Television’s Best (2011-2012): Best New Drama and New Drama Character

*Note: Please consult this post before reading and for a list of the other categories.*

Nothing hurts creativity more than the added pressure to produce profit. Television is, plain and simple, a business; one needs to take just one glance at the vast majority of the television landscape (both broadcast and cable) to realize this. Reality television and repetitive procedurals will always remain popular because they cost little to make and take little effort and dedication to watch. And no, I don’t particularly blame anyone who this deluge of banality; studios will always seek low risk, high reward situations and hectic everyday life doesn’t allow us to be able to keep up with programs that demand our weekly attention.

So although a comedy may have stronger writing demands than dramas, crafting an adventurous new drama for television remains an arduous task. Following the incredible success of LOST, studios have been desperately seeking out the next television event, and show creators have been too willing to try to meet this expectation. This has resulted in a stream of programs that have grand mysterious events driving them, but in the processing of focusing all of their attention on mythology, writers forget to play any to what really made LOST special: the characters. If the audience has no investment in the characters, they have no investment in the mystery. And the evidence is clear: FlashForward, The Event, Terra Nova, The River, and countless others have all followed to trend of mystifying stories over human stories, and all have met the same fate. We don’t want to embark on these adventures if we can’t see ourselves in them.