HijiNKS and Smart People on TV
HijiNKS Ensue: "Everybody shut the hell up forever. I found the remote. Ooh, 'Top Chef' is on." Trust me, in context, it's funny. ;)
Cracked: 5 Things TV Writers Apparently Believe About Smart People
Snurched from janedavitt, and definitely worth a read. Though it doesn't seem to pick up on what I think the real reason for having so many "super smart" characters in TV shows recently -- lazy writing. "Hey, we're on deadline for this episode. And I'm hungry. Let's have X Character order Chinese food and have that be the Epiphany Moment. Done."
I also love this bit:
Hell, even in the not-exactly-realistic Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the characters solved their dilemmas in nearly every episode in the library over stacks of books. That is, real discovery is often a slow grind through theories other, smarter people came up with in the past.
By way of comparison, we're not certain if anyone involved with Supernatural has ever read a book.
Which is kind of sad, because I definitely remember episodes in the first season of Supernatural where they went to local libraries and courthouses to look up information about whatever they were hunting, especially if it was possibly a ghost. We've also seen them refer to books of lore, even in recent seasons, but it's more of a "quick, here's the answer" than trying to find it.
I'd be willing to bet a big reason for the difference is Buffy had a standing set for the library, plus the Internet was just a baby back then. Give Sam and Dean a laptop and they can look up anything from anywhere, no extra location filming involved. Never mind that much of the information they were looking up about people from decades past is probably not digitized yet. It's not cheap to digitize on a large scale, so the backlog is going to stay a backlog for a long time.
Another similarity is they're using semi-familiar mythology/religion in both shows, and can just put whatever twist on it they want without picking up a book. But with Buffy it seemed more likely that someone, usually Giles, looked it up in a book and explained things. With Supernatural, there seems to be use of books of lore still, but it's more of a "Quick, here's the answer, kill the demon with this spell!" thing instead of actually searching for an answer for another length of time.
This isn't really a critique per se, just noticing the differences after reading the article, especially after seeing quite a bit of Buffy on Chiller recently. I'm also be a bit down on Supernatural's Mega Meta Mess in recent years, so I'm not counting the use of the books Chuck wrote as the use of books in the series, especially since they were writings about what had already happened by the time they got to them.
Oh, #5's commentary about "The first lesson TV supergeniuses have drilled into audiences is that it's possible to acquire absolute mastery in multiple fields while still young enough to be attractive to the 18-35 demographic."
Yes. This.
Cracked: 5 Things TV Writers Apparently Believe About Smart People
Snurched from janedavitt, and definitely worth a read. Though it doesn't seem to pick up on what I think the real reason for having so many "super smart" characters in TV shows recently -- lazy writing. "Hey, we're on deadline for this episode. And I'm hungry. Let's have X Character order Chinese food and have that be the Epiphany Moment. Done."
I also love this bit:
Hell, even in the not-exactly-realistic Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the characters solved their dilemmas in nearly every episode in the library over stacks of books. That is, real discovery is often a slow grind through theories other, smarter people came up with in the past.
By way of comparison, we're not certain if anyone involved with Supernatural has ever read a book.
Which is kind of sad, because I definitely remember episodes in the first season of Supernatural where they went to local libraries and courthouses to look up information about whatever they were hunting, especially if it was possibly a ghost. We've also seen them refer to books of lore, even in recent seasons, but it's more of a "quick, here's the answer" than trying to find it.
I'd be willing to bet a big reason for the difference is Buffy had a standing set for the library, plus the Internet was just a baby back then. Give Sam and Dean a laptop and they can look up anything from anywhere, no extra location filming involved. Never mind that much of the information they were looking up about people from decades past is probably not digitized yet. It's not cheap to digitize on a large scale, so the backlog is going to stay a backlog for a long time.
Another similarity is they're using semi-familiar mythology/religion in both shows, and can just put whatever twist on it they want without picking up a book. But with Buffy it seemed more likely that someone, usually Giles, looked it up in a book and explained things. With Supernatural, there seems to be use of books of lore still, but it's more of a "Quick, here's the answer, kill the demon with this spell!" thing instead of actually searching for an answer for another length of time.
This isn't really a critique per se, just noticing the differences after reading the article, especially after seeing quite a bit of Buffy on Chiller recently. I'm also be a bit down on Supernatural's Mega Meta Mess in recent years, so I'm not counting the use of the books Chuck wrote as the use of books in the series, especially since they were writings about what had already happened by the time they got to them.
Oh, #5's commentary about "The first lesson TV supergeniuses have drilled into audiences is that it's possible to acquire absolute mastery in multiple fields while still young enough to be attractive to the 18-35 demographic."
Yes. This.