Five best TV things this year
I was going to make this the five best canon things this year after having done some best fic lists, but all the canon I follow seems to be on TV these days, so that's where the idea came from. And even so, I noticed my favorite canon stuff was strongly influenced by its fandom ties. What can I say? That goes all the way back to when some of the early Trek tie-in novels were former fanfics and I first realized how much deeper canons could breathe. There's something else I realized when I picked my five, which is that each was a sort of commentary on the world around us. So here goes my take (in no particular order):
1) Sherlock (Pilot) - I kind of wonder how people might have reacted had we only gotten the pilot instead of a 3 episode season (just typing "3 episode season" makes me chortle - how unambitious can you get?). I think it's probably better that we did get three episodes because while I was dazzled by the Pilot, I think I was not alone in being less impressed with episode 2 (and I felt episode 3 was trying to move things along too quickly). Totally different in tone and intelligence than the big screen Sherlock of recent years (which I nonetheless enjoyed but let me not digress), I thought this episode was scintillating. It was clever in its reinterpretation of a Victorian-era hero as a current tech-savvy less-than-heroic guy. But I also loved how it demonstrated what fanfic does so well, which is take the starting point of something and give it twists and turns so that it seems both insightful while at the same time deeply familiar.
2) Buffy Meets Jon. I routinely think that I've just seen one of the best Daily Show or Colbert Report segments ever, and those are just the ones that make me laugh. As I write this I'm hearing news from NPR that Jon's hammering of the 9/11 responders' healthcare bill just got it passed and sent to the president.
All those great segments make it very difficult to remember them at year's end. While I thought the Washington rally was a great high point, it was the fannish side that impressed me more there. Not only was there a huge turnout, in Washington as well as numerous spots around the country, but in less than a month the fandom had raised half a million dollars for Donors Choose.
So out of the many great segments this year, I'm picking a recent one that was a total surprise, and was also heartwarming in what it said. I squealed with joy to see where the DS writers had been going with that segment.
3) "Modern Warfare" - Community - Speaking of using media in insightful ways, I think it's pretty interesting to see how the writers on Community realized that their original premise, while ok, was unimaginative compared to what they could do with their cast of characters to comment on popular culture, particularly films and TV. Not only did the series start highlighting Troy and Abed's bromance, but that bromance was very much a fannish partnership. For a viewer it was kind of awesome to see the morphing of the show in this sense, and also pretty funny to pick out who they were spoofing/remixing in any given episode. I think this episode marked the line where the show committed in full to its new plan, producing a LARP like no other.
4) "Mess of a Salesman" - Better Off Ted - Like Community, BOT had a bunch of great episodes, and even better its commentary was about modern corporate life. In my opinion Lem and Phil's nerdy bromance (I'm seeing a pattern here) was a particular joy and "You Are the Boss of Me" was probably the highlight of that. Overall my favorite episodes were "Jabberwocky" and "Racial Sensitivity" but like Boss they aired in 2009.
So I'm going with Mess because I absolutely loved the way that Veronica and Linda paired up in recognition that they were both women in a man's world, kicked some ass, and realized they needed to stand up for girls. Fandom can be a surprisingly misogynistic place, but I think it's great when it gets together to realize that we need to build stuff of our own for the future.
5) Supernatural Soundtrack by Christopher Lennertz and Jay Gruska. When I first heard the strains of "Americana" I was really glad I'd bought the soundtrack. This wonderfully poignant theme played beneath Chuck's narration in what was, for all practical purposes, the final episode of SPN as it existed with its original story arc. The track is aptly named, since the love for an America that both was and yet was a never-been pervaded that opening segment in the episode. At the same time we were reminded of a family that once was, and yet has never been quite all that it was remembered as. We were also told about the passing of days that we had never gotten to see in the series, slotted as they were between bigger moments, high adventures, and terrible tragedies. It made me mourn the budget losses that allowed for some of those beautiful panoramic shots as Sam and Dean crossed the country, saving people and hunting things.
There are many good musical segments on the soundtrack. For example, the one right after Americana - The Grateful Undead - begins with the sort of western theme that indicates the awareness of SPN's roots before it fizzes out into darker, horror tones, then an intimate interlude, later ramping into high-action mode before a quiet coda . There's the entire show in one musical piece.
Speaking of fandom and TV, it's always a jolt to see what the general public actually watches vs. what fandom does. I think they cheated by allowing "regularly scheduled" sports shows to be counted with Top 10 shows. But it's still telling that 8 out of 10 of the most watched events on TV were all football games, and that out of the Top 10 "shows" there are only two dramas (NCIS and its L.A. spinoff) and one comedy. While on the one hand it seems like bizarro world, I think it is also simply the other sex's world. I think that men under 50 watch TV so rarely these days compared to women that when they do, they tend to shift the stats significantly.
Comments at Dreamwidth
.
1) Sherlock (Pilot) - I kind of wonder how people might have reacted had we only gotten the pilot instead of a 3 episode season (just typing "3 episode season" makes me chortle - how unambitious can you get?). I think it's probably better that we did get three episodes because while I was dazzled by the Pilot, I think I was not alone in being less impressed with episode 2 (and I felt episode 3 was trying to move things along too quickly). Totally different in tone and intelligence than the big screen Sherlock of recent years (which I nonetheless enjoyed but let me not digress), I thought this episode was scintillating. It was clever in its reinterpretation of a Victorian-era hero as a current tech-savvy less-than-heroic guy. But I also loved how it demonstrated what fanfic does so well, which is take the starting point of something and give it twists and turns so that it seems both insightful while at the same time deeply familiar.
2) Buffy Meets Jon. I routinely think that I've just seen one of the best Daily Show or Colbert Report segments ever, and those are just the ones that make me laugh. As I write this I'm hearing news from NPR that Jon's hammering of the 9/11 responders' healthcare bill just got it passed and sent to the president.
All those great segments make it very difficult to remember them at year's end. While I thought the Washington rally was a great high point, it was the fannish side that impressed me more there. Not only was there a huge turnout, in Washington as well as numerous spots around the country, but in less than a month the fandom had raised half a million dollars for Donors Choose.
So out of the many great segments this year, I'm picking a recent one that was a total surprise, and was also heartwarming in what it said. I squealed with joy to see where the DS writers had been going with that segment.
3) "Modern Warfare" - Community - Speaking of using media in insightful ways, I think it's pretty interesting to see how the writers on Community realized that their original premise, while ok, was unimaginative compared to what they could do with their cast of characters to comment on popular culture, particularly films and TV. Not only did the series start highlighting Troy and Abed's bromance, but that bromance was very much a fannish partnership. For a viewer it was kind of awesome to see the morphing of the show in this sense, and also pretty funny to pick out who they were spoofing/remixing in any given episode. I think this episode marked the line where the show committed in full to its new plan, producing a LARP like no other.
4) "Mess of a Salesman" - Better Off Ted - Like Community, BOT had a bunch of great episodes, and even better its commentary was about modern corporate life. In my opinion Lem and Phil's nerdy bromance (I'm seeing a pattern here) was a particular joy and "You Are the Boss of Me" was probably the highlight of that. Overall my favorite episodes were "Jabberwocky" and "Racial Sensitivity" but like Boss they aired in 2009.
So I'm going with Mess because I absolutely loved the way that Veronica and Linda paired up in recognition that they were both women in a man's world, kicked some ass, and realized they needed to stand up for girls. Fandom can be a surprisingly misogynistic place, but I think it's great when it gets together to realize that we need to build stuff of our own for the future.
5) Supernatural Soundtrack by Christopher Lennertz and Jay Gruska. When I first heard the strains of "Americana" I was really glad I'd bought the soundtrack. This wonderfully poignant theme played beneath Chuck's narration in what was, for all practical purposes, the final episode of SPN as it existed with its original story arc. The track is aptly named, since the love for an America that both was and yet was a never-been pervaded that opening segment in the episode. At the same time we were reminded of a family that once was, and yet has never been quite all that it was remembered as. We were also told about the passing of days that we had never gotten to see in the series, slotted as they were between bigger moments, high adventures, and terrible tragedies. It made me mourn the budget losses that allowed for some of those beautiful panoramic shots as Sam and Dean crossed the country, saving people and hunting things.
There are many good musical segments on the soundtrack. For example, the one right after Americana - The Grateful Undead - begins with the sort of western theme that indicates the awareness of SPN's roots before it fizzes out into darker, horror tones, then an intimate interlude, later ramping into high-action mode before a quiet coda . There's the entire show in one musical piece.
Speaking of fandom and TV, it's always a jolt to see what the general public actually watches vs. what fandom does. I think they cheated by allowing "regularly scheduled" sports shows to be counted with Top 10 shows. But it's still telling that 8 out of 10 of the most watched events on TV were all football games, and that out of the Top 10 "shows" there are only two dramas (NCIS and its L.A. spinoff) and one comedy. While on the one hand it seems like bizarro world, I think it is also simply the other sex's world. I think that men under 50 watch TV so rarely these days compared to women that when they do, they tend to shift the stats significantly.
Comments at Dreamwidth
.