December 2009
3 posts
smoking smoking smoking smoking
I’m six episodes into the first season of Mad Men and loving it. There’s a lot to write about, but I’m not going to start quite yet.
Suffice it to say that I’ve never really considered smoking in my living room until now. It won’t happen, but it’s damn tempting.
Confessions of an Older, Wiser Version of a...
I was listening to my old band’s record today at work. It’d been a while since I listened to the songs, and even longer since I paid any attention to the lyrics. I thought suddenly that whoever wrote these lyrics must have been a moody, passionate, angry, delusional, pampered-yet-still-demanding, wet-behind-the-ears college student.
I remember being extremely proud (and protective...
Robot E. Lee revisited
How do you make a perfect idea better?
With all due respect to Phil’s outline, I’ve reworked the original Robot E. Lee into what I feel is a more complete vision of the same idea. One act at a time. Here we go.
Act 1:
Three billion years ago, an robotic war machine built by a now-extant alien species crash landed on Earth. The continent had not yet formed. Flora and fauna as we...
Season 2, The Wire
So, I intended to write a series of posts on season 1 of The Wire. I really did. And then I watched all of season 2.
A few thoughts:
If any other show had abandoned its main storyline after the first season, they’d be screwed. They spend 13 hours developing these great characters, characters that you care about, and identify with, and fear for, and then consign them to the C plot. It was...
October 2009
11 posts
AV Club Blog: 30 Rock's Dangerous Decline and the... →
Definitely worth a read.
lessons learned from The Wire: part 1
A lot of due has been paid to The Wire for representing both sides of the drug war. I think the praise has been warranted, but I haven’t seen a good analysis of how this symmetry is achieved. Why do we care as much about drug dealers as we do about detectives (and why are the despicable cops somehow fouler than the vilest criminal)? How are the magnificent yet subtle structures of this...
lessons learned from the wire: prologue
i’m almost done with season 1, and i’m planning a couple of thoughtful posts in conjunction with the milestone. there’s one particular point that i want to make now; there’ll be examples and comparisons later, but for now…
don’t give more backstory than is absolutely necessary. moreover, don’t follow your characters home more often than is absolutely...
30 rock season 3 on netflix view instant
Thank god.
The constant stream of guest stars is a little irritating though. Megan Mullaly! Steve Martin! Jennifer Anistan! Goodness gracious!
The fact is, the regular characters, when they’re written well, are much funnier than the guest stars. And as much as I like having seeing Matthew Broderick on the small screen, it’s more a distraction than anything else. To put it lamely, we...
30 Rock Spec →
The Upside
I can’t say that I’m not disappointed, but there are definitely ways to make the application process a worthwhile experience. “Civic Duty” was my first full episode—if I had been accepted into the program, I’d have no opportunity to dissect and analyze the decisions I made. Now, I have sufficient motivation (and all the time in the world) to pull the script...
The disappointing fulfillments of Lost, cont'd
An example where the mystery box was well designed and cleverly dismantled:
the hatch. The discovery and speculation surrounding the hatch drove season 1. When we got into the hatch, it gave birth to another, equally compelling mystery box: the button, which drove season 2. These two plot lines allowed John Locke to rise and fall, and rise again, and fall again. The power struggle and the...
The disappointing fulfillments of Lost
I’m rewatching the first three seasons of Lost. I never got past the mid point of season 3, and before I continue on with 4, 5, and 6, I wanted to remind myself what happened.
Answer: so fucking much happened.
Structurally, Lost is, for the most part, head and shoulders above every serial out there. The problem is, as everyone knows, sustainability. The others were, for two whole seasons,...
First off,
This weekend I started an outline of a pilot I’ve been wanting to write for the past few months—a sitcom. I think it has the shell of something usable. Something of quality. It’s a nervous place to be, because at this point, the script can go in a few different directions. it could turn out well, or it could turn to shit. Or it could just be plain, which might be worse. I’ve spent a lot of time...
Kenny Powers vs. Michael Bluth
I’ve come to realization that my favorite comedies are funny either because a.) the central character is unrealistically outlandish, surrounded by normal(ish) people who have to deal with him/her , or b.) most of the surrounding characters are unrealistically outlandish, and the central character has to cope with being with them. Examples of a.) include Eastbound and Down, Curb Your...