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Oct. 27th, 2013 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionMelatonin's bad for serious movie watching, as it has me pretty glazed for the last two hours of each day. Maddy's naptime is usually a bust, too, for that or for reading - she's amused enough hanging out in the crib, but seldom falls asleep, maybe the price paid for her reliably perfect night sleeping. When she does nap it's for about three hours but we've failed to understand what the magic word is to effect that: whether exhaustion, a warm bottle, just the right time of day, darkness, a walk, a drive - it happens just often enough to keep us trying hard. So this year we've watched almost as much television as last year, the pregnancy one, during which we probably watched more than in any ten years of our prior lives.
It's funny how many more watchable comedy shows there've been than drama ones, maybe related to how the latter seem to demote themselves permanently when there's a flameout or lull, like with Lost, Twin Peaks, Six Feet Under and even Mad Men. All had recoveries of various, usually temporary, sorts but the trust was lost - insane as it sounds, we do seem to want these 25, 50, 100 hour projects to be mostly of a piece.
Whereas Community's weak first few episodes and whole fourth season, or stray dud Adventure Time episodes, don't stop me from delightedly watching and rewatching those shows. Even Futurama's long death march didn't take anything away from those first four years. I guess part of that is that comedy doesn't rely much on serialization - even the sublime air conditioning subplot in Community 3 was confined to just a handful of episodes, was discrete from the rest of the show, and didn't especially matter even for Glover's character's development.
So that there's at least a dozen light shows where I can say they were certainly worth spending those moments on, as compared to just the two heavy ones. Nearly all of the former requiring carving, though - maybe only Curb Your Enthusiasm excepted. Comedies burn out even more dramatically than non-comedies, of course. But the wing goes while the building stands.
Though I'm looking forward to more Orphan Black this spring. It's technically a non-comedy but the reason to watch is various amusing actorly complications enabled by its subgenre. It's wisely feeding only a bit of info at a time about its inevitably silly long-term plot.
We'll also stick with Sherlock and Hannibal (favorites of Julie's), the resurrected Harmon Community, the Mad Men mini-season, and returned Louie. At the moment we're stuck with Walking Dead and American Horror Story again, which despite occasional stirrings of excellence in the latter one mostly watches just to watch something. In between biweekly life-supporting drips of Adventure Time.
It's funny how many more watchable comedy shows there've been than drama ones, maybe related to how the latter seem to demote themselves permanently when there's a flameout or lull, like with Lost, Twin Peaks, Six Feet Under and even Mad Men. All had recoveries of various, usually temporary, sorts but the trust was lost - insane as it sounds, we do seem to want these 25, 50, 100 hour projects to be mostly of a piece.
Whereas Community's weak first few episodes and whole fourth season, or stray dud Adventure Time episodes, don't stop me from delightedly watching and rewatching those shows. Even Futurama's long death march didn't take anything away from those first four years. I guess part of that is that comedy doesn't rely much on serialization - even the sublime air conditioning subplot in Community 3 was confined to just a handful of episodes, was discrete from the rest of the show, and didn't especially matter even for Glover's character's development.
So that there's at least a dozen light shows where I can say they were certainly worth spending those moments on, as compared to just the two heavy ones. Nearly all of the former requiring carving, though - maybe only Curb Your Enthusiasm excepted. Comedies burn out even more dramatically than non-comedies, of course. But the wing goes while the building stands.
Though I'm looking forward to more Orphan Black this spring. It's technically a non-comedy but the reason to watch is various amusing actorly complications enabled by its subgenre. It's wisely feeding only a bit of info at a time about its inevitably silly long-term plot.
We'll also stick with Sherlock and Hannibal (favorites of Julie's), the resurrected Harmon Community, the Mad Men mini-season, and returned Louie. At the moment we're stuck with Walking Dead and American Horror Story again, which despite occasional stirrings of excellence in the latter one mostly watches just to watch something. In between biweekly life-supporting drips of Adventure Time.
