Monthly Archives: September 2010

September 30, 2010 · 1:40 am

Cultural Conferencing: “The New Criticism?” at Flow 2010

“The New Criticism?” at Flow 2010

September 30th, 2010

I am currently awaiting the arrival of a late night bus which shall take me to Chicago and to a plane which will deliver me to Austin, Texas (my first time in the city/state) for the 2010 Flow Conference at the University of Texas – Austin.

This is exciting for a few reasons. First of all, Flow is unique in that it is about conversation more than presentation: instead of having attendees present formal papers, each panel member submits a short response to the panel’s prompt which then form the basis of a discussion which includes participation from the collected scholars in attendance. Conferences are usually all about conversation anyways, with the time before and after panels often more beneficial and interesting than the panels themselves, and Flow formalizes that process within its topics, and I am very much looking forward to witnessing some fantastic discussion over the weekend.

However, I will also be presenting myself as part of a panel convened by Jason Mittell (who I often link to) on “The New Criticism? Academia, Journalism, and Digital Critics.” It’s spun-off from a blog post Jason wrote back in March, which focused on the blurring of critical categories, and admittedly discusses my own position within the erosion of traditional boundaries. As a result, I was very interesting in continuing this conversation, and am excited to continue the conversation with others who come at the question from different perspectives – along with Jason and myself, the conversation will include The A.V. Club’s Noel Murray, The New School’s Laura Crestohl, and UCLA’s Sudeep Sharma, and I am extremely excited to expand on Jason’s post (and my own writings on the topic) this weekend and perhaps into the future as well.

It’s going to be an extremely exciting weekend, and I look forward to plenty of discussion, debate, and analysis in the days ahead. In the meantime, though, readers can join in the conversation: the panel is at 9:45 on Saturday (October 2nd), and if you’re on Twitter you can follow the #Flow10 hashtag where members of the audience of this and other panels will be tweeting. You can also head to the Flow Conference site, where you can read the position papers from each of the panelists which will be used to spark conversation. In the short term, however, you can check out my own position paper below the fold.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under TV Criticism

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

September 30, 2010 · 12:43 am

Season Premiere: The Good Wife – “Taking Control”

“Taking Control”

September 28th, 2010

I will admit to loving a good ironic title, and I’d argue that “Taking Control” somewhat misrepresents the state of The Good Wife heading into its second season.

I’ve seen a lot of divergent thoughts on the premiere: some seems to think the show is still in fine form, while others felt that it was “off” in some way. I’ll admit to being slightly in the second camp, albeit with a better sense of how, and more importantly why, the show feels this way. While I do think there are a few creative missteps here, I think the general function of the premiere was a good way to enter into the season (if not necessarily conducive to a particularly strong premiere).

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under The Good Wife

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 29, 2010 · 11:12 pm

Cultural Catchup Project: “Dead End” (Angel)

“Dead End”

September 29th, 2010

You can follow along with the Cultural Catchup Project by following me on Twitter (@Memles), by subscribing to the category’s feed, or by bookmarking the Cultural Catchup Project page where I’ll be posting a link to each installment.

I remember way back when I started writing about Angel, and made some comments regarding Wolfram & Hart; as usual, the comments couldn’t help but hint at future developments, noting that there was much to come from this particular organization (a fact which was not really a spoiler, since I was aware the series had some legal elements in its future).

What makes Wolfram & Hart work is that they are simultaneously omnipresent and marginal: while they always seem to have a hand in things, their background role in the majority of threats against Angel keeps them one degree away from pure evil. We know that the firm is certainly capable of evil, and their facilitation of evil activities is certainly something we would consider to be fairly evil, but there is always that sense that the firm as a whole is not truly evil in the sense that we may want them to be. It’s why Angel’s decision to allow Darla and Drusilla to kill the room full of lawyers and their spouses was so problematic: while some of those people, like Holland, deserved to die, the rest seem relatively innocent, and that relativity makes the firm’s position complicated.

It also helps that Lindsey McDonald, central to “Dead End,” has wavered (along with his colleague, Lilah Morgan) as it relates to their connection to the evil at the heart of the company. While Lindsey ultimately chose against leaving the company during those past conflicts, the tension allowed him to seem separate from, perhaps even a victim of, the company’s grasp. It’s a separation which finally comes to its logical conclusion in “Dead End,” although in a way which places Wolfram & Hart into a slightly more direct definition of evil.

Continue reading →

20 Comments

Filed under Cultural Catchup Project

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 28, 2010 · 10:45 pm

Glee – “Britney/Brittany”

“Britney/Brittany”

September 28th, 2010

A week after opening with an unquestionably meta opening, Ryan Murphy did not stray far from that example with “Britney/Brittany”: in the opening scenes, Will expresses how he wants New Directions to know when to show restraint, while Kurt and many other students express their desire to branch out into something more exciting, youthful. It picks up directly where last week’s opening left off, questioning the song choices the series makes, which I’d argue is an interesting question that this season does need to respond to.

Of course, how much you enjoy “Britney/Brittany” depends on both its framework (which has some issues in terms of balancing fantasy and reality) and how Britney Spears’ presence plays out throughout the course of the episode. As someone who admittedly enjoys Spears’ music on the level of cheesy pop fare, I thought choosing Britney was not in and of itself a mistake; however, the show was let down considerably by the way in which her music and its legacy were received by those both within and outside of New Directions.

While musically satisfying, at least for me personally, “Britney/Brittany” suffered from an inelegance which is likely to cause any future themed episodes to raise even more red flags than this hour.

Continue reading →

19 Comments

Filed under Glee

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 27, 2010 · 10:54 pm

Lone Star – “One in Every Family”

“One in Every Family”

September 27th, 2010

“Everything’s always a blur.”

Lying in bed, the newly married Lindsay Allen observes to her husband that her life is sort of like drowning: when he’s away (with his other wife), she feels like she’s drowning, and when he returns it’s like a sudden breath of air.

This scene does little to elevate Lone Star’s gender representations, as effectively Lindsay is arguing that she is lost without her man; however, while I will get to those questions in a moment, I want to focus on the way Lindsay’s description describes Lone Star in and of itself. The show feels sort of like a blur, really: while the show has a fairly leisurely pace, the threat of a reveal remains at every corner, creating just enough instability for an episode like “One in Every Family” to feel meaningful even when it doesn’t have any huge or groundbreaking scenes.

The show continues to paint in fairly broad strokes on some levels, but its second episode quite successfully expands on the nuance within its various worlds: the show still remains fairly centered on James Wolk’s Robert Allen, but the show around him has been effectively given additional depth which would indicate that this show is about more than its premise.

Emphasizing potential, of course, that is unlikely to see the light of the fall season.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Lone Star

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 27, 2010 · 8:27 pm

How I Met Your Mother – “Cleaning House”

“Cleaning House”

September 27th, 2010

Barney Stinson is a very broad character, but Neil Patrick Harris has always specialized at emphasizing his vulnerability. Mind you, this vulnerability always disappears, but the series’ emphasis on serialization has allowed for Barney’s arc to avoid feeling too reductive. Yes, he resets every once in a while, but “Cleaning House” quite clearly identifies that there remains a sense of progress in the character.

While the episode wasn’t particularly fantastic, it felt more emotionally honest than the incredulous nature of the story would indicate on the surface. As someone who appreciates this level of emotional complexity, I like what the episode does for the overall narrative and for Barney as a character, even if it doesn’t fundamentally change the character in future episodes.

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under How I Met Your Mother

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 27, 2010 · 12:54 am

Mad Men – “Hands and Knees”

“Hands and Knees”

September 26th, 2010

“Everybody has bad dreams once in a while.”

In a Twitter discussion, Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall had a discussion about the role of theme in Mad Men: to boil it down for you, Seitz suggested he was on the fence about “Hands and Knees” due to it being a “theme episode,” while Alan argued that every episode is a theme episode (while acknowledging that this may be simply because he, as a critic, looks for themes to inform his review).

The distinction I offered is that there is a difference between “theme episodes” (which I would argue “Hands and Knees” is) and “episodes with themes” (which is the majority of Mad Men’s run). The series is too thematically rich to go without themes in any particular episode, but “Hands and Knees” stands apart in terms of actively tying nearly every single story into that theme: instead of one bad dream, it’s a collection of bad dreams that happen simultaneously (insert Inception joke).

What makes it, and all good “theme episodes,” work so well is that the episode itself acknowledges that the consistency of this theme is ridiculous: everything that could go wrong does go wrong in the episode, as if every worst case scenario and everything they want to keep secret rises to the surface. The episode asks us to join Roger in laughter when we realize just how screwed these people all are, while emphasizing that everyone has a good reason to go on pretending as if none of it has actually happened.

It’s a very straightforward thematic episode, though, and writing out the same thing as everyone else seems like a waste of my time – as a result, I’m going to outline my thematic read of the episode very briefly before discussing some of the more ancillary elements of the story which may not clearly connect with the central theme.

Continue reading →

20 Comments

Filed under Mad Men

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 26, 2010 · 9:26 pm

Season Premiere: The Amazing Race, Watermelons, and the Loss(?) of Uncertainty

“They Don’t Call the The Amazing Race For Nothin’!”

September 26th, 2010

Earlier this month, CBS gave away what I would technically consider a spoiler: they released a video of two contestants completing a Roadblock which was fairly clearly taking place towards the end of the first leg. Being generally spoiler-phobic, I resisted the video for a few hours, but then everyone and their mother were talking about it.

And when I finally watched it, I discovered why.

YouTube – The Watermelon Heard Around the World

I chose this version of the video with the highest number of viewers: while CBS’ own upload has 650,000, the copy posted has over two and a half million views. People have been watching this video for weeks, and it seems to have actually created some legitimate excitement around the season. I don’t think that the video is enough of a spoiler to ruin the episode (my usual spoiler-hating self didn’t really emerge), but I do think that it creates a very different sort of viewing experience than what we’re used to.

As a result, I want to ask (and perhaps answer) some questions about the strategy at play, which ended up helping the series to one of its most memorable premieres in quite some time.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under The Amazing Race

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 25, 2010 · 12:03 pm

Season Premiere: Fringe – “Olivia”

“Olivia”

September 23rd, 2010

Earlier this year, I wrote about what I called “procedural pacing,” wherein FX’s Justified gradually became more serialized throughout its first season: by starting with a more procedural format, and then having that format be interrupted and taken over by a serialized story line as the season wore on, the show established and then shattered its status quo. As a result, when the story eventually turned over in its entirety to Raylon Givens’ battle against the Crowder family, it felt “earned”: instead of seeming like an attempt to create false stakes, we had seen every step in this process, allowing the storyline to feel wholly organic and, more importantly, wholly satisfying.

I don’t think I entirely realized this before, but Fringe very much follows the same principle. It could have, at any point in its first two seasons, indulged in its science fiction premise to the degree we see in “Olivia”: we’ve known about the alternate universe since the first season finale, after all, so what was stopping them from introducing Fauxlivia at that point in the story? Fringe has had the potential for a serialized science fiction series since its pilot, and many have often criticized the series for not doing episodes like “Olivia,” a rollicking yet thought-provoking premiere, more often.

And yet, “Olivia” works as well as it does precisely because it is disrupting a status quo the series has established quite well over the past few seasons; much as Justified’s serialized elements had greater meaning due to the nuanced buildup, the slow development of the alternate universe and its role within this larger story has allowed the various dualities and conflicts the series is creating to have meaning which would have been lost had it been introduced at an earlier date.

Continue reading →

5 Comments

Filed under Fringe

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 25, 2010 · 12:25 am

Save this Premise?: The Premature Campaign to Save Lone Star

Save this Premise?: The Premature Campaign to Save Lone Star

September 25th, 2010

When I realized that there was an online campaign to save Lone Star, I had two thoughts.

First of all, I was bolstered: rallying around Kyle Killen’s inspired support of the series, journalists and fans began to voice their support with Twitter hashtags and Facebook campaigns, and as someone who saw promise in the series I was pleased to see the show getting attention.

However, I was also struck by the fact that people are not really campaigning to save Lone Star. The majority are campaigning to save the idea of Lone Star, the notion that complex drama series not about policemen or lawyers have a place within the context of network television.

While I think this is a battle worth fighting, and I certainly am in support of the series continuing (despite my concerns over its longevity), I have some serious concerns about how this campaign relates to the text itself. When we have seen only a single episode, and when there were legitimate concerns of where the series goes from here, is this metric level of internet-related hype surrounding the series not simply creating expectations that the episode will need to live up to? Does this level of support not seem premature for a show that hasn’t even become a show yet?

Continue reading →

13 Comments

Filed under Lone Star

Tagged as , , , , , , ,