Your Weekend Reading

NOT TO BE gross here, but I'm practically plague worthy right now -- with a sty in one eye and a raging ear infection. If either manages to overpower the antibiotics I've acquired, please tell all relevant scientists that I fully consent to my bionic makeover. I will do whatever bidding you require.

While I suffer on the last weekend of the summer (proof, Will, of your axiom that writers do not get hiatuses. I upset the natural order of the universe and am being plagued for my impertinence) I point you to a couple of particularly good posts by Jaime J. Weinman, on his excellent Macleans Blog, TV Guidance:

In the first he does something that I can't believe none of the blogging smartypants have done: he profiles the writing staff of Friday Night Lights. It's often hard for newbies or even people who aren't writers to understand how the different gifts and strengths of writers with differing skillsets can coalesce into a unified whole, where the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts. I think taking a look at shows that get it right might actually help. You can't catch lightning in a bottle, but if you parse writing staffs that are functional and working at the top of their game (and I think anybody would agree that does indeed describe the staff of Friday Night Lights) maybe you might start to see something of the different kinds of writers you should be considering for a staff job.

In the second, he points to a MTM jem that's now on YouTube (and sadly, will probably not be released on DVD ever, which is a problem, since many people believe it to be the greatest comedy episode of all time.) Then Weinman manages to crystallize the whole "why's the sitcom in trouble" thing in a way that maybe you might not appreciate -- but maybe has a bit of truth to it.

Notice also that the two-act structure of traditional sitcoms -- I know that we're supposed to talk about "three act structure," but the shows themselves have two acts: Act 1, commercial break, Act 2, commercial break, tag scene -- requires a lot of buildup time before the actual plot of the episode takes shape: until the very end of the first act, we don't really know what the episode is going to be about. One of the reasons that the sitcom is having trouble these days is that a traditional sitcom story requires a rather slow buildup before the story really kicks into gear, and slow buildups are not really tolerated by modern audiences.

So you see, audience. It's all on you. Chew on that this weekend. Have fun. Be safe.

I have to go put gel in my eye.

Gross.