The reason each of these shows is successful is the clarity and consistency of the major characters. Each protagonist is written with authenticity and “feels real.” The storylines track the characters’ major life questions and the audience is compelled to watch how the drama unfolds.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the Emmy nominated shows and protagonist Character Type.

Big Love is the story of Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton), the head of a polygamist family of three very different wives (and three sets of children). Bill is a decent God-fearing man who tries to be a good husband and father. He is a quintessential Power of Conscience character. Bill’s stoylines and the dramatic throughlines of the show revolve around questions of “what is the higher duty,” “what is right, just and moral” and “how much wrong-doing is permissible in pursuing what is right.” Bill is caught in circumstances where he must continually decide who and what to put first in a long list of conflicting demands and duties. His nemesis has been Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), a Power of Will character who will stop at nothing to expand his territory and control of the Juniper Creek “family.” Bill is challenged to uphold his own moral standards and personal integrity while fighting Roman.

Breaking Bad follows protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a chemistry teacher diagnosed with Stage III lung cancer. He is given two years to live. Walter “has a brain the size of Wisconsin” and uses his scientific expertise to cook and sell crystal meth. He is a Power of Reason character. Like the title characters in Dexter and House he is alienated from his career, his family and his life. He is filled with a sense of his own superiority and a bitter contempt for others. Even after an improvement in his diagnosis he still seeks the release and intensity of feeling that comes from his criminal activity.

Damages tracks the relationship of a young lawyer, Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), with her brilliant but ruthless boss and professional mentor, Patty Hewes (Glenn Close). The setting is the law firm Hewes runs in New York City and various cases the firm handles involving double-dealing, duplicity and conspiracy. Ellen is a Power of Truth character and the series is about “who can you trust,” “what is really going on” and “who is betraying whom.” Nothing is what it seems and it is folly for Ellen to fully trust anyone.

Dexter revolves around the life of Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a serial killer who is also a crime scene forensic expert specializing in blood spatter patterns. Dexter is brilliant but alienated from his feelings and doesn’t even feel completely “human.” He is a Power of Reason character and continually wonders if he is a “man or a monster.”

House chronicles a brilliant, superior and very alienated Doctor House (Hugh Laurie). He is an unparalleled expert medical diagnostician. House is a Power of Reason character like Dexter and Walter White. He is contemptuous of humanity in general and dismissive of any sentimentality or warm human feelings toward others. Others on the show quite frequently wonders if House is a “man or a monster.”

Lost is about a group of people marooned on an island after an airline crash. The survivors, led by Dr. Jack Sheppard (Matthew Fox), try to make sense of their predicament. The island is filled with mysterious forces that can’t be explained and which erupt at unpredictable moments. It is chaos. Jack is a Power of Reason character, a man of science. The survivors defer to his expertise. Jack starts the show alienated from his wife, his father and the patients in his practice. His stoylines and the dramatic throughlines of the show revolve around questions of “How can I make sense from a world gone mad?” “Do I have enough information to understand the situation?” “How can order be restored from chaos?” “Will I be overwhelmed (emotionally or otherwise)?”

Mad Men follows protagonist Don Draper (Jon Hamm), a man with a shadowy past who stole another soldier’s identity at the end of World War II. Don is a Power of Truth Character. He is an ad man, a master illusionist, twisting words and images to suit clients’ sales pitches. He has trouble discerning the truth about himself, his wife and his target marketing audience: (“What if women want something else? Inside. Some mystery wish that we’re ignoring?”) He works in a cutthroat environment where duplicity, betrayal and infidelities are everywhere. He doesn’t fully trust anyone including himself.

That’s a quick line up of the Emmy Nominees. Each show has a clear, sharply defined protagonist at the heart of its story. That’s the key to success in any series or feature film. Each character in the nominated shows is a complex fully formed human being. Each character “feels real.” Each character is true to his or her type. Defining Character Type is a first step in creating great characters.

Mad Men

The question boils down to:  What audience do you want?  Once you target the audience the question becomes:  What does that audience want?  High brow audiences look for a very different experience than mass appeal audiences.  In fact, the very things that attract one audience repel the other.

This is not to say art is better or worse than commerce– they just are DIFFERENT.

What exactly are the differences?  What is necessary to attract a wide audience?  Below are a couple of articles on Mad Men I have annotated that get to the core of the art vs. commerce divide.  My comments follow.

LA Times: The TV Hits That No One Watches
By Scott Collins

“Mad Men” was the most-honored of any drama series this year, a surprising achievement given that it represented AMC’s first real stab at traditional series development. It was only the latest stop in “Mad Men’s” astonishing trip from a spec script hammered out by a moonlighting TV writer to cultural phenomenon, critics’ darling and Golden Globe winner.

…Too bad, then, that about 98% of Americans have never watched the show. In fact, whatever the interest in this acting showdown or that snub, this year’s Emmy nominations may be most notable for underscoring a growing cultural trend: the yawning gap between what critics and industry veterans cherish and what the rest of the public actually watches.

It’s the relentless narrowing of what was once, in a pre-Internet era, a mass culture, a shift that mirrors what’s happening in movies, books and other art forms.“In terms of nominations, it is a very elite group,” said Shari Anne Brill, an analyst at New York-based ad firm Carat.

Referring to today’s most-honored TV shows, she added: “They get an upscale audience; they just don’t get a mass audience. ”Scripted series, from “I Love Lucy” to “Dallas” to “Friends,” traditionally netted some of the biggest audiences in television history. But now TV’s comedies and dramas are, with a sprinkling of exceptions, becoming expensive diversions for the cultural elite, akin to opera in the 19th century or foreign films in the 1960s.

Critics may love shows such as “Mad Men,” FX’s “Damages” (seven nominations) and HBO’s “The Wire,” but not many other Americans have caught the fever. Even popular network dramas such as ABC’s “Lost” and NBC’s “Heroes” have far fewer viewers than comparable series even a few years ago.

Instead, the TV masses tend to flock these days to major sporting events– such as February’s Super Bowl telecast on Fox, which drew a record audience of 97.5 million– and live reality shows such as “American Idol” or “Dancing With the Stars.” The latter were Emmy-nominated but mostly in the relatively low-prestige “reality competition” category.

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/18/entertainment/et-emmysmad18

My comments:  What makes these “low prestige” show so compelling to audiences?  They are immediate, urgent and authentic. Yes, these shows (and their contestants) are also manufactured, manipulated and managed.  But the contestants, in any situation or challenge created for them, respond by revealing their true characters.

They are real people struggling, failing or overcoming obstacles in real time.  They can’t help showing us who they truly are– that’s what every human being does under extreme pressure.  Over time these contestants’ facades are stripped away.  The audience sees everyone at his or her most vulnerable.  Strengths and weaknesses are exposed. The contestants fall and battle to rise again.

Forget the shiny floor or the flashy lighting.  In these shows something is at stake.  There is struggle, pain, and disappointment but most importantly there is hope.  If your football team falls to take home the trophy at this year’s Super Bowl, there is always next season.  If your favorite singer or dancer is defeated there still is joy in seeing a new star emerge.  And you can pick a new favorite next year.

Another key factor is that these “low prestige” shows are entertainment the whole family can watch together.  This is viewing that isn’t dark.  It isn’t edgy.  It doesn’t “push the envelope.”  And then at the end, there is a sense of affirmation, joy, triiumph or even redemption.

Contrast this with Mad Men and it’s dark relentlessly downbeat tone and stylish but rather empty lives. The characters seem to drift through the story much like the cigarette smoke that fills their homes and offices.  There is little flesh and blood urgency and little worth fighting for.  There is pervasive disillusionment, detachment and disappointment.  Each of the characters is distanced from their emotions (and from us as viewers). The show is stunning in its careful attention to period detail.  It looks beautiful and is beautifully written.  It is also as slow, measured and somber as a classic Requiem Mass.

The Hollywood Reporter
Mad Men Bottom Line: All Pitch and Windup with a Soft Delivery
By Randee Dawn

…(I)f the pieces are in place for “Mad Men” to break big, why does its center feel so hollow? Watching characters indulge with relish in what today are vices has a transgressive quality, yet it’s all done with an insider’s wink to the audience. A fawning tone would grow just as tiresome, but who can identify with characters from whom even the writers seem to shrink?

…There’s much to admire about “Mad Men,” and much worth tuning in for. But so far, it’s all soft sell. At one point, Draper advises a cigarette exec (John Cullum) that they’ll promote his product’s “toasted” quality,” thus ushering in the era of pitching lifestyle over product, the birth of selling nothing. Unfortunately, at this stage, “Mad Men” is giving its audience pretty much the same thing.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/television/reviews/article_display.jsp?&rid=9514

If you are a fanatic fan.  Here is a great site analyzing each episode along with PDF episode scripts.  High art or “low prestige” mass audience. It is your choice.