Sunday, April 08, 2007

 
I was reading an article in slate the other day about the resuscitation of zombie brands. a zombie brand is a brand with a lot of name recognition (like Tab soda orthe Ford Taurus) which has been discontinued due to sagging sales. At this point it is just a dead brand (like pets.com and the ford pinto), it becomes a zombie when a new product is introduced that bears only marginal resemblance to the old one, but is sold based on the name recognition that the defunct brand continues to garner. Tab, the original diet soda, has been reinvented as a red bull-style energy drink named "Tab." This phenomenon plays upon the cultural landfill of the brains of young adults. There are snippets of ads and sitcom catchphrases floating in our heads. and these represent the easiest way to make something stick in a media-saturated market.

The TV show "brothers and sisters" uses this same post-modern gimmick to create a hyper-real tv show. actors frequently complain about being closely associated with a single successful role; Once they have played a successful role for a long time, particularly on TV, it is difficult for them to get work playing other characters because audiences still see them as Rachel, or The Fonz. TV is close enough to our reality that we cannot see Jason Alexander as anyone besides George Kostanza. It feels weird to have to resuspend our disbelief that George is out there trying to sell us pretzels. This is where "Brothers and Sisters" gets it right. It is using "zombie characters. The show takes the ultimate pigeon-holed actress, Calista Flockhart (who played Ally McBeal, the neurotic and awkward, but fundementally sweet career woman on "Ally McBeal") and brings her back on "B &S" to play the same character. It is easy to believe Calista in this role, because an awkward and bumbling, but fundementally sweet career woman is what we know her to be. "B&S" continues the trend by making Rob Lowe play a clean cut, handsome, well-spoken politico. This was his long-running role on the west wing. Sally Field plays the burdened, but bouyant and pretty mother, like always (this may be more of a type-cast than a zombie character). Jason Lewis replays his meta-part that he honed on "Sex and the City" as a georgeous movie star who doesn't buy into the hype. On 'SOTC" he was smith jarrod. On "B&S" he is Chad Barry. Watching this show is like seeing long lost friends. It is fantastically comforting and generates no cognitive dissonance---until we meet Emily VanCamp again. After all of this zombie character setup, emily, who once played the pretty, sensible, small town girl next door on "Everwood", shows up on "B&S" as the LA party-girl with a drug habit and a deadbeat dad. The disconnect simply doesn't make sense in an imaginitive framework that encourages the viewer to use stored cultural detritus especially after someone has worked so hard to piece together a TV drama from type-cast actors of the last 15 years.

Comments:
I agree with you. I've only caught two episodes of Brothers & Sisters, but in past because of the type/zombie casting I felt as if I almost immediately knew what was going on. I hope the show hangs around.

Has there been a tv season in recent memory that's given us three shows as good as Friday Night Lights, 30 Rock and Brothers & Sisters? I think they're all great.

Re: Tab
1) More than one person I knew in college told me that they'd gotten lost or confused in the basement of Woolsey Hall for one reason or another and accidentally stumbled into a room full of dusty cases of Tab. Like, just chock-full of old cases of tab with mildewy cardboard and rusting cans. It seems weird, but if it isn't, then why would more than one person have the same story?

2) I haven't tasted the Tab energy drnk, but if it tastes anything like the original Tab, then the idea of somebody drinking a Tab & Vodka, or a Tab-Bomb (along the lines of the mixed Red Bull drinks) is enough to turn my stomach.
 
I kind of like Brothers and Sisters esp. how they take those familiar stereotypes and then create slight variations that totally subvert them--Ally McBeal and Sam Seaborn are republicans? Sally Fields' husband cheated on her?? Etc.

That said, I find it highly problematic that there are zero (?) people of color on the show. Does this family exist in a vacuum?
 
you will be a success in af-am grad school. I can tell already. there aren't any people of color on 2.5 men, how i met your mother, what about brian, october road (which I love).
 
Whoa. "Smith Jerrod" is on Brothers and Sisters? I have to watch more TV. -CMM
 
Adding to the mix, I just saw Lucy Liu basically playing Ling on Ugly Betty.

And Anthony Hopkins now starring with Ryan Gosling as Hannibal Lecter without the eating people thing.

Calista Flockhart playing essentially the same part was actually vital to my not watching past the first episode.
 
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