ROUND ONE

STALKER

VS

A TO Z

See the bracket at http://challonge.com/popfilter

Ryan and I are about halfway through round one! It’s very exciting. But so far, our matches haven’t made a lot of sense. We often compare two shows that are diametrically opposed to one another, i.e a 30 minute comedy and a 90 minute procedural (as is the case with today’s pairing.) But there’s a strange logic to it. It forces us to compare the larger components that make up a show instead of going beat for beat on which show told the best jokes or what had the most compelling story. It becomes an issue of which pilot presented the best, period. A to Z and Stalker don’t need to have anything in common other than they are both premiering this fall. One is a better sitcom than the other is a drama; no accounting for taste. But here’s why:

The remarkable thing about A to Z, an NBC comedy, is how it fits an entire romantic comedy into a 22-minute episode. In order to do this, it forced the characters to act in a way that no human being would ever act just to hurry along the plot. It also relied on the disembodied narrator, played by the AMAZING Katey Sagal, to tell the audience the things the show didn’t have the time flesh out. But if we forgive it that, it was a cute, relatively tight, schmaltzy story about two people falling in love. It wasn’t so encumbered by the breakneck pace that it wasn’t enjoyable to watch. And based on the check that the pilot wrote, that the show will tell the story of their seven-month relationship, it’s going to have to slow way-the-hell down to cash it. That’s because networks capitalize on audiences’ hatred of letting go of TV characters. They like money, you see. It took Ted Mosby nine seasons to explain to his kids how he met their mother, something my father could do in the nine steps from the kitchen to the dining room. Although, I can watch Cristin Milioti and Ben Feldman (who I always confuse with Rookie of the Year star Thomas Ian Nicholas) bumble around a little while before it gets stale. They go really well together.

Stalker is a freak-of-the-week procedural that centers on a special unit of the Los Angeles police department that handles, you guessed it, stalkers. For a show that opens with a woman being burned alive in her car, it’s pretty boring. The show rests on the shoulders of Beth Davis, who’s got the ice-queen-with-an-edge thing down pat, and aging dream-boat Dylan McDermott who play detectives working the unit. In his article comparing NCIS: New Orleans and Gotham, Ryan established a set of rules for procedurals. Number 1: Turn fun facts into a show. Did you know 1/6 females and 1/19 males are victims of stalking? Check. Number two: The story takes 44 minutes to tell. The pilot had a B-plot about a college boy who is stalked by his former roommate. This served to distract from how absurd the murderer in the main plot was, but neither felt dragged out or rushed through. Check, but not great. Number three: Have a little mystery. Here’s where the show goes off the rails. During some unsubtle glimpses into who these characters are, we find out that she’s a former victim of a stalker and he’s stalking the mother of his child. Check, but in the hackest way possible. And number four: No cheating. Stalker actually doesn’t cheat. There are no computer programs that make a low-res picture crystal clear through enhancing nor short-cuts to information there is no reasonable explanation for anyone having. McDurmott gets lucky, but that’s not the same as cheating. I can accept luck. They catch their killer through deductive reasoning and police work. Done and done. Number four alone makes Stalker better than its procedural peers. However, it’s strengths do not overcome its flaws enough for it to go any further in the bracket. That leaves A to Z’s charming cast and comprehensive storytelling moving on to round two.

 

-Stephanie Rose

Next up:

BAD JUDGE VS GRACEPOINT