Tony Soprano. Walter White. Don Draper. These are all some of cable television’s most notable characters, and also the most morally ambiguous. The concept of moral ambiguity was discussed at length this past Wednesday during the The Cable Show’s daily General Session.
Entertainment Weekly’s Lynette Rice moderated the “From Fringe to Binge” panel and jumped right into it, asking her panel of showrunners whether they feel pressured to create the next iconic character. As an avid binge-watcher and overall content-viewer, I found myself thinking: “I sure hope so, because I’m waiting for the next Fiona Goode to come out of the woodwork.”
Michelle Ashford, creator and writer of Showtime’s Master of Sex, said it first and said it best: “The beauty of television is that it’s so open. There are no restrictions to the kinds of characters we can create.”
With a wealth of imagination and material at their fingertips, I see no reason why our favorite shows can’t continue to churn out original and emblematic characters – and this naïve approach is exactly why I am the viewer and not the content creator.
In the same vein, Richard LaGravenese from The Divide echoed Ashford’s sentiments, “We’re lucky that the audience responds to morally ambiguous characters.”
Does that make us all a little twisted? Or does that mean we’re starting to view things in shades of gray (no, not 50), rather than black and white or good and bad (or Stark and Lannister)? I prefer to think the latter, as we’re a constantly evolving society, growing alongside the innovative technology and stellar content that is permeating our various viewing platforms. Our society is so progressive, that we find ourselves regressing to material from past series and films, such as Noah Hawley’s Fargo, and the end product is even better than the original. The surge of quality that we are finding in our favorite cable shows is providing us with cultural insight.
As Hawley put it, “We may not read Moby Dick anymore, but watching quality television is an education in and of itself.”
The appetite for new content, off-kelter characters and repurposed favorites is ubiquitous, and thankfully, today’s creatives seem to be up for the challenge.
This session, "From Fringe to Binge," was part of this past Wednesday's General Session at The Cable Show 2014 in Los Angeles