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Green Shoots in the Cultural Wasteland at CBS?
In the midst of college students and Democratic politicians behaving badly, might there be signs of second thoughts by more responsible, more moderate leaders? Cop shows have been used to make progressive political points for years. Episodes on two CBS shows this January featured messages that seemed quite out of synch with the dominant narrative. Are these green shoots in the cultural wasteland?
A recent Blue Bloods (CBS) episode, “Disrupted,” had Tom Selleck, as Frank Reagan, delivering a speech from the head of the family dinner table against the transmission of campus behavior into general society; he called it destructive. I was astonished to hear this full-throated defense of civil society on a major broadcast network.
At about the same time, another CBS property, FBI, “A New Dawn,” had an aging radical professor as the villain, comparing him to Osama Bin Laden manipulating his young college students to behave like jihadis. The hero FBI characters used those terms. On CBS. Further, when an agent expressed her progressive disgust with the “alt-right provocateur” victim, the female FBI supervisor corrected the agent, saying the agency does not do politics and must defend free expression, even when speech is disagreeable.
Is there a classic left-liberal resurgence in this venerable network? Are adults realizing things have gone too far? Is this an internecine fight on the left? Time will tell, but we should praise commendable programming decisions.
Published in Culture
It’s true about Murphy Brown, but hey–liberals buy tires, internet service and makeup too. Superior Donuts was a middling, politely woke CBS show. It’s not crazy to try to reach them.
Superior’s messaging was ‘soft’ woke, while Murphy Brown’s was a screed. So you could sort of justify the former as at least trying to set up a funny premise to go with the messaging, which would make it at least playing in the same league as Tim Allen’s “Last Man Standing” (where the cancellation history and the spin on that before Fox pulled it off the scrap heap is a story in itself). But it’s impossible to see a show given the leeway on the right that Diane English was given by CBS to ‘niche’ her show to the left.
English and others involved would probably point to Rosanne’s return as a MAGA-touting Trump supporter, but her sister Jackie was a huge Hillary supporter, and Rob Long noted last spring on the Ricochet Podcast that a lot of the story lines by the end of the short first season were pretty woke. Murphy Brown actually had Hillary on as their big guest star and based it’s entire premise on being overtly on the attack against Trump and others on the right. Something that might work for Colbert after prime-time, when the demand for ratings isn’t as high, was a train wreck in prime time, and hopefully will deter CBS’ next leader from trying to do any more niche programming in prime time that shouts it’s ideology from the rooftops because it doesn’t give a damn about alienating 50 percent of the audience.
ABC with Last Man Standing and CBS with Superior Donuts: pretty similar ratings (eh, not bad, not great), an expensive, older star (Tim Allen, Judd Hirsch), a devoted audience with low likelihood of much further growth. Both were cancelled. Supporters of both shows complained it was politics, and it was true only to this degree: the obvious, if mushy cultural marketing of both shows wasn’t enough to win them a big enough niche to succeed. I’m glad Last Man Standing got a second chance, but I doubt there’s much of a lasting lesson there.