TV's BLUE PERIOD

Tragedy has become television's turn-on, as the season ends in a blur of heart attacks, homicides and marital strife.

Season finales used to be built around either happy events, like births, wedding and consummated passion, or loony operatic violence, like "Dynasty's" massacre in Moldavia and the "Melrose Place" bomb blast. When did TV become so infatuated with personal tragedy as a ratings stunt? Well, you could always blame "thirtysomething." That show's Nancy gets-cancer storyline (not to mention, its Gary-dies-in-a-car-crash sweeps episode) helped bring baby-boomers' thoughts of -- and curiosity about -- their own mortality out of the closet. Adult dramas and sitcoms have been steadily upping the downer quotient ever since. It's almost become a battle of wills between networks and viewers: How much make-believe grief can we stand? Quite a bit, actually, judging from the popularity of "ER's" "Love's Labor Lost" episode from last season, in which an expectant thirtysomething yuppie couple arrives at the hospital all excited about becoming parents and then the wife dies during a hellish childbirth ordeal. "Love's Labor Lost" won numerous awards and has taken on the status of a pop cultural legend (imagine how it must haunt pregnant women and their mates). Everybody was talking about it in the days following its original airing, and its rerun early this year was the highest-rated show of the week. Not nearly as many viewers saw the equally heartbreaking "Homicide" episode this season about a 10-year-old boy who was shot in the head by a stray bullet while on a trip to the mall, and his parents' horrific dilemma over whether to remove the brain-dead child from life-support. But those who did watch (especially those of us with children) won't soon forget. And winning points for never-saw-it-coming audacity was "Chicago Hope's" stunner in which the hospital's legal counsel, Alan Birch (series regular Peter MacNicol), was shot by a teenaged mugger and died on the operating table. This new focus on tragedy and suffering might be due in part to simple economics -- the Nielsen ratings for ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox have been in a steep decline all season, and the networks desperately need to stir up new interest. There's also the threat of government censorship to consider. For the past two years, the networks' sex and violence-filled May sweeps drew fire from the usual suspects on Capitol Hill; the personal tragedy angle may be the wary industry's way to have its "shocking" season finales without getting into the messy stuff. But when shows as diverse as "Mad About You," "Homicide" and "Roseanne" all try to appeal to viewers by using major-bummer plot twists, you've got to figure there's something deeper than TV-industry politics going on here. Whether rooted in their own newfound, morbid fascination with aging and death, or in fear for the well-being of their children, it seems that tragedy has replaced sex and violence as the boomer furtive-turn-on of choice. And not just plain old tragedy -- sledgehammer tragedy, the more cruelly ironic the better. Dan's heart attack occurred on his daughter's wedding day. Birch had recently settled into blissful single parenthood after adopting an abandoned baby girl. On "NYPD Blue" and "Homicide," Sipowicz and Pembleton both struggled with their fear of impending fatherhood, overcame it, then were reduced by fate to helpless, humbled grown-up babies themselves. (True to form, "Seinfeld" satirized all of this in a wicked, O. Henry-esque May 16 season finale in which George eluded dreaded matrimony when his no-fun fiancee expired from ingesting toxic glue -- while sealing the wedding invitations. Unaware of this development, Jerry became engaged, thus holding up his end of the pact he and George made... except that now George is a free man.) For boomers, whose obsession with control, safety and order is well documented, you can see how a fixation on terrible, shattering events could take hold. The media, particularly the primetime network newsmagazines, love to raise the specter of middle-class families under siege, with an endless roll of stories about senseless murder, child abduction, cancer-causing chemicals in food, unsafe planes, cars and trains -- the list goes on and on. For boomers, it seems, the deepest, darkest fear is to become a statistic -- a victim. But it's strange too, how, at a time when so many people are medicating themselves in order to dull painful and depressing thoughts, painful and depressing television should be in vogue. If it's true that we're drawn to that which we fear most, then these season finales are just the latest version of ghost stories. Tragedy doesn't always make for good ghost stories, though. Week in and week out, "NYPD Blue" is the mopiest drama on TV (yeah, it's about human fallibility, but so is "Homicide," and those guys at least manage to keep a sense of humor), but the May 14 episode (the penultimate one of the season) just about broke the angst-o-meter. In (very) rapid succession, Sipowicz lost his son, started drinking again, got thrown out by his wife, alienated all of his coworkers, was suspended by his boss, picked a fight with some street punks, got his ass kicked, and was left mumbling in a gutter. (The episode was also a prime example of the series' dicey "Dr. Sipowicz and Mr. Fuhrman" subtext. One minute, Dennis Franz's Sipowicz is just a lovable, roly-poly Archie Bunker, the next, he's the ugly white male muttering racial epithets at his African-American boss and Latino partner.) Watching this episode was like being hit over the head, repeatedly, with a Louisville Slugger. The May 14 episode of "Roseanne" (the finale airs May 21) was also a victim of melodramatic overkill. It's been widely reported that eight-time Emmy nominee John Goodman won't be back full-time next season (he wants to concentrate on his movie career), the heart-attack storyline being his ticket out. So when Goodman's Dan raged at God from his hospital bed, crying, "Just gimme another chance!", you couldn't help but think, "Yeah, another chance to win an Emmy before I leave!" "Roseanne" has consistently handled serious topics, like child abuse, abortion and racism, with a brave, inventive, darkly humorous edge. Sadly, this episode's blend of sob story and forced comedy was as painfully self-conscious as any dreadful Very Special Episode of "Family Ties." In a season marinated in cruel irony, the biggest irony of all is that TV's best season finale, "Nowhere Man" (airing May 20), has nothing to do with random personal tragedy, but with a very deliberate shadow government/mind-control/coup d'etat conspiracy every bit as terrifying as the series has led viewers to suspect. You'd have to go back to "The Fugitive" to find a suspense series that sustained its momentum and protected its secrets so brilliantly. "Nowhere Man" pulled no punches; the vicious bad guys here made Cancer Man from "The X-Files" look like a wimp. "Nowhere Man's" season finale is also its swan song; UPN just canceled the show, which languished in the bottom 10 of the Nielsens for its entire run. But maybe that's just as well. How many series get to go out at the top of their game? Besides, imagine what could happen if multitudes of viewers hooked on other shows' weak fixes of pathos and despair ever stumbled onto "Nowhere Man." They probably couldn't handle it. "Nowhere Man" is the hard stuff. Voice your choice for the best and worst finales of the TV season in Table Talk.

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