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Jan. 5th, 2015 03:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionLooks like consensus has coalesced around Fargo as show of the year - I guess those of us unthrilled with the True Detective ending managed to successfully deflate its enthusiasts via tactical whingeing? Fargo was mostly amusing and I'll watch its relaunch whenever, but it was more weird than good, and it meant less than it seemed to think. There were some memorable shots, maybe a few up there with the consistently amazing visuals of True Detective and Hannibal, and as usual Mad Men, but in the end nothing can replace story.
True Detective ... happened. The direction, art direction, McConaughection were undeniably top notch. And the credit sequence was just thrilling, even surviving retrospective self-seriousness given what happened with the show. I could watch cars run across Woody Harrelson's face for hours. And I mean that in a nice way.
That the ending plagiarized a comic book was weird. And consequentially, unlike the even weirder (if less certain and more likely unconscious is real) plagiarism of Donald Duck in Inception. Premises can and should be stolen, significance never. And if you do, Jesus - change something, anything. That the last damn seconds were unoriginal sharpens my suspicions that the ending was written while the show was in production. It's desperate and at a bizarre veer from all that came before. But I'm probably just protecting my dumb theory. Fail's doubtless on me.
Perhaps asking a single person to write so many episodes of one show, even with bits of help here and there, isn't as good an idea as we've been assuming? Or at least leads to some problems we weren't prepared for. Penny Dreadful and Louie, one-man shows also, had some neat high points but also some very draggy ones, much like Fargo. But Fargo was sufficiently invested in a serial plotline that the ending needed to matter. It wasn't as much of a burnout as True Detective's (seemed that it) was, but it was enough of a shrug to make the series itself retroactively shruggier. Julie and I argue about whether the "neat! What next!" feeling is valuable in itself or only as a promise of the feeling that a whole experience has been neat, and I'm on the asking-for-disappointment side. But she was a lot madder than she admits at the latter quarters of True Detective and Lost. Enduring love is possible, is the problem with the never loved vs. loved and lost dispute. Breaking Bad is possible. It's just not here this year. But secretly we're watching all this television looking for it.
Hannibal and Mad Men were good, though, and both of them despite our assumption that we've seen all this before. And maybe requiring that starting point for full appreciation? If the assignment is to find ways to keep Hannibal and Draper even vaguely fresh they both aced it. With the zombie team not far behind them, this year. Just like Game of Thrones becomes a lot more impressive when you ask yourself what you could have done better given those constraints. Heroic writing staffs, all.
Comedy we all differ on, though with some universal overlap, and that's fine. I wonder why it's fine, though? What makes it more like music or old movies or genre fiction where if you grew up with some strain of it or took a random liking-to at some early point it's valuable to you forever, while everyone else is pretty much justified in shrugging? Or maybe "drama" works the same way and we all just assume it doesn't? Maybe it's just how we react to the pain of seeing someone not laugh or not respond to our tunes - if they could get it they'd have got it at once, so we just give up. Whereas maybe with this serious stuff that at some point connects up with ethics or politics or spirituality or something they'll come to get it if they keep trying, just like those who disagree with us about all those matters are only tolerated by us for their potential to someday change and agree with us, a potential surely proved by their ability to tie their shoes. Or perhaps just some of us, but enough to keep the Academy Awards and similar provocations going. Perhaps there's no accounting for accounting for taste.
True Detective ... happened. The direction, art direction, McConaughection were undeniably top notch. And the credit sequence was just thrilling, even surviving retrospective self-seriousness given what happened with the show. I could watch cars run across Woody Harrelson's face for hours. And I mean that in a nice way.
That the ending plagiarized a comic book was weird. And consequentially, unlike the even weirder (if less certain and more likely unconscious is real) plagiarism of Donald Duck in Inception. Premises can and should be stolen, significance never. And if you do, Jesus - change something, anything. That the last damn seconds were unoriginal sharpens my suspicions that the ending was written while the show was in production. It's desperate and at a bizarre veer from all that came before. But I'm probably just protecting my dumb theory. Fail's doubtless on me.
Perhaps asking a single person to write so many episodes of one show, even with bits of help here and there, isn't as good an idea as we've been assuming? Or at least leads to some problems we weren't prepared for. Penny Dreadful and Louie, one-man shows also, had some neat high points but also some very draggy ones, much like Fargo. But Fargo was sufficiently invested in a serial plotline that the ending needed to matter. It wasn't as much of a burnout as True Detective's (seemed that it) was, but it was enough of a shrug to make the series itself retroactively shruggier. Julie and I argue about whether the "neat! What next!" feeling is valuable in itself or only as a promise of the feeling that a whole experience has been neat, and I'm on the asking-for-disappointment side. But she was a lot madder than she admits at the latter quarters of True Detective and Lost. Enduring love is possible, is the problem with the never loved vs. loved and lost dispute. Breaking Bad is possible. It's just not here this year. But secretly we're watching all this television looking for it.
Hannibal and Mad Men were good, though, and both of them despite our assumption that we've seen all this before. And maybe requiring that starting point for full appreciation? If the assignment is to find ways to keep Hannibal and Draper even vaguely fresh they both aced it. With the zombie team not far behind them, this year. Just like Game of Thrones becomes a lot more impressive when you ask yourself what you could have done better given those constraints. Heroic writing staffs, all.
Comedy we all differ on, though with some universal overlap, and that's fine. I wonder why it's fine, though? What makes it more like music or old movies or genre fiction where if you grew up with some strain of it or took a random liking-to at some early point it's valuable to you forever, while everyone else is pretty much justified in shrugging? Or maybe "drama" works the same way and we all just assume it doesn't? Maybe it's just how we react to the pain of seeing someone not laugh or not respond to our tunes - if they could get it they'd have got it at once, so we just give up. Whereas maybe with this serious stuff that at some point connects up with ethics or politics or spirituality or something they'll come to get it if they keep trying, just like those who disagree with us about all those matters are only tolerated by us for their potential to someday change and agree with us, a potential surely proved by their ability to tie their shoes. Or perhaps just some of us, but enough to keep the Academy Awards and similar provocations going. Perhaps there's no accounting for accounting for taste.
