This article on internal dissent on the path of this year’s Gilmore Girls includes some reflection that the series might end this year due in part to the creators having said what they had to say and being wearied by the effort (although they also say that the structure of the show could support a much longer run.)
Apparently, the creator of Arrested Development has been voicing similar reactions, and if the show is not picked up by Showtime it may be because of his lack of desire to do more.
Now, this is a reaction that I understand; I’ve been asked at various times about continuing my comic book miniseries The Factor, and (in addition to the fact that it was never particularly financially successful) my main reaction is that I really said what I had to say… I could keep making up further stories for it, but the work is not lacking for them. And in the case of Arrested, the same could be said. We don’t need several more years of Tobias saying things that sound far more homoerotic than he intends. We don’t need more of Oscar passing for George. They brought the series to a reasonable conclusion. Financially, there’s much to be said for a series running forever, but artistically, it can be a mixed bag. There is already far more Arrested Development than there is of most “hit” British sitcoms (more than four times as many episodes as Fawlty Towers, for example.)
If it has said what it has to say, if its long-term life is on DVD because there’s not enough episodes for a good syndication package, so be it.
Coming to a good end.
This Hustle don't flow.
AMC is running what they’re terming an “original series”, a con game series called Hustle. It’s obviously an existing British series being brought to these shores. It’s got some good cast, including Robert “Man from U.N.C.L.E.” Vaughn and Adrian “One Degree of Nat Gertler” Lester (he and I were both in Primary Colors, for which he got great acclaim and I got about $40 and all the snacks I could grab.)
But the problem with terming it an “original series” goes beyond it’s previously existing run. I’ve only caught one episode so far, and it wasn’t the pilot. What it was, however, was an update remake of The Sting. It’s not just that they pull the same con as in that great classic film (if you’ve never seen, please rent it before anyone tells you about it – it’s a great film all around, and particularly fun to watch for the first time.) In fact, the characters say that they’re pulling the same con, and since it’s an actual classic con, that’s legit. The problem is that they add the same complications, same plot twists as in that great Redford/Newman film. That ain’t a con job, that’s simple plagiarism.
I like a good con story. What I don’t need is to see downgraded versions of good con stories I’ve already seen.
(I very rarely turn to the current version of AMC. It’s mostly movies, bleeped out and with ads added. If I want to see a film, I’ll Netflix it and watch it closer to how it was meant to be seen. The old version of AMC, which ran old films, rarelyif ever needed to censor them, and didn’t interupt them with ads… that was more my cuppa tea. Plus, they had their own original series, and while the The Lot was unthrilling and merely worth mentioning for its introduction of later Freaks & Geeks star Linda Cardellini, their earlier sitcom Remember WENN was actually quite charming – although I never quite understood why a station that focused on classic films was doing a sitcom about a classic radio station.)
(edited 10-6-2008, because I’d found I’d pasted a word in the wrong spot and left something confusing.)
AD on NPR
At the moment, I’m listening to the Fresh Air interview with Mitch Hurwitz, creator of Arrested Development, which I caught a part of in the car the other day.
But I had a little laugh when the web page refered to the show has winning “a handful of Emmy Awards”; just how many copies do they think fit in one hand?
The Arrested Development send-off
Fox did their dump-the-last-four-episodes-against-the-opening-of-the-Olympics Arrested Development event on Friday, a minimarathon which both reminded us why we liked the show and also why it might not have caught on with everyone. This is a show that rewarded paying attention, with a lot of the extra laughs coming from references to other episodes, or even to knowledge of trivial matters beyond the show. So a real portion of the humor of the episode “Family Ties” (which is a title that made conceptual sense but was only a joke if you recognized that the actress who played the, ummm, consultant was one of the stars of the TV series Family Ties) depends on recognizing that the guest actress really is the sister of series star Jason Bateman. Dialog in the final episode that mirrors dialog from the first. A character reappears at a key time who was not, if I recall correctly, seen at all this season. A newby sitting amidst a gang of Arrested Devotees would likely seem confused, particularly by the laughter arising from his companions. (It does make me wish that there was a close captioning track on the DVDs to explain the gags; certainly, there were allusions that I only caught on the second viewing of an episode. I haven’t noticed anythings that were obvious gags which I failed to understand, but that may be more a case of them doing a good job of not having the reference interrupt the flow, rather than some encyclopedic knowledge on my part. If I hadn’t noticed the photo of the current California governor on the marriage certificate, for example, I wouldn’t have thought I missed something. And is it a hidden gag or mere coincidence that the gay male/straight female couple in the series is played by a straight male and a gay female?)
There are those who have griped about how Fox abused this series; that I don’t understand. They gave this series air, and kept it going for, oh, 53 weeks (if I trust the allusion made by George Michael). Surely more than the ratings ever called for.
Oh, I feel I should be making some deeper, more insightful comment here, but I’m simply glad that this series was around for as long as it was.
Executive privelege
Just in case anyone isn’t watching the news or checking the news online today, I should point out what is likely to be the big story in both the overseas press and on the tomorrow’s late night shows: the Vice President has shot a man.
While not the first time that a sitting Vice President has shot someone (that honor would, I presume, go to Aaron Burr), it still does bring up the question of just what the limits of the executive branch are.
Mid-season launch update
So, for the new batch of shows:
- Courting Alex has not improved. That’s enough of it for me.
- I was still ReplayTVing Four Kings for some reason, watching it eventually. Then I finally got around to pressing “play” on the Feb 2 episode. At the very start of the episode, they give away the surprise twist in a successful film… yes, one from several years ago, but there are still millions of people out there who will discover it for the first time. I hate that as a gag even when it comes in a work I like (such as Snoopy revealing what Rosebud was, or Frasier reeling off movie twists on Cheers.) At that point, I pressed the Stop button, chose Delete, and gave up on the show.
- I realized that the reason I’m sticking with Crumbs can be summed up in two words: Jane Curtin. Other folks in the show are fulfilling their roles in this still-awkward work, but Jane makes her somewhat crazy, nonetheless smart character come alive.
- That leaves the winner of the mid-season launches: Love Monkey. It doesn’t stray far from the obvious yet (five minutes in, you can tell how the story will end), but it dances the dance in charming fashion, the performances are strong and the production looks good. I like spending my time with these folks.
Waiter, there's a hare in my swap!
In an odd trade, NBC gets a sportscaster and Disney gets an animated bunny. Most of the coverage seems to focus on the oddness of the swap, but for me, the interesting thing is the strategy. There are few companies more history-and-legacy aware than Disney (talk to someone who has researched in their archives sometime and you’ll come to understand just how obsessive those archives are) and few more focused on property rights. If the rights to the Disney-created Oswald The Rabbit had been easily available, I assume they would have been grabbed up long ago.
This feels to me like a situation where Disney was biding their time… if they went around asking for Oswald, they would’ve seemed too eager and the price for this historically-important but not currently particularly money-generating character may have gone way up. But hang back, wait until some other deal is happening, and ask for it to be thrown in the way you might buy a dozen comics at a yard sale to hide your excitement over one of them being Superman 1, and you get a yard sale price.
Foxholes being filled
Fox is preparing a programming service to fill the time created by the UPN/WB merger.
But no, when they say “We are talking to the best syndicators and production people from around the world who are excited about producing first-run strip shows”, that doesn’t mean that we’ll be getting new series generated by Cheetah’s, Chippendales, Spearmint Rhino, and Bob’s Classy Lady. It’s not that kind of strip shows.
At least, I don’t think so. But then again, it is Fox.
Bush illegalizes analog TV
By signing the law that strips away the legal availability of analog TV, President Bush eliminates a medium which has served the nation well for decades now. Who benefits? Not the millions of viewers of analog TV, not all of those folks who will have to upgrade their equipment to continue watching television. No, the benefit goes to the folks who sell the equipment and to the cell phone companies that get new bandwidth. Heck, they’re even setting aside $1.5 billion of our tax dollars to pay for new convertor boxes for folks… yes, money taken from the taxpayers to flow to the consumer electronics companies.
I’ve got nothing against adding digital TV to the media that are available… but to force its increased costs on people, rather than to see if it actually earns its way in the competitive marketplace, is a big-government-supporting-big-business mistake.
Barry Manilow is #1
Billboard is reporting that the top-selling album for the week is the new Manilow covers album. And why shouldn’t it be? Manilow does solid work. About the worst that he can be accused of is being commercial, but he’s honestly commercial, he’s spent decades doing the sort of music he likes which is quite craftsmanlike pop with charm. (And I’ll confess, my favorite of his stuff isn’t just commercial, it’s commercials; one of his albums had a nice medley of his commercial jingles, things that were running through people’s minds for years without realizing they were Manilow.)
Now personally, I sated myself on Barry years ago, but it wasn’t his fault. It all has to do with a young lass (when I was an even younger guy) and an afternoon of intense snuggling when neither of us could bring ourself to get out of bed and change the record on the player until the same side had played about a dozen times. And hey, if it wasn’t for Barry, that otherwise nice afternoon might not have gotten rolling in the first place!
