Tim Minear's "The Inside" and why everyone needs to watch it.

[prozacpark]

Public service announcement: Tim Minear's "The Inside" is made up of utter and complete awesomeness. If you missed this show during its original run in 2005, you're luckier than you realize because now you have 13 episodes of pure awesomeoness that you have yet to experience. Read on for the premise and links to streaming videos and/or downloads

Comments

[prozacpark]

I think the difference between the popularity of Firefly and "The Inside" probably has to do with two things. 1). Joss Whedon has an insanely devoted fan base that is willing to worship at his altar for putting out even crappy fiction (Really, Astonishing X-men is, by no means whatsoever, the best X-men comic run ever). Tim Minear doesn't have that kind of pull when it comes to bringing people into his universe, and it seems like while a lot of Jossverse people tuned into "The Inside," they gave up on it pretty quickly.

2). For all its creativity and interesting bits, "Firefly" still is, at its core, a very formulaic Western. It follows all the popular conventions of Western fiction, down to having most of the main characters be Western types. The rest of the characters are Joss types, which are also familiar. People tend to respond positively to meta-narratives because they recognize the fictional patterns and feel comfortable with them. They know what to except on some level and for most people, that's a good thing. "The Inside?" Is not comfortable at all. It's a dark show that goes to unpredictable places and has characters who have layers and are of types that are rarely ever seen in fiction. People do, unfortunately, react negatively to new things and original ideas in fiction. Like you said, smart TV makes people feel stupid, and that's very true because people don't like their predictions to be proven wrong.

Joss is very clever in his writing. He knows how to hook people in with familiar fictional patterns and then deviates from them.

I'm going to see if I can figure out how to upload "Strange World" somewhere this weekend. :)