Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tv. Show all posts
Sunday, September 3, 2017
Under "feature"
"I still feel like episode 8 of TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN set a challenge." Warren Ellis, talking about the weirdest episode of David Lynch's magnum opus. Ellis's working on a revamp of a whole '90s comix universe in The Wild Storm, so it's fitting that he should reference Twin Peaks which itself has returned this year from its truncated end in the early nineties. I've watched the first part of the finale now and will be putting on the second in a minute. I said to a friend, "This show started when I was 1." Then I realized I was wrong about that--I'd confused the year of the prequel movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me with the original show. It's actually a few months older than I am, falling in that weird almost a year between the days Taylor Swift and I were born. There's a reference you probably didn't expect! Well, let's get to the autopsy...
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Scott van Pelt recalls the Tonight Show fiasco.
SportsCenter does these dj mixes of the month that play around with a lot of soundbites. They also did a recent "things they should trademark" segment. I was thinking about the NBC craziness with Leno and Conan and thought I would write a little remembrance up using quotes. Then I realized this was the perfect time to have an extended use of hyperlinks--it's a new type of reading really. So I hope this isn't too unbearable to get through. It's not very good, but it's the thought that counts, right? (Wrong.)
Thursday, August 13, 2009
"Got Ya"
Psych’s basic set-up is just brilliant to me. The idea of Shawn Spencer, brilliant detective, doubling as a fake psychic allows for near unlimited dramatic irony. It also allows for some four wall slippage, since Shawn and Gus know more than everyone else. Their own continued in-jokes can almost be seen as directly referencing an audience. Couple this with what I’ve mentioned before—USA Network’s solid ad campaigns that take the actors out of the show in semi-character and play little jokes and gags with them.
A few of these ads even go as far as to make light of the show’s subtle way of addressing the fourth wall, with Shawn picking the duo’s theme music in one commercial, and asking Gus if he thinks they might just be the stars of a television show in another.
To me, this is the way fourth wall treatments have to stay. Sure, they’ve been done brilliantly in a pure direct fashion (e.g. Grant Morrison’s Animal Man), but canon is ultimately more important, in my mind, in any sort of non-farcical series. I have issues with the use of the term “the real world,” or “your world” (spoken to an implied audience/reader), in fiction, and when you’ve addressed the viewer, you’ve, to some extent, done just that.
Much of my writing makes light of this fact, since I have writers in the universe that I’ve begun to create who both play characters in it and write it, themselves. But the world they came from is not the real world, just one a lot more like ours than the one that they now inhabit. Psych seems to understand my beef with this and avoids direct references to the audience, but still reaps the benefits of an aside every now and then.
The main problem I have with a show like Psych is how often it deals with murder as a comedy. Along with Monk, I would say that Psych’s main problem has to do with the fact that so many of its laughs have to come around death, albeit fictional death. In less talented hands, this type of show tends to fall on its face quite quickly, as could be noted in CSI’s repeated attempts at episodes based in humor.
Psych is generally able to skirt such issues by avoiding direct macabre humor, the sort of thing that actually makes up a good CSI episode. Where the latter falls flat, is where the former is at its best. CSI is written as a dramedy at best, more often than not it is a straight drama show with some chuckles here and there, while Psych is never unsure of itself as a comedy. CSI seems to be a part of new shows that do not bother themselves with preset rules, and like, let’s say, Scrubs, this program will often times look for experimental new styles. Turning an entire episode into a collection of the macabre humor that is barely visible in one show makes for an uninviting program that laughs at death. Psych can draw its humor from its characters and for the most part avoid that sort of black humor because of this. It is a true benefit of the show’s formatting.
Even when the show deals with dead bodies, which I believe I noted already as being nearly an every episode occurrence, we can watch Shawn and his little joking psychic routines, the knowledge of who his character really is allows the viewer to remember their disbelief perhaps and works well in dealing with the problems caused in laughing at a show that deals with death. A similar course of action can be seen in Case Closed, where the detective’s very appearance adds to the humor of the programming.
What is quite interesting about Psych is how much it depends on its own gimmick, but is not enslaved to it. Characters still interact and relationships still change, the way any active show should be, but without Spencer’s fake psychic gig, the show would become your traditional crime drama, oddly then positioned in a near duplicate status to what might be seen as its child program in The Mentalist, a show that Psych even includes in one of its own in jokes.
This all adds up quite well, but Psych perhaps fizzles once again with the Corbin Bernsen character who is Shawn’s father. Whereas one has an easier time with liking Bernsen’s “semi name actor in a small role” cousin (in his position as actor on show and not in blood), Bruce Campbell who portrays Sam Axe on Burn Notice, my view of the father Henry Spencer is a bit mixed. While the acting from Bernsen is not lacking, the main issue is just an uncertainty over whether or not his character can be liked.
Psych operates commonly through flashbacks to when our hero Shawn was a kid and time and time again we see Henry portrayed as the comical over-bearing father (perhaps that’s the wrong term), and these bits generally leave me with a sick taste in my mouth. Uncertainty creeps into my mind, because Bernsen’s character is almost always portrayed in a dark, dark light.
All in all, though, the show does a good job of working its gimmick premise to the extent that it can, both relying too much on it and being quite independent from it at times. Both James Roday and Dulé Hill (Spencer and Gus, respectively) must be credited with making the show what it is, in the end, since it is their camaraderie that truly pulls everything together.
I guess it must be noted that so far I’ve only written of USA television shows, and I’ll try to steady that out a bit. If you’ve been a true reader of this blog, then you will know that I have written about Fox’s Fringe in the past, and I would just like to add that I plan to move on to other channels’ broadcastings as well at some point. Apologies to anyone upset with my apparent network bias thus far, and as always, for boring you all the way through this post.
A few of these ads even go as far as to make light of the show’s subtle way of addressing the fourth wall, with Shawn picking the duo’s theme music in one commercial, and asking Gus if he thinks they might just be the stars of a television show in another.
To me, this is the way fourth wall treatments have to stay. Sure, they’ve been done brilliantly in a pure direct fashion (e.g. Grant Morrison’s Animal Man), but canon is ultimately more important, in my mind, in any sort of non-farcical series. I have issues with the use of the term “the real world,” or “your world” (spoken to an implied audience/reader), in fiction, and when you’ve addressed the viewer, you’ve, to some extent, done just that.
Much of my writing makes light of this fact, since I have writers in the universe that I’ve begun to create who both play characters in it and write it, themselves. But the world they came from is not the real world, just one a lot more like ours than the one that they now inhabit. Psych seems to understand my beef with this and avoids direct references to the audience, but still reaps the benefits of an aside every now and then.
The main problem I have with a show like Psych is how often it deals with murder as a comedy. Along with Monk, I would say that Psych’s main problem has to do with the fact that so many of its laughs have to come around death, albeit fictional death. In less talented hands, this type of show tends to fall on its face quite quickly, as could be noted in CSI’s repeated attempts at episodes based in humor.
Psych is generally able to skirt such issues by avoiding direct macabre humor, the sort of thing that actually makes up a good CSI episode. Where the latter falls flat, is where the former is at its best. CSI is written as a dramedy at best, more often than not it is a straight drama show with some chuckles here and there, while Psych is never unsure of itself as a comedy. CSI seems to be a part of new shows that do not bother themselves with preset rules, and like, let’s say, Scrubs, this program will often times look for experimental new styles. Turning an entire episode into a collection of the macabre humor that is barely visible in one show makes for an uninviting program that laughs at death. Psych can draw its humor from its characters and for the most part avoid that sort of black humor because of this. It is a true benefit of the show’s formatting.
Even when the show deals with dead bodies, which I believe I noted already as being nearly an every episode occurrence, we can watch Shawn and his little joking psychic routines, the knowledge of who his character really is allows the viewer to remember their disbelief perhaps and works well in dealing with the problems caused in laughing at a show that deals with death. A similar course of action can be seen in Case Closed, where the detective’s very appearance adds to the humor of the programming.
What is quite interesting about Psych is how much it depends on its own gimmick, but is not enslaved to it. Characters still interact and relationships still change, the way any active show should be, but without Spencer’s fake psychic gig, the show would become your traditional crime drama, oddly then positioned in a near duplicate status to what might be seen as its child program in The Mentalist, a show that Psych even includes in one of its own in jokes.
This all adds up quite well, but Psych perhaps fizzles once again with the Corbin Bernsen character who is Shawn’s father. Whereas one has an easier time with liking Bernsen’s “semi name actor in a small role” cousin (in his position as actor on show and not in blood), Bruce Campbell who portrays Sam Axe on Burn Notice, my view of the father Henry Spencer is a bit mixed. While the acting from Bernsen is not lacking, the main issue is just an uncertainty over whether or not his character can be liked.
Psych operates commonly through flashbacks to when our hero Shawn was a kid and time and time again we see Henry portrayed as the comical over-bearing father (perhaps that’s the wrong term), and these bits generally leave me with a sick taste in my mouth. Uncertainty creeps into my mind, because Bernsen’s character is almost always portrayed in a dark, dark light.
All in all, though, the show does a good job of working its gimmick premise to the extent that it can, both relying too much on it and being quite independent from it at times. Both James Roday and Dulé Hill (Spencer and Gus, respectively) must be credited with making the show what it is, in the end, since it is their camaraderie that truly pulls everything together.
I guess it must be noted that so far I’ve only written of USA television shows, and I’ll try to steady that out a bit. If you’ve been a true reader of this blog, then you will know that I have written about Fox’s Fringe in the past, and I would just like to add that I plan to move on to other channels’ broadcastings as well at some point. Apologies to anyone upset with my apparent network bias thus far, and as always, for boring you all the way through this post.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
"One Two Punch"
The main issue I have with American TV is the same one I have with mainstream comics. Basically these creative endeavors generally end in writers establishing the general plotted episode (or issue, as it may be) and avoiding changing character dynamics. This is what generally places cartoon characters into never ending cycles of the same age/grade. I understand this is the general fault of any sort of serial, the basic falling into a pattern and then later almost a template.
To step away from this habit in TV storytelling, I’d say you move to a less commercial network than say Fox. And of course I’m biased in pointing the way to USA, but then again, this blog post is about two of their shows, and I need to segue in on them at some point, somehow, got it?
Two shows that generally avoid what I’d see as a strict formula set-up that leaves virtually no character changes are Burn Notice and Royal Pains, a one-two line-up on Thursday nights that I think blends quite well, over all. Burn Notice adds a touch of the fantastic to a semi-realistic show involving a former spy and Royal Pains is House at a later time, minus Hugh Laurie, and injected with quite a bit more comedy than House’s dramedy.
My opinion on Royal Pains is perhaps a little premature, since the first season of a program tends to be the least formulaic, but the show seems to be overly fresh in its writing—the sort of thing that a complex almost never ending romantic comedy is made of, which, I guess, in a way, is what the show really is. I’m a sucker for the whole idea that entertainment is supposed to just entertain us (something I may have already attached to Chabon), so I think the happy go lucky ending is the best in romantic comedy, and Royal Pains has yet to really disappoint on that front.
The idea of the two shows as a “one-two” punch generally has to do with the way that Burn Notice is mainly an action program that has a bit of romance on the edges—a guy show that the girlfriend isn’t going to continuously complain about. While, as I’ve already mentioned, Royal Pains is a sort of romantic dramedy. Both shows have a similar feel to them—enough so that my father remarked that all USA shows seemed to be the same when he saw the promo for Royal Pains, but of course this was without really watching either program.
This, along with USA’s brand of co-advertising (something I noted on the first of the month) that throws characters from multiple shows into a semi-canon universe all their own, gives the two weekly programs the feel of a split movie that blends genres quite well. In a comic book, one could imagine one show ending and the next being introduced on the next page with the caption, “MEANWHILE…”
Both shows seem to know that character dynamics do not need to tossed completely out of whack or shredded all the time, but that subtle references and in-canon continuing storylines are even more than welcomed, more like strongly suggested.
Michael Weston (the ex-spy star of Burn Notice who is trying to get his old job back)’s narration during the show picks up the kind of mood as the anonymous narrator of Fight Club, telling all these little violent factoids, the kinds of things that got Palahniuk to represent the repressed male in today’s culture, and this is done quite well.
Weston helps accomplish the hard task of giving a movie or show a sort of first person feel to it, rather than your usual third person edge given to camera work (an idea referred to in my last post, that a camera records stories in third person while eyes are needed for first person work).
A tight-knit cast in each series helps keep character interaction important enough so that it is easy to spot at least one major progression in nearly every episode, which, like I’ve said, I find to be a good way to write any sort of serial. Expanding out from here, what is also necessary, in my opinion, is a strong background cast, enough recurring characters so that one to three can be featured in a episode here or there and not wipe out the stock of them.
What I want to be able to do one day is to write various pastiches of TV shows without naming characters and collect them as a book called CAN YOU SPOT THIS ONE?—an Eric Clapton quote from his album, Unplugged, before he plays “Layla.” The idea would be that I would at this time be good enough to characterize the different characters without naming them and without going straight to the physical aspects.
Interestingly enough, I guess, if I were to do this with shows that I particularly liked, I might enjoy formulaic scripting from the writers of the shows, but that would make it too easy, now wouldn’t it? I think the good benefit of a book like this would be the ability to blend so many genres so deliberately in one place, like sitting down and watching a night’s worth of television.
Of course I’m not that good of a writer at this time, at least I don’t think of myself as a good enough one. I fear that if I were to write them now, my own narratives would come off forced, my own writing formulaic, and unlike some talented bloggers, I can’t exactly give a solution to every problem I bring up. I can tell you when something is working for me, when I like what a particular is doing, but very rarely can I pinpoint the problems in a show that I don’t quite think is up to par.
I guess this is the secondary reason, other than the boredom no doubt caused by my writings, that I should shut my mouth and type no more—mother always said if you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all. Don’t bring up problems when you don’t know how to fix them, yourself. But I’m not going to listen to that advice that my mother probably never gave me.
Sorry for that, and as always, for consistently boring you.
To step away from this habit in TV storytelling, I’d say you move to a less commercial network than say Fox. And of course I’m biased in pointing the way to USA, but then again, this blog post is about two of their shows, and I need to segue in on them at some point, somehow, got it?
Two shows that generally avoid what I’d see as a strict formula set-up that leaves virtually no character changes are Burn Notice and Royal Pains, a one-two line-up on Thursday nights that I think blends quite well, over all. Burn Notice adds a touch of the fantastic to a semi-realistic show involving a former spy and Royal Pains is House at a later time, minus Hugh Laurie, and injected with quite a bit more comedy than House’s dramedy.
My opinion on Royal Pains is perhaps a little premature, since the first season of a program tends to be the least formulaic, but the show seems to be overly fresh in its writing—the sort of thing that a complex almost never ending romantic comedy is made of, which, I guess, in a way, is what the show really is. I’m a sucker for the whole idea that entertainment is supposed to just entertain us (something I may have already attached to Chabon), so I think the happy go lucky ending is the best in romantic comedy, and Royal Pains has yet to really disappoint on that front.
The idea of the two shows as a “one-two” punch generally has to do with the way that Burn Notice is mainly an action program that has a bit of romance on the edges—a guy show that the girlfriend isn’t going to continuously complain about. While, as I’ve already mentioned, Royal Pains is a sort of romantic dramedy. Both shows have a similar feel to them—enough so that my father remarked that all USA shows seemed to be the same when he saw the promo for Royal Pains, but of course this was without really watching either program.
This, along with USA’s brand of co-advertising (something I noted on the first of the month) that throws characters from multiple shows into a semi-canon universe all their own, gives the two weekly programs the feel of a split movie that blends genres quite well. In a comic book, one could imagine one show ending and the next being introduced on the next page with the caption, “MEANWHILE…”
Both shows seem to know that character dynamics do not need to tossed completely out of whack or shredded all the time, but that subtle references and in-canon continuing storylines are even more than welcomed, more like strongly suggested.
Michael Weston (the ex-spy star of Burn Notice who is trying to get his old job back)’s narration during the show picks up the kind of mood as the anonymous narrator of Fight Club, telling all these little violent factoids, the kinds of things that got Palahniuk to represent the repressed male in today’s culture, and this is done quite well.
Weston helps accomplish the hard task of giving a movie or show a sort of first person feel to it, rather than your usual third person edge given to camera work (an idea referred to in my last post, that a camera records stories in third person while eyes are needed for first person work).
A tight-knit cast in each series helps keep character interaction important enough so that it is easy to spot at least one major progression in nearly every episode, which, like I’ve said, I find to be a good way to write any sort of serial. Expanding out from here, what is also necessary, in my opinion, is a strong background cast, enough recurring characters so that one to three can be featured in a episode here or there and not wipe out the stock of them.
What I want to be able to do one day is to write various pastiches of TV shows without naming characters and collect them as a book called CAN YOU SPOT THIS ONE?—an Eric Clapton quote from his album, Unplugged, before he plays “Layla.” The idea would be that I would at this time be good enough to characterize the different characters without naming them and without going straight to the physical aspects.
Interestingly enough, I guess, if I were to do this with shows that I particularly liked, I might enjoy formulaic scripting from the writers of the shows, but that would make it too easy, now wouldn’t it? I think the good benefit of a book like this would be the ability to blend so many genres so deliberately in one place, like sitting down and watching a night’s worth of television.
Of course I’m not that good of a writer at this time, at least I don’t think of myself as a good enough one. I fear that if I were to write them now, my own narratives would come off forced, my own writing formulaic, and unlike some talented bloggers, I can’t exactly give a solution to every problem I bring up. I can tell you when something is working for me, when I like what a particular is doing, but very rarely can I pinpoint the problems in a show that I don’t quite think is up to par.
I guess this is the secondary reason, other than the boredom no doubt caused by my writings, that I should shut my mouth and type no more—mother always said if you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all. Don’t bring up problems when you don’t know how to fix them, yourself. But I’m not going to listen to that advice that my mother probably never gave me.
Sorry for that, and as always, for consistently boring you.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
"The Television Commercial"
I don’t mean to throw stones or to insult anyone specifically, but recent treatment of the television commercial has come across to me as quite stupid, indeed. A quick wikicheck* shows me that the commercial break traces its origins to the first televised commercial which occurred one month and sixty eight years ago during a baseball game. The four dollar watch ad was probably able to gather more service from its pure newness than from any actual thought process put into making their advertisement. However, Bulova appears to have made a solid commercial, in my opinion, ten seconds of a clock over a map of the US with accompanying voiceover spouting out what could be seen as the first television advertising catch phrase, “America runs on Bulova time.”
This is a satisfactory approach for any number of reasons really; the ad is short and to the point enough to possibly work itself into viewers’ heads, and many, seeing their old watches break or die in the coming months may have sought out Bulovas thinking that if the whole country was running on them, they might as well too. I’m fairly sure that in ’41 television was trusted much more commonly than it is today, and certain that the first advertisement these people had seen come out of their picture boxes would not be as distrusted as the masses that they must deal with nearly every program these days. So, congratulations to Bulova aside, I would like to trace the sides to my observance of the pure bush league approach taken from almost all sides in today’s television commercial culture.
Sure, some disparaging remarks are due the commercial sponsoring companies themselves, but first I think I need to blow off some steam towards the television stations themselves, namely Fox, and their recent attempt at metamorphosing television advertising. What I speak of directly here is the attempt with new shows Fringe and Doll House from last season to incorporate a “Remote Free TV” approach to programming. My main issue with Fox’s attempt here is plainly the destruction of an important element to television viewing, “the commercial break.”
What commercials have become, to some extent, is a time to get things done around the house, or to do your homework, or whatever else your mother tells you, it is an added element of control for the parent who gives their child the remote, the ability to say, “and I want you to get this done during the commercials.”
Now this isn’t to say that a shortened number of ads in an episode of some show is such a bad idea anyway, but rather that the whole concept of “Remote Free TV” is perhaps a last dying wish from the advertising world. The fact of the matter is, television commercials are going to have to be innovative enough to make people pay attention to them, and shortening ad breaks will do nothing for this. The rise of DVR use effectively crushes the television commercial, no matter how long each break is made.
No one is going to stop and sit through 90 seconds of ads when they don’t need to, but I don’t believe it’s such an absurd thing to see someone pause and watch a commercial they particularly enjoy, or that piques their interest for the first time. The point I’m trying to make is that the commercial break has found its way into our culture, just as television has so firmly put its hand around our lives, and for regular television channels to begin experimenting with this concept is a horrible idea, and one that ultimately benefits very few.
The idea of the commercial as enjoyable programming, skewed towards one product is perhaps the best way to approach the issue. Gatorade’s ads preceding their rebranding that were only asking the question of “What’s G?” were just blatantly useless, as far as any serious ad campaign goes. Spreading buzz really has no place in a thirty second ad. One should stick to humor for the most part, although innovation is always useful.
This is why people like the late Billy Mays and Vince Offer can make their sales pitches into straight commercials. Innovation works very well on television. We, the viewers, have grown skeptical of how truthful our picture boxes really are, but we’ve also grown more sure of the pioneering process. Often times, I’m sure, advertisements for new products leave people thinking, “why didn’t someone think of that before?,” and this works just as well as any humor in winning a viewer over to the advertisement’s sponsor. This concept has spun itself into new life, interestingly enough, with such things as American Inventor and Pitchmen. People like to see new inventions, creations, and ideas made manifest. I’m sure once and awhile even made those of us most skeptical of the worth of the human race**, proud of humanity.
For me, the ad campaign that tickles me the most is USA Network’s series of little interlocking tidbits tying different television series together into one close-knit family. This might just be my own fondness for inside jokes and reoccurring characters, but it is also a good way to make commercials entertaining. It is quite apparent that USA can be more involved with its original television series, because of its smaller network status, but it just seems obvious to me that new semi-canon segments outside of television shows, things like USA’s concept or simple minisodes are perhaps the best way to advertise for television programming.
And now that I’ve truly found myself to have my fill of this particular topic, and my butchery of typical informational journalism, I think I’m pretty much done here. I tag this as a rant as well as whatever else it is, because I’m speaking off the top of my head for the most part, and, in so doing, I’m sure, have devolved at least partially into a raving lunatic. So, if you have made your way all done this line of type to this sentence, than I both apologize and thank you for your effort.
Perhaps the best way to end this whole segment is to segue out on Radiohead lyrics, thusly adding my own little advertisement to this extended monologue…
I’m not here, this isn’t happening.
* A phrase I may have just coined that I intend to only mean checking Wikipedia for facts. Noteworthy in that it allows one to inform the reader that yes, this isn’t just made up, but no, the most suitable source for said information was probably not tapped.
** I’m thinking of Kurt Vonnegut, “Father Kurt,” according to Tabitha King.
This is a satisfactory approach for any number of reasons really; the ad is short and to the point enough to possibly work itself into viewers’ heads, and many, seeing their old watches break or die in the coming months may have sought out Bulovas thinking that if the whole country was running on them, they might as well too. I’m fairly sure that in ’41 television was trusted much more commonly than it is today, and certain that the first advertisement these people had seen come out of their picture boxes would not be as distrusted as the masses that they must deal with nearly every program these days. So, congratulations to Bulova aside, I would like to trace the sides to my observance of the pure bush league approach taken from almost all sides in today’s television commercial culture.
Sure, some disparaging remarks are due the commercial sponsoring companies themselves, but first I think I need to blow off some steam towards the television stations themselves, namely Fox, and their recent attempt at metamorphosing television advertising. What I speak of directly here is the attempt with new shows Fringe and Doll House from last season to incorporate a “Remote Free TV” approach to programming. My main issue with Fox’s attempt here is plainly the destruction of an important element to television viewing, “the commercial break.”
What commercials have become, to some extent, is a time to get things done around the house, or to do your homework, or whatever else your mother tells you, it is an added element of control for the parent who gives their child the remote, the ability to say, “and I want you to get this done during the commercials.”
Now this isn’t to say that a shortened number of ads in an episode of some show is such a bad idea anyway, but rather that the whole concept of “Remote Free TV” is perhaps a last dying wish from the advertising world. The fact of the matter is, television commercials are going to have to be innovative enough to make people pay attention to them, and shortening ad breaks will do nothing for this. The rise of DVR use effectively crushes the television commercial, no matter how long each break is made.
No one is going to stop and sit through 90 seconds of ads when they don’t need to, but I don’t believe it’s such an absurd thing to see someone pause and watch a commercial they particularly enjoy, or that piques their interest for the first time. The point I’m trying to make is that the commercial break has found its way into our culture, just as television has so firmly put its hand around our lives, and for regular television channels to begin experimenting with this concept is a horrible idea, and one that ultimately benefits very few.
The idea of the commercial as enjoyable programming, skewed towards one product is perhaps the best way to approach the issue. Gatorade’s ads preceding their rebranding that were only asking the question of “What’s G?” were just blatantly useless, as far as any serious ad campaign goes. Spreading buzz really has no place in a thirty second ad. One should stick to humor for the most part, although innovation is always useful.
This is why people like the late Billy Mays and Vince Offer can make their sales pitches into straight commercials. Innovation works very well on television. We, the viewers, have grown skeptical of how truthful our picture boxes really are, but we’ve also grown more sure of the pioneering process. Often times, I’m sure, advertisements for new products leave people thinking, “why didn’t someone think of that before?,” and this works just as well as any humor in winning a viewer over to the advertisement’s sponsor. This concept has spun itself into new life, interestingly enough, with such things as American Inventor and Pitchmen. People like to see new inventions, creations, and ideas made manifest. I’m sure once and awhile even made those of us most skeptical of the worth of the human race**, proud of humanity.
For me, the ad campaign that tickles me the most is USA Network’s series of little interlocking tidbits tying different television series together into one close-knit family. This might just be my own fondness for inside jokes and reoccurring characters, but it is also a good way to make commercials entertaining. It is quite apparent that USA can be more involved with its original television series, because of its smaller network status, but it just seems obvious to me that new semi-canon segments outside of television shows, things like USA’s concept or simple minisodes are perhaps the best way to advertise for television programming.
And now that I’ve truly found myself to have my fill of this particular topic, and my butchery of typical informational journalism, I think I’m pretty much done here. I tag this as a rant as well as whatever else it is, because I’m speaking off the top of my head for the most part, and, in so doing, I’m sure, have devolved at least partially into a raving lunatic. So, if you have made your way all done this line of type to this sentence, than I both apologize and thank you for your effort.
Perhaps the best way to end this whole segment is to segue out on Radiohead lyrics, thusly adding my own little advertisement to this extended monologue…
I’m not here, this isn’t happening.
* A phrase I may have just coined that I intend to only mean checking Wikipedia for facts. Noteworthy in that it allows one to inform the reader that yes, this isn’t just made up, but no, the most suitable source for said information was probably not tapped.
** I’m thinking of Kurt Vonnegut, “Father Kurt,” according to Tabitha King.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Fringe
You can't help but compare Fringe to The X-Files, and now it has become very apparent that they are even going to be patterned in similar fashion. After last week's (yes I'm going to say it) mythology episode, this week was easily monster of the week.
The funny thing is that, no matter what Fringe gets right, there are a few things that it gets horribly wrong. In last week's episode we have Agent Dunham, like some new age James Bond with all her female helplessness, asking a captor for a drink of water, and then asking him to unrestrain her so that she may drink it.
I mean, seriously, this is worse than blatant. You make jokes about it before it even happens, assuming that they wouldn't write off the whole ease of her escape as "finding an idiot to unlock her and let her escape." This was what bothered me with Valkyrie, it seemed that no matter who Tom Cruise talked to, he couldn't find someone who would actually call Hitler up and say, "Man, they're planning to kill you." Where that film played off Nazis as just misunderstood heroes working under a monster, Fringe has a way of playing off your criminals as, well, idiots.
How does Dunham discover who it is that captured her? The man works with her at the FBI and he has a spot on his shoe. A SPOT! Something he didn't clean off in the morning, by coincidences that Dickens would feel bad about reading, leads her to coming up with her big breakthrough idea. Look, at least Greg House has conversations with people before he puts 2 and 2 together and it comes back as 4 instead of 22. What I'm trying to say is, in one episode, both a henchman falls for the oldest trick in the book, and an apparent mastermind neglects his own hygiene to the extent that his mask is useless.
My father watched this show and said it reminded him of Dr. Who and the bad thing is that this show isn't low budget at all, they just couldn't write any other way of escaping, any other way of figuring it all out. It's getting to be quite sad now, because this was really where The X-Files excelled, at least for someone like me. Even the mythology episodes post-Duchovny that were annoyingly all about chasing Mulder, it seemed like the people who were making the show at least knew what they were doing.
So hey, maybe I'm being judgmental, maybe this is why a show like Lost (that I haven't seen) is so acclaimed, this new form of "Hey, it looks like we don't get it either" way of making shows doesn't really do it for me, though. The main problem here is that Fringe could be a really good show, but it's not. When trying for some kind of science realism, which is an apparent shift of focus from something like The X-Files, please don't show me some kind of cheap fake thrill as a hand coming out of a computer screen, even if you are going to pass it off as a hallucination. I can't get rid of the feeling that I'm watching a B movie that's trying to be bad.
And you know the whole Scully-Mulder ambigiuty? Yeah, it's back, in a lesser way, but an even more dated way now. I'm tired of any sort of running serial that treats character relationships statically. One of the reasons I've grown to despise certain aspects of House, the main reason I really enjoyed season three of Dexter til near the end. I understand that it's hard to segment off a couple on a show and then have them break up (something that may or may not have happened on Bones which I've seen maybe an episode and a half of), but shows need to learn that any sort of staticness, predictability not played for comic appeal begins to draw on a show.
It also seems like there are enough scary things in our world to play with, rather than Fringe needing to revert to time machines (actually brilliantly done in the film Primer), huge flu viruses, and all sorts of seriously fake sounding things. The theme given by Peter Bishop in the last episode, about how all of this is real and we just don't know about it, is the kind of thing that made Burn After Reading a comedy, and just makes this show appear like it's trying too hard. Do you remember Jurrasic Park? (I need to read the book one of these days.) What was the reveal in Jurassic Park? That the DNA they used to fill in the dinos was from frogs that changed gender when necessary. Even if not of word of that was true, it made sense. The character of Walter Bishop and all these stories he has of all these great scientific things he does, well, they're running thinner each time, and I'm taking them with so many grains of salt, that I'm not even going to drink that glass of water, since it deserves to be in the Atlantic.
The goal of the show does seem to be this sort of "Look at what's going on in the world that you'll never know about," but at this it fails completely, because you can never watch it without at least a small shred of disbelief, and with the number of times I've laughed at it as of late, I'm not sure I can compare it to The Unborn, but it has the same problem. It wants to be good, it wants to work, it really does, and you have to give it that, but...
If anyone out there likes Lie to Me, is actually making an effort to watch Lie to Me, then I'm sorry, but a show like that, that basically reduces every lie ever told to being so blatant as to making an overly visible twitch or a smile necessary, is a foil to the reason something like Fringe doesn't work. It's the uncanny valley (something I actually agree with Freud about), because the show tries so hard to maintain this reality and then place it's irreality underneath, that it fails, while so many other shows aren't even going for real these days, granted, they just aren't trying hard.
But the worst part of all this is that Fringe is promising. It's actually worthy enough to DVR. (Which is a whole new endeavor in itself because of this new way of commercials that Fox has, where they're going to cut to about 5 minutes or something like that of ads per show. What no one notices is that commercials are such a reality of life for people without a DVR, that they've learned to do things during the breaks, and this is only breaking a relatively recent social construct, plus, people who have a DVR aren't going to watch commercial breaks, "because they're shorter.) Joshua Jackson only makes me think of Pacey every now and then, and has now become, comically, the man you go to when you need something done illegally. And it's the kind of show that gets to the point where you say "one more episode" after each one.
So, I don't really know what to say about it, except that I'm liking Leverage better, but perhaps, like Levi Weaver, "I’ve always been better at writing with a bit of vitriol," so have as much to say about it. I just feel that Fringe could have so much going for it, and more than enough to make a good show has been squandered.
But then again, on the topic and yet irrelevant, is Lucas Douglas seriously getting his own show? FTW.
The funny thing is that, no matter what Fringe gets right, there are a few things that it gets horribly wrong. In last week's episode we have Agent Dunham, like some new age James Bond with all her female helplessness, asking a captor for a drink of water, and then asking him to unrestrain her so that she may drink it.
I mean, seriously, this is worse than blatant. You make jokes about it before it even happens, assuming that they wouldn't write off the whole ease of her escape as "finding an idiot to unlock her and let her escape." This was what bothered me with Valkyrie, it seemed that no matter who Tom Cruise talked to, he couldn't find someone who would actually call Hitler up and say, "Man, they're planning to kill you." Where that film played off Nazis as just misunderstood heroes working under a monster, Fringe has a way of playing off your criminals as, well, idiots.
How does Dunham discover who it is that captured her? The man works with her at the FBI and he has a spot on his shoe. A SPOT! Something he didn't clean off in the morning, by coincidences that Dickens would feel bad about reading, leads her to coming up with her big breakthrough idea. Look, at least Greg House has conversations with people before he puts 2 and 2 together and it comes back as 4 instead of 22. What I'm trying to say is, in one episode, both a henchman falls for the oldest trick in the book, and an apparent mastermind neglects his own hygiene to the extent that his mask is useless.
My father watched this show and said it reminded him of Dr. Who and the bad thing is that this show isn't low budget at all, they just couldn't write any other way of escaping, any other way of figuring it all out. It's getting to be quite sad now, because this was really where The X-Files excelled, at least for someone like me. Even the mythology episodes post-Duchovny that were annoyingly all about chasing Mulder, it seemed like the people who were making the show at least knew what they were doing.
So hey, maybe I'm being judgmental, maybe this is why a show like Lost (that I haven't seen) is so acclaimed, this new form of "Hey, it looks like we don't get it either" way of making shows doesn't really do it for me, though. The main problem here is that Fringe could be a really good show, but it's not. When trying for some kind of science realism, which is an apparent shift of focus from something like The X-Files, please don't show me some kind of cheap fake thrill as a hand coming out of a computer screen, even if you are going to pass it off as a hallucination. I can't get rid of the feeling that I'm watching a B movie that's trying to be bad.
And you know the whole Scully-Mulder ambigiuty? Yeah, it's back, in a lesser way, but an even more dated way now. I'm tired of any sort of running serial that treats character relationships statically. One of the reasons I've grown to despise certain aspects of House, the main reason I really enjoyed season three of Dexter til near the end. I understand that it's hard to segment off a couple on a show and then have them break up (something that may or may not have happened on Bones which I've seen maybe an episode and a half of), but shows need to learn that any sort of staticness, predictability not played for comic appeal begins to draw on a show.
It also seems like there are enough scary things in our world to play with, rather than Fringe needing to revert to time machines (actually brilliantly done in the film Primer), huge flu viruses, and all sorts of seriously fake sounding things. The theme given by Peter Bishop in the last episode, about how all of this is real and we just don't know about it, is the kind of thing that made Burn After Reading a comedy, and just makes this show appear like it's trying too hard. Do you remember Jurrasic Park? (I need to read the book one of these days.) What was the reveal in Jurassic Park? That the DNA they used to fill in the dinos was from frogs that changed gender when necessary. Even if not of word of that was true, it made sense. The character of Walter Bishop and all these stories he has of all these great scientific things he does, well, they're running thinner each time, and I'm taking them with so many grains of salt, that I'm not even going to drink that glass of water, since it deserves to be in the Atlantic.
The goal of the show does seem to be this sort of "Look at what's going on in the world that you'll never know about," but at this it fails completely, because you can never watch it without at least a small shred of disbelief, and with the number of times I've laughed at it as of late, I'm not sure I can compare it to The Unborn, but it has the same problem. It wants to be good, it wants to work, it really does, and you have to give it that, but...
If anyone out there likes Lie to Me, is actually making an effort to watch Lie to Me, then I'm sorry, but a show like that, that basically reduces every lie ever told to being so blatant as to making an overly visible twitch or a smile necessary, is a foil to the reason something like Fringe doesn't work. It's the uncanny valley (something I actually agree with Freud about), because the show tries so hard to maintain this reality and then place it's irreality underneath, that it fails, while so many other shows aren't even going for real these days, granted, they just aren't trying hard.
But the worst part of all this is that Fringe is promising. It's actually worthy enough to DVR. (Which is a whole new endeavor in itself because of this new way of commercials that Fox has, where they're going to cut to about 5 minutes or something like that of ads per show. What no one notices is that commercials are such a reality of life for people without a DVR, that they've learned to do things during the breaks, and this is only breaking a relatively recent social construct, plus, people who have a DVR aren't going to watch commercial breaks, "because they're shorter.) Joshua Jackson only makes me think of Pacey every now and then, and has now become, comically, the man you go to when you need something done illegally. And it's the kind of show that gets to the point where you say "one more episode" after each one.
So, I don't really know what to say about it, except that I'm liking Leverage better, but perhaps, like Levi Weaver, "I’ve always been better at writing with a bit of vitriol," so have as much to say about it. I just feel that Fringe could have so much going for it, and more than enough to make a good show has been squandered.
But then again, on the topic and yet irrelevant, is Lucas Douglas seriously getting his own show? FTW.
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