dragojustine (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dragojustine) wrote2007-12-12 08:43 pm
dragojustine) wrote2007-12-12 08:43 pm
Entry tags:
Grrrr x 2
Only 10 more days till I go home for Christmas!
I was really really looking forward to seeingryuutchi and company at the Roxy tomorrow night. I bought my ticket and everything and it was going to be very relaxed with, you know, no pressure and good music and fun LA sight-seeing and fangirls.
Right now I want to try to meet up withryuutchi at, I don't know, sevenish? and pick up my ticket and maybe stay until 9 or 9:30 and try to get to the big Thing by 10. But that's going to be frustrating and stressful and require me to wear fancy clothes I hate to the fun thing and maybe I won't bother and goddammit I'm going to CRY. Am crying. Fuck.
On a totally other note,
The writer's strike drags on. NBC just de-facto canceled Journeyman (that's not the fault of the strike, I'm just sad about it), and all the recent TV episodes are splashed with ads for American Idol and American Gladiators and Next Top Model and crap.
The studios just walked out of negotiations again. They plainly think they can afford to play hardball because of reality TV, and it's probably true. There are lots of news articles out there- most recently Hollywoodland at Salon- making dire predictions about the complete death of Network TV as we know it after this strike and it's all distressingly plausible.
Grrr. The thing is, I think we have been seeing an absolute Renaissance in American TV over the last five years. The rise of the long-form television-novel as a viable genre is a fucking revelation- think Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Heroes season 1, Rome, Deadwood, Dexter, Slings&Arrows, Prison Break, and probably tons of stuff I'm forgetting about. Combine that with the complete renovation of the procedural genre, managing to finally combine cases-of-the-week with long form arcs and character dynamics that blow Law & Order procedural clones out of the water- think Supernatural, Chuck, Pushing Daisies, earlier seasons of House, etc. Hell, people tell me that The Office and Ugly Betty have revitalized the workplace comedy/sitcom in pretty incredible ways, which, not my cup of tea but yaay. Plus, I'm told The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street are the two smartest cop/crime shows to ever hit the air.
Every show I just listed started in 2003 or later. Do you remember more than five years ago? Do you remember when the entire airwaves were full of nothing but Law & Order, ER, and cSI clones? (We have options! You can have legal, medical, or scientific procedurals!) Clones with mediocre characters, crappy multi-episode arcs if any, and nothing to set them apart aside from shallow premise-quirks? (I fell for the shallow premise-quirks too for awhile, but making our detective OCD or psychic or whatever only goes so far). Do you remember when the only REALLY GOOD shows around were West Wing and Buffy (XFiles was around then too, I guess) and you could always find a Star Trek rerun?
I adore TV as a medium now. I think it is in many ways better than movies (for emotional engagement and character development). I love books, and books can still do things TV and movies can't, but TV provides a space for communal narrative and involvement that books don't match right now. I am really, truly in awe of the way TV has come into its own as a worthwhile medium for art right in front of our very eyes. It's grown in leaps and bounds and there is a pool of talent out there now that guarantees it could keep growing that way and I am SO EXCITED to watch that happen.
If the networks' greed kills this Renaissance before it could properly blossom, I'm gonna be PISSED. That's all.
(This makes me think of conversations with Dustin about computer games- how he's spent his whole life feeling like he's watching that kind of total revolution in art, the birth of an entire medium, and now feels like the flowering has died just as he reaches the industry. I don't know- I'm not invested in computer games as a medium the way he is, but I think he's missing the boat there, with an opinion born of depression and personal issues rather than an evaluation of the development of the form. But that's a whole other post which I'm not so qualified for.)
I was really really looking forward to seeing
ryuutchi and company at the Roxy tomorrow night. I bought my ticket and everything and it was going to be very relaxed with, you know, no pressure and good music and fun LA sight-seeing and fangirls.Then Dustin's office party was on the very same night, and he's basically forcing me to go and I DO NOT WANT to. It's this huge massively expensive fancy-dress shindig. There's going to be a thousand people (that sadly is not an exaggeration) and I don't know any of them and I don't have anything in common with any of them and I don't have anything to wear and that is entirely leaving aside my massive loathing and fear and hatred of big fancy parties. I'm not comfortable being there and I'm dreading it and I would do anything to get out of it. On top of that, I'm resenting having to give up my own plans (because I haven't been out on the town in LA yet and I was finally really looking forward to something) and resenting being guilted and kind of trapped into it and just... resenting in general. I'm so pissed, and so disappointed. I think I might be a bit PMSy, because I seriously want to sob and punch people and I'm SO ANGRY at him about this.
Right now I want to try to meet up with
ryuutchi at, I don't know, sevenish? and pick up my ticket and maybe stay until 9 or 9:30 and try to get to the big Thing by 10. But that's going to be frustrating and stressful and require me to wear fancy clothes I hate to the fun thing and maybe I won't bother and goddammit I'm going to CRY. Am crying. Fuck. On a totally other note,
The writer's strike drags on. NBC just de-facto canceled Journeyman (that's not the fault of the strike, I'm just sad about it), and all the recent TV episodes are splashed with ads for American Idol and American Gladiators and Next Top Model and crap.
The studios just walked out of negotiations again. They plainly think they can afford to play hardball because of reality TV, and it's probably true. There are lots of news articles out there- most recently Hollywoodland at Salon- making dire predictions about the complete death of Network TV as we know it after this strike and it's all distressingly plausible.
Grrr. The thing is, I think we have been seeing an absolute Renaissance in American TV over the last five years. The rise of the long-form television-novel as a viable genre is a fucking revelation- think Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Heroes season 1, Rome, Deadwood, Dexter, Slings&Arrows, Prison Break, and probably tons of stuff I'm forgetting about. Combine that with the complete renovation of the procedural genre, managing to finally combine cases-of-the-week with long form arcs and character dynamics that blow Law & Order procedural clones out of the water- think Supernatural, Chuck, Pushing Daisies, earlier seasons of House, etc. Hell, people tell me that The Office and Ugly Betty have revitalized the workplace comedy/sitcom in pretty incredible ways, which, not my cup of tea but yaay. Plus, I'm told The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street are the two smartest cop/crime shows to ever hit the air.
Every show I just listed started in 2003 or later. Do you remember more than five years ago? Do you remember when the entire airwaves were full of nothing but Law & Order, ER, and cSI clones? (We have options! You can have legal, medical, or scientific procedurals!) Clones with mediocre characters, crappy multi-episode arcs if any, and nothing to set them apart aside from shallow premise-quirks? (I fell for the shallow premise-quirks too for awhile, but making our detective OCD or psychic or whatever only goes so far). Do you remember when the only REALLY GOOD shows around were West Wing and Buffy (XFiles was around then too, I guess) and you could always find a Star Trek rerun?
I adore TV as a medium now. I think it is in many ways better than movies (for emotional engagement and character development). I love books, and books can still do things TV and movies can't, but TV provides a space for communal narrative and involvement that books don't match right now. I am really, truly in awe of the way TV has come into its own as a worthwhile medium for art right in front of our very eyes. It's grown in leaps and bounds and there is a pool of talent out there now that guarantees it could keep growing that way and I am SO EXCITED to watch that happen.
If the networks' greed kills this Renaissance before it could properly blossom, I'm gonna be PISSED. That's all.
(This makes me think of conversations with Dustin about computer games- how he's spent his whole life feeling like he's watching that kind of total revolution in art, the birth of an entire medium, and now feels like the flowering has died just as he reaches the industry. I don't know- I'm not invested in computer games as a medium the way he is, but I think he's missing the boat there, with an opinion born of depression and personal issues rather than an evaluation of the development of the form. But that's a whole other post which I'm not so qualified for.)