I Love You, I'm Just Not IN LOVE With You

SO HBO debuted its latest offering on Sunday night, Tell Me You Love Me. The advance word was dirtysomething. The attraction was the prospect of graphic sex -- some of it featuring actors you vaguely recognize. "Hey, is that the Profiler chick with her hand OH MY GOD."

You gotta feel for HBO. At this point it's like they've hit that point in Sinatra's It Was A Very Good Year when he starts thinking about his life as Vintage Wine from fine old Kegs, you know? How it poured sweet and clear and all? By the way, the last age mentioned in that song is thirty-five. They go straight from thirty-five to "my days grow short."

Don't tell me that song's not about TV.

Anyhow, Will Dixon wrote about this a couple days ago, and I think he and I had some similar reactions:

There's a distancing effect that occurs to a viewer when you intercut three or four disparate storylines --- you feel like an observer as opposed to being drawn in and moved emotionally (think Syriana or Traffic or Babel). I know this style makes the whole and the juxtaposition of the parts more important than the parts themselves, which can be swell for a movie, but for a continuing dramatic TV series, I'm not sure how well it can work.

And then there's the discomfort that can happen when you watch shows that cut a little too close to the bone, as it were. In this boys opinion, real life and real issues and realistic relationships can be informative and educational, but they're not very fun or entertaining. Entertaining is what I want my TV to be.

Then there's the fact that the world of the show is pretty, um, normal. The Sopranos and Buffy and Six Feet Under and Deadwood and The West Wing and Oz and on and on were fascinatingly entertaining because they took us to a unique new arena. But real life...real relationships...real problems...real issues - all set in a non-unique arena?

This is where the dirtysomething comparison really threw me. Because I was kind of a big fan of that show at the time. But thirtysomething strayed from the bedroom into the workplace -- it was as much about Michael and Elliot's adventures with Mad Man Miles Drentell as about the minutae of Michael and Hope's relationship. It wasn't that it had a unique arena -- it's that it switched it up. It had many arenas. I think that's what made the Sopranos work, too. It was the combo of Tony's home life and mob life -- the two families -- that was unique.

By putting the focus squarely in the bedroom, and on sex as a litmus test for everything going wrong in the various relationships, Tell Me You Love Me makes its world unbelievably claustrophobic.

But at the same time, I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what the creators of the show would say IS their unique arena -- they stay with scenes where other places cut away.

The New Yorker's Nancy Franklin liked the show, and essentially makes that point (the linked article also has an interesting take on Californication):

“Tell Me” has its flaws, but it’s very watchable (and not merely because it’s arousing); its aim is to show you what committed relationships feel like, and how they work, and how strange and fragile and complicated they are. And, despite the fact that there are frequent therapy sessions, the show isn’t talky when it comes to sexual issues. There’s a creative clarity about the series: Mort is also an executive producer and the main writer, and you’re willing to go where she takes you, even if you find that one or two of the characters aren’t worth your attention, as I did. You get to know the couples’ marriages so well that you become invested in their problems; one couple, devoted upper-middle-class parents of elementary-school-age children, have become like sleepover buddies; they haven’t had sex for almost a year, and can’t find their way back to each other. It’s to the show’s credit that, as you watch these two aching people not have sex, week after week, you begin to feel that you’re invading their privacy.

Will also mentions the complete lack of any levity (one of my drama pet peeves. I don't trust anyone who can't build in a humorous or light or non-ponderous moment every once in a while.) But in figuring out where the show goes wrong, I think Will may be giving too much blame to the intercut storylines, for a reason I'll get to in a moment.

The thing is, Tell Me You Love Me is well intentioned, and there are some lovely moments in the pilot. My disappointed reaction kind of sends me off to want to know more about the show. So I found the creator, Cynthia Mort, talking about the program on the HBO site.

With 'Tell Me You Love Me,' I really wanted to write a very spare, very intimate show about intimacy. I was interested in people who are in a relationship, yet so very lonely. They never thought of leaving their husbands or wives or boyfriends or girlfriends. But what happened? How do they get there?

In-Between Moments

I don't have any patience for artifice anymore, and I think people have a collective awareness of what's real, what's authentic. I wanted the moments on the show to play out, including what is unspoken in those moments. Because that's how you live -- people are not chattering non-stop. And if they are, they're irritating.

When you're in a relationship with somebody, more often it's about what's not said and what's hidden, and what comes to light and why it comes to light. I don't think you can have a show about intimacy without allowing those moments in between to play out.

It's somewhat voyeuristic, and that will make some people uncomfortable -- it made me uncomfortable watching at times. But I didn't want to turn away. And even if I did want to turn away, I wanted to come back. And that's the journey of the couples.

No Bailing on the Sex

When I was writing the pilot, I never thought about the amount of sex on the show, not once. Even when we shot some of those scenes in the pilot, scenes that were very intense and emotional. Not until I saw the footage did I realize what we were capturing. Then I thought, "Whoa. This is a lot." But we had many meetings about it. Sex is part of the language of intimacy. And just as I don't want to cut away in the therapy scenes, I don't want to cut away in these moments. It's not about the physical act. It's about the emotional act. Every sex scene, truly, is part of an existing scene. I was not willing to bail on any part of their stories, whether it was sex or therapy or a dinner party.

Sigh. That didn't help at all. Because I love what she's saying. I just...don't like the characters or the world she's created. I find their struggles and challenges real...I just don't find them...interesting.

By complete coincidence, last weekend also afforded me the opportunity to take in a treatment of almost exactly the same subject.

Now, the couples of Young People Fucking are younger and better looking. And it focuses strongly on the sexual encounters, over the course of one night. Like Tell Me You Love Me, the film follows multiple storylines. In this case, through several identifiable types: The First Date, The Exes getting together for a "no-strings" booty call, The Best Friends trying it for the same thing, The Threesome With the Roommate, and The Couple -- looking to spice it up in the bedroom.

One word: pegging.

Young People Fucking is by no means a drama. It's a raucous, scabrous, dirty, hilarious sex comedy. But there are also those moments that hit the sweet spot -- quieter moments of surprising depth and poignancy.

Here are two pieces of work mining the same territory. The thing is, those serious moments in YPF land with a grace and resonance that Tell Me You Love Me simply cannot match. There are some truths that are just better gotten at through comedy, I think. The ebb and flow of the intercutting storylines in YPF start out with the effect that Will's talking about -- there are some stories that you naturally just find more compelling than others. But somewhere along the line, that changes. The storylines that you thought were weak take a turn that make you go, "huh." That's how engagement works.

The last time I mused over the general differences of film versus television storytelling, I talked about The Squid and the Whale, and how its story made you not want to go back; you felt complete after watching it. TV is about creating a world that you want to go back to, again and again. I'm sure Cynthia Mort thought she was doing that -- that these delicate, troubled characters would inspire you to follow them through their therapy and their time together.

But for me, and judging by the premiere ratings, (it actually got closer to a Canadian TV number. Very. Very Low) for a lot of that audience that once loved the fact that "it's not TV, it's HBO" -- this is a show that could have used a little more TV. And a lot more laughs.

Is laughing at sex, and the foibles of couple more of a male reaction? Is the distancing I feel at Tell Me You Love Me Y-chromosome based? I don't know.

But here it is, folks, my up is down, black is white, cats are dogs confession:

The Canadian Film treated the subject with humor and mined truth, and I loved it.

The TV show eschewed humor completely, and in the process wound up seeming brittle, enervating, and joyless -- like a lot of the bad old Canadian films I tend to criticize. (Although there IS a Canadian film connection to Tell Me You Love Me -- Patricia Rozema directed the pilot.)

I don't know if I'll dip in on Tell Me You Love Me to see if it gets better. I try to give series three eps. But I'm still feeling burned by John From Cincy, so ...

In any case, if you want sex with a dose of truth and a whole lot of fun, I'd say choose the Young People Fucking.

Tell Me You Love Me airs Sundays on HBO, and in Canada on TMN and Movie Central.

Young People Fucking is (hopefully) coming to a theatre near you next year.