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Oh, teevee...
Jan. 15th, 2013 10:20 am I have a love/hate relationship with TV.
On the one hand, I love it. There are so many different stories to be told! So many different directions things can be taken and if you're lucky you get a good story with a great actor or actress and it's just perfection for one episode at a time. Even if you merely get an okay pairing, sometimes it's just what the doctor ordered. Unlike movies, television series are (in theory) given enough time to let a story breathe. You get time to know the characters and grow to love (or hate) them, and then they're given time to redeem themselves if they (and you) are lucky enough. Much as I love books, some things really do work better on screen than on page.
On the other hand, unlike movies and books, TV has to answer pretty rapidly to the fan base. If the majority of the fans HATE something, odds are good it's going to get changed (regardless of whether it SHOULD) or your show is going to hemorrhage viewers and get canceled. Sometimes a perfectly good show gets canceled any way. Movies you pretty much get what you're told you're going to get. The delivery may not be what you want, but once work truly begins, you get a movie. A TV show will suck you in on premise alone and then BAM. Pilot never gets picked up and you're left wondering what happened. Ditto if the show does get picked up but the network doesn't believe in it enough to hold out long enough for people to find it.
There are a million things that can damn a show, which means odds are good you are going to get your heart broken. A lot. Likely numerous times a season and there isn't a ton you can do about it, either. You can watch your show religiously but unless you are one of the chosen few it doesn't matter. You can write it or bombard the internet at large with petitions, tweets, FB posts, whatever you can think of. Doesn't mean it'll matter.
TV is a fickle mistress and after awhile it becomes too difficult to keep giving your heart away.
This is why I try not to watch new shows and get too attached. It's why I will not watch ANYTHING on Fox until it's become an established hit and even then I'm pretty sure me watching it will doom the poor show. (See House. It kept going but the S3 shakeup kind of fucked everything up.)
I am a lover of failed television. And yet, like any good optimist, I keep trying.
With the bitter news that Mockingbird Lane never made it past a very expensive pilot (seriously, NBC, what gives? Cut back on the gore and let the show be as awesome as the pilot promised. It's killing me that a network that doesn't air anything I want to watch pulled the plug on the only thing I DID want to see! A network that desperately needs a good show, no less!) and the writing on the wall for Apt. 23 (when you start burning off episodes, things aren't likely to end well), I find myself questioning my love for television more than ever. 666 Park Avenue never really took off, last season murdered GCB and I'm still bitter about that, I still mourn Hellcats, and that's before we really start reaching back for canceled shows.
Still, hope springs eternal and all that. When they announced The Carrie Diaries was going to be made into a TV show, I thought of course it is. When it was picked up by the CW, I realized Gossip Girl was definitely going to die and my interest somehow managed to slip even lower.
You see, I am not one of those people who watched Sex And The City. I tried. Sort of. I remember all these amazing women (and some pretty impressive guys) who watched and obsessed. I tried watching and couldn't really get past Carrie herself. She irked me on so many levels that it's probably for the best that I never really got into it beyond the occasional 3am marathon on HBO that would lead to me passing out two episodes in.
Lately I've found that it makes a fabulous background noise show for my cleaning so that helps.
So, no. I wasn't looking forward to TCD. Not a SATC fan, not a huge AnnaSophia Robb fan, and while I understand that NYC requires a certain number of shows to be set there... I am not all that in love with the city.
What I do love, however, are the 80's. As a child of, and I do mean that as in I was actually a child during the 80's, my memories are filtered through the lens of someone who saw a lot of the super over the top things as stuff to look up to, to wish I was old enough to be able to wear or use or whatever.
Add to that the less than fantastic predictions for the show and, well, I had to give it a shot.
Aside from me being pretty sure Carrie's home life had to be a direct contradiction of how it was presented in the show (it was, TCD apparently is willing to use SATC as a selling point but bases things more on the book) and being irrationally irked that the big scene where Carrie makes her mother's purse her own was marred by the nail polish bottles that are totally not 80's bottle shapes AT ALL (and as someone who inadvertently did destroy something precious to a parent with nail polish, trust me on this)... I thought it was cute. Definitely a stylized 80's but... the show itself is cute. I think it could be a good show if you ignore the whole prequel thing and concentrate on the story at hand.
Sadly, time has not made Chloe Bridges look any less frightening to my eyes, and I feel bad saying it, but there you go. The 80'sness of her clique and her fabulously WTF-name probably offset things a smidge.
On the one hand, I love it. There are so many different stories to be told! So many different directions things can be taken and if you're lucky you get a good story with a great actor or actress and it's just perfection for one episode at a time. Even if you merely get an okay pairing, sometimes it's just what the doctor ordered. Unlike movies, television series are (in theory) given enough time to let a story breathe. You get time to know the characters and grow to love (or hate) them, and then they're given time to redeem themselves if they (and you) are lucky enough. Much as I love books, some things really do work better on screen than on page.
On the other hand, unlike movies and books, TV has to answer pretty rapidly to the fan base. If the majority of the fans HATE something, odds are good it's going to get changed (regardless of whether it SHOULD) or your show is going to hemorrhage viewers and get canceled. Sometimes a perfectly good show gets canceled any way. Movies you pretty much get what you're told you're going to get. The delivery may not be what you want, but once work truly begins, you get a movie. A TV show will suck you in on premise alone and then BAM. Pilot never gets picked up and you're left wondering what happened. Ditto if the show does get picked up but the network doesn't believe in it enough to hold out long enough for people to find it.
There are a million things that can damn a show, which means odds are good you are going to get your heart broken. A lot. Likely numerous times a season and there isn't a ton you can do about it, either. You can watch your show religiously but unless you are one of the chosen few it doesn't matter. You can write it or bombard the internet at large with petitions, tweets, FB posts, whatever you can think of. Doesn't mean it'll matter.
TV is a fickle mistress and after awhile it becomes too difficult to keep giving your heart away.
This is why I try not to watch new shows and get too attached. It's why I will not watch ANYTHING on Fox until it's become an established hit and even then I'm pretty sure me watching it will doom the poor show. (See House. It kept going but the S3 shakeup kind of fucked everything up.)
I am a lover of failed television. And yet, like any good optimist, I keep trying.
With the bitter news that Mockingbird Lane never made it past a very expensive pilot (seriously, NBC, what gives? Cut back on the gore and let the show be as awesome as the pilot promised. It's killing me that a network that doesn't air anything I want to watch pulled the plug on the only thing I DID want to see! A network that desperately needs a good show, no less!) and the writing on the wall for Apt. 23 (when you start burning off episodes, things aren't likely to end well), I find myself questioning my love for television more than ever. 666 Park Avenue never really took off, last season murdered GCB and I'm still bitter about that, I still mourn Hellcats, and that's before we really start reaching back for canceled shows.
Still, hope springs eternal and all that. When they announced The Carrie Diaries was going to be made into a TV show, I thought of course it is. When it was picked up by the CW, I realized Gossip Girl was definitely going to die and my interest somehow managed to slip even lower.
You see, I am not one of those people who watched Sex And The City. I tried. Sort of. I remember all these amazing women (and some pretty impressive guys) who watched and obsessed. I tried watching and couldn't really get past Carrie herself. She irked me on so many levels that it's probably for the best that I never really got into it beyond the occasional 3am marathon on HBO that would lead to me passing out two episodes in.
Lately I've found that it makes a fabulous background noise show for my cleaning so that helps.
So, no. I wasn't looking forward to TCD. Not a SATC fan, not a huge AnnaSophia Robb fan, and while I understand that NYC requires a certain number of shows to be set there... I am not all that in love with the city.
What I do love, however, are the 80's. As a child of, and I do mean that as in I was actually a child during the 80's, my memories are filtered through the lens of someone who saw a lot of the super over the top things as stuff to look up to, to wish I was old enough to be able to wear or use or whatever.
Add to that the less than fantastic predictions for the show and, well, I had to give it a shot.
Aside from me being pretty sure Carrie's home life had to be a direct contradiction of how it was presented in the show (it was, TCD apparently is willing to use SATC as a selling point but bases things more on the book) and being irrationally irked that the big scene where Carrie makes her mother's purse her own was marred by the nail polish bottles that are totally not 80's bottle shapes AT ALL (and as someone who inadvertently did destroy something precious to a parent with nail polish, trust me on this)... I thought it was cute. Definitely a stylized 80's but... the show itself is cute. I think it could be a good show if you ignore the whole prequel thing and concentrate on the story at hand.
Sadly, time has not made Chloe Bridges look any less frightening to my eyes, and I feel bad saying it, but there you go. The 80'sness of her clique and her fabulously WTF-name probably offset things a smidge.