This post on the "Ozzie and Harriet Syndrome" reminds me, once again, that no one today who invokes Ozzie and Harriet seems to have ever seen their TV show (link via Dirk Deppey). The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is not like Leave It to Beaver, where father knows best and each episode offers a little moral about proper living. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is much more its own thing: a precursor of both the immature dad sitcoms - like Everybody Loves Raymond - and more "experimental" sitcoms -like Buffalo Bill or Seinfeld (because, of course, conventions weren't as set in stone). For instance, in one of my favorite episodes that combines these two aspects of the show, Ozzie decides to protest the fast pace of the modern world by... staying in bed all day.
I find Jim Emerson's argument that the action movie elements in The Pineapple Express are meant to be read as "stoners imagining themselves the heroes of a movie they'd like to see" unconvincing as a literal interpretation of the movie. Despite all the evidence Jim musters, Occam's Razor leads me to think that this is more of a case of bending and mixing genres than an attempt at a story with multiple layers of reality. Still, there's a lot there to mull over and tease out regarding the way conventional narrative movies mix and match different levels of "movieness".
This piece makes a compelling case for 300 as the definitive movie of the Bush era. Some other contenders: Burn After Reading, 28 Weeks Later, Darkon, Flags of Our Fathers, Hostel, A History of Violence, The Descent, The Village, and Mystic River. Looking at this list, I'd argue that genre films manage to capture the era better than movies that try to deal with current events directly because (a) they act as allegories/metaphors with multiple possible readings/meanings (in other words they're slippery) and (b) filmmakers have more freedom with how they enact/realize/shape fantastic/unreal/"genre" elements than they do with "real world" elements (in other words they're more supple).
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Forager's 2008 Big List of Stuff
I usually don't get around to finalizing my annual "Best" lists until after I've had a chance to catch up with all of the year's releases. Going by past experience, that means my 2008 Best lists wouldn't be ready until May 2009.
Here's something different for this year: a big, fruit salad list of my favorite arts/culture stuff from 2008* that I've seen/read/experienced in 2008.
I wanted to annotate each of the entries, but I also wanted to make sure I posted this before I went on my Christmas vacation - so there are some "blanks" here that I might come back to fill in later.
No music here, because I've mostly given up on listening to new releases, although I did like the Coldplay album quite a bit. No novels here because I'm a couple of years behind there, too. No a(r/l)t comix either, for the same reasons: I'm always playing catch up!
I'm on Christmas vacation now, so I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to respond, but questions and comments are always appreciated.
1. Lost Season 4 - In certain RPG circles there's a recurring debate that goes something like this:
On the one side, you have people saying that Star Wars is cool because of all the spaceships, aliens, and powers, so an RPG about Star Wars needs rules for all of the cool spaceships, aliens, and powers. On the other side, you have people saying that Star Wars is compelling because of its underlying dramatic and thematic concerns, so an RPG about Star Wars needs rules to help address these dramatic and thematic concerns. People on this side of the debate tend to dismiss all the powers, spaceships, and aliens as "mere color"- i.e. trappings that you could get rid of and still have something that was Star Wars-like (i.e. something that had the same kind of pulpy feel and mythic reach).
I take a middle ground: Star Wars is compelling and cool because of the virtuous cycle set up between its unique sci-fi trappings (the specific spaceships, powers, and aliens) and its thematic concerns. I think all of the best fantasy and sci-fi manages to find this kind of "sweet spot" where the "rules" of the mythos (i.e., how the Force works, how the Republic is organized politically, etc.) creatively constrain and shape the action and themes.
Sometime during it's second season I started describing Lost as a series that moment-for-moment was one of the most entertaining shows on television, but on a larger, "seasonal" scale was extremely unsatisfying. In other words, they couldn't find that sweet spot. All the little bits and pieces worked, but they didn't seem like they added up to anything and it was frustrating because it seemed like they were supposed to add up to something. In his piece on the Season 4 finale, Sean argued that getting too concerned about the big picture was, perhaps, not the best way to watch this show. But it's hard not to get caught up in all the details of the Lost mythos, since they're interwoven so completely into the action. Anyway, I think it wasn't until the end of Season 3 and (especially) the entirety of Season 4 that the Lost team perfected the balance between micro and macro: moment-to-moment the show was as strong as ever and the slowly but steadily emerging outlines of the "big picture" helped to ground these moments and give them greater thematic resonance because of the way they fit into the mosaic of the mythos.
2. Profit motive and the whispering wind - I want to write something of my own, but for now read this.
3. Cartooning class with Matthew Thurber - Taking this course was definitely one of the best decisions I made all year. Matt is a very good teacher and the class was laid back and a lot of fun. Plus, I learned a lot and even ended up getting to make my own minicomic. I've been a comics/cartoons fan for just about as long as I can remember, but the last time I ever really tried to draw a comic was back when I was in the third grade. What's interesting to me as a guy who spends a decent percentage of his spare time thinking about/writing about comics is how much insight making even a pretty basic minicomic gave me into comics in general. It was an eye-opening experience. Like - I love that part in Donald Phelps' essay on Gould's Dick Tracy where he talks about the way Gould uses blacks, but it wasn't until I tried (and failed) to get a similar effect that I was able to grasp exactly what Gould had achieved.
4. The revival of Last Year at Marienbad at Film Forum - What a difference a print makes! Fred Camper, one of my favorite film critics, always emphasizes that if you've only seen a movie on video, you haven't really seen it. After having first seen Last Year at Marienbad, years ago, on a pretty lousy VHS tape, watching it on a beautiful print at the Film Forum was a revelation. On video, the image was cramped and fuzzy. The subtitles were barely readable and incomplete: I could comprehend French well enough to know that stuff was left out, but not enough to follow the twisty-turny narration. At the Film Forum, everything was clear. This is a beautiful, clever movie - and it's also pretty funny.
5. The Fold - A funny, super smart erotic, sci-fi thriller webseries (co-written and produced by my friends Ray and Polly, but I'd recommend . Erotic, not so much because it's made to turn you on (although it might), but because, unlike most fiction, it acknowledges that the part of us given to erotic fantasizing isn't completely compartmentalized from the rest our lives. It's filled with lots of smart, sci-fi-ish observations about the way Web 2.0 has affected our sense of the border between public and private life and how that, in turn, has affected those fantasies.
6. Burn After Reading - I wrote about this movie already, here.
7. Tim and Eric's Awesome Show Great Job Season 3 - I've written a little bit about Tim and Eric before, here. This season of their show had some of their funniest moments, but it's also probably their most inaccessible body of work, in that it's more self-referential than ever, more focused on exploring its own little world. This has a downside - guests and bits trotted out seemingly as "fanservice" - but it also allows for stuff like the "Jim and Derrick" episode, one of the best takes on MTV-style youth culture since Beavis and Butthead.
8. Wall-E - I like that A.O. Scott has to qualify his praise of Milk as being the best live action mainstream American movie he saw all year.
9. Slam Dunk Vol. 1 - I've gotten back into reading manga, but on most of the series I'm following I'm waaaaay behind. Slam Dunk is the only "new" manga I've started and Vol. 1 is the only manga I've read that was actually released this year. So this was the first year ever that the bulk of my comics-reading enjoyment came from manga, so I'll Slam Dunk stand in for all of the stuff I read and enjoyed.
10. Jason Statham - Almost singlehandedly keeping the action movie alive.
11. The "Brand New Day" and Beyond Era of The Amazing Spider-Man - I read some comics that I thought were better than these and a few comics that I enjoyed more, but I really dig what the writing/editorial team is doing with this book. Which is, as I've written before, trying to elaborate and expand on the John Romita/Stan Lee run without straying too far from what makes the character and concept work. In theory, I'm all for wild and woolly super-hero comics that make no sense to outsiders and I genuinely like those idiosyncrasies of super-hero comics that get filed off when they get turned into super-hero movies, but, in practice, the decisions made by the Spidey Team have led to better super-hero comics (in just about any way you want to define "better") than the weirder/more ambitious ones made by the folks over at DC or in Marvel's "Event Department".
Anyway, this has gotten me back in the comic store on a weekly basis, something I couldn't have imagined happening at this time last year.
12. Rambo - I want to write about this movie, but don't have time to do it justice right now. I'll just say that I think this movie is a kind of inversion of Saving Private Ryan, esp. in terms of how salvation relates to warfare and in terms of how it addresses the question "what good can come of the kind of mechanized violence that rips people to shreds". It's The Wild Bunch for the new millennium. (And this reminds me that I still need to see JCVD.)
13. The Happening - I wrote about this a couple of times.
14. Black Summer by Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp - I wrote about this comic already, here. I'm not as into their follow-up, No Heroes - it's #0 issue was really great, the next two issues were a bit of a let down - but I still think Ryp is one of the few guys drawing super-hero comics who'd be worth following no matter who was doing the writing. Frank Quitely would be one of the others. Luckily, they both tend to work with guys who know how to write these kinds of things.
15. All of the classic comic strip collections that I hope to either get as Christmas gifts or get for myself with any B&N gift cards I might recieve - Kind of cheating since these aren't things I've actually read. But it definitely makes me very happy that there's the distinct possibility that I'll be able to spend New Year's Eve pouring over that Scorchy Smith collection.
*More or less: I always allow for some wiggle room.
Here's something different for this year: a big, fruit salad list of my favorite arts/culture stuff from 2008* that I've seen/read/experienced in 2008.
I wanted to annotate each of the entries, but I also wanted to make sure I posted this before I went on my Christmas vacation - so there are some "blanks" here that I might come back to fill in later.
No music here, because I've mostly given up on listening to new releases, although I did like the Coldplay album quite a bit. No novels here because I'm a couple of years behind there, too. No a(r/l)t comix either, for the same reasons: I'm always playing catch up!
I'm on Christmas vacation now, so I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to respond, but questions and comments are always appreciated.
1. Lost Season 4 - In certain RPG circles there's a recurring debate that goes something like this:
On the one side, you have people saying that Star Wars is cool because of all the spaceships, aliens, and powers, so an RPG about Star Wars needs rules for all of the cool spaceships, aliens, and powers. On the other side, you have people saying that Star Wars is compelling because of its underlying dramatic and thematic concerns, so an RPG about Star Wars needs rules to help address these dramatic and thematic concerns. People on this side of the debate tend to dismiss all the powers, spaceships, and aliens as "mere color"- i.e. trappings that you could get rid of and still have something that was Star Wars-like (i.e. something that had the same kind of pulpy feel and mythic reach).
I take a middle ground: Star Wars is compelling and cool because of the virtuous cycle set up between its unique sci-fi trappings (the specific spaceships, powers, and aliens) and its thematic concerns. I think all of the best fantasy and sci-fi manages to find this kind of "sweet spot" where the "rules" of the mythos (i.e., how the Force works, how the Republic is organized politically, etc.) creatively constrain and shape the action and themes.
Sometime during it's second season I started describing Lost as a series that moment-for-moment was one of the most entertaining shows on television, but on a larger, "seasonal" scale was extremely unsatisfying. In other words, they couldn't find that sweet spot. All the little bits and pieces worked, but they didn't seem like they added up to anything and it was frustrating because it seemed like they were supposed to add up to something. In his piece on the Season 4 finale, Sean argued that getting too concerned about the big picture was, perhaps, not the best way to watch this show. But it's hard not to get caught up in all the details of the Lost mythos, since they're interwoven so completely into the action. Anyway, I think it wasn't until the end of Season 3 and (especially) the entirety of Season 4 that the Lost team perfected the balance between micro and macro: moment-to-moment the show was as strong as ever and the slowly but steadily emerging outlines of the "big picture" helped to ground these moments and give them greater thematic resonance because of the way they fit into the mosaic of the mythos.
2. Profit motive and the whispering wind - I want to write something of my own, but for now read this.
3. Cartooning class with Matthew Thurber - Taking this course was definitely one of the best decisions I made all year. Matt is a very good teacher and the class was laid back and a lot of fun. Plus, I learned a lot and even ended up getting to make my own minicomic. I've been a comics/cartoons fan for just about as long as I can remember, but the last time I ever really tried to draw a comic was back when I was in the third grade. What's interesting to me as a guy who spends a decent percentage of his spare time thinking about/writing about comics is how much insight making even a pretty basic minicomic gave me into comics in general. It was an eye-opening experience. Like - I love that part in Donald Phelps' essay on Gould's Dick Tracy where he talks about the way Gould uses blacks, but it wasn't until I tried (and failed) to get a similar effect that I was able to grasp exactly what Gould had achieved.
4. The revival of Last Year at Marienbad at Film Forum - What a difference a print makes! Fred Camper, one of my favorite film critics, always emphasizes that if you've only seen a movie on video, you haven't really seen it. After having first seen Last Year at Marienbad, years ago, on a pretty lousy VHS tape, watching it on a beautiful print at the Film Forum was a revelation. On video, the image was cramped and fuzzy. The subtitles were barely readable and incomplete: I could comprehend French well enough to know that stuff was left out, but not enough to follow the twisty-turny narration. At the Film Forum, everything was clear. This is a beautiful, clever movie - and it's also pretty funny.
5. The Fold - A funny, super smart erotic, sci-fi thriller webseries (co-written and produced by my friends Ray and Polly, but I'd recommend . Erotic, not so much because it's made to turn you on (although it might), but because, unlike most fiction, it acknowledges that the part of us given to erotic fantasizing isn't completely compartmentalized from the rest our lives. It's filled with lots of smart, sci-fi-ish observations about the way Web 2.0 has affected our sense of the border between public and private life and how that, in turn, has affected those fantasies.
6. Burn After Reading - I wrote about this movie already, here.
7. Tim and Eric's Awesome Show Great Job Season 3 - I've written a little bit about Tim and Eric before, here. This season of their show had some of their funniest moments, but it's also probably their most inaccessible body of work, in that it's more self-referential than ever, more focused on exploring its own little world. This has a downside - guests and bits trotted out seemingly as "fanservice" - but it also allows for stuff like the "Jim and Derrick" episode, one of the best takes on MTV-style youth culture since Beavis and Butthead.
8. Wall-E - I like that A.O. Scott has to qualify his praise of Milk as being the best live action mainstream American movie he saw all year.
9. Slam Dunk Vol. 1 - I've gotten back into reading manga, but on most of the series I'm following I'm waaaaay behind. Slam Dunk is the only "new" manga I've started and Vol. 1 is the only manga I've read that was actually released this year. So this was the first year ever that the bulk of my comics-reading enjoyment came from manga, so I'll Slam Dunk stand in for all of the stuff I read and enjoyed.
10. Jason Statham - Almost singlehandedly keeping the action movie alive.
11. The "Brand New Day" and Beyond Era of The Amazing Spider-Man - I read some comics that I thought were better than these and a few comics that I enjoyed more, but I really dig what the writing/editorial team is doing with this book. Which is, as I've written before, trying to elaborate and expand on the John Romita/Stan Lee run without straying too far from what makes the character and concept work. In theory, I'm all for wild and woolly super-hero comics that make no sense to outsiders and I genuinely like those idiosyncrasies of super-hero comics that get filed off when they get turned into super-hero movies, but, in practice, the decisions made by the Spidey Team have led to better super-hero comics (in just about any way you want to define "better") than the weirder/more ambitious ones made by the folks over at DC or in Marvel's "Event Department".
Anyway, this has gotten me back in the comic store on a weekly basis, something I couldn't have imagined happening at this time last year.
12. Rambo - I want to write about this movie, but don't have time to do it justice right now. I'll just say that I think this movie is a kind of inversion of Saving Private Ryan, esp. in terms of how salvation relates to warfare and in terms of how it addresses the question "what good can come of the kind of mechanized violence that rips people to shreds". It's The Wild Bunch for the new millennium. (And this reminds me that I still need to see JCVD.)
13. The Happening - I wrote about this a couple of times.
14. Black Summer by Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp - I wrote about this comic already, here. I'm not as into their follow-up, No Heroes - it's #0 issue was really great, the next two issues were a bit of a let down - but I still think Ryp is one of the few guys drawing super-hero comics who'd be worth following no matter who was doing the writing. Frank Quitely would be one of the others. Luckily, they both tend to work with guys who know how to write these kinds of things.
15. All of the classic comic strip collections that I hope to either get as Christmas gifts or get for myself with any B&N gift cards I might recieve - Kind of cheating since these aren't things I've actually read. But it definitely makes me very happy that there's the distinct possibility that I'll be able to spend New Year's Eve pouring over that Scorchy Smith collection.
*More or less: I always allow for some wiggle room.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
And they say we live in a geek's paradise...
I have a renewed interest in those crazy crossover comics of the 1990s - Batman vs. Predator, Green Lantern vs. Aliens, Batman/Hellboy/Starman, Superman vs. Aliens, etc.
I think comics fans might take for granted how unique and wonderful this particular sub-genre is. Though there are some video games (Capcom vs. Marvel), a few movies (AVP, Freddy vs. Jason), and a few prose novels (The Seven Percent Solution, The D. Case) that give us these kinds of crossovers, they really found their home in comics. The idea of facing Batman off against the Predator is, IMO, pure genius.
I really wish the trend hadn't died out. Here are some crossover comics I'd love to see:
- Batman vs. The Sopranos
- Hellboy: Trapped on the Lost Island
- Predator vs. Deadwood
- CSI vs. The Sopranos
- CSI: NY vs. Batman
- CSI: Miami vs. Predator
- Green Lantern vs. Firefly
- Jennifer Jones from the Alias comic vs. Sydney Bristow from the Alias TV show
- Jennifer Jones from the Alias comic vs. Buffy
- Jennifer Jones from the Alias comic vs. Buffy vs. Sydney Bristow from the Alias TV show
- Jennifer Jones, Buffy, and Sydney Bristow vs. Aliens
- Heroes vs. the X-Men
- Dr. Steve Brule vs. Lobo
- Battlestar Galactica vs. Firefly
- Torchwood vs. BRPD
For Sean, 21 shows off the top of my head that are better than The Wire...
I mean, I like The Wire, but...
1. Fawlty Towers
2. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
3. Charlie Rose
4. The Twilight Zone
5. Twin Peaks
6. The Muppet Show
7. Star Trek
8. Dragnet
9. The Simpsons
10. The Sopranos
11. Wiseguy
12. The X-Files
13. Cheers
14. The Larry Sanders Show
15. Arrested Development
16. Prime Suspect
17. Deadwood
18. South Park
19. Dr. Who
20. Firefly
21. Blake's 7
Given enough time I could come up with a list of, probably, 100 shows that I think are about as good as The Wire, starting with Seinfeld, The Irish R.M., Fraiser, Inside Winston Cup (when Allen Bestwick was the host), King of the Hill...
1. Fawlty Towers
2. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
3. Charlie Rose
4. The Twilight Zone
5. Twin Peaks
6. The Muppet Show
7. Star Trek
8. Dragnet
9. The Simpsons
10. The Sopranos
11. Wiseguy
12. The X-Files
13. Cheers
14. The Larry Sanders Show
15. Arrested Development
16. Prime Suspect
17. Deadwood
18. South Park
19. Dr. Who
20. Firefly
21. Blake's 7
Given enough time I could come up with a list of, probably, 100 shows that I think are about as good as The Wire, starting with Seinfeld, The Irish R.M., Fraiser, Inside Winston Cup (when Allen Bestwick was the host), King of the Hill...
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Movie Chat: Pick Me Up
This is the third Masters of Horror show I've watched. Based on having seen this, Homecoming, and Cigarette Burns, my impression of the series is that while the episodes have a strong starting concept, the scripts don't do that good of a job of building on the initial ideas and the directors seem to struggle with hitting the right tone and achieving a consistent style - my guess is the shooting schedule is so abbreviated that they have to go with the first take a couple of times too many. Also, I have nothing against graphically violent movies, but in this one and Cigarette Burns there were scenes of graphic violence that seemed to be there just because the show is on cable. (With this in mind, I'm interested to see what Dario Argento and Takashi Miike do with their episodes.)
That said, this is probably my favorite of the three, though it's in many ways the sloppiest and least ambitious. This is billed as a Larry Cohen episode and watching the credits I was disappointed that Larry didn't write the screenplay, but was just the director. I like a lot of his movies, but I generally consider him to be first an foremost an "idea guy". As a director he gets by, but the filmmaking in his movies is usually pretty basic. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but watching Larry Cohen bring his almost non-existent horror stylings to bear on a script by Some Dude wasn't exactly the experience I was looking for.
Oh wait - Some Dude is David J. Schow, who wrote the screenplay for The Crow and according to Wikipedia may have invented the term Splatterpunk. Maybe not a "Master of Horror", but certainly a "Pretty Damn Good Practitioner of Horror".
Anyway - my short, spoiler-free conclusion: despite a rocky start and erratic performances, the movie really does come together in its last act and does a good job tweaking some genre conventions. It also has a couple of creepy bits and a few scares, although nothing that really ranks that high on my "horror" scale.
Some more thoughts (with spoilers):
It makes sense that Cohen would want to work with Michael Moriarty again, but Moriarty seems to be in pretty bad shape. The role requires a certain consistency of style that he can't quite muster, so his performance just goes all over the place. It's actually kind of sad to watch him and it shouldn't be, because his character is supposed to be a kind of a bad ass.
Warren Kole is a lot better in the less showy role of the psycho hitch-hiker.
Now, the idea of these two psychos going after the same prey and ending up going after each other is a pretty good one, but the set up is so haphazard that I didn't realize that it was a good idea until the end of the movie when they're finally facing off. Funnily enough, even though this was just an hour long movie, it felt like it should have been shorter. There's some business - Moriarty's scene with Lauren Landon and the torture scene - that just gets in the way of what should be a straightforward tongue-in-cheek send up of the Roaming Psycho genre.
Still - this is the only one of the Masters of Horror episodes that I've seen that's got better as it went along.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Current TV Faves
- Ice Road Truckers: This show fascinates me for a couple of reasons. (1) The ice road project is an amazing example of human ingenuity and invention. I also knew nothing about it at all before watching the show. I know there must be things like this all over the world: staggering feats of engineering and daring that you'll never encounter and/or even hear about if you're living a standard, middle-class-ish life in the lower 48. (2) It is an extremely dangerous endeavour and, as far as I can tell, it is an unnecessary danger. That is, the truckers are shipping equipment to diamond mines and the only reason there's any money in that is because the demand for diamonds has been artificially manipulated. This isn't like, say, drilling for oil: for better or for worse, oil fuels the worldwide infrastructure. (3) I don't actually find the truckers themselves all that interesting, but I can't help wondering how much of their behavior on screen represents them trying to behave like they think people on a reality show should behave.
- Paula's Home Cooking: So - my mom has always been a pretty good cook when she's wanted to cook. The thing is, she's always worked a lot and she doesn't really enjoy cooking as much as she enjoys, say, reading sci-fi novels or playing video games, so, while growing up (and continuing on to today), except on special occasions - Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, birthdays, etc. - she tended to make a lot of low prep stuff as well as picking up a lot of prepared food and/or ordering take-out (this was an especially popular option while we were living in Montreal). So part 2 - my fiance does like to cook and she's good at it, but she's a vegetarian and she's usually on a diet, so while we definitely eat well (I'm not complaining!!!), we don't eat anything like the stuff Paula cooks up on her show. Health-wise, this is probably a good thing, because when Paula says "I'm gonna add just a little bit of butter" that "just" means "only one stick". But that gets to the heart of why I love this show: I guess it works for me the way that, say, Cribs works for other people. That is, I get a chance to dream about all this stuff that I would really like to have: it's my consumer fantasy!*
- John from Cincinnati: Don't believe the hype and don't believe the non-hype! From a business perspective, I think the people at HBO were crazy to think that this would make a good follow-up to The Sopranos. But it's a pretty ballsy artistic choice: sci-fi (???) without any of the trappings that signal sci-fi to a mainstream audience; a contemporary setting with dialogue that's nearly as stylized as what we'd hear in Deadwood or Firefly; central characters who aren't quite as sensationalistic as the ones from your standard HBO/cable series (polygamists! mobsters! movie stars! drug dealers!). Now, scene-by-scene it's a little uneven: some things seem to work well, but I find myself watching a lot of it in a kind of "wait-and-see"-mode: like, I'm willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt because even when scenes fall flat it seems like they might be setting up something that could be really interesting down the road. Also, David Milch earned my trust with Deadwood so I'm willing to give him a lot of rope. I can say that 4 episodes in, I am much more interested in what the show is up to than I was with Big Love 4 episodes in.
- Flight of the Conchords: I love jokey little shows about fake bands (see also the original Tenacious D). The songs are the main draw, but the sketches are amusing and low-key. Favorite lyrics (sung to a "What's Going On"-ish kind of tune):
Oohh, come on, sont zootka they’re turning kids into slaves
They’re turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers
But what’s the real cost, ‘cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper
Why are we still paying so much for sneakers when you got little kid slaves making them
What are your overheads? - Burn Notice: Okay - this isn't actually a good show. It has the exact same strengths and weaknesses of the other USA network programs I watch (Psych, which starts up again next week, is by far the best of them): the plots are all recycled from 1970s/1980s TV-mystery shows like The Rockford Files and Magnum P.I. (which in turn got them from cheapie noir pulps), but the actors are all game and consistently enjoyable/entertaining to watch. Like, the plot/theme ideas in the first episode were all pretty lame, but getting to see Bruce Campbell play a washed-up, alcoholic, ex-spy is worth it.
*Okay - not completely a fantasy. My fiance bought me Paula's book of dessert recipes and I'm planning to make a pretty scrumptious-looking coffee cake when we go on vacation in two weeks.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Writing about pop culture...
Lin Swimmer writes:
Trying to think of what I want to say about John From Cincinnati is making my head hurt.
(Putting aside the whole issue of everything I want to say about the nature of criticism and media as they exist in my own life.... The more research I do the worse it gets. I came across a description of a press conference where Milch tried to give people an idea of where it came from or what it's "about." ::deep breath:: William James, Einstein's mathematical equations, string theory, the Big Bang, Freud, his own history of addiction, and "themes having to do with the borders and margins of things - political, geographical, and spiritual as well." I like to imagine him walking up there and just unloading like at a cattle auction. "Doawoherawowahherawahgotahjamesawwahjamesowahstring" etc. Can you imagine being an arts and entertainment journalist sent to this thing? Your only job is to return with enough information to write a one-paragraph blurb. At the end of the night you look down at your notes and all that's there are the words "Luke Perry" and a drawing of a Jesus Fish on a surfboard smoking a joint, which means you're fired.)
Monday, June 11, 2007
The Finale
So, right after watching the series finale of The Sopranos I logged onto the the internet and went to Sean's blog to see what he had to say.
He only had this very short post, so I commented:
Sean replied:
And, you know, this is a very strange way to engage with something. It's like: I'm watching and enjoying Sopranos the show, but, as soon as that's over, I'm thinking about and responding to Sopranos the media event.
As much as I like TV shows and movies and comic books, I'm becoming less and less interested in "Television Events", "Cinematic Events", and "Comic Book Events". Not only is the hype tiring, but I think it can warp your actual experience of the shows, movies, and comics in question. Like, The Sopranos finale is an Event, so it needs to be a Big Deal and make a Big Statement and everyone needs to have an opinion on it. In fact, having an opinion is probably more important than just, you know, engaging with the show on its own terms and just responding to what's actually on the screen* - positively, negatively, or however it is you responded to it.
One of the things I like about watching old movies (or old TV shows, etc.) is that there's really no hype surrounding them. Sure, they might have a reputation for being a classic (or whatever), but a historical/critical reputation is extremely passive (not to mention old-fashioned) compared to the constant cycle of media hype.
Hey - my prediction regarding this last season of The Sopranos, which a lot of the show's fans found "disappointing", is that people watching the show on DVD for the first time 10-20 years from now will be see Season 6 as a one of the show's strongest. Ok - maybe that's my prediction because it's also what I happen to believe, and maybe I'm being a little self-centered (not to mention delusional) in thinking that "Of course the world is going to come around to my POV", but I can't help feel that a lot of the disappointment has to do with the way the show played against all the predictions of the cultural commentators and the expectations of the show's fans. And, personally, I think these expectations at least were always a little at odds with what David Chase et al. were actually doing. The signpost moment: when in Season Four the big moment occurs when Tony decides not to do something (go along with Johnny Sack's plan to kill Carmine).**
My prediction was that the show would go out with a whimper and not a bang, and I was only kind of right. It went out on a quiet moment, but one that was extremely resonant, reaching back all the way to the very earliest episodes of the series.
But what I liked best about the last episode were the weird, throwaway moments that didn't have to be there and only added to the series in the most tangential manner, mainly because so much of what I loved about the show were its tangents and the creators' refusal to play connect-the-dots with narrative resolution (plot-wise and theme-wise).
My two favorite tangents:
A.J.'s girlfriend's reaction to listening to Bob Dylan for the first time (that he sounds like he's singing about right now).
Paulie pretending to sweep after Tony almost catches him hitting the cat with a broom. (I liked everything with the cat).
Oh yeah - maybe the most moving scene (aside from the ending) was when Tony goes to visit Janice. It's amazing: I don't think I've ever felt anything for that character before, and, all-of-a-sudden, you can see that she really is grieving (even if the scene ends with some heavy irony).
*I brought this up regarding Borat, too. Borat the Event seemed to cloud people's eyes (or maybe their minds) about what was actually going on in Borat the movie.
**I think that the people who approached the show from the "Who's Gonna Get Whacked this Week"-perspective were really missing the point. Like, I can't help but think that most of the show (and not just the sixth season) would have been really unsatisfying if that's why you were watching.
He only had this very short post, so I commented:
The only thing I'm really not looking forward to are the explanations about how we're "supposed" to interpret the ending as Tony getting whacked.
Sean replied:
I thought the EXACT same thing. What a strange way to engage with these kinds of things!
And, you know, this is a very strange way to engage with something. It's like: I'm watching and enjoying Sopranos the show, but, as soon as that's over, I'm thinking about and responding to Sopranos the media event.
As much as I like TV shows and movies and comic books, I'm becoming less and less interested in "Television Events", "Cinematic Events", and "Comic Book Events". Not only is the hype tiring, but I think it can warp your actual experience of the shows, movies, and comics in question. Like, The Sopranos finale is an Event, so it needs to be a Big Deal and make a Big Statement and everyone needs to have an opinion on it. In fact, having an opinion is probably more important than just, you know, engaging with the show on its own terms and just responding to what's actually on the screen* - positively, negatively, or however it is you responded to it.
One of the things I like about watching old movies (or old TV shows, etc.) is that there's really no hype surrounding them. Sure, they might have a reputation for being a classic (or whatever), but a historical/critical reputation is extremely passive (not to mention old-fashioned) compared to the constant cycle of media hype.
Hey - my prediction regarding this last season of The Sopranos, which a lot of the show's fans found "disappointing", is that people watching the show on DVD for the first time 10-20 years from now will be see Season 6 as a one of the show's strongest. Ok - maybe that's my prediction because it's also what I happen to believe, and maybe I'm being a little self-centered (not to mention delusional) in thinking that "Of course the world is going to come around to my POV", but I can't help feel that a lot of the disappointment has to do with the way the show played against all the predictions of the cultural commentators and the expectations of the show's fans. And, personally, I think these expectations at least were always a little at odds with what David Chase et al. were actually doing. The signpost moment: when in Season Four the big moment occurs when Tony decides not to do something (go along with Johnny Sack's plan to kill Carmine).**
My prediction was that the show would go out with a whimper and not a bang, and I was only kind of right. It went out on a quiet moment, but one that was extremely resonant, reaching back all the way to the very earliest episodes of the series.
But what I liked best about the last episode were the weird, throwaway moments that didn't have to be there and only added to the series in the most tangential manner, mainly because so much of what I loved about the show were its tangents and the creators' refusal to play connect-the-dots with narrative resolution (plot-wise and theme-wise).
My two favorite tangents:
A.J.'s girlfriend's reaction to listening to Bob Dylan for the first time (that he sounds like he's singing about right now).
Paulie pretending to sweep after Tony almost catches him hitting the cat with a broom. (I liked everything with the cat).
Oh yeah - maybe the most moving scene (aside from the ending) was when Tony goes to visit Janice. It's amazing: I don't think I've ever felt anything for that character before, and, all-of-a-sudden, you can see that she really is grieving (even if the scene ends with some heavy irony).
*I brought this up regarding Borat, too. Borat the Event seemed to cloud people's eyes (or maybe their minds) about what was actually going on in Borat the movie.
**I think that the people who approached the show from the "Who's Gonna Get Whacked this Week"-perspective were really missing the point. Like, I can't help but think that most of the show (and not just the sixth season) would have been really unsatisfying if that's why you were watching.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Sopranos and X-Men-ification
I.
Ross Douthat quotes Alan Speinwall on The Sopranos...
...and then adds his own comments:
I've already talked a little bit about why I think the messiness of The Sopranos is a good thing. While I'm not a huge fan of entertainers intentionally pissing off their audience, there's definitely a place for TV shows/novels/movies/etc. that say to their audience: "Thanks for coming with us to this point. Now, we're going to go over there." In other words, it's fine for The Sopranos to ask more of its audience than it has in the past: part of the "asking more" might be that it isn't going to offer the kind of satisfying resolution we get at the end of, say, a season of 24. I'd even say that over the long term, a continuing series needs to be willing to leave part of its audience behind. For instance, my guess is that a lot of what has happened this season on The Sopranos has alienated some of the fans of the show who were drawn to the goombah hi-jinx that were featured more centrally in the earlier seasons.
Dealing with Alan's comments: it's "cruel" when you have a show that promises a certain kind of resolution (say, solving a mystery), but keeps moving the goalpost and/or pulling the rug out from under its audience (like, say, Lost or, alas, Twin Peaks). I don't think it's "cruel" when a show bucks convention by not tying up plot threads, especially when the show has never really bothered to tie up plot threads and where a lot of the best moments of the show have been of a "whimper-not-a-bang" variety (like when Tony finally makes the decision not to conspire with Johnny Sac: it's a momentous negative - the important thing is that nothing comes of it).
II.
I'd also like to comment on the idea that keeps coming up in this discussion that writers need to have an ending in mind when they start a series. That is, serial TV is best when the writers are always writing towards a goal. I'm not saying this is a bad way to work, but I think that it is certainly not the only good way and, in fact, it doesn't necessarily play to one of the major strengths of the serial format - i.e. that writers/producers/etc. can react and respond to ideas/themes/characters/etc. that grow organically out of the creative process.
The problem is that this kind of serial improvisation doesn't fit well with the mentality that all plot threads need to be tied-up neatly. As with most everything having to do with contemporary pop culture, we can get a good picture of this dilemma by looking at X-Men comics.
During the first half of his original run on X-Men, Chris Claremont introduced and developed almost all of the major X-characters and created most of the classic story-lines, including the "Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past". These stories were sprawling, messy, super-hero-as-space-opera pop epics.
Now, these stories - partly because they were churned out on a monthly basis under less than ideal creative conditions - tended to have their fair share of loose ends. Eventually, instead of creating more stories with more loose ends, Claremont and the X-Men writers who followed him decided that they could spend their time just tying-up loose ends.*
The problem with that has been that it trained a generation of super-hero comic book fans to pay way too much attention to loose ends and to place way too much value on whether or not they eventually were tied-up. (Compare this to the wild and woolly days of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko comics). These pop geeks can an inordinate amount of satisfaction over the little details at the expense of being able to get a sense of and enjoy the big picture. This POV has really done a number on super-hero comics, but, even worse, thanks to the triumph of the geeks, it's become a big part of American pop culture in general.
(The X-Men-ification of pop culture might best be experienced by looking through the Wikipedia pages on Lost: the entry for the character John Locke is longer than the entry for the real John Locke.)
So here's the thing: when you're dealing with serial narratives that aren't fully mapped out from beginning-to-end, like The Sopranos, try not to approach them like die hard comic wonks approach contempo X-Men comics.
*Comics wonkery aside: I've singled out Claremont because talking about X-Men suits my purposes, but Roy Thomas probably deserves a mention as the guy who really started this trend.
Ross Douthat quotes Alan Speinwall on The Sopranos...
Since this final season began, I've been warning everyone that Chase and company may not be going for an earth-shattering conclusion, but more of a life-goes-on finish. But the writers have spent so much time over the last five episodes hinting that some apocalypse is coming - whether it's Phil making war with New Jersey, Tony taking out Chris or vice versa, the FBI completing their RICO case, Muhammed and Ahmed up to no good - that if none of that comes to pass, every bit of anger from the fans is going to be justified.
There comes a point when the storytelling stops being daring and unconventional and starts being sloppy and cruel.
...and then adds his own comments:
Obviously, part of the genius of The Sopranos lies in how it confounds expectations (though if I read one more piece that references the missing Russian from the "Pine Barrens" episode as an example of this tendency, I swear ...). Over the years, Chase and company have taken Chekhov's dictum about the gun on the wall in the first act that needs to be fired by the third and said, well, maybe it does and maybe it doesn't, and it's more dramatic if the audience doesn't know which it is. But as Sepinwall suggests, if the final season of your show has about a dozen guns on the wall, all of them obviously cocked and loaded, you more or less have to pull the trigger. If you don't, you'll have sacrificed the very sense of realism that The Sopranos has labored so hard to build... [Y]ou'll leave the audience with the suspicion that you never had any idea what you were doing to begin with.
I've already talked a little bit about why I think the messiness of The Sopranos is a good thing. While I'm not a huge fan of entertainers intentionally pissing off their audience, there's definitely a place for TV shows/novels/movies/etc. that say to their audience: "Thanks for coming with us to this point. Now, we're going to go over there." In other words, it's fine for The Sopranos to ask more of its audience than it has in the past: part of the "asking more" might be that it isn't going to offer the kind of satisfying resolution we get at the end of, say, a season of 24. I'd even say that over the long term, a continuing series needs to be willing to leave part of its audience behind. For instance, my guess is that a lot of what has happened this season on The Sopranos has alienated some of the fans of the show who were drawn to the goombah hi-jinx that were featured more centrally in the earlier seasons.
Dealing with Alan's comments: it's "cruel" when you have a show that promises a certain kind of resolution (say, solving a mystery), but keeps moving the goalpost and/or pulling the rug out from under its audience (like, say, Lost or, alas, Twin Peaks). I don't think it's "cruel" when a show bucks convention by not tying up plot threads, especially when the show has never really bothered to tie up plot threads and where a lot of the best moments of the show have been of a "whimper-not-a-bang" variety (like when Tony finally makes the decision not to conspire with Johnny Sac: it's a momentous negative - the important thing is that nothing comes of it).
II.
I'd also like to comment on the idea that keeps coming up in this discussion that writers need to have an ending in mind when they start a series. That is, serial TV is best when the writers are always writing towards a goal. I'm not saying this is a bad way to work, but I think that it is certainly not the only good way and, in fact, it doesn't necessarily play to one of the major strengths of the serial format - i.e. that writers/producers/etc. can react and respond to ideas/themes/characters/etc. that grow organically out of the creative process.
The problem is that this kind of serial improvisation doesn't fit well with the mentality that all plot threads need to be tied-up neatly. As with most everything having to do with contemporary pop culture, we can get a good picture of this dilemma by looking at X-Men comics.
During the first half of his original run on X-Men, Chris Claremont introduced and developed almost all of the major X-characters and created most of the classic story-lines, including the "Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past". These stories were sprawling, messy, super-hero-as-space-opera pop epics.
Now, these stories - partly because they were churned out on a monthly basis under less than ideal creative conditions - tended to have their fair share of loose ends. Eventually, instead of creating more stories with more loose ends, Claremont and the X-Men writers who followed him decided that they could spend their time just tying-up loose ends.*
The problem with that has been that it trained a generation of super-hero comic book fans to pay way too much attention to loose ends and to place way too much value on whether or not they eventually were tied-up. (Compare this to the wild and woolly days of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko comics). These pop geeks can an inordinate amount of satisfaction over the little details at the expense of being able to get a sense of and enjoy the big picture. This POV has really done a number on super-hero comics, but, even worse, thanks to the triumph of the geeks, it's become a big part of American pop culture in general.
(The X-Men-ification of pop culture might best be experienced by looking through the Wikipedia pages on Lost: the entry for the character John Locke is longer than the entry for the real John Locke.)
So here's the thing: when you're dealing with serial narratives that aren't fully mapped out from beginning-to-end, like The Sopranos, try not to approach them like die hard comic wonks approach contempo X-Men comics.
*Comics wonkery aside: I've singled out Claremont because talking about X-Men suits my purposes, but Roy Thomas probably deserves a mention as the guy who really started this trend.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
On and On...
I more or less agree with Ross Douthat's general point in this post on why, in a lot of cases, with good TV shows, shorter runs are better than longer ones.
My slight disagreement has to do with The Sopranos: while I think it could have used some trimming, a lot of what makes it a great show (as I have suggested) is also what makes it a bit of a mess. Serial TV shows (or comic books) are different from movies in this respect: they sometimes work best when they have room to grow, to make wrong turns, to build what were originally minor ideas/incidents/characters into major elements of the show. That is, there's the opportunity for a kind of narrative improvisation that happens on the writing/production level.
(Matthew Yglesias responds to Ross's point with the comment that shows require "planning". I more or less disagree with this, or, at least, I think that having an overall structure that is (at least partially) open is one of the strengths TV serials have over films and novels)*.
So, I'd adjust what Ross is saying, just slightly: rather than have hard constraints on shows ("David Chase should have told his story in four seasons"), I'd like to promote the idea that shows don't have to go on forever. So, if you're a fan of, say, Firefly/Serenity (like I am), don't whine that you aren't getting any more episodes/movies: be glad that what we have is pretty darn good.
Also, Ross asks "would My So-Called Life be remembered as fondly as it is if we'd had to watch Angela Davis and Jordan Catalano get together, break up, get back together, break up - and then, worst of all, go off to the same college?" - which is exactly the problem with Veronica Mars right now.
*There's a difference between (a) coming up with a story that will take 30 hours to tell and then breaking it up into forty 44-minute pieces story line and (b) coming up with 6 hours worth of story and then figuring out the next 6 hours based on things like which elements resonated most with the writers, producers, actors, audience etc. Both approaches can result in "good TV", but approach (b) is something that TV serials can do really well.
My slight disagreement has to do with The Sopranos: while I think it could have used some trimming, a lot of what makes it a great show (as I have suggested) is also what makes it a bit of a mess. Serial TV shows (or comic books) are different from movies in this respect: they sometimes work best when they have room to grow, to make wrong turns, to build what were originally minor ideas/incidents/characters into major elements of the show. That is, there's the opportunity for a kind of narrative improvisation that happens on the writing/production level.
(Matthew Yglesias responds to Ross's point with the comment that shows require "planning". I more or less disagree with this, or, at least, I think that having an overall structure that is (at least partially) open is one of the strengths TV serials have over films and novels)*.
So, I'd adjust what Ross is saying, just slightly: rather than have hard constraints on shows ("David Chase should have told his story in four seasons"), I'd like to promote the idea that shows don't have to go on forever. So, if you're a fan of, say, Firefly/Serenity (like I am), don't whine that you aren't getting any more episodes/movies: be glad that what we have is pretty darn good.
Also, Ross asks "would My So-Called Life be remembered as fondly as it is if we'd had to watch Angela Davis and Jordan Catalano get together, break up, get back together, break up - and then, worst of all, go off to the same college?" - which is exactly the problem with Veronica Mars right now.
*There's a difference between (a) coming up with a story that will take 30 hours to tell and then breaking it up into forty 44-minute pieces story line and (b) coming up with 6 hours worth of story and then figuring out the next 6 hours based on things like which elements resonated most with the writers, producers, actors, audience etc. Both approaches can result in "good TV", but approach (b) is something that TV serials can do really well.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Currently...
What I'm Watching: More or less the same as before.
Veronica Mars came back from a break with a particularly bad episode about how discrimination is, like, wrong. It isn't so much that I disagree, but when a show does this kind of thing - see also the recent Battlestar Galactica ep with Bruce Davison which was also about how discrimination is wrong - I have to wonder why they even bother. I mean, do the people who make Veronica Mars and Battlestar really think that their audience wants a little civics lesson? Especially simple, cut-and-dried civics lessons like these? The problem with them is that they make it all so easy that it becomes boring: the characters get to do the noble thing and "doing the noble thing" doesn't really cost them anything. There's no drama because their choices turn out to be either (a) really easy and/or (b) free of consequences. Man, how I hate these "very special episodes".
More problems with Veronica: Scene-by-scene, the show has handled the relationship stuff pretty well, but the problem is that the writers have had pretty lame ideas when it comes to the bigger picture. Veronica Mars should not be The O.C., where characters are constantly jumping in-and-out of relationships every other episode. We already had Logan and Veronica breaking-up and getting back together and breaking-up and getting back together again, so, this season they should have tried to show us Veronica and Logan trying to work through their issues - to dramatize a relationship in progress rather than a relationship always on the verge of collapsing or reforming.
Now, about The Sopranos: I've read a bunch of internet critics complaining that Tony's gambling problem came out of nowhere next week and that Chase et al. should have (a) used something else to dramatize Tony losing his grip or (b) spent more time setting-up the gambling stuff. I don't know: I like to nitpick as much as the next blogger, but I think this criticism is off-base. I mean, would you really like The Sopranos better if it were a "well-constructed" show, carefully setting up all of its threads, developing and resolving them on cue, like, say, E.R.? Not a slam at E.R., a show I like quite a bit, but, even when it resolves things in an unexpected manner, it pretty clearly lays out all the conflicts and issues for you. The last three seasons of The Sopranos have been a lot messier. And almost all of the episodes from Season Six have featured some "out of nowhere" element that a more cautious show would have spent some time introducing. Part of why these elements work, for me at least, is that Chase et al. have already laid the groundwork. I mean, I completely buy that Tony would like to gamble, that he'd respond to stress by gambling more, and that his marriage would be vulnerable to the resulting financial strain.
I like that the show makes these big, bold choices, even though it means that sometimes you just have to go along with it.
My personal Sopranos problem recently has been that I don't think Tony Siricco and Stevie Van Zandt are good enough actors to do what the scripts have asked them to do. Sylvio's play for Tony's position from the beginning of this season fell flat for me because it required Van Zandt to do more than just mug, likewise the recent episode that Tony spends gauging Paulie's reliability. Siricco and Van Zandt are both pretty funny and they're good personalities to have around - they add to the show's color - but they don't bring enough to the table as actors to justify the (relative) importance of their characters. I've always though it was a big mistake that Chase et al. had Sylvio kill Adriana because Van Zandt can't really do anything else with it - i.e., can't turn it into something that comes up - or noticeably doesn't come up - in Sylvio's scenes with Christopher.
Finally, the difference between Heroes when it started - stumbling, badly-paced, erratically-acted, but with some good ideas - and Heroes now - written, directed, and acted with assuredness and a sense of style - is (in the debased context of contemporary pop culture) staggering, mainly because most of the time shows go in the opposite direction.
What I'm Reading: It was a bit of a chore to finish The Flying Inn, which didn't quite work for me, although I'm sympathetic to Chesterton's basic philosophy and what he was trying to do with the book.
I'm still reading A Fire Upon the Deep, which, I have to admit, I like a little less than I did 100 or so pages ago. The main problem I have is that there's really no reason for it to be such a long book. Yes, it's full of ideas, but Vinge spends too much time on narratively redundant details that, I guess, are necessary from a world building POV.
I also (finally) read Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. I always see sci-fi fans recommending Have Spacesuit Will Travel when it comes to RAH's juveniles. I think that book is pretty enjoyable, but Citizen of the Galazy, IMO, would be a better choice: it has a more expansive scope, the world building is more interesting, there isn't too much of the "gee whiz rocketships" vibe, and it strikes me as being more in the mainline of the sci-fi that has come afterwards (esp. "New Space Opera" stuff).
And I'm rereading the Russell Kirk edited Portable Conservative Reader. I've just gotten through the opening section of Edmund Burke excerpts and am tempted to start posting some quotes that are particularly relevant to me and to the themes of this blog.
What I'm Listening To: Lots of classic rock, as I'm sure you could have guessed. Still looking for more podcasts.
What I'm Playing: Some Carcassonne with my fiance and a friend of ours this past weekend, plus more NASCAR 06. Still jonesing for RPGing and getting to the point where I'm actually going to have to, you know, do something about it. I was listening to a Durham 3 podcast today at the gym and that reignited my desire to play Sorcerer.
Veronica Mars came back from a break with a particularly bad episode about how discrimination is, like, wrong. It isn't so much that I disagree, but when a show does this kind of thing - see also the recent Battlestar Galactica ep with Bruce Davison which was also about how discrimination is wrong - I have to wonder why they even bother. I mean, do the people who make Veronica Mars and Battlestar really think that their audience wants a little civics lesson? Especially simple, cut-and-dried civics lessons like these? The problem with them is that they make it all so easy that it becomes boring: the characters get to do the noble thing and "doing the noble thing" doesn't really cost them anything. There's no drama because their choices turn out to be either (a) really easy and/or (b) free of consequences. Man, how I hate these "very special episodes".
More problems with Veronica: Scene-by-scene, the show has handled the relationship stuff pretty well, but the problem is that the writers have had pretty lame ideas when it comes to the bigger picture. Veronica Mars should not be The O.C., where characters are constantly jumping in-and-out of relationships every other episode. We already had Logan and Veronica breaking-up and getting back together and breaking-up and getting back together again, so, this season they should have tried to show us Veronica and Logan trying to work through their issues - to dramatize a relationship in progress rather than a relationship always on the verge of collapsing or reforming.
Now, about The Sopranos: I've read a bunch of internet critics complaining that Tony's gambling problem came out of nowhere next week and that Chase et al. should have (a) used something else to dramatize Tony losing his grip or (b) spent more time setting-up the gambling stuff. I don't know: I like to nitpick as much as the next blogger, but I think this criticism is off-base. I mean, would you really like The Sopranos better if it were a "well-constructed" show, carefully setting up all of its threads, developing and resolving them on cue, like, say, E.R.? Not a slam at E.R., a show I like quite a bit, but, even when it resolves things in an unexpected manner, it pretty clearly lays out all the conflicts and issues for you. The last three seasons of The Sopranos have been a lot messier. And almost all of the episodes from Season Six have featured some "out of nowhere" element that a more cautious show would have spent some time introducing. Part of why these elements work, for me at least, is that Chase et al. have already laid the groundwork. I mean, I completely buy that Tony would like to gamble, that he'd respond to stress by gambling more, and that his marriage would be vulnerable to the resulting financial strain.
I like that the show makes these big, bold choices, even though it means that sometimes you just have to go along with it.
My personal Sopranos problem recently has been that I don't think Tony Siricco and Stevie Van Zandt are good enough actors to do what the scripts have asked them to do. Sylvio's play for Tony's position from the beginning of this season fell flat for me because it required Van Zandt to do more than just mug, likewise the recent episode that Tony spends gauging Paulie's reliability. Siricco and Van Zandt are both pretty funny and they're good personalities to have around - they add to the show's color - but they don't bring enough to the table as actors to justify the (relative) importance of their characters. I've always though it was a big mistake that Chase et al. had Sylvio kill Adriana because Van Zandt can't really do anything else with it - i.e., can't turn it into something that comes up - or noticeably doesn't come up - in Sylvio's scenes with Christopher.
Finally, the difference between Heroes when it started - stumbling, badly-paced, erratically-acted, but with some good ideas - and Heroes now - written, directed, and acted with assuredness and a sense of style - is (in the debased context of contemporary pop culture) staggering, mainly because most of the time shows go in the opposite direction.
What I'm Reading: It was a bit of a chore to finish The Flying Inn, which didn't quite work for me, although I'm sympathetic to Chesterton's basic philosophy and what he was trying to do with the book.
I'm still reading A Fire Upon the Deep, which, I have to admit, I like a little less than I did 100 or so pages ago. The main problem I have is that there's really no reason for it to be such a long book. Yes, it's full of ideas, but Vinge spends too much time on narratively redundant details that, I guess, are necessary from a world building POV.
I also (finally) read Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy. I always see sci-fi fans recommending Have Spacesuit Will Travel when it comes to RAH's juveniles. I think that book is pretty enjoyable, but Citizen of the Galazy, IMO, would be a better choice: it has a more expansive scope, the world building is more interesting, there isn't too much of the "gee whiz rocketships" vibe, and it strikes me as being more in the mainline of the sci-fi that has come afterwards (esp. "New Space Opera" stuff).
And I'm rereading the Russell Kirk edited Portable Conservative Reader. I've just gotten through the opening section of Edmund Burke excerpts and am tempted to start posting some quotes that are particularly relevant to me and to the themes of this blog.
What I'm Listening To: Lots of classic rock, as I'm sure you could have guessed. Still looking for more podcasts.
What I'm Playing: Some Carcassonne with my fiance and a friend of ours this past weekend, plus more NASCAR 06. Still jonesing for RPGing and getting to the point where I'm actually going to have to, you know, do something about it. I was listening to a Durham 3 podcast today at the gym and that reignited my desire to play Sorcerer.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Currently...
What I'm Watching: The Sopranos, of course, and Heroes, now that it's back on. Other "must watch" TV in our apartment: the Food Network programs Throwdown with Bobby Flay and Dinner: Impossible, which is probably my second favorite show right now. My favorite is Tim and Eric's Awesome Show - Great Job!. I liked Tom Goes to the Mayor, Tim and Eric's first Cartoon Network show, quite a bit, but I think the Awesome Show format - more gags, less story - suits them better. Awesome Show seems to have solved the major problem of Mr. Show: it's too short to ever feel like it's gone on too long. Oh, also: trying to keep up with as much televised motor racing as possible.
What I'm Reading: I'm almost done with The Flying Inn by G.K. Chesterton, and, I have to admit, it's been a bit of a chore. I like Chesterton's mystery stories and I love his essays, but the combination of whimsy and philosophy here is almost too much. I'm also in the middle of VernorVinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, which I really like: there are about half-a-dozen "Big Ideas" here, each of which could serve as the basis for a single sci-fi novel. The writing is a little clumsy, but I've read worse novels that have been far less inventive. I'll probably post more about it when I'm done.
What I'm Listening To: Ever since I signed up to Rhapsody 3 1/2 months ago, I've been trying to keep up with "new music". In general, though, I find keeping up with "the scene" to be pretty tiresome. There seems to be so little difference between these new indie bands and the ones that were new when I was in college, and all of them sound like The Replacements (who were derivative to begin with). So, anyway, I have been listening to lots and lots ofLoudon Wainwright III, little bits of the Mountain Goats, and various kinds of film music (Goblin and John Carpenter and the Death Proof soundtrack). I've also been trying to find morepodcasts to listen to.
What I'm Playing: NASCAR 06: Total Team Control on my X-Box. I didn't get the most recent entry in this franchise partly because I'm in the middle of a season in this one and I was a little disappointed that this one wasn't that much better than the one that came before it. Hopefully my schedule will open up a little and I'll get someRPGing in soon. I don't think a regular game is anywhere in my future, but I'd like to try to work something out.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Easter Weekend
Apart from the new episode of The Sopranos, I didn't get a chance to watch much in the way of movies/TV shows/etc. over Easter weekend: I spent it with the family and, when we weren't too busy stuffing ourselves, we were watching the Masters. I did finish reading John Le Carre's Absolute Friends, parts of which I loved, but I want to hold off writing about it until I finish watching The Good Shepherd.
As for The Sopranos: this episode continues with one of my favorite themes from the last half-season - the idea that for Tony to be an effective boss he needs to be top thug as much as he needs to be a master of Machiavellian strategy. I knew that once they start playing Monopoly things were going to go bad, but part of what makes me like this show so much is that I didn't know exactly how things would go bad. Tony's eventual "punishment" of Bobby was really chilling and the final moments among the most moving in the show's history. Usually in The Sopranos, irony goes hand-in-hand with black comedy, but here the irony is played as a kind of small-scale tragedy.
As for The Sopranos: this episode continues with one of my favorite themes from the last half-season - the idea that for Tony to be an effective boss he needs to be top thug as much as he needs to be a master of Machiavellian strategy. I knew that once they start playing Monopoly things were going to go bad, but part of what makes me like this show so much is that I didn't know exactly how things would go bad. Tony's eventual "punishment" of Bobby was really chilling and the final moments among the most moving in the show's history. Usually in The Sopranos, irony goes hand-in-hand with black comedy, but here the irony is played as a kind of small-scale tragedy.
Friday, April 6, 2007
TV Chat: The Sopranos
The Sopranos
I know I wasn't completely alone in thinking that the last "half-season" of The Sopranos was the show at or near its best: at least some of my friends agree with me.
For me, those episodes really saved the show for me. As much as I enjoyed the fourth and fifth seasons, I couldn't help but feel that Chase et al. were pandering to the "Bro" crowd: the people whose primary interest in the series was to watch charismatic, funny guys doing horrible shit to people, partly because, let's face it, there's something satisfying about the fantasy of being able to solve all sorts of problems by beating the shit out of the (putative?) source of the problem.
I'm not sure that I would have felt all that strongly about this, except that HBO had two other shows that (for the most part) avoided this kind of weaselly sort-of-glorification of sociopaths. Apart from The Wire's inexplicable romanticization of Omar (the gangsta Robin Hood), none of its criminals are presented as being particular pleasant or goofy or fun to hang with. There's also a dimension of real world tragedy to a character like Stringer Bell - diligently going to community college, trying his best to move into the big leagues, but utterly unprepared for it. And, in Deadwood, while Ian McShane's Al Swearengen is certainly charismatic, the show doesn't let that get him off the hook in the way that The Sopranos has, in the past, let the funny-guy antics and Tarantino-esque dialogue of Sylvio, Paulie, and Christopher cover up their sociopathic tendencies.
Al Swearengen is also great for another reason: the gangsters on The Sopranos are just hoods - violent guys who were too lazy or greedy to settle for living an ordinary, average Joe life. But tktk went into the wilderness and built something out of nothing: his accomplishment is tied up with his willingness to use violence.
But Season 6A changed that:
First, the opening Dennis Potter-ish episodes demanded more of the show's audience than anything in previous seasons. While I don't like it when a series says "screw you" to its audience, I do like it when it rewards a demand for a greater and/or different type of engagement. It's too bad that so many of the shows fans weren't interested in meeting this demand. Usually at this point I'd say something like "I don't blame them", but, in this case, I do blame them. What they wanted seemed to have been more of the same: edgy, violent, goombah hi-jinx and fetishization of mafia politics and power plays - i.e., a mix of some of the more superficial, yet distinctive, elements of Pulp Fiction and Casino. Watching mainly to see who's going to get "whacked".
Second, Chase et al. decided to tackle head-on the fact that, whatever else these guys are, they 're also (perhaps primarily) violent thugs, not heroes or funny "good-time" guys: that they're outlaws because they're greedy and not for any bigger romantic/tragic reasons (or even any bigger socio-economic reasons).
Anyway, I'm hoping that the remainder of Season 6 will continue to take a clear-eyed look at these characters and not revert to pandering to crowd who thinks that this is a good idea.
I know I wasn't completely alone in thinking that the last "half-season" of The Sopranos was the show at or near its best: at least some of my friends agree with me.
For me, those episodes really saved the show for me. As much as I enjoyed the fourth and fifth seasons, I couldn't help but feel that Chase et al. were pandering to the "Bro" crowd: the people whose primary interest in the series was to watch charismatic, funny guys doing horrible shit to people, partly because, let's face it, there's something satisfying about the fantasy of being able to solve all sorts of problems by beating the shit out of the (putative?) source of the problem.
I'm not sure that I would have felt all that strongly about this, except that HBO had two other shows that (for the most part) avoided this kind of weaselly sort-of-glorification of sociopaths. Apart from The Wire's inexplicable romanticization of Omar (the gangsta Robin Hood), none of its criminals are presented as being particular pleasant or goofy or fun to hang with. There's also a dimension of real world tragedy to a character like Stringer Bell - diligently going to community college, trying his best to move into the big leagues, but utterly unprepared for it. And, in Deadwood, while Ian McShane's Al Swearengen is certainly charismatic, the show doesn't let that get him off the hook in the way that The Sopranos has, in the past, let the funny-guy antics and Tarantino-esque dialogue of Sylvio, Paulie, and Christopher cover up their sociopathic tendencies.
Al Swearengen is also great for another reason: the gangsters on The Sopranos are just hoods - violent guys who were too lazy or greedy to settle for living an ordinary, average Joe life. But tktk went into the wilderness and built something out of nothing: his accomplishment is tied up with his willingness to use violence.
But Season 6A changed that:
First, the opening Dennis Potter-ish episodes demanded more of the show's audience than anything in previous seasons. While I don't like it when a series says "screw you" to its audience, I do like it when it rewards a demand for a greater and/or different type of engagement. It's too bad that so many of the shows fans weren't interested in meeting this demand. Usually at this point I'd say something like "I don't blame them", but, in this case, I do blame them. What they wanted seemed to have been more of the same: edgy, violent, goombah hi-jinx and fetishization of mafia politics and power plays - i.e., a mix of some of the more superficial, yet distinctive, elements of Pulp Fiction and Casino. Watching mainly to see who's going to get "whacked".
Second, Chase et al. decided to tackle head-on the fact that, whatever else these guys are, they 're also (perhaps primarily) violent thugs, not heroes or funny "good-time" guys: that they're outlaws because they're greedy and not for any bigger romantic/tragic reasons (or even any bigger socio-economic reasons).
Anyway, I'm hoping that the remainder of Season 6 will continue to take a clear-eyed look at these characters and not revert to pandering to crowd who thinks that this is a good idea.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Random thoughts...
...on The Terminal (dir. Steven Spielberg)...
I think The Terminal would have worked if:
(A) It had been done like a Jeunet movie: a completely self-contained, fully-stylized fantasy world.
...or...
(B) It had been done in a rigorously naturalistic style, with lots of long takes, going for a brooding, art-house effect.
Either way, it would have needed to ditch the idea of Stanley Tucci as the "bad guy" and play up the notion that it's the bureacratic system that's the big problem and petty bureaucrats themselves only symptoms.
...on Andy Barker, P.I....
With this and My Name is Earl and The Knights of Prosperity, I have to wonder: is it too much to ask for a fully-baked "one camera" show instead of these half-hearted attempts to move out of the sitcom ghetto? Enough with the wacky ethnic characters!!!
...on Prime Suspect...
Is this the best show about institutional/departmental politics since The Sandbaggers? If so, why are the Brits so good at this kind of thing?
I think The Terminal would have worked if:
(A) It had been done like a Jeunet movie: a completely self-contained, fully-stylized fantasy world.
...or...
(B) It had been done in a rigorously naturalistic style, with lots of long takes, going for a brooding, art-house effect.
Either way, it would have needed to ditch the idea of Stanley Tucci as the "bad guy" and play up the notion that it's the bureacratic system that's the big problem and petty bureaucrats themselves only symptoms.
...on Andy Barker, P.I....
With this and My Name is Earl and The Knights of Prosperity, I have to wonder: is it too much to ask for a fully-baked "one camera" show instead of these half-hearted attempts to move out of the sitcom ghetto? Enough with the wacky ethnic characters!!!
...on Prime Suspect...
Is this the best show about institutional/departmental politics since The Sandbaggers? If so, why are the Brits so good at this kind of thing?
Thursday, March 22, 2007
The show must go on - wait, no, it shouldn't...
I don't completely agree with the specifics of this zigzigger post (I've enjoyed the third season of Veronica Mars, although it is much more wobbly than the first season story-wise and style-wise, and if it does return the idea of jumping forward a few years strikes me as the right one), but, more generally, I think he's right on:
I know all the reasons why it will never happen, but I'd like to see a move towards the way some British shows (like Prime Suspect, for example) are produced and marketed:
No show can make the "never-ending storyline" thing work, so it's better for a show's creators to end things on their own terms than to be forced to wrap things up due to fading ratings.
Long running shows that are successful tend (a) to be completely episodic with no real serial elements (Law & Order, although even there the formula is showing its age) or (b) to keep the central situation the same while shuffling new characters in and out (like in E.R. and, to a lesser extent, The Wire, which is one of the only shows I can think of that has consistently gotten better each season).
The creators of shows like Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and 24 would have been much better off if they realized that the limited nature of these shows' central premises almost required that they be resolved at the end of the first season. I almost thought Battlestar Galactica had done this - that the third season would mark a complete change in the show, moving from outer-space chase to planet-bound life-under-occupation drama - but after a few episodes they were back in space, doing the same old, same old, but falling into all the traps they were smart enough to avoid the first time around.
(Plus, I agree with something he brings up in the comments: one of the reasons I like Freaks and Geeks is that it said all it had to say and then had the dignity to get cancelled.)
Fans seem to want their favorite shows to be love affairs that last forever and a day... I would rather a good show have a short run than see it extend beyond its natural life into a parody or pale imitation of itself.
I know all the reasons why it will never happen, but I'd like to see a move towards the way some British shows (like Prime Suspect, for example) are produced and marketed:
- Conceive each season as a stand alone story. Don't leave major plot threads hanging. Get rid of the season-ending cliff-hanger.
- Don't try to turn a show into a brand name: rather, focus on actors and writers.
No show can make the "never-ending storyline" thing work, so it's better for a show's creators to end things on their own terms than to be forced to wrap things up due to fading ratings.
Long running shows that are successful tend (a) to be completely episodic with no real serial elements (Law & Order, although even there the formula is showing its age) or (b) to keep the central situation the same while shuffling new characters in and out (like in E.R. and, to a lesser extent, The Wire, which is one of the only shows I can think of that has consistently gotten better each season).
The creators of shows like Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and 24 would have been much better off if they realized that the limited nature of these shows' central premises almost required that they be resolved at the end of the first season. I almost thought Battlestar Galactica had done this - that the third season would mark a complete change in the show, moving from outer-space chase to planet-bound life-under-occupation drama - but after a few episodes they were back in space, doing the same old, same old, but falling into all the traps they were smart enough to avoid the first time around.
(Plus, I agree with something he brings up in the comments: one of the reasons I like Freaks and Geeks is that it said all it had to say and then had the dignity to get cancelled.)
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
A Fairly Short Post on Gore Vidal's Burr and Lincoln
Gore Vidal's "Narratives of Empire" books are by no means obscure - they're in print, easily available, and Vidal is perhaps America's most prominent "man of letters" - but I can't help but feel that they're a little underrated. At least these, the first two in the series, are among the most impressive (not to mention most enjoyable) "big" novels from the last 40 years or so that I've read. (By "'big' novels", I mean novels that have a great deal of ambition in terms of scope and themes and also have a subject that is a fit match to that ambition).
Lincoln is, understandably, the more serious installment, dealing, as it does, with the most important event in American history. Vidal's take on Lincoln is refreshingly ambiguous. But the book really shines when it comes to its depictions of the other politicians in war time Washington. My favorite: Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury and Lincoln's chief Republican rival. Burr is more gossipy and, through Burr, Vidal seems more interesting in tearing down idols. It's hard to decide who comes off worse, George Washington or Thomas Jefferson (right now I would say Jefferson), both of whom seem to be competing for the title of America's Greatest Hypocrite.
Vidal's take on politicians, in general, is one that I find myself nodding along to. It's certainly cynical: their great ideas and great statesmanship sometimes seem to get lost in the shadow of their even greater ambition. But, at the same time, the cynicism never turns mean-spirited. Vidal's irony is too sure and his touch too light for that. And he certainly seems to have some kind of admiration for these men and an appreciation for the feats they undertook to realize their ambitions.
Michael Blowhard floated the theory that the function of big novels like these was taken over by TV miniseries. I'd suggest that it's been taken over from those miniseries by shows like The Wire, The Sopranos, and Deadwood (which is Shakespearean in the same American way that these books are, but on a smaller scale and with a grungier cast). As much as I like these series, I can't help but feel that pop culture has lost something with the waning of the "blockbuster novel". These books operate on a scale and with a level of detail and intellectual sophistication that remains out of the grasp of even the best TV shows.
Lincoln is, understandably, the more serious installment, dealing, as it does, with the most important event in American history. Vidal's take on Lincoln is refreshingly ambiguous. But the book really shines when it comes to its depictions of the other politicians in war time Washington. My favorite: Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury and Lincoln's chief Republican rival. Burr is more gossipy and, through Burr, Vidal seems more interesting in tearing down idols. It's hard to decide who comes off worse, George Washington or Thomas Jefferson (right now I would say Jefferson), both of whom seem to be competing for the title of America's Greatest Hypocrite.
Vidal's take on politicians, in general, is one that I find myself nodding along to. It's certainly cynical: their great ideas and great statesmanship sometimes seem to get lost in the shadow of their even greater ambition. But, at the same time, the cynicism never turns mean-spirited. Vidal's irony is too sure and his touch too light for that. And he certainly seems to have some kind of admiration for these men and an appreciation for the feats they undertook to realize their ambitions.
Michael Blowhard floated the theory that the function of big novels like these was taken over by TV miniseries. I'd suggest that it's been taken over from those miniseries by shows like The Wire, The Sopranos, and Deadwood (which is Shakespearean in the same American way that these books are, but on a smaller scale and with a grungier cast). As much as I like these series, I can't help but feel that pop culture has lost something with the waning of the "blockbuster novel". These books operate on a scale and with a level of detail and intellectual sophistication that remains out of the grasp of even the best TV shows.
Wednesday, March 8, 2006
More on sitcoms
My post on Sons & Daughters was pretty much content-free. I wish I could spin some kind of social/cultural commentary out of it, but I don't pay enough attention to pop culture trends to do that kind of thing.
However, it did get me thinking more generally about sitcoms, so I'll share these reflections with you:
I realize that even though I've watched almost every episode, I'm not a huge fan of The Simpsons. Although perhaps this is because I've watched almost every episode: the show has long passed the point where the bad ones outnumber the good. Now, I could go on and on listing my favorite Simpsons gags (the musical version of Planet of the Apes comes to mind before anything else), but it's the overall sensibility of the show that I just find very wearying. The super-bright writers end up giving the show an insistent, "we're really smart - really", show-offy quality that I find harder and harder to take.
However, I'm having almost exactly the opposite experience with Seinfeld: I was never a devoted follower of the show when it was originally on - I thought it was sometimes funny but always obnoxious - but I've really come around to liking it quite a bit. I think what happened was that watching Curb Your Enthusiasm has given me a greater appreciation for what they were going for on Seinfeld. Curb is more successful (it is Seinfeld stripped to its bare essence without any "extra bullshit"), but Seinfeld is really growing on me, and it seems like, compared to those of most sitcoms, Seinfeld's "famous" episodes really deserve their renown. The only problem I still have with the show is that I think a lot of the acting on it is pretty bad. Jerry is a fine stand-up comedian, but he's no actor and it can be painful to watch him try to, you know, actually act. And after the first season or so, Michael Richards turned into an unbearable ham, playing everything to the audience in the worst possible way. But Jason Alexander is just about perfect in every scene.
Finally, I've been watching episodes of the old Dabney Coleman sitcom Buffalo Bill on DVD. When I was in high school, one of my Media Literacy teachers used this show as an example of sitcoms that were too smart and too quirky to find an audience. Looking at it now, I can see that it probably did push the sitcom envelope when it was first aired, but it really hasn't aged well. Are sitcoms more prone to feeling dated than other kinds of TV shows? Off the top of my head, there's only a couple of "Sitcoms from the Past" (i.e., from before I was in high school) that I can still really enjoy: The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, Shelly Long-era Cheers, The Bob Newhart Show (but definitely not Newhart). Feel free to add your own additions to this list in the comments.
However, it did get me thinking more generally about sitcoms, so I'll share these reflections with you:
I realize that even though I've watched almost every episode, I'm not a huge fan of The Simpsons. Although perhaps this is because I've watched almost every episode: the show has long passed the point where the bad ones outnumber the good. Now, I could go on and on listing my favorite Simpsons gags (the musical version of Planet of the Apes comes to mind before anything else), but it's the overall sensibility of the show that I just find very wearying. The super-bright writers end up giving the show an insistent, "we're really smart - really", show-offy quality that I find harder and harder to take.
However, I'm having almost exactly the opposite experience with Seinfeld: I was never a devoted follower of the show when it was originally on - I thought it was sometimes funny but always obnoxious - but I've really come around to liking it quite a bit. I think what happened was that watching Curb Your Enthusiasm has given me a greater appreciation for what they were going for on Seinfeld. Curb is more successful (it is Seinfeld stripped to its bare essence without any "extra bullshit"), but Seinfeld is really growing on me, and it seems like, compared to those of most sitcoms, Seinfeld's "famous" episodes really deserve their renown. The only problem I still have with the show is that I think a lot of the acting on it is pretty bad. Jerry is a fine stand-up comedian, but he's no actor and it can be painful to watch him try to, you know, actually act. And after the first season or so, Michael Richards turned into an unbearable ham, playing everything to the audience in the worst possible way. But Jason Alexander is just about perfect in every scene.
Finally, I've been watching episodes of the old Dabney Coleman sitcom Buffalo Bill on DVD. When I was in high school, one of my Media Literacy teachers used this show as an example of sitcoms that were too smart and too quirky to find an audience. Looking at it now, I can see that it probably did push the sitcom envelope when it was first aired, but it really hasn't aged well. Are sitcoms more prone to feeling dated than other kinds of TV shows? Off the top of my head, there's only a couple of "Sitcoms from the Past" (i.e., from before I was in high school) that I can still really enjoy: The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, Shelly Long-era Cheers, The Bob Newhart Show (but definitely not Newhart). Feel free to add your own additions to this list in the comments.
Sons & Daughters
I try not to get my hopes up too much or jump on the bandwagon too quickly when it comes to TV shows: my favorites usually get cancelled right after hitting their stride (Arrested Development) or go south when their original spark burns out (The O.C.). Also, I don't give very high priority to watching TV shows as they air (as opposed to watching them on DVD at my leisure).
Still, I thought Sons & Daughters, which premiered last night, is pretty funny. It's a "kooky family" sitcom and it is (supposedly) "partially unscripted" (like Curb Your Enthusiasm, maybe). The show, as opposed to most sitcoms, even the ones I really enjoy, like Arrested Development or the American version of The Office, is pretty laid back: its understated rhythms remind me a lot of the cult cartoons Dr. Katz and Home Movies.
I'd like to see this show (a) stay as good as its first two episodes and (b) find an audience. I'm a lot more optimistic about (a) than (b), although for the last few years it has been a slightly better time for good sitcoms. Sure, Arrested Development got cancelled, but at least it was around for three seasons (two-and-a-half of which are pretty great), The Office seems to be a modest hit, and Curb Your Enthusiasm has a home on HBO.
Still, I thought Sons & Daughters, which premiered last night, is pretty funny. It's a "kooky family" sitcom and it is (supposedly) "partially unscripted" (like Curb Your Enthusiasm, maybe). The show, as opposed to most sitcoms, even the ones I really enjoy, like Arrested Development or the American version of The Office, is pretty laid back: its understated rhythms remind me a lot of the cult cartoons Dr. Katz and Home Movies.
I'd like to see this show (a) stay as good as its first two episodes and (b) find an audience. I'm a lot more optimistic about (a) than (b), although for the last few years it has been a slightly better time for good sitcoms. Sure, Arrested Development got cancelled, but at least it was around for three seasons (two-and-a-half of which are pretty great), The Office seems to be a modest hit, and Curb Your Enthusiasm has a home on HBO.
Friday, March 3, 2006
The Backlash Backlash
On the one hand, I've always thought that the phenomenon of critical backlash was a useful corrective to the way our hype-driven pop culture tends to overvalue and over-praising movies, TV shows, books, etc. (I admit to being just as guilty of over-praising stuff as anyone else).
On the other hand, I'm completely bored by these hit pieces that target virtually anything that manages to find an audience. They've all started seeming like the same piece. And I wonder if there's now an incentive for snarky twenty/thirty-something pop culture writers/bloggers to delay admitting that they like anything until they find out if it will end up being a worthy backlash target.
Honestly, I could care less if you, unlike all your friends/fellow-bloggers/co-workers, just "don't get" Battlestar Galactica or Lost or whatever.
But I guess I'm just really tired of all this posturing masquerading as arts and culture criticism. (And I am posturing now? Does taking an anti-posturing stance make me just as bad? Probably. Oh well...)
On the other hand, I'm completely bored by these hit pieces that target virtually anything that manages to find an audience. They've all started seeming like the same piece. And I wonder if there's now an incentive for snarky twenty/thirty-something pop culture writers/bloggers to delay admitting that they like anything until they find out if it will end up being a worthy backlash target.
Honestly, I could care less if you, unlike all your friends/fellow-bloggers/co-workers, just "don't get" Battlestar Galactica or Lost or whatever.
But I guess I'm just really tired of all this posturing masquerading as arts and culture criticism. (And I am posturing now? Does taking an anti-posturing stance make me just as bad? Probably. Oh well...)
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