Dear television show producers,
If you write a show named after your title character, there is no point in putting this title character in danger in episode nine when we all know there are a dozen more episodes that will certainly star this same title character. (Unless you want to turn your character into a zombie or a vampire.)
Sincerely,
Viewers like me
After enough suggestions, I decided to start watching Battlestar Galactica. I have: the miniseries and season 1. I know the miniseries preceded season 1, but should I watch it first (or at all)? Is it gonna piss me off and make me hate the show? Is there something else I should know before I start?
Dear writers and producers,
I have been watching your show since the beginning, and I have to say, I am close to quitting. Please consider these issues:
I am willing to keep watching for the “I really want to know” factor, but not much longer, unless you make it clear that there is something to know and that you’re not just making it up as you go along. (Or that you’ve quit doing that and are aiming somewhere now.)
Thank you.
Sincerely,
wolfa
So I only recently started watching Wonderfalls proper and wow, I am so foolish, so very foolish. I need to pay very very close attention to all of Shrinky’s suggestions now (the other was Veronica Mars). This is 2 for 2. (It is so much like Dead Like Me. Which, uh, makes sense what with them having the same writer. Which I never looked up despite missing that show. Why does Ellen Muth not do anything else?)
Alternative answer: I need to not take suggestions from Shrinky because it means I spend all my spare time watching tv. But good tv! And then I get my friend to watch the same shows and soon she’ll hate me for filling up all her spare time with (good) tv.
[1] This is also the name of a square my family makes, with a soft crust covered in melted chocolate and then sprinkled with nuts.
Instead of thinking about things I don’t want to be thinking about, let’s talk about last night’s House. The joy I had in the character continuity — Wilson has always been the character who lied to House for his own good (often to House’s detriment), and Cuddy has always been the one who reluctantly went along wtht it. House deciding that just being alive wasn’t enough, as per his earlier discussions with Foreman. Chase giving in when House asked him to do something, even when Foreman and Cameron refused. Cameron is a little lacking in continuity, but since the writers are trying to make her a better character, I’ll give her that. I love shows that feel that character continuity is important. (Timeline continuity clearly doesn’t exist for them, but they’ve also said as much, in a metameta way.)
Positives: no one almost died because of sex this episode!
Negatives: yet again, the female patient did something stupid which caused her near death.
Positives: Cuddy! In I think slightly less hideous outfits than usual. Very slightly.
Negatives: not *enough* Cuddy, and what about that sperm donor thing? If that ends in her and House together, though, not good.
Positives: two patients
Negatives: hello? Clinic? We miss you, clinic patients
I like that despite the magic end of limp (required, as I understand it, by Hugh Laurie, who found limping too painful), they continued with the need for Vicodin and the puzzle to solve (and the Vicodin when the puzzle wasn’t solved — would House have stolen the pad if he’d found out the truth?). I loved that they went back to the Rolling Stones. And I refuse to watch the previews, so I don’t know what’s coming next, but this bodes well for a season that is better than last season (hey, no Stacy, no ‘Foreman in charge’).
Constructing a mystery plot is like an interactive game with a very long time frame. Audiences change over time because they catch on to certain narrative devices, and the devices become useless. The trick for authors and filmmakers is to understand the evolving assumptions of the audience, and play off those assumptions.
Sometimes that seems impossible. The great plots have all been used, most of them by Agatha Christie. . . .
On the other end of the spectrum, there are the hastily written “a child is in peril” novels, often by people named Kellerman, which use the suspense form to, I dunno, prevent wildfires through effective deforestation techniques? Bleh. Then there are the “a serial killer is on the loose sending enigmatic notes/playing cards/collages/Christmas tree ornaments to the police” books, which seem as if they should be solvable, but aren’t. It’s the super at the building where the third murder was committed! Are you surprised? Of course you are, because anything would surprise you.
Now I feel sort of ashamed for reading those books, too (not all of them are that bad — but most are). And also I really want to do something (but what?) with the idea of mystery plots as interactive games. And read a number of the books or movies mentioned in the article.
A more thoughtful review later, where I will discuss the use of the buddy cop cliches in Bon Cop Bad Cop, as well as some other issues I had with it, but overall, big points. The theatre was packed, and there were lineups for the two 9:30 shows. I laughed — everyone laughed.
Rick Mercer plays a tolerable anti-Quebec, anti-Europe, ugly-tie-wearing “Tom Berry”. Louis-José Houde (Jeff, the coroner), plays someone much like the Brad Pitt character in Snatch. Patrick Huard and Colm Feore are great. Greater is Capt. Leboeuf, who makes the most of this “hopportunity”. How funny is it if you don’t speak French? I don’t know. Funny, yes, but laugh-out-loud funny? Perhaps. Canadians — especially Ontarians — should enjoy it. Probably people from the NE US will get it, too (not in the sense that the movie will play there, but if they saw it, they’d laugh).
I rather liked the swearing scenes, where Huard teaches Feore how to swear in French, or Feore’s sister some “dirty French talk” to say in bed. I was also a fan of the “Saving Grace” mini-story (see that movie too). The plot was as thin as any given buddy cop movie, but they were open about it — though I regret the lack of a Zamboni chase scene. Wouldn’t that have been cool?
Overall, it’s every Canadian’s — and every Canadian resident’s — civic duty to see this film. Support local film! Plus laugh! What else could you ask for?
Today I am finally going to see Bon Cop Bad Cop (trailer which hasn’t, as far as I can tell, been updated in a year). I have been waiting for this movie for a year, so I will almost certainly be disappointed. (Other Canadians: it opens across Canada in a week or two. Support the local film industry! People who aren’t in Quebec or Ontario and who are probably ignored, sorry. If you see this movie, maybe there will be another one where they go out west, or to Alberta, or the Atlantic provinces. Manitoba and Saskatchewan, I guess I just don’t care about you.)
I know it had the highest-grossing opening weekend for a Quebec film ever, which is I suppose impressive, in the big fish/small pond way. (Which isn’t fair, because Quebec movies are very good, as — I am told — is much of their tv, though I don’t watch it.) Reviews have been uniformly good, though of course this is in part the “such a cute idea, we have to like it” effect.
Proper review to come tonight.
Now that I’m done with Veronica Mars, I need another show to watch. I like Buffy, Sopranos, House, Dead Like Me. I liked Six Feet Under but watched it only irregularly.
I took a break from watching Veronica Mars while I was in Maine, and now I am obsessively watching it again. I have seven episodes left of season 2. I also have a pile of books I am looking forward to reading. Am I taking equal times, reading and watching VM? No. I cannot wait until this season is done (in part because I want to know if my guesses about the ending are right — I was dead wrong in guessing who killed Lilly Kane and who raped Veronica last time).