Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2015 3:13:30 GMT -5
–Watched an episode of Community. It was okay and I can see why it attracts a cult audience, but it wasn't for me. Can you please explain it to me, then? I liked the show quite a bit, but I cannot wrap my head around its cult of personality. What am I not seeing? icp: patty: pet: icp: gu: highlighted all the earlier parts that spoke to me the most and c/p quoted to make sure i'm not being too redundant. if i may throw my hat into the "What's the Deal with Community Fandom?" ring, i would say all of the above, plus this: my old avc bio, when we had those, said "i was raised by a pack of wild cathode ray tubes." i remember when dan harmon had Acceptable.TV and i loved the Sarah Silverman Program and my Rick and Morty avatar speaks for itself. i am in on that aforementioned frequency. i was to the frequency born. and since i am 6.5 years older than harmon, i can imagine having him as a baby brother, dragging him along with my actual little brother into a childhood of debauched late night tv watching and letter writing to get a dehydrated sponge or collapsible cup from david letterman, warning him against watching crap like married with children or the fresh prince of bel air, and boring him with stories of how dave used to have a morning show and tom snyder got really desperate toward the end and had insane guests like pedophiles and wayne cochran. all that exposure to the medium lent itself to being analyzed-- why scenes did/didn't work, why standup comedians' bits passed or failed. after a while, you got an ear, an eye, a feel for something being really great. mitchell hurwitz had a "failure" on nbc called Everything's Relative. i went nuts for it and wound up having an amazing phone conv. with a customer svc. rep who told me his wife taped it faithfully and even clued me into a Monkees reference i had missed-- one of those weird, real-life moments you can have all the time on the internet now, but pre-internet, there we were, strangers geeking out about a smart, funny tv show that was much smarter than the network would allow-- 5 eps. if you count the pilot. four years later we got Arrested Development, and nobody cared about what should have been a breakout role for kevin rahm in '99 with jill clayburgh and jeffrey tambor playing his parents, nobody but some random couple out there in tv land and yours truly. so along comes Community, a show who seems to know what it is. it really knows. it gets itself, and it gets you, and it knows that you are rooting for it not to suck. that doesn't mean it is guaranteed not to suck, it just means that when it fails, it will be an ambitious, beautiful failure.  the same reasons i love analyzing why bits work or not are the reasons i enjoy Community. additionally i would say the filmic/literary layers of Mad Men have to be appreciated in order to know the work in full. Mad Men has moved commenters to write multi-paragraph themes devoted to its allusions to cheever, matthew barney, kubrick, and the hemoclysm of modern american warfare and institutional violence. Community is the tv show about watching tv while Mad Men is the tv show about art being bastardized into commerce. Community knows that you are aware of the price you are paying by interacting with the most corrupt of all art forms, commercial television, and it will still respect you in the morning. i would further say that both MM and C know that Indicting the Audience is for neophytes and hypocrites. and as always, the bottom line of comedy is that it has to make me laugh. Community does. sometimes it does in ways that make me go online and converse with others, asking why was that so damn funny? b/c of the seeming mild intrusion the dialogue had on the overall episode, thinking about it later makes me scratch my head, while other moments are broader and explode with a gust of silver laughter that last so long i miss part of the show. and one last thing-- i have always loved keith david and paget brewster, and they are not wasted here. this week especially killed. E.T.A.: holy crap, this turned out to be my 2,000th post-- retroactively dedicated to odduck  |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Apr 22, 2015 3:57:49 GMT -5
I'm fine with this going full-on unpopular opinions thread on any subject. An attempt was made to have such a thread previously and though it survived for a while, it eventually was closed by the OP after turning into a bit of a shitshow because well, pop-culture is one thing but once you get disagreements on more profound moral/political issues things tend to go afoul even among a group of smart people. Tread lightly, friends. While I'm here I'll toss my own into the ring of course, first thing coming to mind being that I just will never understand the appeal of Bill Hicks. I've mused before that maybe it's a generational thing but I just couldn't find the comedy in any of his standup, the whole thing just came across like a guy who sounds like Alex Jones yelling his not particularly insightful opinions at max volume for an hour to a captive audience. Laughs were not had. I think it was actually closed in large part because near the end of devolved into shitting on other commenters, though I didn’t see the final few posts (and from what I understand it was only one or two people). There’s moral/political stuff into pop culture, too—I think one of the reasons it seems to be the primary response in the past couple of years is because it makes it a bit easier to defend one’s taste when you can tie it to a value system, and, even better, find things problematic with stuff one dislikes. Sometimes articulating why something doesn’t work is just so difficult—there are a lot of times where I just have to resort to “it just didn’t click”/“it just didn’t come together for me” because that’s all I can find. I've dabbled in commenting on the Dissolve. But it's a very small, close group, way more committed to having long conversations. Whenever I look in the comments I wonder how anyone has that much time to spend on it. I've also found it to be a rather sensitive/touchy place, with some pretty heated arguments and easily offended commenters; unlike AVC, which has (to my taste) a much more pleasant atmosphere of happy low-intensity bullshit. I like the AVC b/c I can drop in, make some jokes, and go back to work. I don’t know how anyone there has the time to watch so many movies—my main participation there tends to be in the “What We Watched Last Night” threads and I’m so surprised to always see people to have watched multiple movies in the previous weeknight, even people I know (from long-time AVC commenter heritage) people with jobs and families. I like the Dissolve and tend to oscillate between being AVC-primary and Dissolve-primary in my commenting, but both sites have the big problem of high overturn and dilution from use of freelancers. The former AVC film writers (and their respective voices) are less visible than last year as they take on more editorial rolls, Noel went back to being freelance (which has pluses for the AVC), they changed up Movie of the Week from being the thing that sets the theme for the week to basically a Tuesday feature (which messed with the timing of the discussions—one of the nice things about the Movie of the Week discussions is that they weren’t especially time-sensitive as comments would roll in over the day and the next day’s comments would build on the first’s). Their original News wirereel writer, Matt Singer, was actually pretty great, but he also left and I don’t feel his replacement(s?) really match his personality. There are a lot of freelancers, which dilutes the site’s voice (though at least they’ve finally hired Craig J. Clark to do some reviews). There are some weird dynamics in the site’s comments, too. There’s sometimes this undercurrent of passive-aggression, various commenters clearly don’t like one another, and I think Washington just deleted his account, which is kind of mind-blowing considering that he was one of the founding commenters at the Dissolve and had a long presence at the AVC. I think part of the seriousness comes from the fact that a huge percentage of people are or intend to work in film, criticism, or media academics while the AVC is more skewed towards people who want to kill downtime at work—it really is their job, so they take it seriously (though I think they made a mistake in tolerating the amount of self-promotion/read-my-blog in the comments, which has always been a bit taboo at the AVC). It’s also a smaller commenter pool, so there’s more variability. Conversely, I think the AVC’s comments have gotten more stable in the past few months as people are able to log in again (I’ve started seeing some of those low-frequency-but-long-lived commenters again), they’ve gotten more aggressive on trolls, and some of the newer commenters (particularly Powerthirteen and Delicious Waffle) have helped reestablish the rhythm that was lost after the redesign exodus. |
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Ice Cream Planet
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Post by Ice Cream Planet on Apr 22, 2015 8:56:19 GMT -5
Powerthirteen: Radiohead is one of my favorite bands and I love a lot of their albums, but when it comes that blending of alt-rock and electronica, I'll typically gravitate toward more poppy stuff like Garbage ( Version 2.0 is my choice for the best pop album of the 90s) or Curve. Roy Batty's Pet Dove: The other show, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, is one of my all-time TV favorites. It was a hilariously demented late-night soap opera parody from the 70s (it only ran two season, but there are 325 episodes because it would air five nights a week). It had Louise Lasser (who was phenomenal at the deadpan and the tragic) as suburban housewife who deals with everything from mass murders to low-flying airplanes to the existential horrors of waxy yellow build-up on her kitchen floor. The tone of the program was essentially 'Samuel Beckett as a serialized comedy-drama.' It's a great, massively underrated series, IMO. Jean-Luc Lemur: I'm bummed Craig J. Clark almost never comments on AVC these days, but good on him for getting some freelance work with TOS.
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Tellyfier
TI Pariah 
Unwarned and dangerous
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Post by Tellyfier on Apr 22, 2015 9:38:35 GMT -5
Saw the first ten minutes of Mad Men, just couldn't get through it, never tried again.
After soldiering through two seasons of GoT, I knew that the impression I already got from episode one was right: It's a daytime soap-opera with tits and gore.
I have no idea why people freak out over Kanye's music. Same goes for 'Run the Jewels'.
Haven't seen the last five or so episodes of Justified, but after six years of Timothy Oliphant being unbearably smug I just wish Boyd would beat the shit out of Raylan for an entire episode.
But what do I know, I actually think Ghosts of Mars is a fine movie.
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Post by Lemminkainen on Apr 22, 2015 9:59:58 GMT -5
It's okay to not like things.
Don't be a dick about it.
It's also okay to like things.
Don't be a dick about that, either.
Ego te absolvum.
Pax vobiscum.
(Also, I don't understand 80% of the Simpsons quotes I post - I just do it for the likes.)
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Dellarigg
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This is a public service announcement - with guitars
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Post by Dellarigg on Apr 22, 2015 10:18:43 GMT -5
The day I read my first page of Stephen King and/or really heard my first blast of electric guitar music (both happened around the age of 12) was the day I forgot all about Star Wars.
I occasionally watch superhero films, just to see what they're like, if they're on Netflix and I can't sleep, and I honestly can't tell why some are praised and some are slated: they're all of a muchness to me.
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Ice Cream Planet
AV Clubber
I get glimpses of the horror of normalcy.
Posts: 3,833
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Post by Ice Cream Planet on Apr 22, 2015 10:20:05 GMT -5
The day I read my first page of Stephen King and/or really heard my first blast of electric guitar music (both happened around the age of 12) was the day I forgot all about Star Wars. I occasionally watch superhero films, just to see what they're like, if they're on Netflix and I can't sleep, and I honestly can't tell why some are praised and some are slated: they're all of a muchness to me. Much of a muchness? |
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Dellarigg
AV Clubber
This is a public service announcement - with guitars
Posts: 7,634
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Post by Dellarigg on Apr 22, 2015 10:22:50 GMT -5
The day I read my first page of Stephen King and/or really heard my first blast of electric guitar music (both happened around the age of 12) was the day I forgot all about Star Wars. I occasionally watch superhero films, just to see what they're like, if they're on Netflix and I can't sleep, and I honestly can't tell why some are praised and some are slated: they're all of a muchness to me. Much of a muchness? I thought I'd nod towards the cliche rather than deploy it. This is a war, after all. |
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Post by Powerthirteen on Apr 22, 2015 10:52:01 GMT -5
There are some weird dynamics in the site’s comments, too. There’s sometimes this undercurrent of passive-aggression, various commenters clearly don’t like one another, and I think Washington just deleted his account, which is kind of mind-blowing considering that he was one of the founding commenters at the Dissolve and had a long presence at the AVC. I think part of the seriousness comes from the fact that a huge percentage of people are or intend to work in film, criticism, or media academics while the AVC is more skewed towards people who want to kill downtime at work—it really is their job, so they take it seriously (though I think they made a mistake in tolerating the amount of self-promotion/read-my-blog in the comments, which has always been a bit taboo at the AVC). It’s also a smaller commenter pool, so there’s more variability. Conversely, I think the AVC’s comments have gotten more stable in the past few months as people are able to log in again (I’ve started seeing some of those low-frequency-but-long-lived commenters again), they’ve gotten more aggressive on trolls, and some of the newer commenters (particularly Powerthirteen and Delicious Waffle) have helped reestablish the rhythm that was lost after the redesign exodus. Aw, thanks. Washington is gone? I thought I hadn't seen him in a while. He's a smart guy, but he seemed like his prickliness was out of place in a more touchy-feely environment like the Dissolve. I think you're on to something with the self-promotion though. I'm not necessarily opposed to it (although I have to say that most of the links I've bothered to click through were... not quite up to the Dissolve's level...), but it does serve to reinforce the sense that the comments there are almost their own site; the ongoing thing where people post their own reviews completely unrelated to the article do the same thing. |
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Apr 22, 2015 11:15:47 GMT -5
My two biggest ones:
-If it aired on HBO I've never seen it and will probably never put invest the money/effort into watching it.
-I don't think what TV shows you enjoy in your precious spare time really says a damn thing about you.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2015 12:46:54 GMT -5
My two biggest ones: -If it aired on HBO I've never seen it and will probably never put invest the money/effort into watching it. -I don't think what TV shows you enjoy in your precious spare time really says a damn thing about you. the 1st one: me too, until the internet, still not spending money, almost zero effort. the 2nd one: it says exactly what you want to do in your spare time, which can speak to weird phases, obsessions, a whole host of things, possibly completely benign-- i am of the camp that does not write people off for having such things until i come to certain conclusions like "oh, you're just a straight up nazi, i see," and by then it is too late! -- but i mostly agree  |
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heroboy
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Post by heroboy on Apr 22, 2015 12:48:55 GMT -5
-I don't think what TV shows you enjoy in your precious spare time really says a damn thing about you. Well, I know it's not fair to judge someone for watching, say, The Bachelor in their spare time, but I'll judge them anyways. |
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Post by Judkins Moaner on Apr 22, 2015 12:52:59 GMT -5
The day I read my first page of Stephen King and/or really heard my first blast of electric guitar music (both happened around the age of 12) was the day I forgot all about Star Wars. I love these epiphanies. "I owned a leather hat. I was a mess. "Then, in about 1979, I lost interest [in Tolkien/ Lord of the Rings]. Completely. And I remember exactly when and why: Someone played me the album London Calling by the Clash, both discs, both sides. "That's all it took." -- Kevin Murphy, A Year at the Movies (2002). |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Apr 22, 2015 12:54:45 GMT -5
My two biggest ones: -If it aired on HBO I've never seen it and will probably never put invest the money/effort into watching it. -I don't think what TV shows you enjoy in your precious spare time really says a damn thing about you. We steal our in-laws HBO Go password.  I have to disagree - I think how you choose to spend your free time does say something about you. But it doesn't say anything terribly deep or meaningful. And if you choose to not watch any TV, that also says something about you, but none of it is necessarily bad. |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Apr 22, 2015 14:28:49 GMT -5
There are some weird dynamics in the site’s comments, too. There’s sometimes this undercurrent of passive-aggression, various commenters clearly don’t like one another, and I think Washington just deleted his account, which is kind of mind-blowing considering that he was one of the founding commenters at the Dissolve and had a long presence at the AVC. I think part of the seriousness comes from the fact that a huge percentage of people are or intend to work in film, criticism, or media academics while the AVC is more skewed towards people who want to kill downtime at work—it really is their job, so they take it seriously (though I think they made a mistake in tolerating the amount of self-promotion/read-my-blog in the comments, which has always been a bit taboo at the AVC). It’s also a smaller commenter pool, so there’s more variability. Conversely, I think the AVC’s comments have gotten more stable in the past few months as people are able to log in again (I’ve started seeing some of those low-frequency-but-long-lived commenters again), they’ve gotten more aggressive on trolls, and some of the newer commenters (particularly Powerthirteen and Delicious Waffle) have helped reestablish the rhythm that was lost after the redesign exodus. Aw, thanks. Washington is gone? I thought I hadn't seen him in a while. He's a smart guy, but he seemed like his prickliness was out of place in a more touchy-feely environment like the Dissolve. I think you're on to something with the self-promotion though. I'm not necessarily opposed to it (although I have to say that most of the links I've bothered to click through were... not quite up to the Dissolve's level...), but it does serve to reinforce the sense that the comments there are almost their own site; the ongoing thing where people post their own reviews completely unrelated to the article do the same thing. As if to bear this out, I got in an extended tiff with someone over there for dissin’ ’MURICA and being A DUMB KRAUT WHO DISSES ’MURICA. Yeah, not going back to the Dissolve for a while. ETA: And I was just being massively trolled by someone who probably hasn’t finished college. Amazingly it’s the first time I have been since I started commenting on the AVC—I used to watch as [Commenter I Respect] and [Commenter I Respect] got sucked into a hole of arguing with an idiot or having their buttons obviously pushed, shaking my head. “Isn’t it obvious?” I thought to myself. And no, I learned, it isn’t. |
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Post by haysoos on Apr 22, 2015 14:36:50 GMT -5
I do think that what TV shows you enjoy does have some reflection of your values, beliefs, and overall worth as a human being.
For example, if I were to meet someone whose favourite shows were Toddlers & Tiaras, Glenn Beck, and anything with "Real Housewives" in front of it, I think I am fully justified in ignoring anything that person says to me forever and ever afterwards.
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Ice Cream Planet
AV Clubber
I get glimpses of the horror of normalcy.
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Post by Ice Cream Planet on Apr 22, 2015 14:37:26 GMT -5
Aw, thanks. Washington is gone? I thought I hadn't seen him in a while. He's a smart guy, but he seemed like his prickliness was out of place in a more touchy-feely environment like the Dissolve. I think you're on to something with the self-promotion though. I'm not necessarily opposed to it (although I have to say that most of the links I've bothered to click through were... not quite up to the Dissolve's level...), but it does serve to reinforce the sense that the comments there are almost their own site; the ongoing thing where people post their own reviews completely unrelated to the article do the same thing. As if to bear this out, I got in an extended tiff with someone over there for dissin’ ’MURICA and being A DUMB KRAUT WHO DISSES ’MURICA. Yeah, not going back to the Dissolve for a while. Jesus Christ. I just saw the thread, and man, fuck that guy. I'm sorry to had to deal with that. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2015 14:46:51 GMT -5
I do think that what TV shows you enjoy does have some reflection of your values, beliefs, and overall worth as a human being. For example, if I were to meet someone whose favourite shows were Toddlers & Tiaras, Glenn Beck, and anything with "Real Housewives" in front of it, I think I am fully justified in ignoring anything that person says to me forever and ever afterwards. right-- favorite being the distinction-- i would look askance at least i admit, but i still would not throw the baby out with the bathwater. people can still have interesting stories and be funny awesome weirdos-- they might even be the sort who only light up when they're drunk, but seemingly have no personality while sober. owl's example didn't lean on the word favorite, so i can allow that there may be some campy/ironic/comfort food reason a person may have something i just cannot stand in their steady diet of tv. and even if they don't have that excuse, if you have enough luxury or patience to really get to know someone, those little red flags may fade with time. but i can understand the need to move on. |
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Apr 22, 2015 14:59:36 GMT -5
I do think that what TV shows you enjoy does have some reflection of your values, beliefs, and overall worth as a human being. For example, if I were to meet someone whose favourite shows were Toddlers & Tiaras, Glenn Beck, and anything with "Real Housewives" in front of it, I think I am fully justified in ignoring anything that person says to me forever and ever afterwards. Certainly there are pieces of culture I would regard as something of a red flag if I found someone very passionate about them. I was more getting at that AVC commenting community mindset of "You really like Community, Marvel movies, and Star Trek? You must be a very similar person to me!". I just don't think that is all that true. It's the same problem I have with the ethos of things like The Nerdist or "manly" sports talk radio: people don't fit into neat little boxes based on their pop culture interests, at least not well-rounded people, and acting like they do annoys me. |
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Paleu
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Confirmed for neo-liberal shill.
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Post by Paleu on Apr 22, 2015 15:47:53 GMT -5
I do think that what TV shows you enjoy does have some reflection of your values, beliefs, and overall worth as a human being. For example, if I were to meet someone whose favourite shows were Toddlers & Tiaras, Glenn Beck, and anything with "Real Housewives" in front of it, I think I am fully justified in ignoring anything that person says to me forever and ever afterwards. Certainly there are pieces of culture I would regard as something of a red flag if I found someone very passionate about them. I was more getting at that AVC commenting community mindset of "You really like Community, Marvel movies, and Star Trek? You must be a very similar person to me!". I just don't think that is all that true. It's the same problem I have with the ethos of things like The Nerdist or "manly" sports talk radio: people don't fit into neat little boxes based on their pop culture interests, at least not well-rounded people, and acting like they do annoys me. Sort of building off of this, I hate being defined by singular or even multiple pop culture interests, and I'll never understand why people willingly align themselves with sports, or Star Trek, or anime, or Community like it defines their existence. That's a recipe for disaster and an unfulfilled life, at least imho, and I think the internet has only made it worse. |
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Apr 22, 2015 15:53:10 GMT -5
Certainly there are pieces of culture I would regard as something of a red flag if I found someone very passionate about them. I was more getting at that AVC commenting community mindset of "You really like Community, Marvel movies, and Star Trek? You must be a very similar person to me!". I just don't think that is all that true. It's the same problem I have with the ethos of things like The Nerdist or "manly" sports talk radio: people don't fit into neat little boxes based on their pop culture interests, at least not well-rounded people, and acting like they do annoys me. Sort of building off of this, I hate being defined by singular or even multiple pop culture interests, and I'll never understand why people willingly align themselves with sports, or Star Trek, or anime, or Community like it defines their existence. That's a recipe for disaster and an unfulfilled life, at least imho, and I think the internet has only made it worse. Oh for sure Paleu, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Maybe it's more of how people tend to present themselves online, but it does feel like the culture has abandoned the idea of being well-rounded with many interests and adopted this very teenage mentality of finding your clique and basing your entire identity off of it. I get why a site like the AV Club would project a very specific sense of itself to attract an audience, I don't understand how eager some people are to just wrap themselves in those banners and let it be who they are. |
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Post by HipsterDBag on Apr 22, 2015 18:05:29 GMT -5
My confession: I have come to realize that I do not have the patience for television serials.
Like, it used to be that I just watched HBO shows. But then last summer I never actually got around to watch the final half-seasons of Boardwalk Empire or True Blood, which I'd watched religiously before that, because I just couldn't be bothered. Right now, as we speak, I haven't watched the most recent Game of Thrones episode because I just can't be bothered.
Non-serial television is fine -- I watch Tosh and Amy Schumer and Archer and Key & Peele and it's all good. I just don't have the patience any more to wait for a resolution to a plot line coming weeks or months in the future, or alternatively to spend 20 straight hours watching it once the season has ended.
So all of those great t.v. shows I never watched -- Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Walking Dead, Sopranos, whatever -- yeah, I'm never gonna get around to those.
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Post by ComradePig on Apr 22, 2015 18:36:02 GMT -5
An attempt was made to have such a thread previously and though it survived for a while, it eventually was closed by the OP after turning into a bit of a shitshow because well, pop-culture is one thing but once you get disagreements on more profound moral/political issues things tend to go afoul even among a group of smart people. Tread lightly, friends. Was Al the OP? That sounds rightish but I honestly can't say I recall. |
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Apr 22, 2015 20:02:48 GMT -5
Aw, thanks. Washington is gone? I thought I hadn't seen him in a while. He's a smart guy, but he seemed like his prickliness was out of place in a more touchy-feely environment like the Dissolve. I think you're on to something with the self-promotion though. I'm not necessarily opposed to it (although I have to say that most of the links I've bothered to click through were... not quite up to the Dissolve's level...), but it does serve to reinforce the sense that the comments there are almost their own site; the ongoing thing where people post their own reviews completely unrelated to the article do the same thing. As if to bear this out, I got in an extended tiff with someone over there for dissin’ ’MURICA and being A DUMB KRAUT WHO DISSES ’MURICA. Yeah, not going back to the Dissolve for a while. ETA: And I was just being massively trolled by someone who probably hasn’t finished college. Amazingly it’s the first time I have been since I started commenting on the AVC—I used to watch as [Commenter I Respect] and [Commenter I Respect] got sucked into a hole of arguing with an idiot or having their buttons obviously pushed, shaking my head. “Isn’t it obvious?” I thought to myself. And no, I learned, it isn’t. Wait, you're from Germany? |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Apr 23, 2015 0:06:24 GMT -5
Roy Batty's Pet Dove Nope. If you don’t live in America you’re a Kraut in Dissolve world (which was the gist of my non-trolly replies, too).
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Post by Judkins Moaner on Apr 23, 2015 6:01:42 GMT -5
My confession: I have come to realize that I do not have the patience for television serials. I definitely feel a little fatigue from time to time. Part of this is that I want so much more out of my free time. If I don't spend part of every day writing, or getting some kind of exercise, or (now that Lent's over) reading, I feel like it's been wasted somehow. Now that I live in my own place, it's a lot easier to bingewatch, and I've done this with, at least, Boardwalk Empire and Nashville. I've recently been watching Life, with David Attenborough, and while it's awesome, I decided yesterday to take the unwatched episodes of Girls and Corner Gas back to the library and replace them with actual movies, which will leave me more time to do what I feel I need to do. I also get a little annoyed at how the rise of serial drama in the past twenty years or so seems to reflect a cultural prejudice in America, if not the world in general, in favor of the novel as a superior artform over the short story (i.e. new or old shows glowingly described as "novelistic," etc.). There's no real rational basis for this; I tend to be too automatically long-winded in my writing to initially keep to the short story format (mine usually end up that way after severe editing for length as well as quality), and it's still hard for me to get excited over, say, a new short story collection (for every Kelly Link, there's a George Saunders) as opposed to a new novel. I guess it's just the assumption of depth that I find irritating. Not sure why, but it's gotten me a little jaded over the serial format. |
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Apr 23, 2015 8:23:23 GMT -5
My confession: I have come to realize that I do not have the patience for television serials. Like, it used to be that I just watched HBO shows. But then last summer I never actually got around to watch the final half-seasons of Boardwalk Empire or True Blood, which I'd watched religiously before that, because I just couldn't be bothered. Right now, as we speak, I haven't watched the most recent Game of Thrones episode because I just can't be bothered. Non-serial television is fine -- I watch Tosh and Amy Schumer and Archer and Key & Peele and it's all good. I just don't have the patience any more to wait for a resolution to a plot line coming weeks or months in the future, or alternatively to spend 20 straight hours watching it once the season has ended. So all of those great t.v. shows I never watched -- Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Walking Dead, Sopranos, whatever -- yeah, I'm never gonna get around to those. I don't think this is all that uncommon HDB, especially when you're talking about the vaguely defined "prestige drama" genre. I can really only be bothered to keep up with one, maybe 2, of one of those parades of misery at a time, no matter how well done they may be. |
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Post by Liz n Dicksgiving on Apr 23, 2015 8:59:52 GMT -5
I don't think this is all that uncommon HDB, especially when you're talking about the vaguely defined "prestige drama" genre. I can really only be bothered to keep up with one, maybe 2, of one of those parades of misery at a time, no matter how well done they may be. "Parades of misery" is such a good way of putting it. I binge-watched the entirety of The Shield a few years ago, and I think that experience ruined all "prestige dramas" for me forever. I get that many of these shows are brilliantly crafted and full of artistic merit, but you know what? At the end of the day I just don't want to feel like I spent all my free time wallowing in the perpetual unhappiness of a bunch of people I don't like. And that's why I've never seen a minute of Breaking Bad, but have seen all the Step Up movies. |
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Ice Cream Planet
AV Clubber
I get glimpses of the horror of normalcy.
Posts: 3,833
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Post by Ice Cream Planet on Apr 23, 2015 9:32:11 GMT -5
I don't think this is all that uncommon HDB, especially when you're talking about the vaguely defined "prestige drama" genre. I can really only be bothered to keep up with one, maybe 2, of one of those parades of misery at a time, no matter how well done they may be. "Parades of misery" is such a good way of putting it. I binge-watched the entirety of The Shield a few years ago, and I think that experience ruined all "prestige dramas" for me forever. I get that many of these shows are brilliantly crafted and full of artistic merit, but you know what? At the end of the day I just don't want to feel like I spent all my free time wallowing in the perpetual unhappiness of a bunch of people I don't like. And that's why I've never seen a minute of Breaking Bad, but have seen all the Step Up movies. I'm the weirdo (according to some of my friends) who really loves depressing TV shows, but there are rules of engagement when it comes to them. It's a wallow in the miserable lives of a bunch of psychopaths, I have less tolerance than if it were just about characters who were likable but their storylines ventured into sadder territory. Hence, why I ultimately gave up on The Sopranos after two seasons (even though it does deserve all the acclaim for being a game-changer in television), but stuck around with Skins (the first two seasons I'll still argue were legitimately great television). Oh, and this is a good a place as any: I'm really sick of how the vast majority of 'prestige TV' is synonymous with 'dark' and 'cynical.' I like a lot of those shows, but God forbid any 'lighter' programming get similar acclaim. |
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Apr 23, 2015 9:42:00 GMT -5
"Parades of misery" is such a good way of putting it. I binge-watched the entirety of The Shield a few years ago, and I think that experience ruined all "prestige dramas" for me forever. I get that many of these shows are brilliantly crafted and full of artistic merit, but you know what? At the end of the day I just don't want to feel like I spent all my free time wallowing in the perpetual unhappiness of a bunch of people I don't like. And that's why I've never seen a minute of Breaking Bad, but have seen all the Step Up movies. I'm the weirdo (according to some of my friends) who really loves depressing TV shows, but there are rules of engagement when it comes to them. It's a wallow in the miserable lives of a bunch of psychopaths, I have less tolerance than if it were just about characters who were likable but their storylines ventured into sadder territory. Hence, why I ultimately gave up on The Sopranos after two seasons (even though it does deserve all the acclaim for being a game-changer in television), but stuck around with Skins (the first two seasons I'll still argue were legitimately great television). Oh, and this is a good a place as any: I'm really sick of how the vast majority of 'prestige TV' is synonymous with 'dark' and 'cynical.' I like a lot of those shows, but God forbid any 'lighter' programming get similar acclaim. I watch Game of Thrones and Hannibal and ... that might be it for the "prestige drama"? But I love Orange is the New Black, and that, while it can be dark, can also be really funny. I agree with others, I don't want to watch nothing but bad things happen to bad people. Or good people. Hannibal is pretty twisted, but there's some great dark humor, too. And I can only handle a few at a time and then I go back to watching Grey's Anatomy or reruns of Parks & Recreation. |
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