"Abbott Elementary," "Matlock," and the Enduring Appeal of Network TV
Two hit series demonstrate the predictable pleasures of network TV while also showing its subversive storytelling potential.
Hello, dear reader! Do you like what you read here at Omnivorous? Do you like reading fun but insightful takes on all things pop culture? Do you like supporting indie writers? If so, then please consider becoming a subscriber and get the newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. There are a number of paid options, but you can also sign up for free! Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading and now, on with the show!
I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a bit of a snob when it comes to TV. While I grew up during the last gasp of the Network TV era–nurtured on such network staples as The Golden Girls, Murder, She Wrote, and Will & Grace–once I left college and then started graduate school I turned pretty decisively toward premium channels like HBO and Starz (mostly because that’s where epic fantasy and historical dramas tended to find a home). That tendency continued into the streaming era, and I tended to gravitate to streamers both because they continued to produce epic stories and because they were also remarkably welcoming of queer stories.
In recent years, however, I’ve found myself drawn back to the world of network TV. There’s something innately comforting about getting to know quirky characters and their foibles and flaws, and there’s something even more pleasurable about knowing that if a show gets renewed you’re going to get a full season sometime the following year. As someone who spends a great deal of their life waiting for new seasons of their favorite epic shows like The Rings of Power, House of the Dragon, and The Wheel of Time to drop, a wait of at least two years usually, this is a true breath of fresh air.
There is, to be sure, a bit of an irony here, considering the fact that the old model of TV production has been slowly starved of energy, oxygen, and money, as streamers hoover up everything in their path, even as they’re throwing aside diversity. While I recognize that, in the beginning, streaming really threw open the doors to all sorts of diverse storytelling, I think it’s safe to say that that trend has been thoroughly reversed now that Trump is in the White House. It’s also frustrating to see streamers cancel some of their most interesting series (looking at you, Netflix).
As a result, these past few months I’ve found myself drawn again and again to two network productions that somehow manage to be both very old-fashioned and yet somehow, surprisingly relevant and contemporary. I’m talking, of course, about Abbott Elementary and Matlock.
I was an early adopter of Abbott Elementary. I knew as soon as my friend and I started watching it together that I was watching something special. Every so often a sitcom comes along that just hits the ground running, dazzling you with both the writing and its performances, encouraging you to love and care about its characters and to crack up each and every week. Whether it’s Janine and Jacob stumbling through another do-gooder effort, Ava and Melissa delivering a withering wise-crack, or Gregory and Barbara managing to be the voice of reason (even with their own foibles), this is sitcom storytelling at its best.
The series has gone from strength to strength, deepening the stories and the dynamics of the characters and their personal and professional lives. We’ve seen Jacob break up with his partner and move in with Melissa; we’ve seen Gregory and Jannine dance around getting together and then finally become a couple (and say they love each other!), and we’ve seen Janine go from schoolteacher to member of the district to back to school teacher. Because we love these characters and have come to care so much about their personal lives, we want them to succeed, even as we also find ourselves frustrated by their mistakes and shortsightedness. I think it’s safe to say that Abbott Elementary is the kind of show that really does love its characters and, given how horrifying the world outside is, that’s a true blessing.
The genius of this show lies in its ability to take all of the usual elements of the workplace sitcom formula–the misfits and the weirdos and the banter and the romantic tensions–and do something that feels fresh and interesting. It would be easy for a show like this to adopt the offend-no-one attitude of so many of others and go for the low-hanging fruit, but that’s not in this show’s DNA. Instead, like other politically-conscious sitcoms–I’m thinking in particular of The Golden Girls–Abbott Elementary isn’t afraid to be both hilarious and relevant. Recent seasons have repeatedly contended with the various financial issues facing the titular school, and time and again we come to understand just how much these teachers care about the students in their care and will do anything to help them get the best education that they can.
And, of course, there’s also the fact that the series really does have a heart of gold. No character is truly bad, not even the frequently selfish Ava. As she shows time and again, she really does have the good of Abbott at heart, even if she also has her eye on the main chance. The series’ ongoing popularity–like that of Schitt’s Creek and Ted Lasso–shows us that there is still a lot of appetite for both a show that expresses optimism about the world and also comes out on a reliable schedule.
The reboot of Matlock, likewise, has all of the features that we associate with network TV of old. There’s obviously the fact that it’s a reboot of a series that was in many ways the very epitome of network TV of the 1980s and 1990s, but it’s also an ensemble piece. Narratively it strikes just the right balance between episodic and serial narrative, giving us a case-of-the-week while also continuing to tease out the complexities, both moral and logistical, involved with Matlock’s quest to find out who at the law firm was responsible for allowing opioids onto the market. All of the characters have their own foibles and flaws and struggles and, as if all of this weren’t enough, it’s also been renewed for a second season, which will presumably come out next fall (again, yay for network TV scheduling!)
What makes the character of Matlock so fascinating is that, for all that we like her, she’s not a particularly good person. This is a woman, after all, who has constructed an entire alter-ego, all in the pursuit of what she deems to be justice. She may have a point that it was deeply unethical of the law firm to allow opioids to flood onto the market, but is it really her place to go after them, even if her daughter did die of an opioid overdose? The latter half of the season has seen Mattie go to ever greater lengths to try to get the information she needs to find out who was responsible, even as she also twists herself in knots to both justify her behavior and shield some that she has come to think of as friends (notably Skye P. Marshall’s Olympia). One can’t help but wonder just how far she’s willing to go and how much of her moral code she’s willing to compromise as she pursues this course of justice.
Obviously Kathy Bates is the center of gravity in this series, as her Critics Choice Award for her work in the series attests. However, like all good network shows, this one is very much an ensemble piece. Olympia has her own dramas, particularly as these revolve around her failing marriage to Jason Ritter’s Julian, and both Billy and Sarah (David Del Rio and Leah Lewis) have their part to play. Given that we have 18 episodes to get to know these characters (far more than we would probably get if this was a streaming show), we really get to know them and their personalities. As a result, Matty’s scheme becomes all the more morally questionable and even somewhat heartbreaking, since we know the toll that its exposure is going to take on all of them.
For all that network TV has been pushed aside, both Abbott Elementary and Matlock demonstrate that there are many pleasures still to be had in network TV series. There is something reassuring about their predictability and their rhythms of storytelling, even as there is also something pleasurable about the way that these two series in particular play with the conventions of their chosen genres. Thankfully, both have been renewed, and so we’ll all get to see more of these delightful characters later this year.