By Tiffiny Whitney · July 1, 2011
Just like the main character of USA’s newest quirky and character-driven show, Necessary Roughness… I really don’t like football that much (or sports, for that matter). In all honesty, I’m actually quite lucky to know what the term “toss the pigskin around” means (that is how you say it, right?). That being said, what I do like is when a show can take a subject matter that its audience might not necessarily relate to and still make it compelling through a mixture of cerebral, comedic, and dramatic elements to the point of where you forget you’re watching a show about football.
And that’s probably because we’re not. We’re actually watching a witty, well-written character piece cleverly disguised as a football show. Sort of like a television version of The Blind Side, except that our damaged football star has already hit the big time and is a womanizing, arrogant jerk with performance anxiety. Regardless of its differences, however, Necessary Roughness employs many of the same tools that made The Blind Side great, and the one tool that is an ultimate lifesaver for any television writer with a desire to make a show last—unique and developed characters.
Necessary Roughness stars Callie Thorne as Dr. Dani Santino, an independent-minded housewife who, after years of sacrificing a brilliant mind to the needs of her well-to-do husband and bratty kids, decides to get a Ph.D. and become a professional therapist. The story introduces Dr. Santino operating her small practice out of her well-manicured upstate-New York home, just as her life is turned upside down by marital infidelity. Kicking her profession into overdrive just to pay the bills, Dani’s attempts to cope with the sudden changes in her life unexpectedly fling her into the arms of Matthew Donnelly (Buffy’s Marc Blucas), an athletic trainer for the fictional New York Hawks.
After Dani manages to help Matt confront his life-long smoking addiction by demonstrating a bit of her therapist magic through the power of hypnosis, Matt passes Dani the gig of a lifetime at exactly the right moment when she needs the cash—a chance to treat the team’s star wide receiver, Terrence King (Mechad Brooks—whom you might remember on Season 3 of “True Blood”). The problem? The promising young athlete has recently become the king of fumbled plays; and Matt thinks that Dr. D may be just the right person to cure him of his apparent performance anxiety.
Citing a recent review I did of another USA Show, Suits, I feel I can best demonstrate here some of the strengths of Necessary Roughness by placing them side-by-side. Pitting these two new USA shows against each other isn’t completely fair—after all, I’m not completely lost on Suits yet—but even being completely different shows, if there’s one thing we can point to that makes Necessary Roughness a standout as opposed to Suits, it is the idea that form should follow function in any successful television show—not necessarily the other way around.
In the television world, this translates into the idea that the overall story arc of the entire show should be more a product of the people who populate its world than the world itself. Without delving too much into Suits, one of my major qualms with the show is that, while it’s written well in parts, there’s an overwhelming sense of “destiny” to its plot. Two star-crossed lawyers magically meet and practice law—despite some very serious logical leaps and arbitrary plot choices meant to fuel a show based around what ultimately feels like a short-lived concept. The characters, despite some great acting, feel almost like an afterthought to the idea. Can we say Heroes, anyone?
Necessary Roughness, on the other hand, has taken a route where they seem to be more focused on developing the show from the inside out—beginning with Dr. Dani Santino. While there are a few ambiguous or stereotypical characters on the show—for example, the loud and impatient coach of the Hawks—our main players are clearly drawn. Most notable is Dani, who is instantly and clearly a strong, intelligent, and confident woman who is also deeply conflicted and torn between her professional obligations and those of her family and herself. I would watch the show if just to see what she does because she is interesting. And no matter how uncouth her behavior at times, or politically incorrect—her statements always ring honestly in ways that we all wish we could say, but never would (because most of us don’t have a Ph.D. to back it up with).
Secondly, Necessary Roughness contains a much more realistic situation and inciting incident that gives the show an air of reality that Suits fails to establish. Despite the unlikelihood that a single mother with two bratty teenagers would luck out so well by landing a hot rebound and a job as a shrink for a pro-football team, the subtlety in which its done feels a lot more likely than the situation in Suits where the protagonist convinces an experienced lawyer into recruiting a college-dropout for a prestigious law firm. Events in Necessary Roughness are not rushed to suit the plot as they are in Suits; rather, the development of character is what motivates its forward motion. There’s also a greater tangibility to the character of Dani, who actively takes a role in rebuilding her life, as opposed to the protagonist of Suits—a guy that happens to just be in the right place at the right time, and just happens to have a photographic memory.
Simply put, the strength of Necessary Roughness comes from strongly drawn characters, whereas Suits, at least in this very early phase of the show, feels like it’s running on the steam of Hollywood contrivances and happenstance. Even some of the funniest moments in Roughness are borne from the conflict inherent in having characters so strongly defined as individuals that they naturally clash from a conflict due to their unyielding personalities.
As a television writer, to be able to craft a character that is so clearly “him/herself” is a great ability. Instead of boxing characters into a corner though, the writers have created a lot of room for their characters to grow and change. Barring a lockout or other outlandish sports clichés, Necessary Roughness has the potential to make some strong plays in the game of television—at least for a while.
