Good-bye Network Dramas

[belsum]

This has been a television season like no other: I just keep jettisoning shows. It’s very liberating. I finally quit Stargate Universe once and for all after being thoroughly bored by the new offering after the mid-season hiatus. That helped me to never even start Caprica after the underwhelming DVD pilot. Idol is fading fast, though I still

Comments

[belsum]

I don't think I had the problem with Caprica because it wasn't enough like BSG, though I'm sure there are plenty of fans that did in fact have that particular issue. It just seemed...too hard. I don't know. I thought about trying it a lot. I toyed with the idea over and over and it just seemed like work. And frankly I don't need any shows right now that are work. BSG was hard enough but I was completely invested. I wasn't willing to give myself over to something new.

I know that a lot of people said that Dollhouse was worth it once you got 6 or 10 episodes in. But I couldn't get past three. I kept it on my Netflix queue for a long time, thinking I'd try again but ultimately I decided that it's not a homework assignment and took it off. Caprica is the same way for me. Maybe I'm missing out. Maybe I'm denying myself or not pushing myself. Maybe people like me looking for simpler television programming are responsible for the dearth of quality shows on networks. But I don't think it's completely unreasonable to ask a show to capture my attention in the first hour or three. You don't give movies a half dozen hours to do the job. If you fail, no sequel. Period. One of problems with SGU was the showrunners' constant refrain to just wait for the back half of the season, that's when it gets good. Well fuck that. Write some good episodes in the frakkin' front half and maybe we'll be willing to stick around.

But I am glad you're enjoying it. :)

[free_laddicals]

You don't give movies a half dozen hours to do the job.

True, but the media are two different animals in spite of their many similarities. Television by its nature, especially on shows that are specifically designed as serials instead of being episodic, is a less compressed form of storytelling.

Fair enough, though. For my part, I was hooked from the get go - the episode 6 marker is just one I've heard tossed around a bit. For my part, I knew I was in for the long haul when Tamara Adama was screaming at Joseph that she couldn't feel her heartbeat.

Though I probably wouldn't love the show nearly as much as I do were it not for Sam Adama, Joseph's mafioso brother, who was criminally underused in the pilot but is definitely the most intriguing character of the show and has a very solid presence in those first six episodes - moreso, in fact, than he does in the more popular back end of the season.

[belsum]

I guess I'm just getting better at letting go if things aren't grabbing me, even if I think they *should* be right in my wheelhouse. My aunt has always said that she just stops reading something if she doesn't like the book. There's too much else out there that she will love and not enough time to get to it all. I must be subconsciously applying it to television, too!