my reaction to the TWoP Rob Thomas interview (part one of two)
Warning: This entry is not terribly negative about Rob Thomas. I know some on my f-list (and some people dropping by?) will (possibly strongly) disagree with me on certain points. That’s fine. I don't judge people based on well-considered opinions, whether or not I agree. There's room for all voices, all perspectives; to me, it makes for exciting conversation.
Warning #2 - I spoil basically everything that's already aired.
Here, then are my thoughts after reading Couch Baron's interview with Rob Thomas over on TWoP, written in chronological order as I read back through the interview:
1) Sounds like Rob is letting Diane Ruggiero doing some of the final polish on scripts before they become production drafts, rather than doing them all himself. This explains something that's really been bothering me this season: Too. Many. Jokes. The show has always been fun and quippy, but not like this. I think this is part of the disconnect viewers have been feeling WRT Veronica's character. She doesn't respond to other characters very often these days. She quips instead, which creates distance and implies a sense of superiority. I used to like Diane Ruggiero's work, but this season I've found her episodes FAR too glib. The sorority storyline in ep. 2, the Patty Hearst story in 8. Veronica was so over the top in both, she was almost a parody of herself.
2) People are upset that Rob says that in hindsight, he wouldn't have done the mystery of what happened with Logan on the bridge. I agree with everyone who says that who killed Felix was pretty much the ONLY storyline I cared about last season, so WTF?
But. All he's really saying here is that he had too many storylines to juggle and therefore couldn't do any of them justice. Listen, if he'd excised the Felix storyline, he might have been able to work Logan into the bus mystery somehow. Just saying. We don't know what would have developed, because it didn't go down that way.
And the truth is, there were some serious flaws with the Felix mystery. It repeats the dead-best-friend storyline, for one thing. For another, the resolution makes little sense to me. Why would the Fitzpatricks have THUMPER kill Felix? Just because Felix is in love with Molly? Not their style at ALL. I realize it's supposed to be some kind of gang fidelity thing, but really. I. Don't. Buy. It. And then expend SO MUCH ENERGY on framing Logan? Again. I. Don't. Buy. It.
I adored Plan B, where it all unraveled, don't get me wrong. And I loved that Logan had such a compelling reason to care about the mystery (hello false accusation, hello prison sentence hanging over his head). The story was executed far better than the bus crash, certainly, and that's why it's hard now to say the season would have been better without it. But still, I wonder what he would have used that screen time for instead. It might have made the bus crash story actually, oh, I don't know, WORK.
It's also reassuring to me to hear him talk about Logan as a breakout character who was therefore a logical choice for his own mystery arc. It's become fashionable in fan circles to assume that RT doesn't like the fan adoration of Logan and Jason Dohring, that he would get rid of JD if he could. To me, this is fan angst at its most irrational. I think RT knows exactly what he's got in JD and loves it. I've gotten this in bits and pieces over the years, so I can't point to one thing right now, but I believe this with absolute conviction. Fans hating on RT for supposedly hating Logan is, to me, the ultimate straw man argument. They almost want him to be that stupid so they can have a reason to hate him.
3) I love that he ADMITS that it was hard to keep Veronica involved in the bus crash mystery. That was kind of blazingly obvious, but it's really nice to hear him admit that.
4) Here's the first time he criticizes Season One, saying:
It's weird, the untouchable status Season 1 holds for some fans. We failed in plenty of instances in Season 1 to land on the "good" side of the reality line. The audience was simply more forgiving -- E-string strangler, anyone?
And I think he's absolutely correct. I LOVED S1 for the overall arcs. Episode by episode, MotW by MotW, it had a lot of flaws. That's all he's saying, folks.
5) He knows we don’t like the Lilith House women. He thinks it's okay because he has Veronica as a feminist model. He likes twisting expectations around, messing with the politically correct way of doing things. I admire this in theory. In practice? Oh, Rob. You really botched this one.
However, this:
it's sort of a theory I have on writing television -- to use the audience's television expectations against them. In other words, the way I set up a surprise that works is to think about the way that television treats its viewers that we are accustomed to. If you see the person doing A here, then he can't do B later.
Is, I think, the heart of Rob Thomas' approach to TV drama. It has a lot of pros but also some cons. I also think it's the main reason he engenders such fan passion on both sides of the coin. Because he screws with our expectations and sometimes that really, really works, but other times we can't shake loose of those expectations or, more commonly, those expectations have stronger underpinnings than he's aware of, so by messing with powerful emotional constructs, he's treading on very dangerous ground and blows it. Big time.
6) Okay, I find this really fascinating:
CB: You know, I didn't have this question prepared, but on the topic of shades of gray, I want to tell you that "Of Vice And Men"...I don't know to what extent, if any, this was an episode where you wanted to show the audience your worldview, but everyone in that episode comes off as really gray in a moral sense. Was that what you were going for?
RT: I should say that if I'm defensive about my feminist cachet, I'm even more defensive about "Veronica as nice person." But it's Veronica's internal struggle between forgiveness and vindictiveness, and what standard she holds people to. You know, she, like our audience, is fairly judgmental. It's tough for her to let things go, it's tough for her to forgive. She's very eye-for-an-eye. And certainly, that episode is largely about cutting people some slack, saying we all make mistakes, but at the end of the say, who can you count on? For better or worse, who is going to stand by you, and can you give them a love that's more unconditional?
I laughed when I read RT's dig at his audience (fairly judgmental). I also think it's accurate. Heh. Does that make him defensive? Well, yeah. And he admits that. But this view of Veronica, it's as close as we're going to get to getting inside her head, because we're inside her creator's head here. I have felt all along this season that RT was setting Veronica's arc up as just this: she's judgmental. She needs to learn that things aren't always black and white. That you can love someone who is flawed. To me, her epiphany at the end of Of Vice and Men was the start of that. Not something that will stick right away (obviously), but something she can now grow into understanding. Do I have too much faith in him? Maybe I do. But I'd rather have that faith and be disappointed than spend the rest of the season angry and fretting about how he's going to screw things up this time.
I think last season was a mess as far as Veronica was concerned. I think he had an idea at the beginning, this return to normal after the intense, painful, life-changing events of S1, but then totally dropped the ball. He should have shown the cracks in her relationship with Duncan in a far more organic way, showing how fundamentally incompatible they now were. He didn't. That bites. So why do I now think he can pull this off? Partly because he seems to have more focus on the character arc this year than last (which he's admitted was far too plot-driven), but mostly because I think her character's flaws/need for growth are far better defined this year. Normal/not normal, that's a more intellectual construct. Not trusting, that's all about character, baby.
Okay, this is getting long and I'm only halfway through the interview. I have to go do other things for a bit. I'll come back and finish later.
Thoughts?
Warning #2 - I spoil basically everything that's already aired.
Here, then are my thoughts after reading Couch Baron's interview with Rob Thomas over on TWoP, written in chronological order as I read back through the interview:
1) Sounds like Rob is letting Diane Ruggiero doing some of the final polish on scripts before they become production drafts, rather than doing them all himself. This explains something that's really been bothering me this season: Too. Many. Jokes. The show has always been fun and quippy, but not like this. I think this is part of the disconnect viewers have been feeling WRT Veronica's character. She doesn't respond to other characters very often these days. She quips instead, which creates distance and implies a sense of superiority. I used to like Diane Ruggiero's work, but this season I've found her episodes FAR too glib. The sorority storyline in ep. 2, the Patty Hearst story in 8. Veronica was so over the top in both, she was almost a parody of herself.
2) People are upset that Rob says that in hindsight, he wouldn't have done the mystery of what happened with Logan on the bridge. I agree with everyone who says that who killed Felix was pretty much the ONLY storyline I cared about last season, so WTF?
But. All he's really saying here is that he had too many storylines to juggle and therefore couldn't do any of them justice. Listen, if he'd excised the Felix storyline, he might have been able to work Logan into the bus mystery somehow. Just saying. We don't know what would have developed, because it didn't go down that way.
And the truth is, there were some serious flaws with the Felix mystery. It repeats the dead-best-friend storyline, for one thing. For another, the resolution makes little sense to me. Why would the Fitzpatricks have THUMPER kill Felix? Just because Felix is in love with Molly? Not their style at ALL. I realize it's supposed to be some kind of gang fidelity thing, but really. I. Don't. Buy. It. And then expend SO MUCH ENERGY on framing Logan? Again. I. Don't. Buy. It.
I adored Plan B, where it all unraveled, don't get me wrong. And I loved that Logan had such a compelling reason to care about the mystery (hello false accusation, hello prison sentence hanging over his head). The story was executed far better than the bus crash, certainly, and that's why it's hard now to say the season would have been better without it. But still, I wonder what he would have used that screen time for instead. It might have made the bus crash story actually, oh, I don't know, WORK.
It's also reassuring to me to hear him talk about Logan as a breakout character who was therefore a logical choice for his own mystery arc. It's become fashionable in fan circles to assume that RT doesn't like the fan adoration of Logan and Jason Dohring, that he would get rid of JD if he could. To me, this is fan angst at its most irrational. I think RT knows exactly what he's got in JD and loves it. I've gotten this in bits and pieces over the years, so I can't point to one thing right now, but I believe this with absolute conviction. Fans hating on RT for supposedly hating Logan is, to me, the ultimate straw man argument. They almost want him to be that stupid so they can have a reason to hate him.
3) I love that he ADMITS that it was hard to keep Veronica involved in the bus crash mystery. That was kind of blazingly obvious, but it's really nice to hear him admit that.
4) Here's the first time he criticizes Season One, saying:
It's weird, the untouchable status Season 1 holds for some fans. We failed in plenty of instances in Season 1 to land on the "good" side of the reality line. The audience was simply more forgiving -- E-string strangler, anyone?
And I think he's absolutely correct. I LOVED S1 for the overall arcs. Episode by episode, MotW by MotW, it had a lot of flaws. That's all he's saying, folks.
5) He knows we don’t like the Lilith House women. He thinks it's okay because he has Veronica as a feminist model. He likes twisting expectations around, messing with the politically correct way of doing things. I admire this in theory. In practice? Oh, Rob. You really botched this one.
However, this:
it's sort of a theory I have on writing television -- to use the audience's television expectations against them. In other words, the way I set up a surprise that works is to think about the way that television treats its viewers that we are accustomed to. If you see the person doing A here, then he can't do B later.
Is, I think, the heart of Rob Thomas' approach to TV drama. It has a lot of pros but also some cons. I also think it's the main reason he engenders such fan passion on both sides of the coin. Because he screws with our expectations and sometimes that really, really works, but other times we can't shake loose of those expectations or, more commonly, those expectations have stronger underpinnings than he's aware of, so by messing with powerful emotional constructs, he's treading on very dangerous ground and blows it. Big time.
6) Okay, I find this really fascinating:
CB: You know, I didn't have this question prepared, but on the topic of shades of gray, I want to tell you that "Of Vice And Men"...I don't know to what extent, if any, this was an episode where you wanted to show the audience your worldview, but everyone in that episode comes off as really gray in a moral sense. Was that what you were going for?
RT: I should say that if I'm defensive about my feminist cachet, I'm even more defensive about "Veronica as nice person." But it's Veronica's internal struggle between forgiveness and vindictiveness, and what standard she holds people to. You know, she, like our audience, is fairly judgmental. It's tough for her to let things go, it's tough for her to forgive. She's very eye-for-an-eye. And certainly, that episode is largely about cutting people some slack, saying we all make mistakes, but at the end of the say, who can you count on? For better or worse, who is going to stand by you, and can you give them a love that's more unconditional?
I laughed when I read RT's dig at his audience (fairly judgmental). I also think it's accurate. Heh. Does that make him defensive? Well, yeah. And he admits that. But this view of Veronica, it's as close as we're going to get to getting inside her head, because we're inside her creator's head here. I have felt all along this season that RT was setting Veronica's arc up as just this: she's judgmental. She needs to learn that things aren't always black and white. That you can love someone who is flawed. To me, her epiphany at the end of Of Vice and Men was the start of that. Not something that will stick right away (obviously), but something she can now grow into understanding. Do I have too much faith in him? Maybe I do. But I'd rather have that faith and be disappointed than spend the rest of the season angry and fretting about how he's going to screw things up this time.
I think last season was a mess as far as Veronica was concerned. I think he had an idea at the beginning, this return to normal after the intense, painful, life-changing events of S1, but then totally dropped the ball. He should have shown the cracks in her relationship with Duncan in a far more organic way, showing how fundamentally incompatible they now were. He didn't. That bites. So why do I now think he can pull this off? Partly because he seems to have more focus on the character arc this year than last (which he's admitted was far too plot-driven), but mostly because I think her character's flaws/need for growth are far better defined this year. Normal/not normal, that's a more intellectual construct. Not trusting, that's all about character, baby.
Okay, this is getting long and I'm only halfway through the interview. I have to go do other things for a bit. I'll come back and finish later.
Thoughts?