Harry's Law: Revisited

"Television, at its heart, is all about the story. And that's what I love. "

This pretentious self-quotation headlines my blog. It can be seen on every post, and in every link I make to the site on Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere. There's a reason I put the quote in a place of such high regard on this collection of thoughts. I give a lot of thought to stories. Trying to analyze what makes one good or bad, what makes one more interesting than another, where their power comes from and what kinds of messages they're being used to send.

Another matter I have considered quite a bit is what goes into a story, and realized that there are two key elements. These are what get criticized or praised depending on the quality of the tale. Good stories have both, bad stories have neither, and the mediocre have one or the other, sometimes in alteration.

The first is content. The second is method. The story told and the storytelling.

Harry's Law airs Wednesdays at 9:00pm Ea

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I have not been watching NBC's Harry's Law this season because of Hulu's ridiculousness. Well I have recently caught up on season 2 and am shocked at the dramatic change in the series this season. Both the content and the storytelling have dramatically shifted, and I have yet to determine if it's for the better or worse.

The show is still a law procedural, but the shoe store is more or less gone, as is Harry's central position as a lawyer for the poor and disenfranchised in the middle of inner city Cincinnati. Now she's just a lawyer handling tough cases that bring up questions of morality and social responsibility. Sound like any other law shows you can think of? How about all of them?

Wait... Harriet's law firm is associated with a shoe store?

The characters are different too. Of the original four main characters, only two remain. Malcolm is already gone and Brittany Snow's Jenna leaves by the end of episode four. Nate Corddry's character, Adam (which was the entire reason I kept watching this show in the first place) seems like an afterthought. So much so that his own character notes it in episode four, claiming he has been marginalized this season, appearing in the first few episodes only as a part time player. Insane Tommy Jefferson is back with a vengeance and last season's guest stars pop in and out, but there are also two new full time characters, Cassie and Ollie, who have been thrown into the show with almost laughably minimal backstory or explanation.

Basically overnight, the full time cast went from this:

  To this:

You may also have noticed a difference in the style of the cast photos above. It's because the style of the show has also shifted, towards the dramatic. Long camera shots linger on people's faces to show the "dramatic tension" at almost every beat in the narrative. The dialogue makes a wild stab at an attempt towards "natural speech," by having characters repeat every other line of their conversations, but it doesn't seem to serve any purpose, both because it doesn't feel natural at all, and because the rest of the show is so contrived that these moments seem out of place.

The once episodic show, with more or less standalone episodes, now airs in pairs or trios of episodic plot arcs, meaning if you miss one, you're not going to understand any of them without watching the almost two minute long "previously on" at the top of each episode. The light-hearted nature of the show, which originally led me to believe it was a parody, is completely gone, but the show still seems to be trying to maintain its "sense of humor" by having sweet old lady Kathy Bates constantly saying things that are as caustic and rough as possible, or by forcing absurdly characterized moments with Tommy.

Change is a natural part of television. As I've mentioned before, one of the greatest challenges it poses as a storytelling medium is its length which can be indefinite and expansive. I'm used to seeing good shows change tones or plot lines between seasons. Fringe would be a perfect example. In and of itself, change doesn't bother me. What does bother me is when I can't figure out why it's happening. What was wrong with Harry's Law in season 1 that David E. Kelley felt needed to be changed? And if it was wrong in the first place, why didn't NBC just cancel the show like so many of it's other failed one-season-wonders last year? More importantly than why, though, is the question of "Where?".

What direction are these changes trying to take the show, because right now it just seems disjointed and unsure of itself. Does anyone else have any idea what the show is trying to accomplish by making such sweeping and drastic changes?

Does anyone else actually watch this show too?

I enjoyed this, thought I'd share

http://boobtubedude.com/index.php/2011/10/20/theories/funny-business-critical-analysis-of-television-comedies-part-1/

Geekdom

It has been said that we are in the midst of a "new" age: The Age of the Geek. Shows like Big Bang Theory and Chuck, which idolize the nerd and make him a hero for the everyman, are common place. Now stories like Game of Thrones, which formerly were known only on the fringes of society are becoming mainstream. As we reach the apex of this age, all different forms of geekdom are colliding with each other, competing for their place on the fleeting throne of popularity. And in the game of thrones, you win or you die.

Today I finally watched last week's Big Bang Theory, which opened with Sheldon and Leonard debating whether or not to purchase a sword from the Game of Thrones. Among the arguments for not getting the sword were that it wasn't a great enough sword to start a collection with, when compared to something from "Lord of the Rings" or to Arthur's sword of legend, Excalibur. Immediately after the boys purchase the replica of the lesser mythological blade once wielded by bastard Jon Snow, Wil Wheaton, who played Ensign Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, enters the comic book shop and completes the geeky picture. It's a mash up moment of sci-fi and fantasy that creates a nerd's paradise. It's a moment the Big Bang Theory has managed to perfect.

This super geek moment came right on the heels of a marathon viewing my roommate and I had just finished during which we'd re-watched all of the "Lord of the Rings" movies, and the moment in the comic book shop rang particularly true for me. So I was inspired by the movies, the show, and the age of the geek to quote for you some of my favorite speeches. I call this small collection the Epics of Geekdom.

Enjoy.

"Don't play games with me. You just killed someone I like. That is not a safe place to stand. I'm the Doctor and you're in the biggest library in the universe. Look me up." - The Tenth Doctor (Doctor Who) 

"Men of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails. When we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. An hour of woe and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down. But it is not this day. This day we fight. By all that you hold dear on this good earth. I bid you stand! Men of the West!" - Aragorn ('Lord of the Rings: Return of the King)

"Well then, what shall we die for? You will listen to me. Listen! The brethren will still be looking to us, to the Black Pearl to lead, and what will they see? Frightened bilge rats aboard a derelict ship? No. They will see free men, and freedom. And what the enemy will see is the flash of our cannons. They will hear the ring of our swords and they will know what we can do! By the sweat of our brows and the strength of our backs and the courage of our hearts. Gentlemen, hoist the colors." - Elizabeth Swan ('Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End')

"Hello Stonehenge! Who takes the Pandorica takes the universe. But bad news everyone, 'cause guess who. You lot, you're all whizzing about. It's really very distracting. Could you all just stay still a minute because I! AM! TALKING! Now question of the hour is who's got the Pandorica. Answer: I do. Next question: Who's coming to take it from me? ... Come on! Look at me. No plan. No back up. No weapons worth a damn. Oh, and something else I don't have. Anything. To. Lose. So, if you're sitting up there in your silly little spaceship with all your silly little guns and you've got any plans on taking the Pandorica tonight, just remember who's standing in your way. Remember every black day I ever stopped you. And then. AND THEN! Do the smart thing. Let somebody else try first." - The Eleventh Doctor (Doctor Who)

"By rights we shouldn't even be here... but we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. Sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those are the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. The folk in those stories, they had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding onto something.... That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for." - Samwise Gamgee ("Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers")

Didn't see your Epic? See if it's featured here in this video.

Want to share your favorite geeky epic movie speech? Post a comment below!

Confession

I have a confession to make. Up until just recently, I have been hiding something from my friends and readers. I had a habit I've been rather ashamed of. As I imagine a drug addiction would feel, I found both enjoyment and shame in my habit. You see, I'd been watching certain videos, late at night in my darkened living room, after my roommate had gone to sleep...

No! Not that kind! Get your minds out of the gutter. I'm talking about ABC's new drama, Revenge.

And no, that's not a typo in the network name. The show, at first glance, looks like it belongs on ABC Family, Disney's soapy, cable network bastard child, or the CW, both known for shows about pretty people with the pettiest of problems. They are the tabloids of television shows. A complete lack of substance is made up for with flash and gossipy stories. For the most part, I find myself too much of a television snob to appreciate these kinds of shows, and so I shun them, as do many of the more serious professional television critics. So I almost didn't watch Revenge when its pilot aired this fall, because I felt like it was another CW creation, despite its broadcast network sire. The reason I didn't though, was a commitment I made to myself during premiere week last fall. I decided then that I would watch every new pilot on the four major broadcast networks, and decide for myself which shows I would continue to follow. And so I watched the pilot of Revenge.

I was instantly sucked in. Despite my arrogant claims of superiority, I succumb to a good bit of gossip as readily as any other human being, and this show felt like the best kind. It had love and lust, murder and betrayal, secrets on top of secrets, and a beautiful leading lady. At least if I was going to fall victim to a soapy show, I had picked one that was going to go all out. And so, reluctantly, I gave into myself and put on the second episode. By the end of episode two, I was still cringing as I watched, cursing myself for so deeply enjoying what I still believed to be a travesty of a television show.

The lead actress, while gorgeous, seemed talent-less, playing every scene she was in without emotion, her eyes completely dead of any connection to life, let alone to those around her. Both episodes had ended with flashback reveals to what I could only assume were supposed to be secret "surprise twist" moments in the episodes' plots, but were so integrally crucial to the basic concept of the show - that Amanda  was manipulating the lives of the Hamptonites to ruin them - that their absence seemed like a forgetful omission that I then glossed over. I assumed that somehow Amanda had caused Conrad Greyson's faux heart attack, and that it was an element of the plot that the writers just hadn't bothered to flush out. The entire take down was so well tied together that the end of episode reveal, that she had slipped in as a maid and drugged his soup, couldn't possibly have been a surprise to anyone.

And there were plenty of other little details that didn't seem right with the show, but for some reason, like the worst of highway side collisions, I found I just couldn't look away. Worse though, was that I was smiling as I watched. I couldn't figure out what it was about the show that kept me so enthralled, and so I assumed it was my baser mind coming to the fore, and overcoming my education and refined viewing palette. A possibility I had not considered was that my subconscious mind had recognized something that my conscious mind could not fathom. That this show had quite a bit of potential.

But when I put on the third episode, it started to dawn on me. Maybe this actress wasn't so terrible after all. It's possible that her dead, lifeless eyes are a character choice. After all, Amanda Clarke is dead inside. Psychotically so. It makes sense that this girl, while smiling, or looking embarrassed, or crying over her dead father, would never let the emotion touch her eyes, because all emotion is put on, and for show. The Hamptonites, so focused on appearances, don't notice what's lying in wait beneath the surface of Emily Thorne, but we do. It's actually the central point of the show, that the viewers can see what the people in the world can not, the inner workings of Amanda Clarke's mind. Maybe we're not just seeing it in her duplicitous actions and manipulative schemes. Maybe we're seeing it in her eyes.

As the third episode drew to a close, I noticed something else: a conspicuous lack of the poorly executed Leverage-esque end of episode reveal. This time, it seemed, the audience had been allowed to see all of Amanda's tactics in the order that they happened without the pitiful attempt at trickery displayed in the last two episodes. Thinking back, I realized that there had been a marked rise in the continuity of the plot in this episode as well. Whether or not it was simply because there didn't seem to be a chunk missing from the middle, I can't say for certain, but that's my opinion.

Apparently the head writer on Revenge, a man named Mike Kelley, recognized the problems with the show's format and made the appropriate changes. Kudos to Mr. Kelley, for doing what so few executive producers are willing to do with their shows. Change them.

After watching the fourth episode with my new, more positive outlook, I am becoming fully addicted, and loving it. I am no longer ashamed to like the show because, despite it's soapier surface tendencies, there is a high quality foundation at its base.

Now it seems that new rules have been established. Before now, Emily's take downs had been limited to people in the company picture in her locked chest. Now, apparently, anyone from Amanda's past associated with the dissolution of her childhood, whether directly involved in framing her father or not, are fair game. The playing field for Amanda's revenge has broadened, and the story is expanding with it. I'm curious to see if she ever makes a mistake, and takes down someone innocent of wrongdoing. Heck, I'm just curious to see what happens at all.

I had been worried that the show would have trouble reaching past its first season, both because of the limited number of people available to be taken down, and because of the already established ending which was provided for us in the opening minutes of the pilot episode. Now I'm content to just sit back and enjoy the ride, knowing that the story can sustain itself as long as the show can sustain its viewership.

Speaking of ... Speaking of

Brought to you, courtesy of Dan Harmon, the showrunner of NBC's Community

Heart

Television this week has been strong in the soul department. I just finished watching yesterday's Raising Hope, which found Burt offering Virginia the idealized Vegas wedding she'd dreamed of since she was a child. Meanwhile, Jimmy brought Sabrina along for the ride, hoping for a little "happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" type hanky panky. Instead, he spent the entire episode trying to help his father raise money for the perfect second wedding. Even at the end of the episode, he gives Sabrina her "wild" moment with a slow dance on the roof. It was truly adorable, and it was exactly the kind of heart melting comedy that Raising Hope has somehow managed to perfect.

At the core of the show is the Chance family, one of the most loyal, loving families on modern television. As Jimmy says to Sabrina in the episode, "you've only ever seen dad Jimmy. You've never seen sex in the back of the van with a serial killer Jimmy." But we, the viewers, have. What Raising Hope does weekly is give us a heartwarming story of love and fellowship, while subverting our expectations for comedic value. True, the show is a class comedy, and has its occasional poorly written (but never poorly executed) one liners about how hilarious uneducated people are, but nine times out of ten, the reason you laugh is because the unexpected, but never absurd, just surprised a laugh from your gut. Classic sitcom plot says the protagonist (Jimmy) takes his love interest (Sabrina) to a place of debauchery (Vegas) with the end goal being some sexy fun. In the end, he realizes he's a good guy and doesn't go through with it. You've seen it on Friends and How I Met Your Mother, and Chuck, just to name a few off the top of my head. It's the 'Superbad' plot, in a nutshell. Essentially, that's what happened in this episode, but it never felt like a cliche sitcom staple. It felt like a new story, because the episode wasn't about Jimmy. It was about Virginia, as so many of the best Raising Hope episodes are. I laughed so hard when Virginia showed up in spray-tanned black-face, despite the best efforts of my middle class white guilt and even harder when Burt actively commented on its all too predictable disappearance. Then I almost cried during the end-of-episode voice over (during a VOICE OVER!) as Burt and Virginia danced in the corner of the ballroom. The best episodes of television should make us do both, and sometimes I think we forget, and settle for a couple of half-hearted laughs, or a bit of suspense.

Speaking of suspense, I followed up my Raising Hope viewing by finally catching up on Castle, and this week's episode was a doozey. Castle is doing its damnedest to debunk my three season rule. The episode was great for Seamus Dever, who plays the less ethnic half of Beckett's team, Ryan. Once again, the episode started with some bad Castle puns about "concrete evidence" that reminded us of the show's goofy side, and then quickly took a spin for the dramatic when Ryan's stolen pistol turns out to be the murder weapon. The turn was so dramatic, that the show even attempted a subtly different title sequence. I don't know about the opinions of the rest of you, but I think that this might have been my favorite episode of Castle in the entire run of the series thus far. Certainly the strongest of the season, overthrowing my much praised former favorite, the season premiere.

It's been a good week for TV.

You know, if you ignore NBC.



That's not fair, I haven't watched Community yet. NBC might have an ace up its sleeve this week.

Or so my exploding Twitter feed would have me believe.

Lord of the Rings and Epic Storytelling

Recently, I have taken to rewatching Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings.' I'm on the second of the trilogy, and it actually makes me think of television.

I will defend television as the strongest visual medium of continuous storytelling, but film is the medium of the epic. And I don't mean that in the modern, "that was epic, dude," sense. I mean it in its historic context, that of a long poetic composition. I still get chills watching moments of 'Lord of the Rings,' like the elves arrival, link the moment of Gandalf's return, like the moment Treebeard declares, "The Ents are going to war. It is likely that we go to our doom. The last march of the Ents." These chilling moments are ones I never experience while watching Game of Thrones on HBO.

I attribute the difference in experience to two factors. The first is soundtrack. There is something grandiose about the scores to major motion pictures that the scores of television shows just can't hope to mimic. The second is a difference in scale. Over the course of ten episodes, Game of Thrones amounted to over 400 minutes, almost 7 hours, of air time, yet no single episode had more than 45 minutes to develop and build emotions. Then we were forced to wait a week to watch it again, and start the process over. If you've ever stood on the beach watching the waves build in the distance, only to have them reach the shore with little more force than the ebb and flow of the tide, then you have experienced the emotional arc of epic told in a television show. The emotions rise and build, but never quite have enough time to crest. I would be curious, now that all of Game of Thrones season one has aired, to watch them back to back, like a film, to see if it had any effect. Even without the weekly pause though, I feel like the broken structure of the individual episodes would still be a hindrance. 

As a side note: Talk about moving down in the world. Currently, I am watching the men of Rohan prepare Helm's Deep for the final stand against Saruman's Uruk Hai whilst Merry and Pippin beseech the Ents to join the wars of men. As I watched, I just realized that the actor playing Haldir, the elf captain who brings his archers to the aide of men, later played Darken Rahl in the independent show, Legend of the Seeker, which barely managed to eek out a hilarious two seasons before even its cult fanbase abandoned it as too ridiculous. It was one of my guilty pleasure shows in college, and I used to stay up late on Monday nights with a good friend of mine to watch it on the big screen television in my dorm lounge. I miss those nights sometimes. 

Time

I've come to realize lately that work keeps me from watching the television I'd like to. I was in the office until nine tonight, which meant that I missed both How I Met Your Mother, and Terra Nova out of hand. However, I was excited to get to see Castle when I got home.

Unfortunately, when I made it to my apartment, my roommate was watching a movie, which he had only just started. It was called 'Son of Rambow' and it was an adorable British film about two young boys and their adventures in film making and friendship. It reminded me of some of the films I saw when I took a film class in London, and made me remember how much I love British movies. I'll need to start trying to find some more of them in the near future. Maybe at the library?

Anyway, now it is 11:30pm, and instead of watching Terra Nova, How I Met Your Mother or Castle on the DVR, I am instead going to bed because I have to be at work at 9am tomorrow.

I'm not complaining. I absolutely love my job.

I just wish I had more time to watch TV. I haven't done a review of anything in a really long time. It's because I haven't had time to really analyze and enjoy any of the television episodes I do have time to watch, and instead, I've just been passively watching episodes of Lie to Me as I cook dinner, or spending thirty minutes before bed watching 2 Broke Girls then immediately passing out.

This must be how normal people watch TV.

Not a fan.

Scripted Life

Why can't real life be like television? Amusing problems arise every day, but resolve themselves by the end of a reasonably small amount of time. Strong, unbreakable friendships are formed between people that last indefinite amounts of time and withstand all tests and trials. You are forced out of your comfort zone in some sort of humorous way that allows you to grow and learn. The person you're meant to fall in love with is already within your immediate circle of acquaintances, and you know that even though it won't necessarily work out right away, it will work out eventually. Good triumphs over evil. Crimes never go unsolved. Doctors can diagnose and heal almost every ailment. 

It's a fantasy, I know this. But I still can't help but wish. I would love a scripted life. I imagine this is how every television critic feels, but maybe I'm alone in abnormality.

Of course if my life was scripted, I'd probably hate it.

'Cuz then my life would be Reality TV. 

Trickery

In addition to my many other ways of categorizing shows I like to watch, I also have what I call the "queuing" method. Some shows are Live. These are shows I watch as they air, on my television screen. Other shows are Hulu queue. These tend to be NBC and ABC shows. Ones that end up on Hulu within a day or two of when they air on television. Still other shows are DVR queue. These tend to be Fox and CBS shows. Ones that I don't need to watch live, but don't really want to wait the 8 days to see them on Hulu or the network website. And then there's Netflix queue. This tends to be reserved for shows that are no longer on the air. Shows I've heard tell of but, for whatever reason, didn't catch when they were on the air. 

It's a fairly simple system, and it keeps me from having to keep track of each of the dozens of shows I watch regularly. I check every queue at least once per day, and sometimes far more often, to see what new shows have popped in for my viewing pleasure, and to watch the ones that strike my fancy. Sometimes though, I am tricked by my Hulu queue, when I suddenly realize that a show I have favorited on Hulu isn't showing up in my queue. It's even more annoying when the show used to queue up without issue.

This is exactly what has happened with Harry's Law, an NBC drama (or parody if you follow my blog. See previous posts "New Show Review: Harry's Law" and "Update: Harry's Law"). It's a show I mainly watch to see Nate Corddry, an actor who I admire from Studio 60 that also happens to play a main role on the law procedural. Apparently, Hulu does not have the rights to make Harry's Law available for viewing at this time, and so it has stopped loading the videos in my queue. So now I'm fully three episodes behind on the series and I have no way of legally watching them, since I didn't know to set my DVR to queue them up for me instead. Now I'm not sure if I should bother. 

Once again it seems Hulu's contract negotiations have cost a major broadcast network to lose viewer for one of their shows. Even worse, it was already a show in a bit of trouble with viewership, and I'm sure I'm not the only one affected by this Hulu trickery. Sorry NBC.

On an unrelated note, it was a personal challenge to myself to see how many times I could use the word "queue" in one post. 

Answer: 11

Gossip

I apologize in advance. This post will have nothing to do with TV, but it's my blog, and "I do what I want," which I'm pretty sure is a South Park reference. So now it has to do with TV, at least in a peripheral way. So there.

I'd like to talk for a moment about Amanda Knox and her return to the city I too call home, Seattle. Whether or not you believe the girl to be innocent, we can all agree on one thing: The girl has been through an ordeal. She returned home today after spending four years in an Italian prison for a crime she has been acquitted of. After rushing out of Italy fleeing further persecution, she returned home and quite surprisingly spoke before the press.

At this press conference she expressed her gratitude for the support of nations, exhaustion from her experience, and relief that it is more or less over. Personally, I was impressed that she spoke at all, but as a part of the press conference, she and her family expressed a desire to rest and share some private time as a reunited whole.

In the 50 minute drive home, I was listening to the news, and for a solid thirty minutes I listened to a reporter on site in West Seattle at the house of Amanda's father, where the family was gathering to celebrate her return. The reporter asked any and every person present not a member of the press that she could get to a few questions. Without fail, everyone had the same response: We, and Amanda, are grateful, exhausted and relieved. The reporter would then ask one final question: Where is Amanda now? And without fail, the person being interviewed would chuckle and refuse to say. I am sure that if they had figured out where Amanda was hiding out, and asked her the same questions, her answers all would have been the same... again. Thirty minutes I listened to this nonsense, getting steadily angrier, before remembering that the radio in my car had a tuner dial, and I changed the station.

I was not mad at the family, or mad about their responses, I was mad at the so called reporters, who have deemed the harassment of a beleaguered family to be journalism.Whether or not Amanda is innocent, the family is, and they don't deserve the media frenzy that has been thrust upon them. The reporters have not, and will not, learn anything new, anything newsworthy, by talking to the family. If this story truly belongs in the news, the source will be the Italian courts, the effect of the case upon diplomatic relations, the future of the Italian prosecutor and how they will be driven or influenced by this case. There are many ways to make this news, but none of them are being investigated. They are being left behind in favor of the easier, more sensational gossip.

It might seem odd that someone who calls himself a critic and obsessively reads the publications of entertainment journalists would cry foul at gossip. After all, the reputation of Hollywood reporters are red carpet fashionistas and celebrity sexcapades. But there is a difference between gossip mongers and entertainment journalists. A journalist seeks and searches, trying to be the first to share a piece of information. An entertainment journalist will tell you when a new show is premiering, or if a certain show runner has started a new project. They give you news within the entertainment framework. A gossip pesters and prods, also trying to be the first upon a piece of information, but  to know it, for the sake of self satisfaction, not to share it, or enrich the world.

Granted, this is a fairly idealistic concept of the journalism profession, but I'm a fairly optimist person.

And I am sick to death of gossip.

Porn and Cryogenics

I just described the central plot points of this week's Castle....

Case and point.





Actually, the episode wasn't half bad. The twists were back up to standard Castle standards, marginally predictable but nothing you can't work with. The Alexis story line didn't feel outlandish and ridiculous, it felt like a real 17 year old perfectionist's kind of problem. The Castle/Beckett relationship had a couple little moments, like when they back-and-forthed their theory build over Laney's dead body. Plus, the whole situation with body freezing and beheading the corpse provided enough situational comedy to feel like an average Castle episode, even though we didn't get nearly enough crazy Castle theories.

All in all, a solid, standard episode of a solid, standard show, despite this blog post title.

Explanation vs Justification

Last night's Doctor Who finale was pretty solid. That's my review, in a nut shell. Instead of talking about the episode itself and what it set up for the future of Matt Smith's tenure as the Doctor, let's examine what it explained and justified, or didn't,  in past episodes.

Looking back at 'Let's Kill Hitler', Doctor Who's midseason premiere, it was a terrible episode. The titular character, Hitler, spent all of four minutes on screen, and was in no way critical to the plot of the episode. Basically they used Hitler as a draw to get the audience to tune in for the premiere, but then didn't know what to do with him in the actual episode. They arbitrarily introduced a new character, Mel, who supposedly had been a part of Rory and Amy's life since the beginning. So much so, that Amy names her daughter after this supposed bestie. All just so the writers could throw in a "surprise" of Amy and Rory's best friend actually being their half Time Lord daughter. Then, for no explicable reason, except perhaps to make the episode a "stand alone" in the Doctor Who canon, the writers introduced the Justice League, or whatever they were called. Humans miniaturized and travelling about in a robotic full sized humanoid righting the wrongs of time and space. Essentially a Doctor clone. To give them their own story, they gave us antibodies, which apparently kill intruders, but why the Justice League would bother creating them in the first place never really gets explained. All in all, the whole episode felt like a mash up of different plots and ideas that the writers had had for this season, but just never got time to get around to.

At least that's what I thought through most of the back half of the season. Until the finale last night.

Last night's finale explained the reason for Mel. For as long as we have known River, her timeline has run opposite the Doctor's, but since 'Let's Kill Hitler' it seems that their timelines have synced, or at least are running in the same direction now. This is important to explain away River's capture, then breeding to be a psycopathic killer, then apparent memory loss, then sudden love of the Doctor, all before we get to the end point where everything depends on River being madly in love with our favorite alien. This, in no way, was the best way to handle this. Just off the top of my head, I would suggest River's timeline continues running opposite the Doctor's, then the River we have all known, who loves the Doctor, could justify the disintegration of time without the complicated unneccesary Mel plot. The only downside to that plan is that we'd have to go through the entire back half of the season wondering what happened to little Melody Pond.... but it's not like we've never waited for an explanation in this series before.

The finale also explained the little robot wielding men. Basically they provide an alternate body for the Doctor to be in at the time of his "death." Explanation. But it doesn't justify the Justice League (or whatever they're called)'s existence. The writers had already given themselves an out for the Doctor's death by creating the Flesh Doctor in the first half of the season. Why, oh why, do we need THREE Doctor's running around in the universe? We don't, even if one of them has to die.

Basically, the flaws of 'Let's Kill Hitler' can all be explained by Stephen Moffat's need to get a lot of plot points that didn't really fit in anywhere in the later episodes into the canon before the finale to justify the overly complicated finale plot that we got to see. As any designer will tell you though, at a certain point, fancy and complicated does not always equal better. At some point, there's an elegance in simplicity, and too much complication just makes things feel cluttered.

Here's the thing though, Doctor Who has never been about the overarching seasonal plot, and it probably never should be. The different seasons do have their own plots: Bad Wolf, Torchwood, Doctor Donna, etc, but they're never the focus of the individual episodes. Typically speaking, each Doctor Who episode is a stand alone comedic piece of universal history for us to enjoy and then forget 90% of. Most of what makes the show such an enduring success is that it has never really tried to be more than a quirky niche sci fi comedy. If the writers want to branch out into serious dramatic television, then they're going to need some help. It's not a move I'd recommend in any case, but it seems to be the direction the show is trying to head.

And it scares me more than the Daleks and Cybermen combined.

Trust Me, I'm the Doctor

"Hello Stonehenge!"

"People assume that time is a straight progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey, stuff."

"I'm the Doctor and you're in the biggest library in the universe... look me up."

No seriously, look it up. If you're not one of the lucky few whose hearts I just warmed thinking about these great moments in cult television history, you should start watching Doctor Who. To those of you who rode that wave of feel-goodness right along with me, we need to be friends.

Doctor Who is a British sci fi show about a quirky alien who travels through all of time and space in a blue police box that's bigger on the inside. As he traverses the universe fighting monsters and saving civilizations he brings along a human companion that he can show off to. Companions come and go, as people do, but every once in a while, even the Doctor finds himself in an adventure too big even for his two hearts, and he gets himself killed. When that happens, he regenerates, fully healing himself and taking on a completely new body and personality in the process. The show is a cult hit that first came on the air in 1963 and went off again in 1989. A television movie was made in 1996, bringing the Doctor back to television for all of 89 minutes before going off the air again for almost another decade. In 2005, Doctor Who was revived, and brought back to the BBC. Since the revival, there have been three Doctors and four primary Companions. I think that's all the background you need, but if you don't watch the show, the entire revival is available on Netflix Instant, and I recommend checking the show out yourself, it's worth it, I promise.

On Companions
Several weeks ago, just before Doctor Who season 6.5 premiered on BBC America, I remember thinking to myself, 'You know self? Since the revival, no Doctor and Companion have ever shared more than a single season of television together.' It seemed odd to me that Matt Smith and Karen Gillan had spent so much time together travelling the Tardis, and I was starting to find too many things to complain about with Amy Pond. Now it seems that Amy and Rory's time with the Doctor is at an end, despite their underwhelmingly emotionless departure (which makes me believe she's not really done just yet), and while I'm sad to see the feisty red-head settle down to a quiet life at home, I'm pretty sure that I'm ready to move on. Maybe her departure seemed so emotionless because I know she'll be back for the Doctor's final moments.

I absolutely have loved Amy, as I love all the long term companions, but personally, I love the idea of the throwback Companion. Donna Noble was one, making her first appearance in an earlier David Tennant era Christmas special, as was her Grandfather, Wilfred Mott. Now we got to see Craig, the chubby footballer with the alien upstairs neighbor, get a chance to play with his good buddy the Doctor again. I'd much rather spend a full season getting to know a character, rather than trying to cram all of their development into a few short episodes, but I'm content to wait for companion number five if they keep giving me little throwback teasers like Craig. Also on my list for possible throwback companions would be the "beautiful girl" Sally Sparrow, or the bus flying Lady Christina, or the Doctor's own Daughter, Jenny.

On Matt Smith
With the Doctor's "final" death imminent in the Season 6 finale tonight, I find myself wondering if they're building towards a Doctor regeneration as well. After all, River Song, half time lord, was shot during HER regeneration, and it only made her stronger. Why couldn't the same theory be applied to a full time lord? I'm not the only person thinking this, of course, and the internet is alive with rumors and predictions on when and who the 12th Doctor will be when he steps into the game. (If you look beyond the story though, it seems Matt Smith has been signed on for another 14 episodes, so he's not officially going anywhere anytime soon. Karen and Arthur are both signed on for guest appearances also, so their time with the Doctor is not completely at an end either.)

Like I am content to wait for the story to naturally bring me a new companion, though, I'm also content to wait for a new Doctor. I've loved Matt Smith, every bit as much as I loved David Tennant, and I will be so sad to see him go. That said, the Doctor regenerates, it's a part of the story, and it's silly to get so attached to a particular Doctor that you get angry when his time playing with the humans comes to an end.

On Running
If I had one complaint about this season of Doctor Who it would be the conspicuous lack of running. Almost every episode in season one, Christopher Eccleston would take Billie Piper by the hand and they would go running down some street or corridor. Since 'The Impossible Astronaut,' it just seems like the Doctor doesn't run as much as he used to. His companions are still running like crazy though. Lately the Doctor and his companions have felt separate, like two different sub plots in each episode. Amy and Rory do one thing, the Doctor does another. For a perfect example, look to the season 6 episode 'Night Terrors.' Get the Doctor to run again, and I'll have very little to complain about.

"I'm the Doctor. Basically, run."

Where's My Happy Ending?

Yesterday marked the return to television of a show that I have come to enjoy quite a bit. It's not one of my favorites by any means, I won't be rushing out to buy the first season DVD set anytime soon, but if I happened to win them as a prize in some sort of contest, I wouldn't try to sell them on ebay either. I'm talking about ABC's second season comedy, Happy Endings.

Some of you may have missed the first season of Happy Endings entirely, since it sneaked in at the end of ABC's spring season. If you're one of those people, I'd highly recommend you give the show a try. It was kind of slow to start out, and I even described it once as a show that I kind of hated myself for liking. However, by the end of the season, I was looking forward to each new episode popping up in my Hulu queue. It's basically a Friends clone, about six friends hanging out, and how their relationships are changed forever when one of the group walks out on another at the altar. Interesting premise right? And it automatically killed any of the will-they-won't-they that made Ross and Rachel so annoying.

So anyway, back to season 2, which premiered last night. I have to say, I wasn't too impressed. There were some really great jokes thrown into the middle of the episode, like when Penny's random Neighbor #3 announced matter of factly that he had trained his cats to crawl through vents and open windows, but overall the episode didn't make me smile very much, let alone laugh. Also, it felt really out of place as both a season premiere, and even just as part of the second season at all. The first season of Happy Endings was aired out of order by ABC, and this second season premiere kind of felt like it belonged midway through season one as far as plot points and character development (such as it is in a 30 minute comedy).

I'm not too worried about the show as a whole though, because the first season, at the beginning, didn't really impress me either, but it grew on me. I'll let season 2 grow on me a bit as well, and we'll see where that takes us.

On a side note, television tells me that attractive twenty-somethings group together in evenly gendered packs of six. Where are my two awesome male friends and three super cool female friends?

Anyone in Seattle want a new friend?.... Anyone want to move to Seattle?

Be forewarned, I spend a lot of time watching TV.

Fall 2011

It will forever be known as the season of Background Noise.

Here are the new shows that have come out so far this season that I have seen:

The Playboy Club

2 Broke Girls

New Girl

Up All Night

Free Agents

Suburgatory

Charlie's Angels

and Whitney

Here are the new shows that have come out so far this season that I have seen that I would qualify as Background Noise:

The Playboy Club

2 Broke Girls

New Girl

Up All Night

Free Agents

Suburgatory

and Whitney

Here are the new shows that have come out so far this season that I have seen  that I would qualify as Bad:

Charlie's Angels

Here are the new shows that have come out so far this season that I have seen that I would qualify as new favorites:

Yeah.... Ya see what I mean?

Sell the Damn Horse

To appreciate a good story, you have to buy into the premise. It's a difficult reality of television as a story telling medium because it can be so easy to buy out. Maybe it's a particular actor who you can't see in any other role than her first, which is a problem I have on White Collar fairly regularly every time Elizabeth Burke shows up on the screen. Or maybe it's a particularly ridiculous plot point, like when the characters on Glee complain about being poor but then have three different sets of synchronized outfits in an episode.

Whatever the reason, buying into the basic premise of a story is key to getting the most out of it. I can continue to watch White Collar despite Kelly Kapowski's regular appearances because I can believe that Peter and Neal have a similar moral code even though on the surface they are so different. I continue to watch Glee because I can ignore the fact that the actors playing the supposed outcasts are all immensely popular celebrities. Buy the premise, buy the bit.

I have never had so much trouble buying the premise of shows as I am having with some of the new fall comedies this season.

CBS's Two Broke Girls centers around... well, two broke girls. One, the former socialite daughter of a Bernie Madoff esque corporate type who just lost all his money, the other the street savvy loner type with a biting wit, both living together in a tiny one bedroom apartment and trying to make it in New York while waitressing at a crappy diner in Brooklyn. On the distant horizon is the girls' loose plan of starting up their own cupcake business to make their big break in the world.Also, they have a horse in the back yard... First of all, it's a cupcake business, it's not going to make anyone filthy rich, but if they're so broke, why don't they just sell the damn horse for start up cash?

FOX's New Girl centers around Jess, played by Zoe Deschanel, a lovable dork of a girl who moves in with three new male roommates she met on the internet. There is nothing about this show that is believable. The boys live in a deluxe four bedroom apartment complete with a college dorm style in house bathroom, urinals, shower stalls and all. Jess moves in with these boys because she dumped her cheating tool of an ex-boyfriend, but let's be honest, nobody could ever cheat on the wonder that is Zoe Deschanel. The real kicker though is Jess' character. She's one of those mildly humorous but way over the top socially awkward stereotypes. It is impossible to believe that someone so beautiful has any trouble fitting in with the world around her. Just look at me, I'm only mildly attractive, and I've assimilated just fine.

Don't get me wrong though, I am actually quite enjoying both of these shows, and I'm working hard to really dig in, bite down (and any other metaphor for trying hard) and just believe the basic premises so that I can invest myself a little bit in the story going forward. I'm pretty sure that they will both be worth the effort.

And I hope 2 Broke Girls doesn't sell off the horse, because Chesnut (the horse) is probably my third favorite character on the show.

Maybe I should write my own show about a post-college theatre major living in Seattle and trying to make it on his own in the world of entertainment but spending his nights sitting on his couch writing a not-so-up-and-coming blog about serialized television. The show would probably be pretty boring, but at least it would have one thing going for it:

Premise bought.

Fluke or Follow Through?

For background on this post, you should read two of my previous blog posts entitled, "A Theory" and "The Exception that Proves the Rule." This will make a lot more sense if you have, as I intend to analyze this week's episode of Castle, the second of its fourth season, as it relates to my theory. Is this second episode part of a truly great fourth season that makes it an exception to my rule, or was the premiere a brilliant fluke that will only serve to heighten viewer disappointment as the rest of the season starts its rule-required post-third-season decline. 

Let's start keeping score. 

The worst part of tonight's Castle was having to watch the last three minutes of Dancing with the Stars while I waited for the episode to start. That said, there were a lot of groaner puns, plot "twists" not worth the name, and idiotic character choices made for the sake of drawing out the plot. In fact, the only turn of events I personally didn't see coming in this episode was the one Castle himself admits, "I did not see... coming." I was convinced it that the 2nd to final mislead would be the comic book store owner. We'll call the score 1 in favor of an ongoing strong fourth season to 1 against (in favor of a downward spiraling fourth season with a fluke of a good premiere). 

Starting at the beginning, I'd like to mention a moment that I liked: the opening Castle family interchange. Not the whole thing, just the part with Martha in Shakespearean attire. As a theatre professional, I could really relate to the idea of an old actress, far too aged to get away with playing the young ingenue, trying to play Desdemona. Pretty hilarious, and far too accurate. The rest of the Castle family back and forth was awkwardly forced and unnecessary family drama dug up from the grave to give Alexis some screen time. When I say "dug up from the grave" I mean that in an all but literal sense. The idea of Alexis going to college early, and Castle freaking out about it was a plot point late in season 3 that was laid to rest when our writer protagonist came to terms with her departure. We'll call it 1.5 for to 2 against, because the B plot of this episode was terrible, but it referenced Shakespeare, so I had to give it something. 

When the episode first started and I realized we were dealing with a superhero-esque vigilante, I decided I would start keeping track of nicknames that they gave the masked swordsman. Unfortunately, they only came up with a couple before they learned the character's real name, and started calling him by it instead. What I should have been tracking were awkward sword related puns. After the initial "that is so Game of Thrones" comment, an intelligent reference to another book related popular television series, nothing said about the sword or it's owner DIDN'T make me roll my eyes. It wouldn't have been so bad if they came from the goofy Fillion character, but most of them came from Beckett. We'll call the score 2 for to 3 against, because the Game of Thrones reference earned the positive column another half a point, but the terrible one liners were a truly large step in the wrong direction. 

In case you were wondering... Vigilante Nicknames: Conan the Barbarian, Sword of Justice, Captain Permafrost. Ok, that was the Captain, but still...

Playing Ryan and Esposito off of each other to get both sides of the classic "is a masked vigilante a hero or a nuisance" argument was pretty inspired. The two already have a natural brotherly back and forth, and with both of them swapping sides of the argument regularly throughout the episode, it made the tired premise seem fresh and interesting. We'll give it 3 to 3. 

I should probably address the issue of the most stereotypical character in the episode, who also turns out (big surprise) to be the murderer. Seriously? The Mob? And Tony the Butcher? .... that's even more cliche than the word choice in my blog entries. It was nice, though, having a final murderer that the viewers, even those supporting the vigilante lifestyle, could get behind getting behind bars. That makes the final score an even 4 to 4. 

The tie breaker will have to go to Beckett's secret comic book fetish. It seems like the kind of thing that the writers would throw in just to get the laugh, but with Beckett's own comic-book-like back story and her already established secret obsession with Castle's 'Derek Storm' repertoire, it actually made sense for her character. So we'll call it 4.5 to 4. 

All that means is I'm going to withhold judgement until next week, but I have to say Castle, I'm disappointed. Episode three will have to be pretty great to make me believe you've got a chance to justify your fourth season.

Of course, I'll be watching until the day the show is cancelled anyway, even if it runs for another 4 seasons, so I really shouldn't judge. 

Seattle Preview Screening

The benefits of using Twitter are pretty constant if you follow the right people. You get to read news as it's happening, from anywhere in the world. You get to share opinions on your favorite topics, like television or theatrical arts. And you get to hear about events in your area that you would never have known where happening.

Like this one:
http://suburgatory.eventbrite.com/

I just saw one of the television critics I follow tweet a link to this event with a simple description of "Seattle Preview Screening." In that tiny description were three words that interested me greatly. Now, I'll be going tomorrow to watch a show I have barely heard anything about with other fans of television. Hopefully some of them will be fans of tv with a level of obsession that mirrors my own. It would be nice to meet some people in my city with my same passion for the screen. The show might be awful, or brilliant, I'm really not sure, but I'm looking forward to watching it all the same. That's the beauty of fall premieres. You  never know what you're going to get!

If you're in the Seattle area, sign up for a ticket, and let me know that you're coming. I'd love to see/meet you there!

Netflix

There's a lot of people on the internet talking about Netflix right now, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. Most people are talking about Netflix because of CEO Reed Hastings' colossal blunder separating both services of Netflix's business, the online streaming from the DVD by mail, based on an arbitrary and ancient business model. I'm not going to say anything about that though, other than what my choice of adjectives and nouns in that last sentence may or may not relay.

Instead, I want to mention that I'm late to this Netflix ball game. I never subscribed myself, didn't think I could afford it. Or rather, I didn't think that the service provided was worth the constant outgoing cash flow. It wasn't until I moved in with my current roommate, and current Netflix subscriber, that I realized just how stupid I've been.

In the past four months of living here I have watched full series runs of several old shows that I've never heard of before, or shows from my childhood that I'd nearly forgotten. Right now, as we speak, I am watching Star Trek: Enterprise a show that I used to watch with my mother as a kid. I've watched full seasons of shows currently on the air, that I'd never seen but had meant to start watching. It's kind of nice to have this library of television shows at my fingertips. Every once in a while I'll find a new show and add it to my instant queue, which is filling up fast. It's like having a fully stocked DVR waiting for me every time I come home, with new shows added fairly often. I don't know if I'll ever get through half of the stuff I want to watch.

Best part? Since I only use Netflix instant anyways, I'm not affected by the sweeping changes Netflix is making to their business model. Those of us us on this half of the divide even get to keep the name. A household name. One of perhaps 100 company names that everyone in the country knows. It's stupid to think that Netflix is going to fall apart as a company just because they have no faith in the DVD by mail half of their company and want to disassociate their brand from it, for when it goes bust in five years.

So why is everyone else complaining? I kinda feel like buying some stock in Netflix, because I don't feel like it's going anywhere anytime soon.

Facebook though, now there's a company we should all be worried about...

Wait, what?

Background Noise

Everyone know that there are good television shows and bad television shows. Which shows fall into which list is a matter for popular discussion, and some would even argue that the shows in the former are only marginally better than the latter, but it would be difficult to deny that both categories exist. 

I'd like to break it down again, and say that there are two types of good television shows.

First, there are the Favorite television shows. These are the shows that you sit down to watch. You invest yourself in the characters, or the plot, or even just the excitement and suspense, but you tune in as often as possible, even if it isn't possible to watch every week, to see the story unfold. This list tends to be pretty small for anyone, and for the casual television viewer, this list might only have one show on it. For me, they are the shows that I try to make an effort to watch live, partially out of a knowingly false sense of helping the shows ratings, and partially because I don't want to wait to watch them later. On my list of favorite television shows currently on the air are White Collar, Community, Raising Hope, Falling Skies, and Castle. I watch dozens of television shows regularly, all of which I would consider "good," but that's the extent of my Favorites. 

The other type of good television show is the one I call Background Noise. Other good names for them would be distractions, time wasters, or channel-flippers. These are the shows you watch if it happens to be on the television as you're holding the channel up button on your remote. This list can be much more sizable. On my list of Background Noise would be How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory, Suits, Modern Family, and even Glee among many others. For me, these are the shows I subscribe to on my DVR and on Hulu, that I watch every week because they pop up in my queue, or because they are taking up space on my DVR hard drive. They're the shows you put on in the background while you're surfing facebook, or writing your blog. In fact, I'm watching Lie to Me on Netflix right now as I'm writing this. I'm still following the story, I'm just not particularly invested in it, and if I miss a line or two of the dialogue along the way, that's not the end of the world. I'll still enjoy the episode. 

The way I'm describing them, it would be easy to mistake this second subcategory for bad television shows, but they aren't. I watch them week after week because I enjoy them (or in the case of Glee, can't stand that I enjoy them). They are still good television shows in my mind. I know, because I still watch them, and I certainly don't watch everything. Most people don't watch their Background Noise list quite as religiously as I do, but that doesn't make them bad shows either. 

Bad shows would be Two and a Half Men, before or after Ashton Kutcher. Bad shows would be True Blood, even if you claim you watch it for the mythology. These are the shows that make you change the channel when you see them on the screen. To make the distinction clear, I mock fans of Glee and True Blood with equal passion, but at the end of the night I go home and I watch Glee. Glee will never be on my list of favorite shows, and I'll probably never watch another live episode again after the post-superbowl catastrophe last year, but that doesn't make it a bad show. If it was, I'd be able to avoid it a little better than I do now. 

That said, I still haven't watched the Season 3 premiere yet, so we'll see what happens.

The Exception that Proves the Rule*

Yesterday I wrote a piece about a theory of mine, that basically declares that a television show, no matter how good it may be, should be cut off after 3 seasons to avoid ruining the story.

Today I'd like to talk for a minute about a show whose third season finale and fourth season premiere have left me with the impression that I might have found the exception to my wide sweeping rule, ABC's cop procedural romance Castle.

Most shows have a central storyline with an arc that can only be sustained for 2 or 3 seasons before the plot line either has to draw to a close, or be given up on completely. In a romance, this central arc is usually the building and forming of a relationship between the male and female leads. Castle is no exception. It's a fairly simple premise though, and you'd be correct in thinking that if the conclusion of a series' core plot is dependent only on two attractive people sleeping together, a series shouldn't last more than a few days in TV time, or maybe two or three episodes in ours.

Most romantic television shows try to draw out this simple storyline with what is colloquially known as "will they won't they" drama. It's a lot like watching middle school children try to form a real, lasting, meaningful relationship, and it's every bit as obnoxious and annoying. I'll point to another of my regular shows, NBC's Chuck, to illustrate this point. In the very first episode, it becomes obvious that the title character, lovable nerd Chuck Bartowski, has fallen in love with his female CIA handler, Sarah Walker. Within three episodes of the series premiere, it becomes obvious to the viewers that Sarah has also fallen in love with Chuck. So by episode four, they should be sleeping together, right? Well we all know that isn't how this game is played on television. Instead, it takes Chuck and Sarah all of three seasons before they finally acknowledge their love for each other and sleep together. By the end of the first season, all but the most die hard Chuck fans had grown tired of the "will they won't they" and those who still watched the show only did so because of the quirky spy capers that were the bulk of individual episodes and basically served as a backdrop to throw Chuck and Sarah into awkward situations that would make Chuck realize once again just how much he loved Sarah.

Back to Castle, whose show runner has publicly stated that his comedic crime procedural is, at its heart, a love story. What's amazing though, is that there is none of the "will they won't they" tension we see in Chuck. I've already written about this aspect of Castle though, and if you're interested, you should check out February's post entitled "Castle's Couple."

Instead of focusing on the central romance, Castle focuses on the crime stories in the individual episodes, and uses the mystery of Beckett's mothers death as the seasonal through-line. Rick Castle's love for Kate Beckett drives a lot of his actions and decisions, but his affections are rarely highlighted and even more rarely spoken of aloud. With that in mind, it stands to reason that this mystery would replace the romance as the central plot device, and therefore have played itself out after three seasons. What's interesting though is that Kate's mother's death in Season 1 was not necessarily a plot point, but rather, simply a character device. It was a little piece of background for Detective Beckett's character, not anything that motivated anyone to move from plot point to plot point. It wasn't until season 2 that her mothers' death became an actual storyline.

Castle survived its first season by relying on Nathan Fillion (who plays the title character, Richard Castle) and his quirky charm and considerable fan base. Essentially, season one was a gimme, and the show really started in season two. So here we are at the start of Season 4, but plot wise, it's really the start of Season 3. The mystery of Kate's mother's death has led Beckett and Castle to a conspiracy that extended right into their daily lives with the season finale reveal that Captain Montgomery was partially responsible. It even felt like a second season finale. The main story comes to a head, and we've got one more season to wind it down and tie up the loose ends. I'd put money on the fact that by the end of the fourth season, Beckett's mother's murder will have been resolved, or if it hasn't it will have started to feel unnecessarily drawn out. And Beckett herself has stated that the internal walls she put up after her mother's death are the only thing keeping her from a true and lasting relationship, which means once the mystery resolves, so should the romance.

By keeping the romance at the heart of the show, but never in focus, Castle's writers have managed to extend the life of their show beyond my law of diminishing quality. It's fourth season premiere was darker than what Castle fans are used to seeing, but it eased nicely out of the high drama that the third season cliffhanger left us with. Now we've got another season of goofy Nathan Fillion and stoic Stana Katic crime solving to tide us over while little pieces of the major mystery pop in at the end of each episode to tie them all together into a season. The question is, what happens at the end of Season 4? Will it prove my rule, assuming we ignore the misplaced first season?

Here's hoping that Castle's writers either know when to quit, or know how to prove me wrong.



*I feel it is worth mentioning that there are some exceptions to my rule that don't prove it, they are actually true exceptions. Any chapter of the Star Trek franchise is a good example, as is BBC's Doctor Who, both of which survive beyond the three season limit by not trying to be anything more than what they are, a niche market guilty pleasure, and I say that as a huge fan of both. What do you think? Are there other exceptions?

A Theory

I have a theory.

Middle school English tells us that every story must have three things: a beginning, a middle and an end. The thing about television that makes it a challenging story telling medium is that the ending is always uncertain. The writers rarely have any idea how long their show will be on the air. Sometimes this causes problems when a show gets cancelled before the writers were expecting resulting in unresolved cliffhangers and unfinished characters. This is the common complaint of television viewers whose favorite show gets "cancelled before its time." Sometimes, though, television's lack of a certain end point causes problems when a show goes on far beyond the limits of the story and its premise. Lost is a perfect example of a show that fits this mold.

It is this second category that leads to my theory: Good television show should be given three seasons, no more. If, at the end of a third season, a television show truly feels strong enough to deserve something more, they should be given a movie deal to give the series one last, but finite, story. The ideal Arrested Development deal, if you will.

Before everyone tells me that networks would never go for this model, that it doesn't result in maximum profitability, let me assure you that I understand this. I'm not suggesting this as a realistic idea, but really as a quality based-ideal. Although, as Jordan McDeere says in Studio 60, "quality is not anathema of profit," so maybe it's more logical than I give it credit for.

By giving the writers of popular television shows a finite end point, it solves two problems.

First, it provides a sense of focus by limiting the stories that a series has time to tell. Writers can focus on the heart of their show without worrying about having to fill time with extraneous characters or subplots that exist solely to provide a later plot twist or cliffhanger. Any ABC Family show tends to have this kind of problem, but if you want a more mainstream example, just look at Glee. Just speaking in general terms, it's a show with characters and stories that exist purely as a device to move from song to big dramatic moment to song. More specifically though, looking back at all of Season 2, Mercedes and Santana's plot lines were perfect examples of this kind of waste of air time.  Now that the show runners have announced that Season 3 will have fewer guest stars and less singing to focus on the quality of the plot and characters, I feel justified criticizing them for their... well, their plot and characters.

Secondly, limiting a show to three seasons gives it a guaranteed ending. Sounds obvious, right? It is. Gone would be the days of cliffhangers at the end of shows' final seasons. No longer would shows like The Office be allowed to stumble off into the future desperately trying to find stories to tell after every major character has completed their arc. Jim and Pam are married with a child, Michael has left the office, and even Dwight managed to run the place for a day. The story has ended, even if the show continues to move forward.

Shows like The Office or Lost which are allowed to drag on long after their initial premise has worn out, only serve to dull their brilliance. Viewers look back at both of those shows now, initially praised and cheered for their greatness, and remember them, at best, as just above mediocre.

Of course, there is always an exception that proves the rule... But we'll talk about that tomorrow.

And We're Back

Today was an excellent day. Let me tell you why.

1) It was the first day of classes. After almost two months of intense preparation, we kicked off our school year program at work today. The students arrived with that air of nervous excitement that kids only get on the first day of school, and I realized just how much fun this year is going to be.

2) It was the kick off day of premiere week, when all the major broadcast networks air season premieres of returning shows and pilots of purchased new ones that they hope will keep viewers' DVRs full to bursting with their company logo. As part of this momentous day, NBC, ABC and FOX kicked it off with two hour blasts of their front runners in "illiterate programming." I'm sorry, I mean "alternative" or "reality" programming. (For those of you who got the Studio 60 reference that I just made, you are the core of my audience, thank you.) CBS, though, did it right and kicked off their week of new shows with an hour long premiere of their half-hour comedy, How I Met Your Mother. The "hour long" premiere was really just two episodes aired back to back, but they were nicely tied together with continuous story, callback jokes, and a self-mockery of the show's style that I found highly amusing. Not to mention that the twist ending of the second episode nearly had me crying with excitement. My own love life all too often mirrors Ted's. Not in the sweeping general sense that all hopeless romantics follow a similar track of love and loss, but in the much more specific "I just lived that plot line point for point 3 days ago" kind of way. The chance for Ted to get a second chance on his 2am disaster is almost too exciting for words. 

CBS then followed up their most beloved comedy with their most controversial one, airing Ashton Kutcher's return to television on the heels of Charlie Sheen's (character's) death - I really hope somebody finds this blog post after google searching "Charlie Sheen Death." I'll be checking the Stats section of this blog religiously for the next few days - and I have to admit, today marked the first day I've watched an entire episode of Two and a Half Men. Even though I know Nielsen wasn't counting my screen, I was happy to contribute to that look-in-audience tonight. I probably won't tune in next week, but it did manage to make me laugh a little more than I thought it would. 

Then it was onto the first new pilot of the week, 2 Broke Girls. After hearing good things about the actresses in the title roles, and the multi-camera approach with an actual live studio audience, I was eager to give this show a try. As a storyteller who chose theatre as his medium because of the live audience interaction, I was intrigued by the network risk taken in returning to true laughs from the canned hysterics affectionately called "the laugh track." The show didn't knock me off of my feet, but I'm happy to say I'll probably be tuning in for that one again next week, especially since it's airing right after How I Met Your Mother, so I won't have to carefully dodge Two and a Half Men in the middle to keep from being part of that statistic again. 

CBS followed 2 Broke Girls with Hawaii 5-0, and I followed by changing the channel over to ABC for the very dark premiere of Castle. I'd go into the writing brilliance that went into the opening episode, but it's 1am, and I would like to do it justice if I do it at all. That's what she said. We'll see if it makes it into tomorrow's post. Which brings me to my third and final reason why it was a good day.

3) It marked the return of my daily blog. I'm excited to challenge myself this year. I want to see if I can do the daily "article," and do it well enough to justify the return of my meager but loyal following, on top of a full time job. I considered making this a five day a week thing, as I don't plan to watch much on the weekends, and I'd like to have a chance to relax every so often, but I know if I give myself that inch, I'll surely take the mile. So instead I'll set the bar as high as I can set it and I'll see you back here every day for the next few months. 

As a good friend of mine once said in response to a complaint of, "you raised the bar a little high." 

"Did I? I raised the bar high? Sorry. Clear it." [elevator doors shut]

A Return to Glory

*Note* As Always: Spoilers Abound! You have been warned.

Since I plan to spend most of this entry raving about the season opener of White Collar, I feel like I should make a confession in honor of the attempt towards neutrality that I proclaimed in my last post. I was dreading the season three opener that aired this week. Now don't get me wrong, there was no single episode of television I have more anxiously anticipated than this premiere, but I was so upset by the fact that Peter and Neal were going to be at odds again after what I had considered two long seasons of trust building exercises for televisions greatest bromance. So much of what makes White Collar great is the steady, if not always smooth, relationship between our suave conman and stoic agent. After watching the episode, though, my fears have been proven groundless. Although to be fair, they weren't proven groundless until the very end of the episode, and it would probably be better to start at the beginning anyway.

Let's begin where every great episode of series based television begins: with the "previously on..." It's the blessing and the curse of serial television. It is a tacky device that always feels cheap and out of place in a well written series, but it is a necessary construct that allows a show so heavily based on a continuing story line evolving out of past developments to draw in a new audience who may be unfamiliar with the canon. In addition to its necessity, it serves as a quick and easy way for writer's to focus viewer attention on specific past events that will be important to the upcoming episode. For example, the "previously on..." for this episode didn't tell us anything about, say, Neal's arch-rival Keller, only a little bit about Vincent Adler, and a whole lot about the Nazi treasure trove. This makes sense, as the episode centered on the stolen U-Boat treasure, and a peripheral awareness of Vincent Adler is required to understand why Neal and Peter are involved at all in the first place, but as Keller plays no part in anything happening in the episode, his back story with Neal and Peter is irrelevant and ignored. I realize that I'm probably making a great effort to explain what seems like a basic principle of television that even a middle schooler (and maybe even a well educated elementary schooler) inherently understands. 

The rules of the "previously on..." are so well established that it stood out enormously upon my second viewing when the writers betrayed this very basic principle of the convention. Which brings me to my first criticism of the episode. Why, in the pre-episode tool used to focus us on important information to the episode, was Neal's new relationship with Sarah so heavily referenced? Sarah's screen time in the episode amounted to less than June's daughter, a character we haven't seen since the pilot. Now I love Sarah's character and her (bound to be) short-lived relationship with Caffrey, but she was completely irrelevant to the episode. Her one scene with Neal seemed tacked on merely as a way to include the newly promoted series regular in the episode. 

Since I'm already moving forward, we'll talk about the actual episode itself, starting with the too-clever-by-half opening mislead. It's a mislead that everyone who has any knowledge of the show and its characters instantly knows is a mislead and anyone who doesn't know it doesn't care enough to be invested. How do we know that it's a mislead? Because the premiere has to end with Neal and Peter (at least on face value) still on the same side. If they aren't, then the whole premise of the show changes at the outset of Season 3, and that's a risk that no showrunner is willing to take, especially with a show that's had as much success as White Collar. Plus, even if you didn't think quite so meta-critically, you might have noticed how carefully crafted the shots are in the opening to not reveal anything other than what you're supposed to be seeing. Like I said, the opening mislead is too clever for its own good. It's too exciting and too controlled to be real. Nevertheless, I loved watching Mozzie in his Amelia Earhart get up(a joke I'm really glad that Peter got to make at the end of the episode) trying to escape from the fleet of black SUVs.

I've already mentioned my thoughts on Sarah's inclusion in the episode, so I'll let that part slide and skip forward to the premise of the episode. I'm not sure if it's Neal or the writers who have finally decided that enough is enough and put Kate to bed, but there was not a single mention of Caffrey's former love interest in the entire episode. While I'm sad that her true and final death means the writers did not explore their most interesting (if overly dramatic) option, I'm proud of them for sticking to their guns, at least for one whole episode, and laying her to rest. It seems like the new story through-arch will be more than enough to carry our romantic con-man because when you get right down to it, his true love is the thrill of the score, and the Nazi plunder is his biggest, best and final.... If he can get away with it.

Which brings us to the point that I was making at the beginning of this article. I am no longer dreading upcoming episodes of White Collar. Eastin has done a masterful job of reminding his audience that the distrust between our two heroes is nothing new. In Season 1 it was a natural distrust between respected former enemies turned partners. In Season 2 it was Neal's quest for closure that kept him from ever truly opening up to 'the suit.' Now in Season 3, the secret treasure trove slips seamlessly into that spot as the point of contention between two people who would likely be best friends were the circumstances a little different.

I'm ready to watch Caffrey circumvent Burke's supervision at every turn, content to know that it's the way things are done on White Collar, and that while things have changed just enough to keep them interesting, it's still the same ol' buddy cop dramedy I've come to know and love.

I'm excited to see if they can top it tonight. 

Welcome Back

Alright my avid readers, let's see if I have the mental capacity to work a full time job that requires me to regularly work 10 hour days, still watch three plus hours of television, and then spend another hour writing about it. It will be tough, but I think I'm up for the challenge. Plus, I feel like television has become my middle child. My brain has been pretty actively focused on my first born -theatre- and my new baby -paying bills- lately. I think it's about time that television got its fair shot again.

Tonight marks the second season premiere of one of my favorite summer shows, Covert Affairs about a pretty young CIA operative struggling to balance her personal life with her professional one. It sounds a little contrived, and that's because it is, but it's a feel good spy show with easy-on-the-eyes female talent, and I'm a sucker for those.

Tonight also marks the third season premiere of my favorite television currently on the air, beating out such gems as Community, Happy Endings, and Raising Hope. I am, of course, talking about Jeff Eastin's nearly brilliant brain child, White Collar. This season I am determined to not let my love of the show white wash my editorials. I'll try to be more critical of poor writing decisions than I have in the past, or at least justify myself when I wax poetical about how great the show is. Hopefully, the fact that I no longer have access to a cable package with USA on it will help to stem the flow of my enthusiasm since I will not be able to watch the episodes live. My theories will now be a day late and a dollar short, so maybe I won't fall in love with them so easily. On the other hand, I'm convinced that the theories I've written about in this blog, since proven wrong by plot developments, are actually better thought out and more adequately suited to the characters and their motives than the storylines actually explored by Jeff Eastin and the writers. Maybe that's just me being narcissistic.

Either way, television this summer should be pretty good. At the very least we can rest assured knowing that it will adequately tide us over until all our favorite comedies come back next fall.

Second Season

Is anybody else really excited for this?

On the Bubble

I frequently read these "on the bubble" guides from various sources, just to see what other people are thinking. I rarely agree with their opinions about my favorite (or least favorite) shows. I agree with almost all of these.

http://www.hitfix.com/galleries/tv-shows-on-the-bubble-2011

Pretension

Network Reprogramming has been accused several times recently of being "pretentious." The term has been hurled about like it was an horrific blemish to the honor of internet writers everywhere that should be avoided at all costs. I thought I'd take a moment to respond and defend the poor defenseless webpage from its school yard bullies. It doesn't deserve such abuse.

The reality is, this blog is pretentious. In addition to my own healthy ego which adds a sense of the grandiose to everything I write, more often than not this blog is written in a voice that presents my opinions as facts. Pretension is a natural bi-product.

Not only that, but I'd like to remind everyone that in this blog I am critically reviewing and analyzing television. Even if I altered my tone to sound less self-assured, I would still be giving a great weight, that most of society would deem abnormally large, to a storytelling medium mostly deemed to be base and unworthy (as opposed to books, theatre, opera, etc...).

This blog can not NOT be pretentious. So rather than try to downplay its pomposity, I choose to embrace it.

Also, I'm just always right. So the blog has that going for it as well.

Previously On

I was inspired to write this post by an article I read recently by a television blogger whose opinion I tend to respect. In it, he makes the case that television viewers have become caught up in serial continuity to the detriment of their favorite shows. Using Fringe as an example, he points out that sometimes abandoning established plot points or character choices in favor of better/stronger ones later in the series is too often attacked by the viewers as a flaw, when it should be embraced as a part of the medium. Basically, the author says that because television show writers are limited by several factors unique to the ongoing medium of television including fluctuating actors, changing writing staff, and an uncertain end time, sometimes continuity is all but impossible, and the inevitable changes should be embraced as the writers' attempts to better the shows that we love within the confines of their serial structure. Pulling a quote from the article that I feel pretty well sums up its central argument, "If a show like 'Fringe' nails the structure while missing the character, then it's little more than a hollow artistic exercise."

The article really got me thinking. As I read it, I was struck by the truth of what he wrote. I called to mind shows, like my often critiqued Glee, that make changes to established characters and plot lines with reckless abandon for the sake of episodic simplicity. I then compared these to shows, like the aforementioned Fringe that make slight and calculated alterations to plot lines in later seasons to strengthen the story and better the characters and their relationships. The difference was clear, and I found myself agreeing with the author, that faulting shows that fell into the latter category for making changes was a little mean spirited, and perhaps even a bit unfair. Despite my acceptance of his argument, though, something still didn't sit right with me.

Something about that nagging doubt kept pestering me for days until now, several days later, I finally decided to sit down and think about what it was that was irking me. In other words I stopped trying to ignore the part of my brain that so desperately wanted to play devil's advocate, and instead chose to confront then embrace it.

Thinking about all the shows I watched, and how they ranked in my personal hierarchy of favorites, I noticed a trend developing. The more a show managed to conserve its continuity over the course of its run, the higher it ranked. Was I, therefore, one of the people that the blogger was criticizing in his article? As much as I hated to admit it, I absolutely was. This is what had been bothering me the entire time since I had first read the article. Either the author was right and my own opinions were deserving of criticism, or the author was wrong and my opinions were valid. Having an overly inflated ego, and knowing myself to be infallible, I became determined to find the flaw in the author's argument. 

What I realized is that he was oversimplifying the idea of continuity (or maybe I was oversimplifying his argument) by giving only two categories to serialized television. Shows like Glee that didn't care about continuity in the least, and shows like Fringe that cared a great deal about continuity, but couldn't maintain it. Both of these categories are definitely valid, and I'm sure you can find several shows that fit into either from your own repertoire of followed shows. The problem was that an allowance for a third category of shows wasn't being provided. The shows that care about continuity and successfully manage to uphold it.

The reason was obvious. This third category is pitifully small. The number of shows that manage a fully continuous storyline over the course of more than a season or two without any errors in characterization or plot elements is dangerously small. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any that fully meet the criteria, but the one currently on the air that comes closest, in my mind, is White Collar.

Interesting, is it not, that my favorite serialized drama happens to be the show that most successfully maintains its continuity?

So here, finally, is my counterargument. A show that nails the structure and misses the character may indeed be a hollow artistic exercise, but a show that nails the structure and the characters is still leaps and bounds above a show that scores with its characters but misses the structure of continuity.

Television is a medium limited by unforeseen complications, uncertain end dates and an inability to rewrite the beginning if you think of a better ending halfway through, yes. All of these points, made in the article, are true. But accepting these limitations only to forgive writers for mistakes made as a result is like forgiving a sailboat captain who scuttles his ship on a reef because the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. A skilled captain would use even a shifting wind to his advantage to keep his boat afloat. In a similar sense, a skilled writer (or team of writers) should be able to use the fluctuating rules of their medium to improve their storytelling.


A continuous story in television, where it is so difficult to pull off, is all the more impressive. It should be something writers strive for, even if we, as viewers, shouldn't be too upset when they occasionally fall short.


For those of you who would like to read the whole of the article that inspired this post (and I assure you, it makes some good points worth reading) you can find it here.