While I enjoy the father-son interaction... I enjoy it because it feels like a good use of secondary backstory to make things work. Which is why I like the use in Castle of Castle's family. They are minor bit parts, but the flesh the story out so much.
To think the story of Fringe was all just built around Walter it suddenly makes it feel that everything else was just tacked on and then it will fall apart at the drop of a pin.
Yes! Yes!!!! I am so worried now. Even though they are halfway through the third season, I am really concerned!
I wonder if their opinions about the show have changed over the years. But they recorded this commentary while filming (or right before starting to film) season two, and I can't imagine someone getting through the first ten episodes of the first season and still thinking this show is mostly about Walter and Peter. Flabbergasted.
The best commentary I've ever encountered was in the McSweeney's book Speak, Commentary by Tom Bissell and Jeff Alexander, a collection of fake DVD commentary. It's a toss up between the fake Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky commentary on Lord of the Rings and the Dinesh D'Souza/Ann Coulter commentary on Aliens.
Seriously, though, some of the commentary that Criterion has done for classic films has been outstanding. The Kurosawa films are particular standouts. Mel Brooks commentary on Young Frankenstein also gets a nod.
Bordering on the satirical/fake, the commentary on Spinal Tap is great, both the version where the actors are improvising in character about the making of the film and the one where they're just being themselves.
Aside from those exceptions, I agree that for the most part DVD commentary is a waste of bandwidth.
I think my favorite commentaries are the craft and "how we did this" commentaries--some of the early Battlestar Galactica podcasts delved into dramatic beats, why certain scenes were cut, and the process of creating tension in a TV show. I don't do commentaries, generally (they're not very accessible) but I went out of my way for a while to listen to the BSG podcasts.
The story, once it leaves the author's hands, belongs to the readers. And the story that they read may not be the one you *meant* to write. But, for better or for worse, it's the story that exists for them. I'll happily listen to creators' commentary on their own work, but if I disagree with it, I disagree with it. (Melisande as a sociopath? I guess I can see it, but I think it cheapens her character to think of her that way.)
(I argued with JC about Melisande for quite a while at a con, then gave up; there was no convincing her that my interpretation could even be considered valid!)
I love technical details about things. I particularly enjoy when set designers and costume designers and lighting people and post-production people sit down and talk about what they did and how they did it. The Fringe DVDs actually have some cool sections about their special effects and stuff like that, although it's not quite as in-depth as I'd like. (Plus those sections have no subtitles, so I'm sure I'm missing stuff.) I also like insights into the writing process, but I think blog posts and articles are a better distillation of that than an hour-long commentary where maybe 5 minutes total is spent talking about structuring tv episodes so that the scene before a commercial is always a mini-cliffhanger.
I would watch commentaries all day long if it was all techies talking about how they did stuff and their reasoning behind decisions. Especially costume and lighting design, but as a photography geek I'm into those sorts of things.
The story still belongs to me, the author. But I will tolerate any delusional interpretations on the part of the readers since they pay me money to do so. And if they come up with interpretations or ideas better than mine, I may claim them as what I meant all along if I can sound convincing. ;)
I think that's a great attitude to have! But I'm not sure I agree that no one can ruin my enjoyment of something unless I let them. I mean, finding out Johnny Depp is a rape apologist completely ruined all Johnny Depp movies for me forever -- I can't look at his face without thinking about how he doesn't think rapists are predators. That's not something I "let" happen, you know? Similarly, I can't read a book by Orson Scott Card without being reminded that he holds beliefs that are so abhorrent to me that it makes me feel nauseated just to think about them; again, that's not really me "letting" my enjoyment of Ender's Game be ruined.
So finding out that the creators of Fringe don't prioritize their main character is pretty upsetting -- and finding out that they don't even consider her to be the main character/protagonist is not only really annoying, but also tells me that I can't trust what they create, as much as I can enjoy it on other levels, because they don't even know what they are creating.
Ah, that's a good point. And I can totally understand that perspective, too. There's a level of disturbing realization that can certainly break apart the illusion of the story that's being created. Though I have still been able to see the beauty of a work, despite the ugly of the creator, perhaps because I don't equate the creator and the creation as the same thing. However, I do see that there could be cases where the creator's beliefs or doings are bad enough that I may choose to avoid their work from a desire to not support their belief or doings, though that stems more from a political choice rather than from my ability to look at their work as a stand alone object, which may or may not be enjoyable in and of itself.
I don't tend to equate the creator with what they create -- but I do think that (with very rare exceptions) creators tend to imbue what they make with parts of themselves. OSC is a really excellent example of a writer who puts a lot of himself into his work, and once you know it's there, it's difficult to overlook the bits of his beliefs that make it into the work in the characters.
I pretty much never watch commentary. I have no interest in the creator's dialogue in the middle of a scene, and I'd rather have no spoilers of any sort -- including the way you're viewing the story, because that might tell me what I should expect you to do next.
I love Fringe so far, though I have to shove my brain back to the Doc Smith plus Marvel Comics mode in order to keep from exploding about the so-called science. I don't care what the commentary said; it's clearly ALL about Olivia -- even within the Father-Son dynamic, she's the one that drives the events. It may be they talked about that part most because Olivia's position in the story is obvious and thus not worth talking about; it's the stuff that ISN'T obvious, that other people might not have seen, that you're going to talk about.
I have some interest in being ABLE to find out what a creator may have been thinking at some points, what resources they used, what inspired them, but DVD commentary is SOOOOO very much NOT the format for that.
The Fringe commentary -- at least on that first episode -- contains zero spoilers past the first ten or so episodes of the first season, which I appreciate. I hate being spoiled for later seasons of a show on the DVDs!
The way they describe the creation of the show is that it began as a story about a mad scientist, and they added his son to humanize him and give viewers an entry point, and the other characters sprung up around that; the way they describe it, Olivia was basically an afterthought. (They also readily admit to stealing everything from Altered States, if that helps you with the bunk science.)
I can see that explanation. It's far from the first time that a one-off or side character became the focus, sometimes without the creators realizing it. As one example (X-Ample?), Wolverine was just a counterpoint character for the X-Men, meant to be a way of showing the nastier side of mutant powers that still just barely stayed on the side of right; no one expected him to become the center of the frickin' mutant universe for several years. TVTropes calls this a "Breakout Character" and the classic example is The Fonz.
I could even (without hearing the commentary) draw a diagram showing how Olivia could first have come to exist, and eventually to become the central character, without the actual creators even realizing that she WAS.
Yeah, like I've said, I can definitely see that happening over the course of the first few episodes -- but by the time you hit the end of season one, there's just no denying what the show is about and how it's structured. The fact that these guys, going into -- or possibly already enmeshed in -- season two still didn't see that makes me really question their perspectives.
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To think the story of Fringe was all just built around Walter it suddenly makes it feel that everything else was just tacked on and then it will fall apart at the drop of a pin.
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I wonder if their opinions about the show have changed over the years. But they recorded this commentary while filming (or right before starting to film) season two, and I can't imagine someone getting through the first ten episodes of the first season and still thinking this show is mostly about Walter and Peter. Flabbergasted.
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Bordering on the satirical/fake, the commentary on Spinal Tap is great, both the version where the actors are improvising in character about the making of the film and the one where they're just being themselves.
Aside from those exceptions, I agree that for the most part DVD commentary is a waste of bandwidth.
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The story, once it leaves the author's hands, belongs to the readers. And the story that they read may not be the one you *meant* to write. But, for better or for worse, it's the story that exists for them. I'll happily listen to creators' commentary on their own work, but if I disagree with it, I disagree with it. (Melisande as a sociopath? I guess I can see it, but I think it cheapens her character to think of her that way.)
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I love technical details about things. I particularly enjoy when set designers and costume designers and lighting people and post-production people sit down and talk about what they did and how they did it. The Fringe DVDs actually have some cool sections about their special effects and stuff like that, although it's not quite as in-depth as I'd like. (Plus those sections have no subtitles, so I'm sure I'm missing stuff.) I also like insights into the writing process, but I think blog posts and articles are a better distillation of that than an hour-long commentary where maybe 5 minutes total is spent talking about structuring tv episodes so that the scene before a commercial is always a mini-cliffhanger.
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So finding out that the creators of Fringe don't prioritize their main character is pretty upsetting -- and finding out that they don't even consider her to be the main character/protagonist is not only really annoying, but also tells me that I can't trust what they create, as much as I can enjoy it on other levels, because they don't even know what they are creating.
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I love Fringe so far, though I have to shove my brain back to the Doc Smith plus Marvel Comics mode in order to keep from exploding about the so-called science. I don't care what the commentary said; it's clearly ALL about Olivia -- even within the Father-Son dynamic, she's the one that drives the events. It may be they talked about that part most because Olivia's position in the story is obvious and thus not worth talking about; it's the stuff that ISN'T obvious, that other people might not have seen, that you're going to talk about.
I have some interest in being ABLE to find out what a creator may have been thinking at some points, what resources they used, what inspired them, but DVD commentary is SOOOOO very much NOT the format for that.
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The way they describe the creation of the show is that it began as a story about a mad scientist, and they added his son to humanize him and give viewers an entry point, and the other characters sprung up around that; the way they describe it, Olivia was basically an afterthought. (They also readily admit to stealing everything from Altered States, if that helps you with the bunk science.)
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I could even (without hearing the commentary) draw a diagram showing how Olivia could first have come to exist, and eventually to become the central character, without the actual creators even realizing that she WAS.
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