TV So Complicated!

Forget the linear plotlines of police procedurals or medical dramas. The best TV shows today are dystopian Rubik’s Cubes. Zoning out is not an option

MISS THE DAYS OF PREDICTABLE,

uncomplicated television? Blame Christopher Nolan.

The Dark Knight mastermind’s 2000 psychological thriller Memento, based on his younger brother Jonathan’s idea, was a head spinner. Trauma victim Leonard (Guy Pearce) searches for the man who murdered his wife—but he suffers from anterograde amnesia, a condition that produces short-term memory loss every five minutes, preventing him from forming new memories. Nolan visualized the main character’s profound disorientation by splitting the plot between color sequences of Leonard trying to solve the mystery, presented in reverse chronological order, and black-and-white flashbacks presented chronologically. The highly complex, nonlinear narrative enthralled moviegoers and critics alike. With box-office success and two Academy Award nominations (one for best original screenplay), Nolan was on his way to becoming one of our most influential contemporary filmmakers.

The biggest impact might have been felt on television. Twenty years after Twin Peaks pioneered the model, Nolan showed there was an audience for a labyrinthine style of storytelling that prioritized ingenious structure and puzzle solving over character development and, often, logic. With shows created post- Memento, the confusion is intentional, and the exposition never stops. In other words, they’re not the simple comfort food of Law & Order; they’re baked Alaska.

In 2004, Lost ran with that idea for six seasons, adding a cast of seemingly thousands to the mix of flash-forwards, flashbacks and myriad, often confounding clues. It was a veritable Russian doll of a show, and the small screen wasn’t big enough to contain it. Lost spawned books and websites where obsessive fans desperately searched for

hints to help solve mysteries about the plot and characters, and the show’s success inspired a host of copycats. It was the ideal form of storytelling for the internet era. Where fans had previously exchanged theories and highlights at the office the next day, online forums allowed for endless virtual deconstruction—some of it more complex than the show itself. ( Lost’s writers talked of being influenced by the show’s fans in an unprecedented way.) The watercooler show had been replaced by rabbit-hole television.

Nolan upped his own ante with the 2010 film Inception, a massive critical hit so intricate it demanded repeat viewings. The film’s premise, of stealing information by entering another person’s subconscious, presaged another twisty, complex TV series: HBO’S Westworld, based on the 1973 film of the same name and co-created by Jonathan Nolan. The show, which premiered in 2016 and returns for Season 2 on April 22, became the most-watched first season in HBO’S history, and it includes the usual thought-provoking tropes of the Nolan brothers. “The depth of Westworld lies not in asking questions about memory, free will and what makes us human, but in whether we can become more human than what we let ourselves to be, whether our stories can be richer and more meaningful than what the culture allows,” wrote Entertainment

Weekly TV critic Jeff Jensen. Given the commercial success of these brainteasers, it’s no mystery why they are proliferating, and you can see Christopher Nolan’s influence on all of them. (Nolan, for his part, was heavily influenced by Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner.) Here are the most recent, and best, of TV’S puzzle boxes.