Rescue 9/11

Normally, these year-in-TV columns are a breezy, easy write--a plea for good shows buried somewhere in an embittered litany of bad ones. In recent years, it has felt as though the proliferation of channels and choices has given us only more of the wretched and less of the watchable; satellite television proves it's possible to have access to 150 channels of nothing but 1980s sitcoms and 1970s movies that air endlessly on so-called premium channels, which aren't. But, of course, this was The Year TV Regained Its Relevancy, when all of us stopped what we were doing for two, three, four days and stared, through damp and unblinking eyes, at the carnage and wreckage that lie in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., and a Pennsylvania field.

America Under Attack--that was the name given most programming on September 11, as though it were the first new show of the fall season, starring Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings. It also served to introduce America to its newest ingenue, MSNBC's Ashleigh Banfield, who changed looks like a network Madonna. And for a little while, at least, television did its job without fail or fault: Anchors and reporters were calm, somber, connected at last to those of us on the other side of the screen. Every now and then, we would see too much--bodies falling from the World Trade Center, copious replays of the planes smashing into the towers--but, for the most part, the networks held up their end of the bargain: They spoke but never shouted; they informed but never inflamed.

But soon after its premiere on September 11, America Under Attack gave way to its inevitable spin-offs: America Strikes Back, America Under Alert, Operation Enduring Freedom and so forth. Like most spin-offs, though, they just disappointed: The graphic had given way to the grainy, as bombs were dropped on Afghanistan behind Don Rumsfeld's scrim of secrecy. And, as networks are wont to do, they resurrected has-beens and gave them top billing long after their expiration dates had passed. Geraldo Rivera showed up on Fox, wearing Kevlar and a sidearm while lying about where he was when U.S. soldiers were killed and when he was (or, actually, wasn't) there. In the end, everything went back to normal, just as our president ordered: Insight wrought hysteria, news anchors started sporting Old Glory lapel pins as though we doubted their patriotism, and all we were left with at month's end were those endless bottom-of-the-screen news scrolls bereft of actual news.As well as TV handled the events of September 11 and the days after, its post-attack coverage was often clumsy, especially in prime-time programming: NYPD Blue retooled its season premiere with hollow, dashed-off references to the attacks; stoner Aaron Sorkin turned The West Wing into a junior high lecture series; even Billy Ray Cyrus got touchy-feely on PAX, where every utterance is a thinly veiled, softly whispered Godblessyou. Indeed, the most touching and resonant moments dealing with the attacks and their fallout were to be found on comedies: Saturday Night Live, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Daily Show, even South Park, which returned on November 7 with the Looney Tunes-inspired episode "Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants" (allegedly the original name for Operation Enduring Freedom).It's hardly surprising that comedy would come to the rescue. TV's hour-long dramas are too much in love with their sense of self-importance; they want to make us wallow in the suffering, turning even the mundane and clichéd into A Very Special Episode. The attacks soon enough became fair game for writers unable to cope or create with any intelligence or sensitivity. And so we found comfort in the funny stuff, perhaps because humor's far better at letting audiences unleash emotion. Comedy doesn't work without the real-life shit getting in the way; it's there to make sense of chaos, to make tangible the inexplicable.

Maybe the best way to express anger and confusion and grief and all the attendant emotions we can't even identify is through the sob that gives way to the chuckle, or vice versa. Look only at David Letterman, who comforted a weary, distraught Dan Rather days after the attacks, then provoked us weeks later by calling bin Laden "an asshole" during a Top 10 list. Those who inexplicably find Jay Leno funnier surely can't find him more human or relevant, not anymore. Only Jon Stewart, who wondered during the days after the attacks if he could even continue with The Daily Show since a fake news show seemed horribly inappropriate, was equal to the task. At once self-deprecating and sincere, he mocked the by-then familiar weepy opening speech and then delivered his own, with bile and tears doled out in equal measure. When he closed his remarks by mentioning that his apartment's view of the World Trade Center had given way to one of the Statue of Liberty, good Christ, you just wanted to give the man a hug.