Wednesday, October 04, 2006
TV and life's other little disappointments
A sign near us says "Full-time toddler opening $153/week."
Now, it's not great money--clearly below minimum wage. But the work isn't hard at all. I mean, you'd be paid to nap!
It's worth considering.
One word of advice: no one should ever sign up for an Internet discussion forum and by their 3rd overall post be telling people that they have everything all figured out. Trust me.
But the real subject is how I'm disappointed in every new TV show I've tried. Here are the highlights:
Studio 60 with the Overlong Title I dismissed after seeing about 20 minutes of a random episode. I realize that this looks like I'm judging it far too soon, and I know a lot of people like it. My suspicion is that most of those people haven't seen an Aaron Sorkin show before. I've watched all of Sports Night, his first TV show, and I watched all of the first couple of seasons of West Wing (before it got completely ridiculous). And Studio 60 is, to me, just more of the same. It's a bunch of articulate, witty people who know a lot of obscure little factoids trying to do something under terrible deadline pressure and gradually revealing their Shocking Secrets.
And the thing is, I'd like to imagine that people who work in the White House can rattle off statistics about traffic accidents and exports and financial whatevers, and I know that at least some of the people in sports broadcasting carry around amazing statistical details in their heads. I'm not so sure that writers and producers of Saturday Night Live--I mean, Friday Night in Hollywood--are worried about such things.
Heroes was what I was most excited about, and therefore what I'm most disappointed in. It's stupid and flat and often boring, and I don't care about any characters at all, partially because they aren't characters, they're just little play figures who get moved around a big board in order to advance the arbitrary (if I can use the word) "plot." It reminds me of when I was six and had a little Fisher Price Village playset. The characters on Heroes have about as much internal consistency as those little plastic figurines, and they act according to the same logic. Why does the guy with the mustache leave his fancy apartment with steaks on the grill to go across the street to get his hair cut? Because I want to use the cool bridge across the street and spin the wheel that changes the traffic light. Why is there a fire? Because I want to turn the crank that makes the siren noise! Why is there a cheerleader walking across the field in the middle of full-contact football practice? Because the writer wants another chance to have her display her power in public. (And apparently her power is "gets hurt really easily," since her neck snapped from being knocked over. If this guy wrote a movie about the NFL, the mortality rate would be 90%.)
OK, it's stupid, enough.
Jericho is also stupid too often, but there's more of a sense that it matters and that these people are people instead of cardboard cut-outs, so I'm willing to give it a little slack. But I wish they'd be more careful about the details, and I'm worried that when everything is revealed it won't be very satisfactory. For the moment I'm willing to watch it if I remember.
But so far, there's nothing I'll miss at all. So, more time for me to read comics.
Now, it's not great money--clearly below minimum wage. But the work isn't hard at all. I mean, you'd be paid to nap!
It's worth considering.
One word of advice: no one should ever sign up for an Internet discussion forum and by their 3rd overall post be telling people that they have everything all figured out. Trust me.
But the real subject is how I'm disappointed in every new TV show I've tried. Here are the highlights:
Studio 60 with the Overlong Title I dismissed after seeing about 20 minutes of a random episode. I realize that this looks like I'm judging it far too soon, and I know a lot of people like it. My suspicion is that most of those people haven't seen an Aaron Sorkin show before. I've watched all of Sports Night, his first TV show, and I watched all of the first couple of seasons of West Wing (before it got completely ridiculous). And Studio 60 is, to me, just more of the same. It's a bunch of articulate, witty people who know a lot of obscure little factoids trying to do something under terrible deadline pressure and gradually revealing their Shocking Secrets.
And the thing is, I'd like to imagine that people who work in the White House can rattle off statistics about traffic accidents and exports and financial whatevers, and I know that at least some of the people in sports broadcasting carry around amazing statistical details in their heads. I'm not so sure that writers and producers of Saturday Night Live--I mean, Friday Night in Hollywood--are worried about such things.
Heroes was what I was most excited about, and therefore what I'm most disappointed in. It's stupid and flat and often boring, and I don't care about any characters at all, partially because they aren't characters, they're just little play figures who get moved around a big board in order to advance the arbitrary (if I can use the word) "plot." It reminds me of when I was six and had a little Fisher Price Village playset. The characters on Heroes have about as much internal consistency as those little plastic figurines, and they act according to the same logic. Why does the guy with the mustache leave his fancy apartment with steaks on the grill to go across the street to get his hair cut? Because I want to use the cool bridge across the street and spin the wheel that changes the traffic light. Why is there a fire? Because I want to turn the crank that makes the siren noise! Why is there a cheerleader walking across the field in the middle of full-contact football practice? Because the writer wants another chance to have her display her power in public. (And apparently her power is "gets hurt really easily," since her neck snapped from being knocked over. If this guy wrote a movie about the NFL, the mortality rate would be 90%.)
OK, it's stupid, enough.
Jericho is also stupid too often, but there's more of a sense that it matters and that these people are people instead of cardboard cut-outs, so I'm willing to give it a little slack. But I wish they'd be more careful about the details, and I'm worried that when everything is revealed it won't be very satisfactory. For the moment I'm willing to watch it if I remember.
But so far, there's nothing I'll miss at all. So, more time for me to read comics.
