Concept v. Sustainability

You know, I think I would be the last person to claim that I am losing my obsession passion for television these days, but there does seem to be a definite drop off. The new fall season is in full swing and right now I am only actually watching two new series (two more that I will try premiere later this month though). That's kind of a record low for me. It's...weird.

At the moment I don't hold high hopes for either of the two I am currently watching (Terra Nova and Ringer) getting picked up for a second season. In the case of Terra Nova, I think that's a shame, because I feel like the show has a lot of potential and I am quite honestly enjoying the hell out of it right now. I am just pretty certain that the ratings have no shot at justifying another season of a show with this kind of budget. I'll just have to enjoy my dinosaurs on television while they last and hope that BBC America decides to air the next season of Primeval sometime soon. Ringer, on the other hand? Well, that's a different story.

Here's the show's premise in a nutshell: Twin sisters Bridget and Siobhan have been estranged for several years, and they live very different lives. Bridget is a recovering drug addict/former stripper about to testify against a mob boss in his murder trial and then (presumably) go into witness protection. Siobhan is a New York socialite with a wealthy husband and an artistic boyfriend (who happens to be married to her best friend). The night before she is supposed to testify, Bridget freaks out and runs away from police protection and reunites with her sister Siobhan. The two seem to be making up, hanging out at Siobhan's summer beach house and riding around in Siobhan's fancy speed boat. Then Bridget falls asleep on the boat, and when she wakes up Siobhan is gone, leaving behind an empty pill bottle and her wedding ring. Assuming her sister killed herself, Bridget then makes the snap decision to assume Siobhan's identity in the wake of her sister's conveniently timed suicide, and returns to New York to begin living her sister's life, all the while trying to hide out from the FBI agent and mob boss looking for her. She quickly learns that Siobhan's life is not as idyllic as she had believed it to be (shocker, that).

Okay, let's stop for a moment and acknowledge what this show is: It is a nighttime soap opera. Seriously. It's just got a higher budget and slightly glitzier production values than what you find on during the day. Normally, a show like this wouldn't even enter into candidates for my viewing time. The only reason it is on my radar at all is that Sarah Michelle Gellar (you know, Buffy) is the star of the show, so I have been hearing about it for months. I still wasn't all that interested. I mean, I don't actually really like Sarah Michelle Gellar that much to be honest (as an actor, that is, I am sure she is a lovely human being). She was never my favorite thing about Buffy. But early reviews of the pilot said it actually was a pretty entertaining hour of television and that there was real possibility there. Also, I found out that Ioan Gruffudd plays one of the main characters. Sure, sure, most people know him as Mr. Fantastic from The Fantastic Four. Whatever. He's Horatio Hornblower (from the series of television movies adapted from C.S. Forester's novels), and I will always love him for that. So, his presence got my interest up. Add that to the fact that it airs at a day and time when I'm not watching anything else, and I figured I could give it a try.

It's...okay. My husband was around this week when I was watching it, and I caught him giving me a sideways look of "Are you really watching this?" on more than one occasion. At this point, I feel like Ringer is a train that is destined to derail, I just don't know when or how, but I am kind of curious to find out. So I keep watching. I will give it the season, at least (unless it just goes way too far down the rabbit hole for me to follow). But unless there's a huge game changer, I don't see me watching past that point. Heck, I really don't understand how there could even be a second season.

Ringer is the perfect example of a phenomenon that I have been noticing in television a lot more often these days. Have you noticed how many shows have come and gone recently because as interesting as their concept was, it just wasn't sustainable for more than a season's worth of stories? It's getting a little bit ridiculous. It's like everyone gets excited by the pitch about how cool and original and all kinds of other excited adjectives the concept is, but no one stops to actually sit down and think about how much of a story there is to actually play out.

Because at some point? Bridget won't be able to pretend she's Siobhan anymore. The FBI agent will connect the dots, her "husband" will notice that missing scar, her snotty "stepdaughter" will overhear a frantic phone call, her jilted ex-"lover" will...oh wait, we've already gotten to that one, haven't we? You get the picture. Either way, the concept can't be sustained, and at some point the charade is over. Sometimes, that is okay, because sometimes it is in the aftermath of that revelation where the true story really lies. But way too often, nobody stops to figure out what happens next before they start making these shows. The stakes are so freaking high for Bridget's identity being discovered that sure, maybe she'll go down in a blazing ball of glorious flame, but once she's down, there's no getting back up. There's no story left, at any rate. So maybe the solution is to keep her secret, well, a secret? But no. Because once that goes on long enough, it also stops being interesting. How many near misses can she have? How many times can she talk her way out of an awkward situation? You see where I am going with this.

I mean, don't get me wrong, if they decide to blow the whistle on Bridget halfway through the season and actually turn the story's direction ninety degrees into a whole new direction and somehow manage to pull it off? Well, damn, I will give them a medal for genius storytelling. But right now I just don't see it. Right now it seems like this is just yet another high-concept show that would have made a perfect movie, but that really was never intended to be a long-form story.

It's like the people making television these days don't even grasp the concept that television is, in fact, long-form. Yeah, everything should have an endgame, but the best series actually take their time to get there, in a way that lets the viewers invest themselves in the story and the characters, and makes us actually care about what happens. Why do those shows seem to have become an endangered species?

Also, who the heck has twin daughters and names one Bridget and one Siobhan? I mean, really, who?

A Dose of Reality

This weekend I watched the season four finale of the British show Primeval, and it got me thinking about an old television trope that this particular series has managed to more or less ignore completely. You've seen it dozens of times, I am sure. The show's protagonist is faced with an epic life-threatening event, or less impacting but still no less meaningful, a decision about whether to move/change jobs. Will the brave hero survive the ordeal, or will she perish? Will our favorite character stay right where he is so we can continue to enjoy his antics, or will he choose to move on, thus no longer being part of the show?

The problem with this kind of situation in contemporary television is that it has become common enough to be a trope, certainly. But because of this such scenarios have almost completely lost whatever sense of drama or suspense they were intended to lend to the show in the first place. Why? Because we the audience already know how the game will play out. In almost every case of such a trope, the hero survives or chooses to stay exactly where he is. In those few cases where the show does follow through on the threat, it is usually only a matter of time before the dearly departed returns, whether it is from beyond the grave (usually in a science fiction or fantasy show) or from wherever she moved to. In fact, it seems to me that the more hyped up the "event" is beforehand, the closer the actual threat gets to being no threat at all.

There is a largely simple explanation for this, of course. The biggest impact, and therefore the most drama, comes from the threat being leveled at a show's main character. But the actual loss of a main character on a popular show is a frightening idea for networks and other people who make their living from said show. With the main character gone, a show is left with three primary possibilities: End the show, wrap up the story, and walk away; replace the main character with someone new and run the risk that she will be seen as a pale imitation; or have that event truly impact the other players in the story, and have the rest of them move forward, evolving because of their loss.

The first two options are seen often enough, usually when the loss of a character is due to external circumstances rather than the story (such as if an actor chooses to or is asked to leave a show). I am hard pressed to think of examples of the first two options occurring simply because the show's writers felt the story had come to a close or demanded such a change. The third option, however, tends very much to be reserved for the story-driven loss of a character, but it is very rare indeed. So while writers want their audience to feel the jeopardy of the situations the characters experience, or the drama of the lives they are leading, their hands are largely tied in that they can't just get rid of everyone's favorite character because it would tell a good story. I think that's a sad thing, honestly, because it can make for some very compelling stories and character development, allowing for background characters to step forward and shine. Such a change can also breathe new life into a flagging series if pulled off well, giving it an extended run and pulling in new viewers who find something to appeal to them in what they once felt was lacking.

It's a fact of life that people move on and that people die, even people that we care about or consider the center of our lives. I wish that there was more television that could accept and mirror that fact, because the shows I have seen to do so have really surprised me with how amazing they became for doing so.

Primeval, for example. (You were wondering when I was going to get back to that, weren't you?)

Feel free to assume the bit after the photos is chock-full of spoilers for all four seasons of the show, by the way. (Photos from Flickr used via Creative Commons License, roll over photos for attribution.)

Primeval Seasons One and Two Main Cast

Primeval Early Season Three Main Cast.

For the first two seasons of the show (which was only thirteen episodes), there were four primary characters on the show, and a few ancillary characters. The four mains were Cutter, Steven, Connor, and Abby. They comprised the field team that locates anomalies in the space-time continuum. The team's job is to monitor the anomalies until they close, track down and contain any prehistoric creatures that might have wandered through, and keep any innocent passers-by from wandering through and getting stranded in another era. If I had to pick one of them as the main main character though, it would definitely be Cutter--he was the guy calling the shots.

The first two seasons were largely one overall story arc, with the team coming together and discovering the anomalies, and learning about the threat posed via the anomalies and from none other than Cutter's wife, Helen, who had gone missing several years previous to the start of the series. The second season concludes with us more or less finally figuring out just what Helen is up to and with Steven sacrificing himself so that the rest of Team Anomaly can actually have the chance to stop her nefarious plans.

The very last bit of the season two finale is kind of interesting, because Helen pops up at Steven's grave promising that this is not the end, and they will be together again (they had a kind of thing on the side before she disappeared). The camera then pans out to show multiple iterations of Helen's henchman, indicating that she has figured out a way to use the anomalies to bring together multiple versions of people in one place and time. While this was a really freaking awesome bit of misdirect, thankfully, the show never carried through on Helen's promise, and Steven never came back.

This started season three with Cutter reeling from the loss of his best friend because of his crazy evil unfaithful megalomaniacal wife (seriously, watch the show, Helen Cutter was a piece of work). Every one on the team is affected by the loss, and new guy Becker (awesome though he is) just isn't cutting it in their minds. New girl Sarah likewise doesn't quite fill the empty space either (that's right, it took two people to replace Steven's scientific and soldiery skills, and that still wasn't enough). But still, everyone is doing their best to move on and continue their work--and stop Helen, because she is back at making their lives miserable--but we've got some amazing character development going on here because the writers offed a character and stuck with it. I will be honest I don't know if that actor left the show due to external circumstances or if it was purely a case of serving the story, but either way, the writers ran with it and it was awesomely done.

Then, a third of the way through the season, Helen shows up and freaking kills Cutter. Yeah, crazy woman killed her own husband, claiming she still loved him the whole time. Gah. So, bye bye Cutter, the show's true lead character. Wow. A third of the way into the season.

Again, the writers took this and ran with it, causing some great character development as well as moving the story along. Everyone was just starting to get over the loss of Steven, and now they are struck another blow with the loss of Cutter. It proves too much for one character, Jenny, who decides to leave the Anomaly Research Center (ARC). She puts in a brief appearance in season four, but just to show that she has moved on with her life and is still alive and well (and perfectly able to kick some prehistoric butt). There is actually a whole other interesting bit of plot/character development with her in seasons one and two, but this post is already long enough that I won't go into the whole Claudia Brown/Jenny Lewis thing other than to say it was really kind of spectacular, and a great example of both how evil Helen truly was and the further implications of the anomalies beyond wild creatures running loose out of place and time.

So, two and a half seasons in and we've lost two team members and an ancillary character has decided to leave. Now everyone has to get used to yet another new guy, Danny, who, along with Becker and Sarah, rounds out the new field team, with Connor and Abby still hanging in there. I think it is interesting to note that once Cutter was gone the show didn't try to bring any of the other characters, new or old, into the main focus. It was all about the team, not any one person. Even Danny, as the new team leader, was still very much portrayed as part of the team rather than the central player. The season closes with Connor, Abby, and Danny chasing Helen through an anomaly into the past. She is hellbent on going to the dawn of humanity as we know it and ending us all there before we have a chance to evolve into what we are today. Danny manages to follow her all the way to this era, though Connor and Abby get stuck somewhere in between (there was a series of anomalies). The season closes with (finally) the death of Helen Cutter, stopping her once and for all, but also with the realization that Danny is stuck in that era, and Connor and Abby are also stranded in the past, in yet another era altogether.

And here many of us feared it would stop, because the channel originally airing the show decided at the last minute not to renew it for a fourth season. Thankfully, another network was interested and though we had to wait an extra year in between seasons, we did finally get a season four.

Season four may have been less heavy on the dying, but all of the previous deaths are still taking their tolls. Also, we get a bunch of new people thrown in the mix with the old (Connor and Abby do make it back to their own time as the season opens). We learn that Sarah was killed in the year bridging seasons three and four, and even though it happened off screen, it still managed to have a huge effect on the show--Becker's grief over losing everyone he had been brought to the ARC to keep safe gave him a very nice chunk of character development and brought the character forward from the guy on the sidelines he started out being in season three to one of the mains in season four. Even the death of Helen has its impact, because her actions in the first three seasons had their own effects on all of the characters, and as season four closes, we learn she may have left other legacies as well, and not for the best. (Which means richer conflict in season five, yay!)

We do get three new characters introduced during season four who do not stick around, though I would consider none of them main characters. Still, their influence on the primary players is not minimal. Danny also does eventually pop back into the modern day, only to leave again shortly to continue the quest that originally brought him to the ARC in the first place (searching for his brother who disappeared through an anomaly when they were boys).

So, while this show's many comings and goings are certainly not always main characters, often enough they are. I truly liked all of the good guys that they killed off, as well as the good guys who chose to leave. I miss them, and was sad at their loss. But I am still happy that the show's writers made the call that they did. It has given the show a much deeper emotional resonance for me, and has strengthened the characters immensely, allowing for the kind of character growth that we don't often see on shows with a more static cast. It has also deepened the show's mythology in a way that gives every single episode more weight than on other shows of Primeval's ilk. I believe the risk is real every time, because I have been shown that no one is truly safe on this show.

The very premise of Primeval is a fantastical one, yet it feels so much more real that any other show I have watched in a long, long time, even those with no science fiction or supernatural elements, purporting to be set in the "real" world. I have to say, that is because the people on Primeval, just like in real life, come and go. I hope they keep it up for a long, long time to come.

(Okay, but I do also hope they don't kill Becker. Sue me.)

All in All I'd Say It's a Good Start

Well, despite my daughter deciding to kick off 2011 by waking up several times in the night on New Year's Eve/Morning screaming her head off and all but inconsolable (she is in the process of cutting three very large teeth), so far this year has gotten off to a pretty good start, I'd say.

Saturday was just plain awesome.  I hung out with my husband and daughter all day long, which is actually a much rarer event than you might expect, given Hubby's normally busy schedule.  We finished off watching the first season of Stargate Atlantis together (we've been working on that for a while now), I finally started in on watching my season four Bones DVDs (I got them for my birthday back in August), and, there was something else...what was it?  Oh, yeah.  My alma matter, TCU, WON THE FRAKKING ROSE BOWL!!!!!!!  Dude.  I am not a football person.  I seriously only watch two football games a year (and as someone who lives in Texas, I promise you, that takes some dedication), but even I can tell you that was a GREAT game.  So yeah, heck of a way to ring in the new year.

Yesterday was a pretty nice day as well.  I realized that I definitely need/prefer to go to the earlier of the two available services at our church (they started offering a later service in November), despite the fact that it means I have to get up early.  Going to the later service has just had me dragging.  So.  Did that, and then had another day of hanging out with my family.  Hubby mostly napped on the couch while I played with Baby Girl and watched some more Bones.  I also watched the first episode of the new season of Primeval on my DVR and enjoyed it quite a bit.  I am so so glad that show has come back.  Good times. 

Lest you think all I did was laze about and watch television (though I did do quite a bit of that), I also got in some good "puttering."  I finally, finally, pulled out all of my yarn and went through and cataloged my stash, then put it all on my Ravelry account.  I also pulled out all of the kits I have yarn for (crochet and knitting) as well as making a list of the other patterns I have that I want to make in the coming year and put those in my Ravelry queue.  I will definitely work my way through the patterns/kits I have the yarn for first, and then start moving on to the others.  While I was going through my stash I also at long last took the time to go through a stack of vintage patterns my mother-in-law had given me earlier in the year.  Most of them are for crocheting with thread, which I might want to try at some point, but while looking through them I also found the pattern for the blanket she has at her house that I have been admiring for years.  Yay!  As it is a rose motif, I told my husband that if the Frogs won the Rose Bowl (we were watching the game at the time) I was going to make the blanket this year and make the roses purple.  So.  Yes.  That will be happening.  Sweet!  Right now I am just dithering over the decision of whether or not to start my first attempted knitting project or my crocheted sweater first.  I think I may go with the knitting because it is a pair of slippers and darned if I don't just really need a good pair of slippers right now.  So I will hopefully get started on that this week.  I am sure you will hear much about it.

I haven't said much about Kingdom Hearts II yet, but that is mostly because I was still slogging through the beginning of the game, which was incredibly slow (I kid you not--I was five hours of playing time into the game before I got to the title sequence).  I am (mostly) enjoying it so far, I think the story is an intriguing one.  I was chagrined to find that even though the designers seem to have lessened the amount of time you have to spend in the Gummi Ship (yay!), they managed to make the time you do spend in it about three times as obnoxious as it was in the first game.  Sigh.  Also, I ran into this new addition yesterday called the "morale gauge" that was giving me some problems and is a huge pain in the rear-end.  But other than that, I am having fun with it overall.  I feel the strong urge to brag about the fact that I have thus far not once cracked open a walkthrough either.  I have a few bookmarked, just in case, but I am gonna see how far I can get before I break my resolve.

I made the first steps on the path toward achieving a few of my goals for the year as well.  For the "read more books" goal, I have made the executive decision (then told it with my husband and am now sharing it with you so that I have people to hold me to it) that since I am getting up early on Sunday mornings again, I will just rule Saturday nights a non-game-playing night.  I can read a chapter or two of my book instead of wittering away hours on my game.  It's a baby step, sure, but a step all the same.

I made some slightly bigger strides toward my writing goal yesterday though.  I've started giving some serious thought to the story I will be researching/starting this year.  I spent a large part of the evening bouncing ideas off of my husband last night to see how crazy any of it sounded.  I have definitely decided that this one will be straight up science fiction, not fantasy, which is a break from my normal MO.  This also means, flat out, NO MAGIC.  This is gonna be a challenge for me, but I think I can do it.  Sadly it also means no dragons, but I will find a way to make sure they are represented in the story, never you fear.  *cough*spaceships*cough*

So I would say I am pretty pleased with how my first weekend of 2011 went.  I hope each of you are as satisfied with the new year thus far, and if not, I sincerely hope that things start to look up for you soon! 

Oh!  And before I forget, I did manage to finish my cowl on Thursday.  I am pretty pleased with how it turned out, even though it was not as I expected.  I think if I made it again, I would half the width of the circle and double the length of the tube.  But still, it is super warm and cozy and I love how the colors came out.

Cori's Cowl by Cori 2010.

This is how the pattern photo suggests it be worn.

Though I like wearing it as a hood to keep my ears warm too!

Pattern:  Vintage Cascade Cowl by Lion Brand
Yarn:  Red Heart Super Saver in various shades (I used remnants from other projects).
Hook:  J