A Rant Upon the Subject of Telivision. (Here be Spoilers)

[ekundayo]

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

Comments

[anonymous]

this style of storytelling has been building for awhile. the usual suspects, fight club, memento, etc. then it hit television, which has even more of a feeding frenzy mentality than the movie industry. i would like to believe that over time, people would get better at this style of storytelling. but J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof theoretically were the best in the industry at concocting these types of stories. Maybe in a generation, you'll have people coming up who have synthesized the methods and heuristics, and can actually produce masterpieces.

There's got to be something in here about information glut, cognitive load and processing power as well. Does a distributed mediasphere give us greater ability to deal with a fatter information stream in one story? Maybe we can handle more of this stuff because we have wikis to serve as external memory, and affiliation groups to serve as distributed processors of information.
-lev

[anonymous]

outside the loop sounds like the vacuum of space... odd

what was my point?

[anonymous]

Based on your line about Hurley and Eko in front of a white background, I think we're on the same page, which is this:

it's just not good storytelling.
-lev

long time no talk

[nettyk8]

Hello. Decided to check the site after a long hiatus . Just wanted to say that i never thought about television or storytelling in this way, but i feel where you're coming from. to see more characters embrace their highest selves would not only be inspiring, but refreshing. thanks for the comment. it really struck a chord with me. and i'm out.

Re: long time no talk

[ekundayo]

YOU'RE refreshing!

loops

[anonymous]

Dear sir, We don't circle the same loops, but I end up here tangentially because you speak words that I hear, ex. "debt of expectation". Words, man

Re: loops

[ekundayo]

Hi! You're welcome! Thanks yourself!

Yeah, I heard Heroes is NOT going to clifhang this season, and next year will be back with mostly new characters and a new story arc! Great huh?

So where you googling the phrase "debt of expectation"? Thats great!

[oodannit]

I was outside the loop once.... ::stares into distance::

:: long pause, punctuated only by sound of wind:: :: continues to stare into distance ::

:: suddenly snaps back to the moment with a wild-eyedness ::

Damn them...

:: spits ::

[ekundayo]

Imagine the nightmares!

[andropolis]

Interesting stuff, here

[ekundayo]

Good point about Cable... That may be why such a great show as Sci-Fi's Battlestar Galactica (the new one, not the old one) had the oportunity to move to the parent network of NBC, but stayed on cable.

Incidently, Ron D. More, creator & showrunner of BSG, as well as the creative force behind turning Star Trek Deep Space Nine into the franchise redeeming brilliance that it was in its later seasons, recently complained that the Neilson Corporation's monopoly on the ratings system is (paraphrasing here) as dead as a dinosaur and does not reflect in any realistic way the TV watching habits of America! For real! Have you EVER met somebody who has a Neilson box in their house?

[andropolis]

My fervent hope is that the current crop of streaming video players on offer from the websites of NBC, CBS, ABC and the CW will harvest more realistic statistics.

I also fervently hope for a good walk in the arboretum, and a chance to burn large swaths of it.
-lev