Minutiæ

Snappy dia­logue is no stand-in for sub­stance, a fact that remains elu­sive to the so-called mas­ter­minds behind The Evening News, air­ing nightly at 5:30pm on ABC. It doesn’t take a crip­pling fear of the out­doors to see that things don’t add up in the hyper-stylized world of inter­act­ing peo­ple that the show’s writ­ers present. But for this shut-in viewer, it cer­tainly doesn’t hurt.

Set in small-town Paw­tucket, Rhode Island, the Chan­nel 7 nightly news is a lumpy sofa with one arm torn off: hard to sit through and with no end in sight. Range Dock­weiler plays the strong male lead, oppo­site Ross­lyn Com­pa­cho, a fiery brunette of unknown her­itage who favors drab pantsuits and large gold neck­laces. Together, they are the Action News team, set with the osten­si­ble task of bring­ing global dra­mat­ics into the rick­ety, trash-filled home of this and every other nightly viewer.

Dock­weiler pro­vides an air of strength to the screen, fre­quently shoot­ing off smiles and coy nods to the disheveled audi­ence. He is, how­ever, an imper­fect lead­ing man. The crisp attempts at witty desk ban­ter come off as banal, self-assured non­sense, only occa­sion­ally punc­tu­ated by the nasally, hol­low laugh of Com­pa­cho. Hav­ing shied away from human inter­ac­tion for nearly six years, it’s still hard to imag­ine that this dri­vel is what passes for con­ver­sa­tion in the world beyond the clut­tered liv­ing room.

For her part, Com­pa­cho relies too heav­ily on make-up and not enough on emo­tional dia­logue, often drown­ing out the dirty viewer and his cats with a bar­rage of facts when a few moments of innu­endo would more than suf­fice. If this viewer wanted noth­ing but facts, maybe they’d open the front door once in a while. No thanks!

As this sea­son drags on, the unan­swered ques­tion seems to be: will they or won’t they? Dockweiler’s arrest­ing good looks make him an obvi­ous can­di­date for Compacho’s bed­room eyes, but every time things begin to turn towards what the viewer must assume human con­tact to be like, a cut­away or screen graphic breaks the affair to pieces. And if you’re wait­ing for these moments to add up to some­thing sub­stan­tially more, you’re likely to be sorely dis­ap­pointed. After 270 con­sec­u­tive episodes of the evening news, the most arous­ing moment for this viewer came dur­ing a PSA for a cat shel­ter. Meow, indeed.

Beyond the broke­down romance, what’s left is a series of ever-changing cut­aways to field reporters in ter­ri­fy­ingly open spaces, and video pieces that high­light the sort of mov­ing traf­fic / shop­ping expe­ri­ences / pub­lic dis­cus­sions that no audi­ence in their right mind could con­nect with. Pre­cious few are the moments back at the news desk, safe in an office chair and with all the world’s newsy moments at a com­fort­able dis­tance. Only the open­ing visu­als – a sweep­ing mélange of gold and navy-blue shapes that hap­haz­ardly shoot towards the fright­ened and largely immo­bile viewer, before mag­i­cally form­ing the num­ber 7 inside of a cir­cle – seem to be a hit with the feral cat crowd, whose screen-pawing and occa­sional uri­na­tions show off their sat­is­fa­ca­tion. This is just about the only high­light to the evening’s view­ing experience.

It’s a shame that Chan­nel 7 and the fig­ure­heads sur­round­ing The Evening News can’t seem to put together a rel­e­vant tele­vi­sion pro­gram, instead rely­ing on out­landish tales of war, crime and other social detri­tus that is enough to scare com­mon cit­i­zens into a world of out­right fear at what’s beyond the front door. What’s more, there are piti­ful few moments of real­ism that would allow the viewer to con­nect with the show. Where is the strug­gle to find a clean spoon with which to eat cold oat­meal? Or the joys of dis­cov­er­ing an old box of Christ­mas orna­ments in the damp base­ment? Any men­tion of the thrill of dis­cov­er­ing a throw blan­ket that per­fectly cov­ers the liv­ing room win­dow? Sadly, there are none.

Until major over­hauls are given to this long-running series, it’s as impos­si­ble as unlock­ing the front door to give The Evening News a pass­ing grade. From con­cept to exe­cu­tion, the Action News team needs an over­haul. Until then, this viewer might just chan­nel surf a bit. Now, to find the remote under all of these man­nequin parts! ✦