A recent discussion on Twitter about television shows with “mythologies” raised the question of the origin and meaning of this term. I thought I’d take a shot. The term “mythology” seems to have sprung up in the mid Nineties and is only used in reference to television shows. We generally don’t speak of movies or [...]
“Are end dates actually good for TV shows?”
EW‘s Darren Franich asks the big question, “Are end dates actually good for TV shows?” Since I have been obsessed with sequential narrative, like that seen in TV series, I have a keen interest in this question. I think Franich is wrong, at least for the reasons he states. His argument against setting a scheduled [...]
Telling Stories and Selling Soap
Longtime readers of this blog (I used to joke there were two of you, but I think both of them stopped reading a long time ago), may recall I got a little obsessed during the latter part of the run of Lost with the challenges of sequential narrative, which is also sometimes referred to as [...]
Get What You Like, Like What You Get
There has been a lot of rabid discussion of Lost as the TV series winds down. There are tons of articles and blog posts, but this one piece by James Poniewozik is probably a perfect distillation of the discussion. (Maybe you also want to read this long interview with Cuse and Lindelof .) There’s a [...]
Watching Life on Mars
I previously wrote about the challenges of drawn-out sequential narrative. A TV series is a classic example, but there are plenty of other examples of authors telling a big story over a sprawling landscape (e.g., the Harry Potter books, any number of comic books, etc.) Old school television is self-contained. Each week, a story is [...]
How to tell a big story on TV.
Art and commerce so frequently conflict with each other. For the artist, the object is to create of work of beauty and meaning: A painting, a novel, a song. You create the work; but from the business standpoint, you want to re-create. Do it again. Write the sequel, Drag it out for years. Turn the [...]
What Makes For Great TV?
I was asked to write one more tribute to The Sopranos, so I did. It made sense to do so by talking about the overall quality of television today and by looking at the bar that The Sopranos has set for all television shows. Sing a Final Song for The Sopranos One might get the [...]
Round-up: Spots
I have seriously fallen behind on linking to my Spot-on columns. I love food, but I love food culture even more. I love exploring past food fads, cultural variances in certain dishes, new exotic trends. So, last week I wrote a piece entitled Eat to Live? Live To Eat? which tied together the new Pixar [...]
The Sopranos: Have you been paying any attention?
I wasn’t necessarily going to weigh in on this, because every-damn-body is, but there is something I want to address about the series finale of The Sopranos. It’s this: Fade to Black Has ‘Sopranos’ Fans Seeing Red. Plenty of people wanted to discuss the ending with Chase. And not just viewers — some TV critics, [...]
Round-up: V For Very late…
I have been insanely busy at work, so this will serve as a catch-all of observations. An almost violent altercation broke out when discussing the behavior of George during this week’s Grey’s Anatomy. In recent weeks, he’s been extremely difficult in the aftermath of the Meredith Incident. I grant you that he is behaving like [...]