After months of negotiation, reruns, and alternative programming, the writers’ strike is over, according to…Michael Eisner? Sure, why not?
Listen, it’s not like I haven’t found plenty of other things to watch since some of my favorite shows disappeared as early as November, but when Lipstick Jungle is the only new original programming on the air, you know it’s time to create some new shows.
First order of business: bring back The Office!
As the Hollywood writers’ strike drags on into the New Year, it seems to be getting harder to choose a side and stick with it. I’ve been behind the writers all along, asserting that the immediate impact of a settlement is less important than setting the precedent for compensation when, a few years down the road, all television is delivered to your set from the Internet. But as my favorite scripted shows run out of banked episodes, ready to be replaced by reruns, untested new series and a handful of episodes of LOST, my resolve to support the union wanes, and I wish they’d figure out a short-term deal that would leave open the possibility of future negotiations. But as late-night talk shows return tonight, some without writers, I can’t help but support those who are bold enough to stay on the picket line.
As a rather passive gaming enthusiast, I don’t know all that much about the history of video games; I have just enough information to appreciate the fact that the 8-bit games that lived in cabinet-sized machines have evolved into photorealistic adventures that fit onto a compact disc. I’m the perfect audience, then, for the Discovery Channel’s Rise of the Video Game, a documentary series on the growth of the gaming market. From Pong to, I imagine, PS3, the series takes a comprehensive look on what makes gamers tick and how the market has responded over time. Tonight’s installation is neatly summarizing my formative years, including the introduction of the NES and Sega Genesis. For anyone who’s interested in gaming, or anyone wondering why people would be interested in gaming, it’s a worthy watch.
With an end to the writers’ strike almost nowhere to be found – the sides meet up again on Monday to renegotiate but who knows how long until out favorite shows (The Office, The Daily Show) can return with new material even if a deal is reached - I’ve taken to catching up on a series that I missed the first time around: How I Met Your Mother, likely one of the funniest shows on…well, on CBS, but who’s counting?* The actors do a remarkable job of bringing to life some very funny characters, and as I watch each new-to-me episode, I regret not watching when they originally aired. Does anyone have reccomendations for me to fill the void if the strike should go on?
*This has to be a terrible run-on sentence. Kate?
Welcome to the first real weekend of NaBloPoMo, after my enthusiasm for the project has started to wane. Today’s post is a quickie: a video of what Fox’s 24 would be like in 1994. Courtesy College Humor.
[video]http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1788161&fullscreen=1[/video]
While it’s hard to look at successful people in New York and Los Angeles refusing to do their jobs while I write online for free in the time I’m not working at a non-profit, there is a legitimate backbone to the ongoing Hollywood writer’s strike. Isn’t it the rich getting richer, you ask? In some cases, yes. Some members of the WGA are well off, but that doesn’t mean that some of the brightest minds in Hollywood shouldn’t be compensated for their work appearing in new media. It’s the perfect time for a strike, too, because TV is only just beginning to make its strongest legal steps into the Internet. And though we won’t feel the full force of the strike until January if it continues, action needs to be taken now, so history (the 1988 strike that cost the entertainment industry $500 million) won’t repeat itself, and so that an actor’s strike next year can be avoided.
Though my preference in television has long evolved away from the traditional sitcoms of my youth to hour-long dramas and half-hour comedies with high concepts and no laugh tracks, one throwback show has managed to be one of the few new series this year to keep its grasp on me: The Big Bang Theory. Yes, I know, it follows a lot of the predictable setups and punch lines — hot waitress moves in across the hall from twenty-something physicists, laughs ensue — that dozens of other cookie-cutter sitcoms rely on, but the writers and actors provide interesting variables to the typical equation.
It’s hard, really, to feel bad for Aaron Sorkin. After the runaway success of The West Wing and the critical embrace of the pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the series’ failure could easily be shrugged off. But for so many fans of Studio 60, its departure from the airwaves marked a significant downturn in the amount of quality television available. If only Sorkin hadn’t felt it so necessary to continue telling us so.
Upon the cancellation of Arrested Development and Veronica Mars, two of television’s most intelligent shows, fans clamored for them to be transferred to HBO, where ratings are less important and advertisers are virtually nonexistent. Anyone looking for those shows to resurface is out of luck, but they can take solace in the network’s Sunday lineup, which now boasts one of TV’s smartest shows in Flight of the Conchords.
You should consider yourself very lucky, because this is the last time I’ll write about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip…at least until the DVD set comes out. That’s right; last night was the season and series finale of Aaron Sorkin’s erstwhile series about the behind-the-scenes drama of a late-night sketch comedy show hampered by conservative America. The final six episodes were a strange mix between limping to the finish line and going out in a blaze of glory; the same can kind of be said of the entire series. Marketed as a comedy at the same time as a show with an identical ad campaign (30 Rock, which will be coming back for a second season), Studio 60 was never presented to audiences the proper way. At the same time, Sorkin never managed to spread out his political sermons among stories that could keep the show moving at a good pace.