Guest Post: Monstrous!

DMc writes:

Today's guest post comes from an old acquaintance. While not exactly friends, per se, Boris was a important influence on my life from a very young age. Until I ran into him at a Starbucks in Orlando last February, I hadn't seen him in years. But from 1971 to 1978, Boris served two terms as the embodiment of all my childhood fears, as the monster in my closet. Having followed my immigrant's path from the South Bronx to Rockland County, New York, to Florida and Canada, Boris was uniquely poised to track and trace the many anxieties that animated me in my most formative years. I've asked him to weigh in on my current locus of terror, the television industry. After some grumbling about the parameters of the terms, he agreed. He writes from his retirement home, a bright and sunny semi-detatched closet in Winter Park, Fla.


Hello. Boris NO LIKE TV......tv today TRASH and not fill with good FUNNY show. Make people laugh. Laugh make people more open to monster and NIGHT TERROR. Night terror GOOD. Monster go YAAGH! and do THAT THING with TEETH AND WAG FINGR. Boy shit bed. Boris laugh. LAUGH GOoD!!!!

Monster LIKE laugh. Good way to UNWIND end of day. WHERE George? George funny with parents who yell all time and say yadda yadda. George PERFECT for Monster. Kid himself into do MANY things. Never work out. Go work and be anxious at Yankees. See BIG MONSTER HEAD STEINBRENNER. Then kill girlfriend with poison stamps. Oh how monster laugh. GOOD TIMES FOR MONSTER!!!

TV today FULL of FLYING CAMERA. KEEP STILL, MONSTER want be SICK. Serious! Also Jack BAUER. Jack bauer attach electrodes and SHOCK people and people SCREAM. Why SCREAM? TV? No. NO SCREAM. Scream at MONSTER. But nooooo. TODAY, people WATCH show PEOPLE CUT UP & DO CREEPY STUFF. Monster jump OUT OF CLOSET and go YAAAGH! and boy keep playing Playstation Portable. WTF? Monster WORKING HERE. Boy not care. Boy watch CSI and CRIMINAL MINDS and JACkASS. Think MONSTER doing KENNY SPENNY.

Monster BLAME TELEVISION. TV Bullshit. And WHAT WITH SAW MOVIES? SERIOUS? Monster not HAVE that kind Special FX budget. GIVE MONSTER break. WOULD it KILL WATCH MORE shows FUNNY like GRACE & GAY GUY? That JACK. That FUNNY GUY. People GO BED happy. MONSTER get jump out and GET PAID.

And WHILE AT IT, let's talk JOSS WHEDON. Joss Whedon new show not good WELL. Network NOT happy. SENDING to FRIDAY NIGHT. You KNOW WHO DO THAT? MONSTERS!!!

That right. BUFFY, ANGEL, all that STAKING and making FUN. ALL THAT TIME. Joss WHEDON enemy of Monster. VANITY card "GRR, ARGH?" end of shows? PLEASE. Boris glad show fail. SUCK IT, JOSS. Monster SNEAK INTO CLOSET of FOX Execs, JUMP OUT whisper "FRIDAY." PAyBACk BITCH.

Joss WHEDON never understand HOW hard be MONSTER. Take CHEAP shots and EASY sTEREOtypes. MESSAGE all good EMPOWER women but what about MONSTER? Stereotype MONSTER no PROBLEM. Noooo. Make MONSTER look stupid. ENJOY FRIDAY NIGHT, WHEDON. YAaaaagHHH!

ALSO, ok WHEN we CALL EACH other monster. NOT YOU. YOU -- call us FICTO-AMERICANS.

While have floor, Boris also WANT talk PROP 8. WTF? California GREAT PLACE for Monster. Lead COUNTRY in PROGRESSIVE and GOOD THINK. Work HARD to help PEOPLE out of CLOSET. Make life better for people, but also MONSTER when CLOSET not QUITE SO CROWDED.

People fear so SIMPLE. Get older, MONSTER YAAAGH! not work. People scare DIE ALONE. Scare not BE ACCEPTED. Scare of LIFE no MEANING. Ritual IMPORTANT not just for PEOPLE. For MONSTER. CHOP PEOPLE UP and feed to RELATIVES, that HURT SOMEBODY. How allow TWO PEOPLE make LIFE COMITTMENT hurt ANYBODY?

Me VISIT YOUR CLOSET you VOTE PROP 8. FINALLY, children MORE SENSE. They NOT SCARE. TEN MORE years, silly FIGHT over. But STILL NOT MAKE IT RIGHT now.

Work for MONSTER today UGLY. Economy SO BAD. F BUSH. He not scarable. All JESUS. Do MONSTER take work GOING TO closet of CRACKER scare of OBAMA cause BLACK? HELL NO. IS two - thousand EIGHT. SMARTEN up. Also, RACIST closet usually FILTHY and full of fleas. JUST SAY.

If MONSTER WANT love OTHER MAN MONSTER, is MONSTER BUSINESS! NO ONE else. Why not JOSS WHEDON do show that? Stop picking on MONSTER!!! And MAKE FUNNNY. That SO HARD? And keep CAMERA STILL. And LESS MUSIC. MUSIC TOO SOPPY!!!!!!

In Close -- Whedon racist against Monsters -- Friday NIGHT payback. TV no good FUNNY go, MONSTER work WAY HARD. Harvey MILK die NOT FOR NOTHING. You PROP 8 ashamed. Look in MIRROR maybe ask yourself who REAL MONSTER?

YAAAAAGH!

Is It Wrong?

THAT I FIND myself wanting to impress Bad Horse?


Probably not a good sign, right?


Whatever.

Um...

WHAT ARE YOU doing here? The first part of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog is up.

Seriously. You Go Now.

But When Will You Go to the Bathroom? Joss Whedon and FOX's "Hail Mary" Pass...

PROBABLY THE MOST interesting thing to come out of the upfronts weren't the choices of any of the new shows, but the following announcement from FOX:

At its upfront presentation Thursday, the network announced it will air two new drama series, J.J. Abrams' "Fringe" and Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse," with dramatically reduced commercial breaks.

"It's a simple concept and potentially revolutionary," Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Liguori said. "We're going to have less commercials, less promotional time, and less reason for viewers to use the remote. We're going to redefine the viewing experience."

Both "Fringe" and "Dollhouse" would have network commercial loads of about five minutes per hour, about half the usual. The commercial pods would also be shorter and they would have about half the promo load as well.

In an interview after the presentation, Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly acknowledged that "Remote-Free TV" was a risk but there needed to be a "paradigm shift" in network TV.

Cutting down commercials will make the two already pricey sci-fi series even more expensive as they have to produce longer episodes. To offset that and the reduced commercial inventory, the network is planning to charge advertisers a premium.

Ad buyers were generally upbeat about the idea, and said they liked the two shows picked.

This ripples through on a few levels, and I'm coming a bit late to this particular party. From the Canadian TV perspective, Jim Henshaw points out how the headache unaccustomed buyers from the Canadian nets are having trying to pick shows based on pilots they haven't even seen may have just gotten worse. After all, the Canadian nets just went in the OTHER direction -- demanding (and getting) MORE commercial time per hour from the CRTC, plus asking for "carriage fees" from Cable Companies (which will be passed on to cable customers.)

The two series will have to either be edited to fit the Canadian format or allowed to overlap into the next time slot.

The former approach would likely alienate an audience who will know they can purchase the full show the next day on iTunes or stream the unexpurgated version from another source.

The alternative is probably even more terrifying to a Canadian network suit -- because overlapping the hour will create a conflict with whatever American series they've scheduled to simulcast following "Fringe" or "Dollhouse".

Remember, these guys aren't usually buying full nights from one network. They're mixing and matching from all of the Big 4 (and elsewhere).

Therefore that overlap could allow viewers a few minutes to sample the American feed from its original source before its usurped by the simulcasting Canadian channel -- and most remotes go searching if the first five minutes of a show haven't grabbed the viewer.

To additionally compound the problem for Canadian broadcasters, FOX is placing a premium on the ads for "Fringe" and "Dollhouse" feeling they are two of their "must see" shows of the season -- and of course to pay for the additional content of the programs and the fewer commercial slots.

That'll likely mean a certain amount of branding, like Ford has done with the season openers of "24".

I'm not sure those same sponsors (or a Canadian equivalent) will be willing to lay out larger ad fees to reach the much smaller Canadian audience.

Boy oh boy -- wouldn't it just be easier to make Canadian shows instead?

For my money, though, I think as interesting as the business implications are, the creative implications are even moreso. Jaime Weinman raised some good points in this Macleans "TV Guidance" entry:

Will this “fewer commercials” idea work? I hope it does, because I think that some of the problems of network television today are related to the too-short running times. People used to point to many reasons why premium cable could do things that network TV couldn’t, but they rarely pointed to one of the biggest reasons of all: premium-cable episodes are longer than network TV episodes, and therefore have more time for pauses, character development, and all the other stuff you can’t put in if you have to chop the show down to 42 minutes (minus 30 seconds for the main title and another 30 seconds for the closing credits, and also some time for the “previously on…” segments). Comedies especially would benefit from longer episodes, since 21 minutes just is not enough time to tell one story, let alone the two or three you get in most comedies. But on the other hand, Dollhouse and Fringe don’t seem like the type of shows that are guaranteed, or even particularly likely, to become big mainstream hits, and if the network takes a hit on one or both of them because of the need to charge more money to advertisers (which they may not be willing to pay for a “cult”-y show), it may sour them on the idea of reduced commercial time. Which would be too bad, because it’s high on my list of things that could save TV.

I'm with Weinman on how commercial creep has damaged network TV. I think the 21 minute half hour is the single greatest thing that's destroyed sitcoms. The need to jam the story into that short a time has meant that all human moments have been shaved off, leading to a situation where the half hour looks even more artificial than it otherwise is.

I've also decided that in my relatively short career, where I've seen the move from the four act hour (or four act + tease, what some people called five act) to actual five acts with long first acts (w/o teasers) and even six acts, that that format simply doesn't work as well, for a slightly technical reasons.

It's not my form, but I was once taught that the MOW -- a format that's all but disappeared from network TV -- was usually written in 7 acts. At least one of the nets in Canada used a 9 act structure. All that seems daunting, but let's remember that Act here is just a unit that connotes length between commercials. In the old 7 act MOW structure, you would have a long, long first act, much like you do sometimes now with the 5 act tv shows -- the idea was that you got at least 12 to as many as 18 minutes of story before cutting to commercial so that you hooked everyone in and they didn't have a chance to tune out.

The problem with the "long first act" in hourlong drama is that it frontloads so much action into that first act that it's hard to not make the rest of the episode seem unbalanced. There are tricks people use to combat this -- the J.J. Abrahms trick was to start at the ending. You set up the peril of the main character and then flash back to 72 hours earlier -- which has the advantage of establishing two timelines -- a very different thing than having to jam too much of your storytelling into the first Act.

What I've found with the move to five and six acts is a certain inevitability in having to accept things that a true craftsperson might not have stood for in earlier days. By necessity, you generally have to settle for one act being shorter than the others... but what goes in that act? You don't want to have an act without hitting all your various plots, so sometimes that means shoehorning a scene in there that would organically probably better go elsewhere -- but the math won't let you do it.

I also find that at five, six acts and 42 minutes, you have to settle for more shorthand than you might otherwise be comfortable with. That shorthand can take many forms, all of them slightly poison pill-y:

• An Act Out or Act Curtain that simply isn't up to snuff (ie: you go out 'soft' -- on a character beat that you might not otherwise go out on, rather than go out on a real twist or revelation of new information, which is always the preferred method.)
• A "convenience" or "coincidence" that eagle eyed people might drub as lazy storytelling, but really is a function of the fact that you only have one scene to do something that really should take two or three scenes. (This could also mean making a thematic point/counterpoint between two plots way more overt than you'd otherwise like, again, because you don't have the room to make the point more subtly.)
• Living with nightmare expo. It's hard to hide the pipe when you've got to open in three minutes. I've definitely done my best to conceal some setup handwaving that could have been handled more cleverly if only there was more time, more time, more time...

The really great - and hilarious - thing about this change for FOX is that one of the beneficiaries of the experiment is Joss Whedon. When we last saw Whedon, he was being deeply screwed over on Firefly by -- wait for it -- FOX! (Fox was also the studio that rich off the Buffy DVDs)

Joss got out of series TV before the big ugly transition to five and six act... and as Jill Golick points out in a couple of her posts on Dollhouse -- Whedon has, in fact, always made the most of pure four-act structure. In fact, his scripts for all his shows show you exactly what an elegant thing four act storytelling structure can be. As Golick puts it:

With only three act breaks to worry about, Whedon doesn’t have to force the drama up into unnatural cliffhanging pre-commercial moments. He gets into the story quickly and rolls it in out in four virtually equal-length segments.

By eliminating the short final scene or tag, Whedon can play out the real story right to the end, weaving together the final beats of the story with the final emotional moments, rather than playing them in separate scenes. This works really well for arced series like this one will be, where a single story is parsed out over the duration of the series.

There's a reason why his stuff inspires such diehard admiration, both from fanboys/girls (who may not geek out on the structure but grok the superior form of the storytelling) and scribes (who see how meticulous the story construction actually is.)

So, separate and apart from the interesting economics of this decision, Joss actually has a chance here to reclaim some of cable's coolness factor -- and if Dollhouse is a hit and more shows go back to four act, and 48 or 50 minutes, I will be the first one to line up and give all the Hosannahs to Whedon.

First he benefits from the birth of the weblet, then the calculus of DVD sales, now this. Either he's got St. Ann (Patron Saint of TV, don'tcha know) tied up in the basement, or being a nice guy does actually pay off in this business.

I'll take either one. Hope it works.