It is even funnier to me since it was made in Britain - which I think makes the part where “Marge” is driving home since she is actually on the wrong side of the car - but that’s a pretty small nit to pick.
I was a huge fan of the show Lost. It was complicated and mysterious. It was Sci-Fi and suspense - with decent acting and really great character development. There is a lot to love there. Last year I waited for the new episode every week. I knew that it would happen on Wednesday. That may sound like no big deal - but you have to understand I’ve been watching TV thru a PVR (ReplayTV) for 5 years. I never know when anything is on. I just sit down and watch whatever I have recorded.
There was a small problem. Lost is complicated. Over the year they slowly built an auidence. Either to make it cheaper by producing fewer episodes (cynical) or help the new viewers catch up (optimistic) ABC re-ran a lot of the episodes. Even more painful they would go back a few episodes and start again - so there would be weeks where there was nothing new.
Because of the story line - Lost has almost no syndication potential. That is a big deal when you consider how much revenue that ends up leaving on the table when your show is a success. This is a model that has worked well for “Reality TV” but they don’t care because the production cost on your typical “Reality”
show is nothing compared to a scripted hour long drama like lost.
At the end of the season, my fiancee got the DVD set for her aunt and got a copy for us. We ended up lending it to several people who all got hooked on the show.
Roll this year - the story moved much slower. Partially because you already knew a lot of the characters (optimistic) , and partially because since they know they are success they have to figure out how to make the story last (pessmitic). The re-run thing has been even worse. It’s gotten so bad I don’t even watch the show any more. It’s too annoying.
In the end, I’m just going to wait until the end of the year , and rent the DVDs. That way I can have a Lost weekend and call it done. That’s sort of a shame since I’m pretty sure everyone did that then the show will get cancelled since I don’t think ABC gets the revenue from the DVD sales (though they may).
So what’s the point of all of this - basically this - Lost is exactly the kind of show Everything Bad Is Good For You predicts would be popular. It’s complicated and involves a lot attention. The only problem is it seems like the network isn’t able to deliver the product in a way that makes sense. If it was a book it would be like having to go back 2 chapters everytime you sat down to read.
It makes me wonder if this is the beging of a larger trend that although TV has the potential to tell complex and interesting stories - the economcs of the model preculde them from doing that because the end goal of any network is to maximize revenue not enjoyment. So bring on the video ipod and more PVR tech to slice and dice the TV stream into one of those Long tail thingys that makes it easier to watch TV set at difficulty level 9.
This was a documentary about the development and evolution of Punk. In many ways I’ve always been a little confused about it. I mean it seemed like at some point punk was rebelious and out there and then it turned into Green Day (Not to knock Green Day as artists - I like some of ther stuff - but seriously - punk?)
The show was great because it took such an expansive view - from the Ramones to Sex Pistols to Black Flag and more.
One of my favorite parts was the interviews with David Johansen THe lead singer of the New Yorks Dolls. A totally old school punk band. You know him - he was the guy also known as “Buster Poindexter” if you grew up in the 80s :) Kind of a switch - I understand the psudeonym now a lot better.
Bottom Line: If you are into music history - this is a fine slice of a genre that isn’t all that it is cracked up to be - but you don’t know that when you’re young and angry.
‘boards - Screening Room
The C-list glitterati try their hand at scenes from HBO’s Entourage. (Warning: coarse language, mature subject matter, etc.)
Another one - and there are apparently 2 more floating around out there somewhere
If you like ENtourage (Which I do) or if you don’t this is still pretty funny - just be prepared for completely inapproriate language
Enjoy!
“Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law” (2000)
Ok this show has been out there for a while - but I never watched it. A friend of mine kept making references to it - so i decided I should give it a shot.
First of all - this is another Adult Swim 15 minute show. I love them just because you can enjoy then and then move on.
Second of all - apparently the entire animation is done in flash to get the style right - it looks great.
Please be prepared for humor that is in no way approriate for childen - it is in “Adult Swim” for a reason.
Basically this show is a lot like the comic book “Damage INC”. In “Damage INC”, the story followed a special construction company that handled clean up after super heros battle it out in the city.
In this case - Harvey was once a super hero and now he’s a lawyer. In the last episode he was sued by a villan he defeated in the 60s for emotional damage.
There are tons of super hero references - and it is funny to have them redo classic Hanna-Barbarah cartoon characters.
Bottom Line: I think it’s pretty funny - plus at only 15minutes - you can figure out pretty quickly if it is for you.
This is a new show on FX. It’s about a bunch of people with eating disorders. When I was at the gym all the morning talk shows were in a flutter about how the show glamorized/trivialized the eating disorders on the show.
I watched the pilot last night. I can tell you they didn’t glamorize it. Watching a cop pull over a chinese food delivery guy to make him surrender his chinese food , so the cop could eat it, and then force him self to throw up - didn’t not make me want to go out and become bulimic.
I don’t really know what to say about the show. It was disturbing and in a number of ways - the characters were basically nails on a chalkboard for me. They were not just compulsive about food - but also all the details related - for example every time there is a tv on in the show it is always either talking about weight loss or showing a food commerical.
The characters spent a while trying tof igure out if a 5′9″ and 140 pound women could be considered anything other than fat.
I usually give a new show three episodes to determine if it is even worth being on the line up - probably even more important now that the new fall line up will be here soon.
OK I’ll admit that “reality” tv isn’t really my bag. From time to time there have been hooks that got me in (The Joe Schmo Show was awesome) and since Annie likes them - I end up watching them and in some case getting hooked in the process.
I understand that they are cheaper to produce than a normal show because you don’t have to pay writers and there are probably no residuals (Though I’m not sure they make any money in syndication - I mean is anyone dieing to see that first season of survivor?) but there was something that never quiet made sense - they don’t last very long.
A standard TV show needs about 24 episodes to make a full season. It doesn’t always work out that way because now they re-run epsiodes from the same season even before the season is over. But that’s a lot of episodes. Sone reality shows make it that far but a lot of the most insane ones don’t.
Now it all comes together. It’s ok that they don’t last for very long. They get to make a 5-10 episode reality show - if it is a hit they make a ton of money in the process and if it is a dud - no big deal another one is going to be coming along shortly. Plus since you can make a bunch of them all at the same time - you can add new content over the summer when it is mostly re-run time - which worked fine in the old days - but people watch TV year round now.
So reality shows end up being a huge windfall for the networks as they continually attract new viewers -especially when you stumble onto a hot concept, the creators make a ton off of schulbs who we love to watch, and we the viewing public love it because we get to see “real” human emotions - who needs acting when you can see people say and do things that you would never believe if you knew an actual writer was involved.
Does that mean that the plot driven serial - or feature film is going to go the way of the dodo - it’s probably more likely that we’ll all stop reading books before that happens - but unfortunatly - unless the economics of tv show making change - reality shows are going to be with us for a long long time.
Ok I fixed the problems with the & sign in names - turns out that I was using the Python html parser incorrectly :) (Fixes A&E and Law & Order)
I fies the problem with HBO2 - basically it thought it was a channel number not a channel label so everything got messed up.
FLN - there is no FLN channel :) It’s actually FINE - Fine Living Network - all fixed.
Also I had TMC (The Movie Channel) when I meant TCM (Turner Classic Movies)
Also there was a bug that put the publish date of all the articles in the year 2001 - which has been corrected now.
All better now - enjoy.
Ok it looks like A&E, HBO2, and FLN are having problems in the feeds. I’m swamped so hopefully I’ll be able to get them sorted this week.
Apparently the system doesn’t like the & sign - so Law & Order and Lilo & Stich are messed up - don’t worry it’s on the list now.
Also as a heads up - the feed itself may clear and repost - this is part of the debugging process so ignore it for now - once I get this sorted out that will go away.
