Secret Societies Make Great TV Fodder
There's a secret cabal that really knows what's going on. It's an underlying conceit for a host of television shows, ranging from Get Smart and "The Man from UNCLE" to "The Prisoner," and even the new "Dollhouse." Even "The X-Files" folowed the same premise, though from the outside rather than inside the secret organization. Most of these shows first appeared in the wake of the 'spy craze' of the nineteen-sixties that grew out of the James Bond phenomenon. One explanation for the recurring popularity of these shows is that it's all part of the innate human desire for order. We want things to make sense, and when they don't it bothers us. Secret organizations are an attempt to impose order on the chaos based on the idea that everything does make sense so long as you have the big picture. As an idea it's very successful, but how successful is it as TV? Is it like the crime genre where shows like "Law an...