- Other people have been saying it at various times for weeks, but last night was the first Mad Men where I felt like they were just treading water. Esp. disappointing after the last two, very strong episodes. The Conrad Hilton thing is cool, and I know the clock still ticks to November, 1963... but they need to get to the point or I'm going to find my mind wandering to my own fantasy spinoff : Joan Holloway, 60's Shopgirl.
- Community & Modern Family both had stronger 2nd episodes than their first outings. I'm amazed by what fully realized, confident comedies they seem to be straight out of the gate.
- Flash Forward is my favorite new drama. I think both John Cho and Joseph Fiennes are surprisingly durable TV presences
- At this point, I can't even conceive of what would cause me to add another Medical Drama to my viewing. But Trauma, Three Rivers, & Mercy haven't exactly made that argument.
- I'm just about willing to concede that I've been wrong all along about Curb Your Enthusiasm. Although maybe it's just that they're so smooth in the improvisation now that I don't notice it.
- The Stargate: Universe Premiere rocked it for me. I think the actor playing Lt. Scott is really sympathetic. David Blue's great. Most of the actors are stronger in this iteration, and I think that Robert Carlyle is going to be so much more than a cardboard villain. I really am looking forward to seeing how the season plays out. Love the totally different look and pacing than any previous Stargate series.
- On Being Erica -- it's a funny thing when you evolve your concept forward -- you have to be careful. I find myself way less interested in Erica's journeys into her own past now, though maybe the series highest-rated edition ever last week might suggest that's a minority opinion. To me though, it's like House with his ducklings - I have no interest in seeing Chase/Cameron/Foreman and their dynamic; move it along.
Not to reopen an old wound, but my LOST reprint column garnered this very interesting comment:
DMc, I think you're missing something important here. The car analogy isn't quite right. In the car, both driven and passenger know the destination. LOST is more like a driver insisting he knows *just* where he's going, trust me, and Don't worry honey it's going to be *fantastic* when we get there. And the passenger is supposed to trust, when they get to the run-down empty amusement park (personal note: fucking scary those places are, yet weirdly erotic) that Disney World really always looked like this, really really, trust me, really, this is where we were headed all along.
I didn't stop watching LOST because it turned out the writers had no idea what they were doing at first - I've known that since the end of Season One. Nor does it bother me that 'experiments' (read: unwise indulgences and failures) like Pablo and what's-her-name have stolen time that might've lifted the burden on other, overstuffed episodes. Hell, I stuck it out through S4 despite S2 being the longest, least daring Psych-101-via-cheap-weed dorm-room bullshit session I've ever sat through. You fight through such things.
Nah, the problem is the realization that when the show is over, *nothing will have happened*. LOST is all about its own mechanisms, how 'fun' it is to get swept up in a conspiracy-shaped thing...and you look at shows like DEADWOOD and THE SOPRANOS and THE WIRE and, Christ, even BUFFY, and realize that they left you with something to think about, a series of plot movements that summed to something more than themselves.
The herky-jerky plotting, illogic, and navel-gazing isn't just irritating in itself, it breaks the illusion that the show *means something*. Which is only bothersome at the craft level but, like, existentially crushing when you turn off the TV. All those hours for a show with nothing to say. I turn off THE OFFICE on Thursday night and I'm disturbed and ambivalent and hopeful. I'd turn off LOST admiring the writers' labours. It's like praising seam placement and not noticing the pants look stupid, y'know?
The show's a cheat. Not because of how it's written but *what it's saying*. The latter opens you up to anxiety about the former. The end, baby.
So what do you think? Is our commenter right? I think this is part of what makes Flash Forward & Mad Men's compacts with the audience so interesting. FF promises that come April you're going to have closure, of a sorts. While Mad Men is spooling out an entire season predicated on your knowledge that this is the calm before the storm. The pressure to have each season have a discrete theme also helps in packaging them for DVD or Bundled sale later, methinks.
One of the great fictions perpetrated on fans, I think, was how the creator of Babylon 5 told everyone that every single chapter was worked out in his head, and people bought it.
I think the commenter above might be right -- but I don't really take the point, because I think the idea of following the cleverness, and making it up as you go along is the endearing part of ongoing series drama...in fact, it's the endearing part of storytelling -- from the days when it was around the campfire. When I read Charles Dickens' books, I don't marvel at how he had the whole story in his head before he wrote it. In part, I find them compelling because I know they were written as serials -- leading to richly detailed smaller characters and story eddies and all sorts of great stuff that you might not have gotten in a more planned work.
But maybe that's just me.
So. There you go. Grist. Comment below. Writer types : I'm esp. interested in anything you've seen, any trick or technique or example from the new season that made you think differently about your own work, or made you want to steal something for your own toolbox.
8 comments:
I've never seen Lost nor do I have any desire to - but what your above commenter said about it being 'all about its own mechanisms' could certainly apply to Being Erica. As odd as that show is I did hold out hope (if that's the right word) that the end of last season signaled some kind of new direction - but its clear to me now that it is just floundering around full of 'its own mechanisms' - i.e. this ripple in time, back in time therapist thing. This ponderous assertion that this all means something when its really just a bunch of shallow cliches - ( 'Relationships and conflict go hand in hand' ). But I'll probably keep watching mainly because of what I will assert once again is Being Erica's apparently unrepentant 'so bad its good' weirdness . It ain't for nothing that the girl's last name is Strange . Like all of sudden Erica is dancing on the bar Coyote Ugly style. Or last season's weird occultish fixations, its completely bizzare portrayal of Erica's former poetry Professor, or poor Leo's death by 'joint fire' out in grandma's old barn. Right? This is just weird stuff.
They might be able to redeem this season if they have Erica leave Ethan and start banging the guy who works in the coffee shop and then they both somehow disappear though some looking glass of time and past life experiences until Dr. Tom shows up to tell them that they're 'breaking the rules' - again - 'two people in therapy are forbidden to couple' - but it will be too late, because they will be in love - which Erica will perfectly qualify with some snappy little faux aphorism about how 'it doesn't matter what life experience you're inhabiting, or what your therapist says - when you meet the right person, you know it.'. That kind of thing.
Also, Brent's anger at being rejected for the 'sex book' is already way overblown and ridiculous and who cares and - yeah, just weird.
I disagree with you about last night's Mad Men. I thought it advanced Betty Draper's character significantly - in ways that were sly, sexy, classy and intelligent - like everything on that glorious show.
I agree with much of what you've said, although I've often thought that when the occasional episode of Mad Men appears (on the surface) to be a bit plot thin, it's really a table setter for what is to come. I have faith that what we saw in last night's ep will have repercussions at a later point this season.
Or so I hope. If not, then they were just spinning their wheels.
As much as I enjoy Fringe, what drives me insane is that their teasers often feel like a writer's "wouldn't it be cool if _____ happens" pitch and then the rest of the episode fails to deliver on that expectation. Last season's porcupine-monster-on-a-plane teaser set-up was truly a what the hell moment, but the story that followed was underwhelming at best. It's as if they have a cool scene they want to shoot to kick off an episode, but can't always come up with a plot to follow it up with.
I think Modern Family is one of the few laugh out loud shows I've seen on TV in a while. Still have to get to Community, but the trailer actually made me laugh more than a few times.
You make an interesting point about Mad Men -- it was definitely a plant the seed ep. But, there were some tremendous scenes, including the outdoor cafe in Rome, the Pete break down when his wife tries to f*ck him, etc. It was also refreshing that they pulled off an episode where you essentially do not see the office.
It's interesting to call an episode in which a guy gets away with rape, "the calm before the storm," or just "treading water," but that's the power of the writing on that show.
And it was a good episode about power - Hilton has the power to have Don (and Betty) go to Rome for a day, even though he'd already decided to hire the firm. Pete, of course, has the power over the au pair and the Governor's aid had the power to help Betty - and then presumably to take that help away when he didn't get what he wanted.
It did lay a lot of ground work for the next episode.
The thing I like about the show (Mad Men) is that for every "significant" plot development there's at least a couple ways to read it. No spoon feeding here.
And since so much of enjoyment is subjective, and since I've been hearing from people for weeks that they thought Mad Men has been slow this season, I guess it was inevitable that I would find an episode slow myself.
I'm not the slightest bit surprised that there are people who disagree; that's the nice thing about the show. Enough is given but not definitively that there is plenty for the audience to fill in -- which to me, is the highest form of interaction with the audience -- it's what you hope for.
I do also like as a previous commenter mentioned, that this was entirely a weekend set episode.
And Mad Men continues its tradition, after last week's momentous Peggy plot -- of goosing you by not following up. Matt Weiner is a minx.
I've read all the scripts, notes and outlines on Babylon 5 and I have to say, yes, it was planned out entirely in advance -- but then shit happened.
Actors quit or pulled power plays, network insisted on changes, then left things alone, and then the cards (the whole thing was written out on recipe cards in a small box on top of his computer in plain sight for years) were thrown out by the cleaning staff at a convention just before he began writing Season 5.
It's a good example of "No battle plan survives engagement with the enemy."
I got fed up with Lost pretty early on. I popped in now and then and, much like a daytime soap opera, not much had changed - not much plot had advanced - since my last viewing. There's only so long this mule can chase a carrot before I get tired.
I'm going to have to give Madmen another go. Maybe I just tuned in on a furniture moving episode. I checked it out a while back because everybody I know, every blogger and twitter I followed, was talking about it like it was chuck full of awesomesauce,(and then there's the Emmy's...) and when I watched it for the first time, I'll admit I had trouble staying awake and I gave up on it, figuring, "Maybe it's not my thing. Maybe other people see something in it I don't."
I never watched The Sopranos largely because I was turned off by really aggressive marketing by Rogers Cable at the time. I was so sick of the telemarketing, flyers, billboards and such that I got a hype allergy and said, "The hell with that." I'd planned on checking out the DVDs at some point, but I have a very limited time in my day for solo TV watching, so that point hasn't come yet.
I loved the SG:U premiere and it had me hooked. I can see why some of the posters compared it to Lost as the structure closely paralleled the Lost pilot, opening with a disaster, telling the characters' backstories with flashbacks, the main focus being worrying about survival, finger pointing and yelling. But I'm hooked. I didn't see Dr. Rush as a villain (although you're privy to more detail than I) but as perhaps a catalyst. He's got his own agenda, he's probably lying about a number of things, and he's using and pushing and manipulating people...okay, maybe you're right. I just hoped that he wouldn't turn out to be a Dr. Smith or a Dr. Baltar ("You know, it's amazing how many super villains have advanced degrees."), or that it wouldn't become like Lifeboat: The Series because that would get dull fast. I'm looking forward to Air Part 3 and then we'll see.
Loved the Modern Family second episode too (I missed the premiere.). Some moments, like the gay couple stressing about their daughter's achievement level ("Has she stacked yet?") ring painfully true.
I'd post more, but I'll be late for my day job.
I loved the premiers of both Flashforward and Stargate SGU. Before I watched Flashforward, a friend of mine mentioned that the beginning reminded her of the pilot for Lost. I gotta say, both Flashforward and SGU shared that in common. I mean, shows of that tone and genre want to grab with a strong hook right away, but the execution was similar to Lost in that you have a lot of people confused, scared, screaming, and are able to pick out who your cast or lead is based on how they're handeling the situation.
Regarding this weeks Mad Men, the enjoyment is subjective so for me, take away the office, and you take away a primary draw of the show - watching people do an interesting job well (West Wing), and it can become too soap like. Even though the trip was work related, it could have used more stuff with Hilton. Plus, I need at least one Roger Stirling zinger per episode.
"When God closes a door, he opens a dress."
"There's a line Freddie, and you wet it."
Kinsey: "He [Guy McKendrick] might lose his foot"
Sterling: "Right when he got it in the door."
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