TELEVISION REVIEW : ‘Architects’ Profiled in the Best Light

In the newspaper biz, it’s called a “puff piece.” A little story with no discouraging words and lots of airy schmoozing.

That’s pretty much the direction of KOCE Channel 50’s “Architects of Change” series, which purports to profile some of the movers and shakers of Orange County. The second 30-minute episode, airing Sunday at 8 p.m. and again Thursday at 5 p.m., lionizes scientist and philanthropist Arnold Beckman, singing cowboy and California Angels owner Gene Autry and the founders of South Coast Repertory, David Emmes and Martin Benson.

These apparently are wonderful people, deserving of praise. But the way writer, producer, director and editor Paul Bockhorst presents them is so unsparingly complimentary and optimistic that the viewer naturally wonders about the hard times. Skeletons in the closet? Heck, we don’t even know if they have any slightly soiled overcoats in there.

To be fair, the show never claims to be a documentary, and there’s not much Bockhorst can do with the 10 minutes he allows for each segment. But with superficiality comes boredom. The latest episode passes by like one of those travelogues to a not especially interesting place.

Bockhorst does give some facts, although none of them are really new. The segment on Autry notes that he bought the Los Angeles Angels in 1960 and then fretted over being relegated to playing in Dodger Stadium only when the more popular Dodgers were out of town.

After an overture from Long Beach that didn’t pan out, Anaheim came forward and the “Big A” was built. Former City Manager Keith Murdoch explains that building Anaheim Stadium was “a big risk” for a city of only 100,000 people at the time, but he doesn’t elaborate on what those risks were.

As for visuals, we get a few interviews (Autry himself and Orange County Register sports columnist John Hall talking about Autry), several new and old shots of Angels playing ball and Walt Disney grinning near the dugout.

The program starts with Beckman in a segment akin to the self-promotional snippets that colleges show at halftime during televised football games. You know--shots of students working in labs, all with a friendly voice-over saying how nice it is.

Beckman was a groundbreaking scientist, and viewers will learn that he invented the acidimeter, which tests the acidity or alkalinity in liquids, and another machine that measures the Vitamin A content in substances. He aided the county’s technology boom by moving his business, Beckman Instruments, from South Pasadena to Fullerton in 1954. He’s also been financially generous with UC Irvine, helping establish the Beckman Laser Institute there.

Important accomplishments, to be sure. But what about the failures? Were there any dreams, any inventions, that didn’t work out?

We also don’t hear anything about the problematic plays that SCR has staged during nearly three decades in the county. Most of the talk is about how extraordinary the Costa Mesa playhouse has become, described in the program by former Times drama critic Dan Sullivan as one of the best in the country.

But in establishing that reputation, the theater has tested its subscribers’ loyalty from time to time. For example, SCR infuriated some patrons in recent seasons with stagings of such scatological David Mamet plays as “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “Speed-the-Plow.” Again, though, we get only the ups, not the downs.

The segment does get a bit more interesting in looking at SCR’s early days in the progressive ‘60s, when it was first a traveling repertory and then a meager theater in Newport Beach. Sullivan makes sense when he says that Emmes and Benson took a chance: “They knew Orange County would boom” and anticipated a growing audience for quality theater. But they also realized there was a gamble in being “divorced from Los Angeles, where the (professional) actors’ pool was.”

It all paid off, of course. The program proudly points out that SCR went on to win a prestigious Tony Award in 1988 as the nation’s best regional theater. But then, every ending is a happy one in “Architects of Change.”

Episode 2 of “Architects of Change” airs Sunday at 8 p.m. and Thursday at 5 p.m. on KOCE Channel 50.