So, what's happening? Fox interprets the terms of the contract as their 13 episode order including the unaired pilot, while the production company made 13 episodes (exclusive of the original pilot) for the DVD distribution. See Sepinwall's summary to understand where everything stands.
This sounds like it comes down to a contractual and bargaining issue between the network and the studio, more than a premature cancellation (ala Firefly, Pushing Daisies, etc.) If Fox does renew Dollhouse, I'm sure that "Epitaph One" will air at some point before the start of season 2. Or perhaps the brisk DVD sales of the show (for fans to watch the epitaph) will encourage the network to pick up the show for a second season.
Given that episode 12 is titled "Omega" and episode 13 "Epitaph One," it seems that there won't be many plot threads left dangling after episode 12, or cliffhangers that will be resolved in episode 13. The characters may be able to react to the events in the last act of episode 12.
Even if Dollhouse ends with this one 13 part story, does that make it a failure?
I think that single season 13-episode series (longer than a miniseries, shorter than a multi-season 22 episode series) can be great artistically. Lots of room for character building, but not too much time to get sidetracked and diverted from telling a single story. What if Whedon had the opportunity to tell a story every year for a few years in 13-episode chunks, with each year being a completely different story/series? I'd very excited to see what Whedon or one of the HBO Davids (Simon, Chase, Milch) could do with that type of creative concept.
To a large degree, David Simon's HBO projects have all been in this style. The Corner and Generation Kill were mini-series. Season One of The Wire was essentially one story told from beginning to end (but did create a world that was opened up and explored in depth in the following four seasons, which were slightly less self-contained.)
Kings, which has been interesting, if not compelling viewing, will likely end up as a single 13 episode series (as NBC burns off the remaining episodes to lower ratings on Saturday night). How it stands on its own as a story remains to be seen, but this could be a model worth pursuing, at least from the creative perspective.
]]>Battlestar Galatica. The bleakest show on TV? While it may not be quite as sad and tragic as The Wire, the level of abstraction that involves space ships, replicants and sexy robots also allows for comments about society in a way that the realistic Baltimore of The Wire couldn't. Only 3 hours left over 2 weeks (plus another 2 hour film airing sometime around the release of season 4.5 DVD's, I assume.) In the last couple of seasons, Bear McCreary's score has become an unexpected highlight.
Lost. Like Battlestar Galactica, Lost was helped tremendously by the producers and network agreeing to a set end date for the series. Since then, the show has moved forward with momentum. While not every episode is brilliant, there's enough brilliance in the time-skipping adventures of the castaways.
Chuck. In its second season, all of the elements of the show are coming together and clicking. It's both funny, acknowledges the ridiculousness of its world and adds in actual emotional resonance in a way that evokes the best seasons of Buffy. Plus, one of the best theme songs of any show on TV (Cake's "Short Skirt, Long Jacket") and Jeffster!
The Daily Show. Media critics who wondered if The Daily Show with Jon Stewart would remain relevant in the Obama administration obviously never quite understood the show. TDS focuses in on the ridiculous in the news. And even if the Obama administration is distinguished from its predecessor by a sad absence of man-sized safes in the Vice President's office, there is enough fodder for ridicule from the media. See e.g. TDS discussing CNBC and Stewart interviewing Jim Cramer.
The Colbert Report might lose its edge and relevance when there are no longer any cult of personality pundit shows on cable news or talk radio. Considering that Rush (the blowhard, not the awesome prog band) is the leading voice of the conservative movement (or just the loudest), there's no imminent danger of the show losing its relevance.
Friday Night Lights. All the cool kids watched this season in the fall on DirecTV, but even if it's not as good as the wonderful first season, this season is much better than the show's sophomore slump. Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!
30 Rock. At its best, fast-moving farcical hilarity. At its worst, mildly amusing. Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan get the attention, but the unmentioned highlight of the show is Jeff Richmond's title theme song and score.
The Office. Perhaps the comedy that best blends in drama in a realistic and natural way. The deep supporting cast makes it possible for Creed to have only one line per week and still be consistently hilarious.
The Amazing Race. While some of the last few seasons have become formulaic, the formula works. This season has featured mostly well-designed legs, distinguishable teams, interesting locations and the usual great editing. I understand the reasoning, given the difficult of production, but still wonder why this is not filmed in HD. No other show on network TV would benefit as much from filming in HD.
How I Met Your Mother rarely rises to a level of greatness. But as a show focusing on the lives of 30 year olds in NYC, I find it relevant and reflective as much as-- if not more than-- I find it funny.
Important Things with Demetri Martin. Funny and clever comedy.
South Park. There's always going to be famous or important people doing stupid things for Parker and Stone to make fun of. It works often enough that they're still relevant, more than ten years in.
American Idol. It would be unwatchable without fast-forwarding through everything but the performances and Cowell's critiques. Actually, this fragment of the show is barely watchable, but it's still big enough to talk about. And it's always nice to see how your own personal taste compares to aggregate taste of the American public. Or the subset of the American public that votes for Idol.
The Simpsons. At this point, the new episodes are doing little except for chipping away at the legacy of the brilliant first 8 seasons. But now it's doing that in HD and-- perhaps surprisingly, The Simpsons look better in HD. While not up to the standard of brilliance, this incarnation of The Simpsons is still a good TV show, even while it tarnishes the goodwill of those earlier seasons.
Burn Notice. Its season just ended, but it's worth nothing, because for a show that is deliberately not intellectual, it is smart and fun with an emotional core. Other , the Miami scenery, Bruce Campbell and hundreds of ways to turn ordinary everyday objects into bombs, projectiles, or other deadly devices,
Considering: Kings (which would require foregoing the new episodes of The Simpsons), Breaking Bad.
On hiatus: Mad Men, Mythbusters, Top Chef.
Looking forward to: Parks and Recreation.
]]>Brian Lowry, Variety, TV has the advantage in storytelling: "There are obvious parallels between 'Mad Men' -- the AMC series that keeps amassing accolades despite what star Jon Hamm aptly referred to during the Screen Actors Guild awards as 'dozens' of viewers -- and 'Revolutionary Road,' the star-driven movie that generated mixed critical response and largely missed out on major Oscar recognition. Yet in the differences resides a clue as to episodic TV's advantage in tackling character-driven material."
Willing Davidson, Slate.com, Great Book, Bad Movie "Why does Hollywood take our favorite novels and turn them into crap? …Three of the films that will be feted come Oscar night are based on recognizable literature. And while The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Reader are definitely terrible movies, Revolutionary Road is both the worst movie I saw this year and one of the best novels I've read."
Film is an ideal medium for certain types of ideas, but not the complex storytelling with which television and novels engage their audiences. A serial television show usually has 13 or 22 hours per season to tell a story. In 13 hours, it's much easier to engage with the characters than in the 2 to 3 hours of a film.
Fortunately, television auteurs now have the ambition to tackle visually complex and ambitious endeavors. HDTV has also helped to make the medium more engaging, dynamic and cinematic. While film may remain the more commercially successful medium, television may be joining literature as a more creatively successful medium.
]]>Here's the completely bad-ass 7 minute performance of "I Want to Take You Higher"
And the high-larious interview with Sly Stone:
]]>The New York Times reports, At the Inauguration - The Famous Fingers Were Live, but Their Sound Was Recorded: "The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind during Tuesday’s ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation minutes before the president’s swearing in (which had problems of its own)."
And for other clarinet nerds, that snazzy clarinet McGill played is a LeBlanc by Backun Legacy. The Times profiled McGill, who is a principal clarinetist for the Met opera earlier in the week, Another Eloquent Chicagoan at Center Stage.
]]>The New York Times profiled the show's script supervisor, who is responsible for maintaining the continuity of the show. , Television - Gregg Nations’s Job - Keeping ‘Lost’ on Track: "With 34 episodes to go in its two final seasons, the stories of nearly 100 characters to wrap up, several Dharma stations to keep track of and a whole lot of time traveling going on, the writers of ‘Lost’ are doing anything but winding down. Yet their task — untangling the seemingly impenetrable mass of plotlines that have become addictive to some viewers of the show and alienating to others — is relatively simple compared with that of Gregg Nations."
Alan Sepinwall interviewed producer Damon Lindelof, What's Alan Watching?: 'Lost' goes time traveling for season five: "We spoke at length last week about last season, this season, and how the worst episode in 'Lost' history may also have been the most important episode in 'Lost' history (from a production standpoint, anyway)."
Sepinwall also has a cheat sheet of where all of the characters are at the beginning of season 5
And A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago's Isaac Spaceman (no relation to 30 Rock's Dr. Spaceman?) offers the single best summary of Lost to date. Previously on Lost, "JACK: Well, we lived on the beach, mostly, except for the time we lived in the cave with the skeletons and the time we lived in the secret underground bunker with the lending library and the time we lived in the village built by the scientists that the people who don’t age gassed to death with the help of their leader, my third nemesis, the nebbishy con man with spine cancer, which we took over when the freighter people came to kill everybody."
But Galactica is also a show that's inspired great commentary, criticism and community. And while I probably won't blog much about the episodes, I will be reading the commentaries online.
Alan Sepinwall has a usually thorough review along with a critical mass of smart and engaged commenters. Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion": I can't fight this feeling anymore
Todd VanDerWeff's reviews at The House Next Door are generally very insightful. This one is no exception, BSG Saturdays: Season 4, Episode 11, "Sometimes a Great Notion": "Battlestar Galactica gets a reputation for being a dark show, and some of that is well-deserved. It's a show that examines some of the worst things human beings can do to each other, and it's often unflinching in its gaze."
VanDerWeff also interviewed BSG director Michael Nankin.
Time's James Poniewozik tunes in with BSG Watch: Pleased to Meet Me.
But the winner of this week's online criticism is the Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan, who interviewed Moore, Nankin, and writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle. 'Battlestar Galactica's' Ron Moore addresses the shocking developments of 'Sometimes a Great Notion'
And here's Moore's commentary:
Reviewing Chinese Democracy is not like reviewing music. It's more like reviewing a unicorn. Should I primarily be blown away that it exists at all? Am I supposed to compare it to conventional horses? To a rhinoceros? Does its pre-existing mythology impact its actual value, or must it be examined inside a cultural vacuum, as if this creature is no more (or less) special than the remainder of the animal kingdom? ...]]>It's as if Axl is desperately trying to get some unmakeable dream song from inside his skull onto the CD, and the result is an overstuffed maelstrom that makes all the punk dolts scoff. His ambition is noble, yet wildly unrealistic. It's like if Jeff Lynne tried to make Out Of The Blue sound more like Fun House, except with jazz drumming and a girl singer from Motown.
In this clip that's been going around the web today, Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron twice uses the word "knowledgeability" where the shorter and more direct "knowledge" would have sufficed.
Or is knowledge:knowledgeability :: truth:truthiness
]]>Here's the video for Get Yourself Home:
These United States on iLike - Get updates inside iTunes
While it's not the first, it is a good example of what a talented editor can do with the wonderful resource of public domain film material available at the Internet Archive.
Built from 40+ public domain films, the video for "Get Yourself Home" by These United States uses the free and long forgotten footage of the Prelinger Archives. With each clip, a resurrected moment of early film history offers itself up to be woven into the fabric of a whole new American narrative. From the main character, who comes from a 1930's propaganda film about the importance of workers' unions, to the passing scenes of carnivals, cabarets and the great wild West, all come together to evoke the contrasting emotions, environments, sins, schemes, devils and delusions that bind us on These United States' newest release "Crimes."
MP3: West Won
MP3: Get Yourself Home (In Search of the Mistress Whose Kisses Are Famous)
These United States come to NYC on Nov 19 at the Knitting Factory Tap Bar.
]]>What's the point of the hologram technology (which I assume involves the reporter/interviewee standing in front of a green screen)? If you're sending a reporter into the field, isn't showing what's going on in the background around them providing more useful context to the viewer than just showing more of the studio set?
Maureen Ryan does think that there are some benefits to getting the correspondent out of the scrum and into a cordoned off area to give a more coherent report. But why the hologram? Why not have the correspondent do a voice over over footage of the event that she's reporting?
What I found so aggravating about watching coverage (particularly of the speeches at the end of the night) was the need for the on-air personalities to make sure that there was someone talking at all times (Brian Williams and Katie Couric were the ones I noticed exhibiting this trait, but I just happened to be between NBC and CBS at the time). After Obama's speech, instead of just showing the crowds and letting the viewers listen to their cheering, both Williams and Couric were talking about "what [Obama] must feel" and such.
This is a symptom of the same hubris that led to CNN's expensive hologram. Instead of using the TV medium to show us the news and use visuals to provide useful analysis, the networks seem more obsessed with showing the importance their news teams coverage of events rather than the intrinsic importance of those events. Instead of sending more reporters and crews out in the field to get different opinions from the electorate, CNN spent that money on a hologram booth.
None of the channels I watched had much interesting to discuss during the lulls between reporting results. The exit poll demographics are moderately interesting. Some of the analysis can be useful (especially having someone like CNN's Jeffery Toobin on hand to explain the legal issues of voting that might come up during the night.) But much of it is no more than pundits being in love with their own voices.
Fred Armisen playing with the touchscreen map on SNL's Weekend Update may be one of the more perceptive media critiques of this campaign.
(The obvious headline shamelessly borrowed from Sepinwall)
]]>via Videogum. This is seriously the 19th Treehouse of Horror episode? Is there anything The Simpsons hasn't done yet?
]]>There is another month until the release of the album, but I wouldn't count on China becoming any ore democratic in that time.
But at least you, the American music and soda pop fan, can get a free Dr. Pepper, thanks to Axl finally letting the world in on his album.
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