execution and ambition -watching, and the "right" way to tell a story

[pocochina]

Art is hard to grade.

The types competitive artistic sport that I know of use this bifurcated scoring system, with execution being one aspect of the scoring process and difficulty being the other. And this makes sense, right? If you do two minutes of bland kiddie-pool shit but do it perfectly, or if you try a lot of really hard stuff but fall all

Comments

[sunclouds33]

Great meta. I agree with a lot. Although, it's interesting that you say that you liked S3-5 of The Wire the most. I'm on ep 5 of S1 and I'm finding it very hard to get into. I've stalled on my watch and the only thing that's propelling me forward is that it's highly recommended. However, I do agree that The Sopranos was the first but also easily the best of the prestige anti-hero shows and the Madonna comparison was dead on (in terms of how it works as an analogy and my own I HEART MADONNA AND THE COPY CATS DON'T COME CLOSE musical tastes

[sunclouds33]

However, Breaking Bad does its premise very well. It tells the Story of Walter White in an organized fashion and moreover, it’s an *interesting, new story* to get into how an ordinary suburban guy falls and eventually leads that underworld. It’s a worthwhile new twist on the anti-hero concept to build him into an anti-hero through the show instead of to deliver him to us as a Mafioso or shady vampire or even, a troubled, philanderer ad man living under a false identity with a shady past. BB is a lean, mean storytelling machine to tell the plot of Walt’s change and that's pretty new for a lead character

[pocochina]

House of Cards I do like, because while it's not my favorite of the anti-hero dramas, I think it's a move away from the 99.7% calculated BB-plotty type dramas in that it's not really about what happens, it's about getting insight into the psychological makeup of this very frightening person who exists within an American institution and in understanding how he sees himself. It's more of a vibe-watch, I think, but about a megalomaniac who's good at working the system rather than someone outside of it.

I think it ends up being meta in a cool way, too, because the audience has to just kind of go with it on so much stuff that flies over our heads....in the way most people end up doing about the mechanics of our actual government. Kind of chilling.

[pocochina]

I do hope you can stick with The Wire. I mean, life is short, if it doesn't work for you then it doesn't work for you, but yeah, IMO S1 is the show establishing itself (though I do like the last couple of episodes), S2 wavers a little, and everything after that is fantastic.

I HEART MADONNA AND THE COPY CATS DON'T COME CLOSE

5EVA. There are attempted Madonna impersonators who have the musical chops to make good stuff, or who have gone on to establish their own stage presences that work for them, but certain stylistic choices are too much in her orbit to escape the comparison. JUST LIKE TONY.

Christopher querying to Adriana what his “arc” is because every well-written character needs to progress to something. Because Christopher didn’t really have an *arc* or, at least, the predictable arc

ahaha, yes, he's such a messy piece of work, and that's what makes him so believable.

[sunclouds33]

And I'm posting again because two comments just isn't enough bloviating from me! Despite my defense of BB, I did agree with your main point. Maybe you'd disagree but I'd actually claim your entirely correct supposition that there's a trend towards detailed-story correctness to satisfy Twitter nit-pickers away from risky, chaotic inventiveness to describe why House of Cards (the latest big blatantly anti-hero show) is such a technically correct, prestige show with disappointing icy, distant non-character work far afield from The Sopranos's (the first blatantly anti-hero show) heat and "in yo face" challenging the viewer and non-stop new curve balls

[pocochina]

I want to meta how law enforcement is frequently a key ingredient to anti-hero shows.

OOOH YES WRITE THIS POST.

I like your point about Hank and Kate versus the group of agents on The Sopranos, and I think that's reflective of the differences between the shows? Angel and Walt are exceptional special snowflakes, and so The System gets represented as just one person. The Sopranos is a lot about how people exist in context, and law enforcement, being Not Us, is more about context than individual people.

[lokifan]

there's a trend towards detailed-story correctness to satisfy Twitter nit-pickers away from risky, chaotic inventiveness to describe why House of Cards (the latest big blatantly anti-hero show) is such a technically correct, prestige show with disappointing icy, distant non-character work

Very belated comment on this cool meta, poco, but - Yeah I would totally agree with this comment on House of Cards, esp when you compare it the original UK House of Cards which is much older.

[local_max]

Right, I think the central idea here always comes down to: "there is only one right way for X," where X is right way to be a story, right way to love a character, right way to be a good person.... And it's tempting to fall into that trap, I think, for various reasons good and bad. Maybe the way I'd frame it is this: we live in a culture that promotes "excellence" and over-consumption and having All The Things. It's like a joke I read recently -- "You can't fuck all the hot guys, logistically, unless your standards are very high indeed." It's also like the sour grapes Aesop. Fundamentally, not only can we not watch/read/learn/do everything, there are some htings that don't appeal to us but we might not be able to fully ascertain why, and/or we might suspect that we're missing some of what appeals to others about it, or some of what others are put off by about something, or so on. A shortcut to the difficult, kind of devastating work of acknowledging finitude is to just say that X > Y and that's why I'm expending energies on X rather

[pocochina]

I think the central idea here always comes down to: "there is only one right way for X," where X is right way to be a story, right way to love a character, right way to be a good person.

like being an execution viewer on ~LIFE ITSELF

blergh

[raktajinos]

Excellent essay. Really enjoyed reading it

[pocochina]

I've never given a damn about a tv show that is "excellent" if it doesn't do anything with it's narrative

Same! And if a show loses or proves itself not to have had that spark, then I'm out. I've given up on shows mid-episode. There's so much great stuff out there!

Lets take 'Pretty Little Liars' as an example. As an execution show, it fails terribly. They haven't solved a single issue and the characters make dumb decisions and it's sometimes painfully stupid and frustration. But then, as a concept it's genius and I love it.

Do you mean that PLL is poorly-executed for those reasons, or that it's a show that doesn't impress people who like shows to go according to a predictable ~plan? Because I don't know that these are necessarily flaws in a narrative, you know? A show can still be a well-executed story about people who are struggling within a system they can't wrap their minds around enough to maneuver intelligently (see: all Greek tragedies

[ceciliaj]

I love you. Brb, rereading your HIMYM finale hatefest. I'm still mad.

[pocochina]

IT WAS SO THE WORST. I was barely invested and I'm still mad, so I get it.