writing; it's gripe-writing.
Apologies to Truman Capote for that line, but then again considering it's borrowed from an attack on Jack Kerouac, I take that apology back. Which brings me to the issue of the day.
For 50 years, TV has displayed an unerring skill at trivializing each new generation. Just as Kerouac's beats became Maynard G. Krebs, and hippie activists became "The Mod Squad," and feminists became "One Day at a Time," and later boomers became "thirtysomething," and Generation X became "My So-Called Life," now it's the turn of Generation Y or whatever you want to call young adults these days to be stamped, labeled and largely lampooned by network TV.
The new Web-log drama "quarterlife" debuts at 9 p.m. today on NBC's WMAQ Channel 5. Think of it as "thirtysomething" for twentysomethings.
The comparison is deliberate -- and apt -- as the two shows share writer-creators in Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who also did "My So-Called Life." (Anyone notice a trend here?) As in all three series, a viewer finds a cast of entrancing, moody, above all photogenic characters intended to somehow embody their generation.
"quarterlife" arrives with a bunch of Web-generated buzz, as it began as the concept for a TV show that found a place on the Internet and has now returned to TV (these being desperate times for the strike-afflicted networks) while focusing on one woman's self-absorbed blog (redundant though that phrase may be) at quarterlife.com, natch.
Yet if the Internet is supposed to change the way we communicate and, as a result, alter all human relations, how is it "quarterlife" traffics in so many of the same old young-adult cliches?
Once again, we have the love-go-round. David Walton's studmuffin Danny drops the L word on his sultry, bookish girlfriend, Michelle Lombardo's Debra, but he doesn't really appreciate her. No, not the way his best buddy, Scott Michael Foster's Jed, does, while being clueless about how Bitsie Tulloch's Dylan -- our blogging heroine -- feels the same way about him.
I don't know if it's comforting or disturbing that each new generation inevitably obsesses on the choice of a mate. Or maybe that's all TV writer-creators can think of to spice up their stories with a little sex.
In any case, just as Claire Danes was the clean-cut, cynical, wide-eyed face of a generation 15 years ago on "My So-Called Life," Dylan (dig the name, "the voice of a generation" and all that, get it?) is the darker, rumplier, even-more-jaded, yet just-as-yearning face of the next generation. And she shares it all with the world by talking into the internal camera of her Mac laptop and posting it on the Web.
"It's my curse that I can see what people are thinking -- what they can't say and want to say," Dylan says.
No, it's her curse that Zwick and Herskovitz can't think of anything fresher than those hackneyed old sentiments for her to mouth. But she should consider herself blessed next to her roommate Lisa, played by Maite Schwartz, who is your stereotypical self-destructive blond bombshell bimbo aspiring-actress nymphomanic bartender. Worse yet is her acting coach, who gives voice to Method dogma like "It's gotta come from here, from your gut, from your soul," and goes on to say she suffers from "pretty-girl syndrome."
Cut the rebop, Stanislavski, and while you're at it, you too, Zwick & Herskovitz.
Taken as an attractive, alluring, youth-oriented prime-time soap opera, "quarterlife" compares favorably to more conventional potboilers like "Desperate Housewives" when it checks into its regular timeslot at 8 p.m. Sunday. Yet it loads itself down with so much cultural, generational baggage it's impossible for it to be at all nimble or surprising. It's alluring, sure, but more than that it's annoying.
Were we ever like that? I'm afraid so. For all its supposed uniqueness and timeliness, "quarterlife" is all too familiar. That's its blessing, and its curse.
In the air
Remotely interesting: WBBM Channel 2 has hired Anne State as a 5 p.m. weekday anchor and reporter on the 10 p.m. news. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign alumna returns to the Midwest after being an anchor-reporter at KNSD-TV, the NBC affiliate in San Diego. She'll join the station April 21.
PBS' "American Masters" looks at the life and career of Pete Seeger in "The Power of Song" at 9 p.m. Wednesday on WTTW Channel 11. … ABC's "Men in Trees" returns at 9 p.m. Wednesday on WLS Channel 7.
End of the dial: WGN 720-AM morning-midday hosts Kathy O'Malley and Judy Markey will receive a Gracie Allen Award from the American Women in Radio & Television in the category of Outstanding Talk Show. The awards are presented in May in New York City.
Rich Warren, host of "The Midnight Special" airing at 9 p.m. Saturday on WFMT 98.7-FM, has been named Broadcaster of the Year by the North American Folk Alliance.