I have been catching up with ABC's recently premiered "The Rookie: Feds," in which Niecy Nash-Betts stars as a middle-aged high school guidance counselor turned FBI "probie." (I say "middle-aged," but that isn't a description that sticks easily to Nash-Betts.) It's an over-the-top action cartoon, in which scenes dealing with personal relationships, health challenges and workplace plotting occasionally give way to running around with guns drawn. And it's completely enjoyable, made by people who seem to be having a good time, with a diverse cast of characters who take no more than a minute to fully classify and comprehend and are all the more enjoyable for it.
There is a quality to broadcast television. Not "quality" as betokens high-class, Platinum Age TV, but a certain something you don't readily find on streaming or premium platforms — something that continues to attract what nowadays are considered large audiences without translating to trending tweets, critical hubbub or ("Abbott Elementary" notwithstanding) year-end awards.
It's not that network series are without gravitas, or art, or nuance, or something to say — they sometimes have a lot to say, in a very loud voice — but the rate at which they unfold and the way they relate to their viewers are special to the platform. You can only go so dark for so long on network TV, where viewers come for comfort and resolution. Dramas are nearly always leavened with comedy and characters who are designed to be liked, and who you hope will like each other. Broadcast shows offer easy pleasures, and this tends to be true of the middling ones as well as the best. (And even the worst.) The venue will tolerate a good deal of cliche and corniness and obviousness. Characters tell you who they are and what they're thinking straight out. Text trumps subtext.
