A Rant Upon the Subject of Telivision. (Here be Spoilers)
The current trend of "Highly Serialized Dramas" has officially run out of creative steam. The market has been flooded-the plot twist has fallen sharply against the dollar, and runs the risk of becoming so completely devalued as to be worthless. The story-reveal futures market has crashed as high risk short term cliffhangers fail to perform at their projected rate of return. Character development on already overdeveloped characters is being used as filler in order to plug leaking episodes. The outlook is bleak.
It's a ghost town. Late comers like last fall's "The Nine" are being told "Best to keep movin', youngster. There ain't no more ratings here fer you. Stick around here and all you'll get is canceled. Aint nothin' here but dust, and the souUUund of the wind."
"Prison Break", just finishing it's first full season of sucking, has been the perfect example. Its set up, if you didn't catch the previous season, was: Dude gets thrown in jail to help his brother (wrongly accused of killing the vice president's brother) escape. Dude has massive, intricate plan which gets more and more convoluted as various prisoners force themselves into it. Dude gets threatened by angry white and black people! Guards are mean! Meanwhile - massive conspiracy hinted at as friends on the outside try to prove Dude's brother is innocent. People get shot! Scary!
Obviously, they stretched it out for 22 episodes or so until the actual escape, and the narrative got pretty strained there a few times. You know what that looks like: "OH! Last minute reprieve! YAY! UH-OH! Massive setback! Threat of Death! AHH! Last minute reprieve again! YAAYYY!" But for the most part, it was still fun to watch.
Season two's concept plays out like this: Dude, Dudebrother, and 5 or 6 other prisoners escape. Magical airplane to fly them to panama takes off without them! FBI tracks them. Prisoners argue, fight, backstab, disfigure each other while trying to be the first to find BURIED TREASURE. OOOO! Meanwhile, massive conspiracy kills lots of people a lot. Other prisoners get killed one by one! Lots dead, creepy guys responsible. Dude & broher escape! Oops, they don't. They do! They don't again! They find evidence to blow the thing wide open! It's destroyed! They find more! It's faked! They find a witness! It's a trap! Wait, they escape! They really escape! Panama! They're proven innocent at the last minute! Its All Over! ***AWKWARD SILENCE*** OHH NO! SUDDENLY GUY FROM CONSPIRACY JUMPS OUT, GIRLFRIEND SHOOTS HIM, AND MAGICAL PANAMANIAN POLICE RUSH IN AND ARREST EVERYBODY FOR MURDER! Dude is BACK IN PRISON! TUNE IN NEXT FALL! PLEASE!
But really, my point in all this is that these shows, both the bad and the good ones (Lost, Prison Break, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, etc) have played a losing game with audiencs, creating huge elaborate back stories (or in the case of Prison Break's make-it-up-as-we-go-along second season, not so huge), and dribbling a meager portion out to the fans each week. The idea of generating excitement and repete viewing by trying to make an ever more sensational cliff hanger each week, and playing promos that claim, fraudulently, that the next episode will finally tell you whats going on - it can only work for so long. And I think we're seeing that "so long" is 2 to 3 seasons, give or take.
It isn't just that the audience loses faith, feels like they're being strung along for a payoff that's never coming. A bigger problem is that no matter how big the payoff actually is when it does come, they still feel cheated. Remember last season's Lost finale? Two hours of rip-roaring, other-shooting, hatch-exploding, Desmond-flashbacking madness? After it was done, I was thinking "yeah that was pretty crazy, but... wait that's it? That's all till next year? A purple flash and some fake beards?" Or this season's Battlestar Galactica finale. "Thats all? A Bob Dylan cover and some hallucinations?" It's like the writers are running up a debt of expectation, and the more they borrow against it, the more they'll have to pay for us to feel like we weren't waisting our time every week for up to 5 years. And that stuff is accruing interest. If, for example, Lost doesn't pick up the pace (it has been lately, but will it last?), then they'll have to end season 5 with a 6 hour marathon of pure, uninterrupted explaining. They wont even have time to make it a story. They might have to just get Hurley and Eko to stand in front of a white background and take turns saying "Ok, so this is what's gong on with (mysterious thing). Oh yeah, and that (mysterious character)? He/she was behind that. The (bizarre event) is because of that. The (random thing) doesn't mean anything, they where totally messing with you! Ha!" Etc.
______
I know, I've got a lot of things going on in my life, and after yet another month of not writing, I could be writing about so many other things. But this strikes me as important in a certain way. I hate it when an artform, thanks to the vision of a few, becomes suddenly meaningful again, and for a while it's inspiring, surprising, and fulfilling. And then it makes a killing, the artist(s) realize they've got a racket that they can drive into the ground, the copy cats show up, and suddenly the whole scene starts leaking its purpose out into a big, oozing commercial oil slick. And what is this space for, if not for rants?
Oh, my phone is back on finally. Good think too, because everyone assumes I know everything already. I've been out of the loop for more than a week. And the outside of the loop is a scary, cold place.
EKUNDAYO
It's a ghost town. Late comers like last fall's "The Nine" are being told "Best to keep movin', youngster. There ain't no more ratings here fer you. Stick around here and all you'll get is canceled. Aint nothin' here but dust, and the souUUund of the wind."
"Prison Break", just finishing it's first full season of sucking, has been the perfect example. Its set up, if you didn't catch the previous season, was: Dude gets thrown in jail to help his brother (wrongly accused of killing the vice president's brother) escape. Dude has massive, intricate plan which gets more and more convoluted as various prisoners force themselves into it. Dude gets threatened by angry white and black people! Guards are mean! Meanwhile - massive conspiracy hinted at as friends on the outside try to prove Dude's brother is innocent. People get shot! Scary!
Obviously, they stretched it out for 22 episodes or so until the actual escape, and the narrative got pretty strained there a few times. You know what that looks like: "OH! Last minute reprieve! YAY! UH-OH! Massive setback! Threat of Death! AHH! Last minute reprieve again! YAAYYY!" But for the most part, it was still fun to watch.
Season two's concept plays out like this: Dude, Dudebrother, and 5 or 6 other prisoners escape. Magical airplane to fly them to panama takes off without them! FBI tracks them. Prisoners argue, fight, backstab, disfigure each other while trying to be the first to find BURIED TREASURE. OOOO! Meanwhile, massive conspiracy kills lots of people a lot. Other prisoners get killed one by one! Lots dead, creepy guys responsible. Dude & broher escape! Oops, they don't. They do! They don't again! They find evidence to blow the thing wide open! It's destroyed! They find more! It's faked! They find a witness! It's a trap! Wait, they escape! They really escape! Panama! They're proven innocent at the last minute! Its All Over! ***AWKWARD SILENCE*** OHH NO! SUDDENLY GUY FROM CONSPIRACY JUMPS OUT, GIRLFRIEND SHOOTS HIM, AND MAGICAL PANAMANIAN POLICE RUSH IN AND ARREST EVERYBODY FOR MURDER! Dude is BACK IN PRISON! TUNE IN NEXT FALL! PLEASE!
But really, my point in all this is that these shows, both the bad and the good ones (Lost, Prison Break, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, etc) have played a losing game with audiencs, creating huge elaborate back stories (or in the case of Prison Break's make-it-up-as-we-go-along second season, not so huge), and dribbling a meager portion out to the fans each week. The idea of generating excitement and repete viewing by trying to make an ever more sensational cliff hanger each week, and playing promos that claim, fraudulently, that the next episode will finally tell you whats going on - it can only work for so long. And I think we're seeing that "so long" is 2 to 3 seasons, give or take.
It isn't just that the audience loses faith, feels like they're being strung along for a payoff that's never coming. A bigger problem is that no matter how big the payoff actually is when it does come, they still feel cheated. Remember last season's Lost finale? Two hours of rip-roaring, other-shooting, hatch-exploding, Desmond-flashbacking madness? After it was done, I was thinking "yeah that was pretty crazy, but... wait that's it? That's all till next year? A purple flash and some fake beards?" Or this season's Battlestar Galactica finale. "Thats all? A Bob Dylan cover and some hallucinations?" It's like the writers are running up a debt of expectation, and the more they borrow against it, the more they'll have to pay for us to feel like we weren't waisting our time every week for up to 5 years. And that stuff is accruing interest. If, for example, Lost doesn't pick up the pace (it has been lately, but will it last?), then they'll have to end season 5 with a 6 hour marathon of pure, uninterrupted explaining. They wont even have time to make it a story. They might have to just get Hurley and Eko to stand in front of a white background and take turns saying "Ok, so this is what's gong on with (mysterious thing). Oh yeah, and that (mysterious character)? He/she was behind that. The (bizarre event) is because of that. The (random thing) doesn't mean anything, they where totally messing with you! Ha!" Etc.
______
I know, I've got a lot of things going on in my life, and after yet another month of not writing, I could be writing about so many other things. But this strikes me as important in a certain way. I hate it when an artform, thanks to the vision of a few, becomes suddenly meaningful again, and for a while it's inspiring, surprising, and fulfilling. And then it makes a killing, the artist(s) realize they've got a racket that they can drive into the ground, the copy cats show up, and suddenly the whole scene starts leaking its purpose out into a big, oozing commercial oil slick. And what is this space for, if not for rants?
Oh, my phone is back on finally. Good think too, because everyone assumes I know everything already. I've been out of the loop for more than a week. And the outside of the loop is a scary, cold place.
EKUNDAYO