COMMENTARY: I Do Not Much Care For TV Series That Tell Backstories We Never Wanted to Know

I don’t know if this is part of a new strategy where networks totally give up on young people, but that is what it seems like. We now have a series that tells us all about Will Graham’s first encounters with Hannibal Lecter (see above), Carrie Bradshaw’s high school years, and Norman Bates’ relationship with his mother, for heaven’s sake. These can only be appealing to people who have no imaginations and hate new things, because there’s a ton of great new stuff on television. Granted, it’s exclusively on cable, but it’s there—”Mad Men,” “The Walking Dead,” even totally inoffensive fare like “Cougar Town” and the USA dramas demonstrate genuine cerebral activity. “Suits” is surprisingly good; “Burn Notice” is great.

Are broadcast networks really that starved for good scripts? The only halfway decent thing I can even think of coming to broadcast in the fall is Joss Whedon’s “Shield” show (and I almost linked to IGN’s coverage of that, until I realized that I would rather saw my own leg off at the knee than link to the actual staffer-created content on IGN. “Reporter” actually describes Samuel L. Jackson as “a very busy, very important man”), and even that is spun off of a movie premise, and not officially greenlit yet.

In conclusion, go watch “Archer” or “Downton Abbey” or something, and try not to think about how your taxes pay for broadcasters to have free access to public airwaves.

From the Game of Thrones Exhibition Party Last Night

Here is a photo of Tyrion Lannister’s armor. YES. That is all I have to say.

New Wachowskis/J. Michael Straczynski Show on Netflix Next Year: Sense8

So J. Michael Straczynski, who wrote Babylon 5 and several good comics series and is also a really objectionable loudmoth on the subject of creators’ rights, which you’d think he’d believe in being a creator, is writing a new SF show for Netflix called “Sense8.”

Netflix basically backs up the money truck when series get greenlit, so this is cause for some excitement, especially since the directors of this thing are going to be Lana and Andy Wachowski, of “The Matrix” fame. The press release has some vague gibberish about minds linked and souls hunted, but the Wachowskis are such wonderful visual directors (see above still from “Cloud Atlas”) that I have high hopes here.

And whatever I may think of him, Straczynski is a very talented SF writer and he tends to keep things grounded enough to promise some less highfalutin material from the Wachowski siblings, which is good, because they’re amazing action directors and quite bright as storytellers, but tend to get bogged down in philosophy. Whereas JMS is Mr. Technique.

GOOD JOB: Kids In The Hall’s ‘White Guy’ Sketch

http://www.hulu.com/watch/174236

“I guess a lot of people would say, ‘What are you doing the hambone for in the first place, college boy? You’ll injure your lily-white collegiate hands.'”

Gross, Dude

gucci gucci goo.

Gross, Dude

So this guy Buzz Bissinger who wrote the book “Friday Night Lights” that then got turned into all the other “Friday Night Lights” things is addicted to buying fancy clothes and fine, whatever, good on him for owning it, but his article is ostensibly about how ashamed he is of his habit, and then the descriptions become less about how enticing the clothes are—that would have been interesting—and more about how totally awesome he thinks the clothes are, and then it becomes him wanking about irresistible clothes and poor-me-ing over how terrible his addiction is. I mean, maybe grow up? Just a suggestion.

Edit: Also: “No wonder male heterosexual whites are aimed toward obsolescence, boring the rest of us to death.” Uh, overspending on clothes doesn’t excuse you from your gender and race, big fella. There are ways to do that, but that ain’t one of ’em.

Edit: Also: “I sat in a soft armchair in the hotel suite sinking like a ship, barely able to keep my eyelids open in the wash of too much food and too much wine, but still managed to hit enough correct characters on my laptop to buy a $4,525 Versace jacket from Moda Operandi. I forgot I had bought it when it came a few months later, a pretty good indicator that I did not need it. But I still kept it, and it still is seriously smoking, and none of you can fucking have it.” Uh, that’s cool, bro, I don’t really want it.

Edit: Also: “I also went to Hong Kong and Macao with some friends. We went to sex clubs, many, many sex clubs with many, many women. We became tired. Four days seemed like four years.” I don’t usually say this kind of thing, but this guy needs Jesus. Seriously, get religion, stat.

COMMENTARY: Commercials Are Terrible

I am not opposed to advertising in order to create interesting art. This practice has a history as old as art itself, or at least as old as giving people a lot of money to paint and then asking that they maybe try to get your good side when they do a picture of you.

But I do not like commercial breaks. No indeed. And this is why I do not have cable television any longer. And it does not bother me one little bit. I have Netflix, and I have the internet, and by and large I don’t mind video or banner ads, but interrupting my viewing in order to try and sell me something for progressively longer periods of time just isn’t cricket, and it’s getting worse.

Commercial pods are getting longer, and networks are trying to drive live viewing with shorter and shorter TV seasons. That’s fine with me—my favorite shows are mostly on Amazon.com after a few hours and I’m more than happy to drop $2 per episode to catch them, because you know what? That is not nearly the price of a cable bill, and it’s all ad-free.

Cable services are expensive, finnicky, and suffer from some of the worst customer service in any medium. HBO produces crackerjack TV shows and it has no advertising revenue at all, so I think we can dispense with the “ads pay for your content” argument. I, world. I pay for my content. If I don’t like it, I stop paying. It’s that easy. All the McDonald’s ads in the world can’t make me go to McDonald’s; soon enough advertisers are going to figure that out and stop buying most of the shows I like altogether, and that will be fine with me, because they will still exist in some form, somewhere.

Anyway, HBO is thawing on the subject of a la carte service, and it would be nice if they came around. Also if I could buy my internet service from somebody who doesn’t also sell cable, because I suspect you can only get the good internet if you buy their too-expensive cable packages.

/rant

Time Magazine’s 100 Longest Clickbait Slideshows

At #1, this monster. Really, Time? Really the 140 Best Twitter Feeds (not a joke)? We know you’re hard up for cash but this is just stupid.

DC Comics Finally Admits It Has That Other Version of Batman Lying Around

So for years now, DC has pretended that the 1966 Adam West-Burt Ward “Batman” television series just didn’t exist because it conflicted with the ridiculous grim’n’gritty image the company seems to want for the character. But that appears to be changing: courtesy of Heidi MacDonald’s excellent site “The Beat,” DC has a line of comics based directly on the campy take on the characters scheduled. The most interesting thing about the comics is that they’ve got covers by Mike Allred (who, poor guy, got robbed by Ebenezer Scrooge or somebody else who hates fun, because Allred’s art is amazing), but the change in strategy probably means that we’ll be getting DVDs of the old TV show before too long.

“Kids in the Hall” Guy Dave Foley Sells a Comedy Series to CTV

Dave Foley, from the amazing Canadian comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall, has managed to sell a new series about PR called “Spun Out” to CTV. Ten years ago Canadian television was where networks went to buy stuff they could pass off as originals when they’d run out of money. Now, between fellow KITH vet Mark McKinney on “Slings and Arrows” and “Lost Girl” on Syfy, it’s getting to the point where I wish we could steal most of their writers. Foley is among those writers.

Also, “Premise Beach” still makes me laugh like an idiot.

Commentary: Game of Thrones, Season 3

I’m watching the third season of “Game of Thrones” at the moment, and as always (I like the series), I’m having a ton of fun seeing my favorite moments from some of the best fantasy novels ever written acted out by truly wonderful performers. Diana Rigg is a total treat as Olenna Tyrrell and Ciaran Hinds is exactly as good as you’d hope playing Mance Rayder. As ever, the writing elucidates some of the more delicate features of the writing–it became clear to me, for example, that Tywin Lannister’s refusal to give Tyrion his birthright breaks the “rules” of the world. I’d never thought of that, but it shows better how the books work and why.

In performance terms, however, the most interesting thing about this show–far more than the appearance of the occasional ringer–is how many truly awesome actors are getting the chance to do what can’t help but be the work of their careers. I mean, Peter Dinklage? Conleth Hill? Gwendoline Christie? When will there be another three roles for a little person, a babyfaced guy with a little extra weight on him, and a totally unconventional looking 6’6″ blonde woman? Never, that’s when. Oh, they might each get a featured part here or a hero’s-best-friend bit there, but Varys, Brienne and Tyrion might be the three best characters in the series. Hell, Samwell Tarly has a full-blown hero’s journey ahead of him and it’s specified in the books that he’s morbidly obese. Martin’s a brilliant writer in many respects, but this one gets mentioned less often than it should: his unadulterated affection for the weird, the ugly, and the pathetic within a world that shows none of those people the slightest mercy has made for some of the best roles in the history of television acting.