By Kate Blake Admin Multipleverses.com
My Own Worst Enemy has been this year’s Journeyman for NBC. Both were highly hyped and highly 
anticipated series that failed to launch and catch the interest of viewers week after week. I think there is a simple reason why. Both series focused on family men in the midst of strange mid-life complicated twisty situations beyond their control. Both series have featured top notch casts and promising action week after week. Why didn’t these shows that sound so good on paper catch on?
Both shows had high concepts- so high that the weekly episodes didn’t always blend and offer complete storytelling. The action gets bogged down by the domestic storylines and the family drama never fully develops due to the other forces at play.
Compare this to Medium where Patricia Arquette’s character Allison DuBois and her husband Joe are at the 
center of each episode along with their girls and the mystery she is solving each week is secondary. Medium has been one of my favorite series from the get go. The very real family drama is completely middle class. Allison and Joe don’t keep things from one another- when they do no good comes of it. They have ups and downs but the love is constant. Even last season when their household was thrown into strife and uproar when Allison’s secret came out, the family came first with team DuBois.
The central issue of Edward vs Henry on My Own Worst Enemy has a big fat wedge in the marital dynamic from the beginning and the fact that alter ego Edward sleeps around makes the complete character a fraud and not something women wish to tune in to see week after week. Personally I thought that the wife in Journeyman was a bitch and did not care for her at all which was part of what turned me off on that series. The chemistry between characters has to be right. No matter how much high concept you work with, the key to every successful series is the characters. We as viewers tune into see people we like and find fascinating.
Life - another sophomore show on NBC is another example of a show with a concept that has managed to evolve beyond simply being a concept into a character drama. I really like the lead Damian Lewis as Charlie Crews. His character is quirky, layered and has depth. The police work is usually fairly predictable ( as it is on The Mentalist another series I have connected with) but that is ok. The characters are what make the show work. This year’s addition of Donal Logue has been great. He is so slimy and needy and just about everything Dani is attracted to- you just know they will end up in bed together. Charlie catting around after his ex has been nice this year after his pursuit of anything that came along last year. His live in financial advisor Ted played by Adam Arkin is another low key addition that rounds out a fine cast. And hey- he made moves on Charlie’s sexy step-mom played by Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks.
Back to My Own Worst Enemy and Journeyman. I think the take home message is that you need to have balance in every show. When Heroes premiered they balanced the family with the action and mythos serialized storytelling. MOWE and JM both had too much relying on the episode before it so you couldn’t drop into the middle and figure things out. Medium is no problem- each episode is its own unit. Yes things do link from episode to episode but you can watch without having seen anything in the past.
Law and Order and CSI and the army of police procedurals work ratings wise because you can watch any given episode from any season without having seen anything before it and jump right in. The most successful sci-fi series of all time The X-Files had a few mythos episodes per year but the rest of the time you tuned in to see Mulder and Scully solve cases and see them together. The key is figuring out the balance and not being too hung up on having every episode be about the ones before it. Fringe lost my interest after the second episode when I realized I couldn’t remember the characters names- any of them and really didn’t care.
Sloppy scripts with high concept plots do not win viewers over the way that clear stories with defined characters and good acting do. NBC has had some of the finest talent in the business on board- Kevin McKidd is an amazing actor and well- Christian Slater is the only reason I will watch MOWE through its last episodes but even great actors can’t make hits out of loser scripts. What I do give NBC credit for? Trying. They keep trying to find that magic series and they don’t go cheap when they do so. The NBC cable network USA has a big branded image campaign that is “Character’s Welcome”. I wish NBC would remember this- we want to see characters we like week after week. Heroes has gotten too bloated with people we don’t care about crushing thier ratings. If viewers don’t care- they won’t tune in.
