Comments | sistermagpie: Would you like cheese with that?

sistermagpie

Would you like cheese with that?

Sep 14, 2010 14:47

I've been having these vague thoughts lately on "realistic" drama, and how it is or isn't realistic, or how real life does or doesn't get considered realistic. And seeing a couple of comments on the last couple of episodes of Mad Men spurred me to actually write some of them down ( Read more... )

meta, mad men, writing, tv

Comments 20

ptyx September 14 2010, 18:59:41 UTC

I'm very behind in my viewing of Mad Men, but I'll come back here when I catch up :)

sistermagpie September 14 2010, 20:39:37 UTC

I don't want to oversell the ep from the week before last but OMG I LOVED IT SO MUCH! :-)

ptyx September 14 2010, 20:50:34 UTC

Hee, I love when you go into fannish mode. I wish I could see it NOW, but it's my sister who's in charge of everything related to shows and TV in my house. So I have to wait.

go_back_chief September 14 2010, 19:29:19 UTC

In fact, writing a diary is something that so many people would do in a similar situation. So I found myself thinking--hmmm, I feel like this is a totally believable choice for this character, but is it still a bad idea because a) voiceover is immediately bad and artificial and those things are supposed to be outside the style of MM, and b) a character laying out their thoughts is a cheat because good dialogue should be ambiguous and we should have to work to really understand people.I don't think voice-over is immediately bad, but it's very very hard to pull off well, and when it manages to do that, I think it's usually because it brings something extra. Although I can't come up with any examples on the spot. With the Mad Men episode though, the problem for me was just that, that I didn't think it brought anything that we couldn't figure out by ourselves. Okay, we found out Don never finished high school, but that was pretty much it. It's possible that I've missed something, of course, I've only seen the episode once, and I don't ( ... )

redbrunja September 14 2010, 20:31:11 UTC

I would point to the show Veronica Mars as an example of voice over being used effectively. Yes, sometimes Veronica's OV were clunky bits of exposition... but a lot of time they were her internal monologue and worked because the show was a neo-noir and hearing the protagonist's thoughts was a homage to all the previous first person detectives who had gone before her. So not only were the viewers getting insight into Veronica's character, the VO also fit with the genre VM was part of.

go_back_chief September 15 2010, 16:25:10 UTC

Yeah, it's been a while since I watched Veronica Mars, but as far as I can remember, they handled that pretty well. It was obviously a grip they'd thought through, at least.

redbrunja September 16 2010, 17:57:04 UTC

Yeah, they were definitely aware of how it could easily go wrong.

Thread 6

ava_jamison September 14 2010, 20:03:01 UTC

I like the idea of the similarities running through dramas that are as diverse as Mad Men and LHotP. I'm not watching Mad Men at the moment (I know. Every really likes it and I should be but it lost me a while back and I'm not back into it at the moment. I do think it's an excellent show. Watch Breaking Bad, though, so there's that.)

Anyway, what strikes me about what you're saying is kind of the same thing as say, a sudden new PoV showing up in a book--like with the voiceover. When I'm reading a story, if the writer's somehow woven in a way that I can be comfortable with a PoV change, usually by patterning it or the idea that it might occur, earlier in the story, then I'm okay with it. That's kind of what voiceover makes me think. It's probably hard to have an established show that's never used a voiceover suddenly use one. Did you find any of the moments jarring/surprising enough to throw you out of the story for more than a minute?

The problem with the ghost here was, I think, that it either signaled MM getting into magical ( ... )

sistermagpie September 15 2010, 14:55:05 UTC

Yeah, all I can think of is that at least the point of it in the ep seemed to be at least in part to signal Something Different. Not a new thing that was going to be a staple in the show from now on--at least I hope not--but just to say that something new was going on with the character. And that something new had to do with being introspective and looking at his actions, so they probably thought a diary was the most obvious thing.

And of course there were other things going on in the ep where there was no voiceover so those played more like the show usually did. Also now that I think about it, I think they saved the voiceover for things that were pretty obvious perhaps to signal that these were things that the character had a handle on. So it wasn't like watching him work through his feelings on something where we'd be interested in where it was going if that makes sense.

slytherincesss September 14 2010, 23:12:11 UTC

I can never discuss TV eloquently or in a cerebral manner (I wish I could!), but it bothers me how often proper names are spoken on TV shows.

Betty: Don, you shouldn't smoke in bed. It might light the bedspread on fire.

Don: I know that, Betty. I'm being careful and am responsibly using a large ashtray.

Betty: You never listen to me, Don. What if the bedspread caught fire, and then spread to the bedroom and the hallway and down to the kids' room? What would you do then, Don?

Don: Betty, I would simply place dry-cleaning bags over the childrens' heads and bodies, and usher them through the fire to safety, and have them wait on the curb outside of the house. I can't believe we're having this conversation.

Betty: Whatever was in those dry-cleaning bags had better not be on the floor of my closet, Don. I don't appreciate how you dismiss my things as if they don't matter and don't need to be respected. Really, Don!

Don: Betty, I'm going to the office.

I notice this trend a lot in TV shows and it just makes me squirm. I don't call ( ... )

sistermagpie September 15 2010, 14:57:50 UTC

LOL! I remember reading an article once that said that specifically on Soap Operas they used the names all the time to the point where the actors found it hilarious. Because of course on the soap they wanted people to be able to jump in and follow the story so if you kept repeating the characters' names people would learn them more quickly.

I, too, thought that vision was going to turn into the Samsonite campaign--which would have been pretty awful. It's one of the reasons I can really accept it as a device because it wasn't about pulling everything together in a neat little bow.

And yeah, Don totally can be kind. It really does seem right that Roger would dictate and Don would write in a diary.

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sistermagpie September 15 2010, 15:00:45 UTC

I hope if you decide to watch it again you like it!