October 10, 2007 · 12:02 am

House – “97 Seconds”

“97 Seconds”

October 9th, 2007

This will be fairly short as I was admittedly not entirely paying attention to tonight’s episode of House. However, there are a few observations I wanted to make about it. Because the episode tried to do a lot of things, and I wasn’t entirely buying it.

House with a death wish was just bizarre, and I still don’t entirely “get” the situation with the car accident victim. I know there’s the obvious connection to House’s own past, but it felt too arbitrary and pulled House out of the episode’s reality. The storyline had no connection to the rest of the episode, and its purpose was not clear by episode’s end.

As for Foreman’s attempt at pulling a House, I think that is actually serves to point out one of the show’s glaring flaws: no one would ever let House do what he does. While this is supposed to drive Foreman back to House, all it did for me was confirm that Cuddy would never have kept her job this long without firing him, results or no results. House’s apparent immunity to what Foreman experienced is a flaw the show has never really addressed in a real fashion.

And while it was actually a strong episode for the potential cottages, I find that the suspense is gone when I know who they cast (I won’t spoil it here). It is interesting to see how they try to mess with our heads, and one of them was pretty well decided within this episode (I’ll let you assume who you wish to assume), and their case drama certainly made for some interesting elements.

But in the end, it didn’t feel like a cohesive episode of House: I would have almost rather they left out House’s storyline altogether and simply let him terrorize the fellows with more great Survivor-style tribal councils. Going for the death wish just felt…false.

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October 9, 2007 · 8:37 pm

The Sophomore Test: Pushing Daisies – “Dummy”

The Sophomore Test: Pushing Daisies

“Dummy”

While breaking into the headquarters of the Dandelion Car Company, Ned the Pie Maker experiences a mixture of happiness and trepidation, and poses a rather telling question:

“Why does it always have to be a mixture?”

I concur, Ned, I concur: watching tonight’s sophomore episode of Pushing Daisies, my reactions formed a dangerous mixture of optimism and pessimism. With each passing scene, the pilot’s potential flashed in front of my eyes before disappearing shortly after. It was an emotional rollercoaster, but I am now back on solid ground and capable of breaking this mixture down to its key ingredients.

While it’s too early for the verdict, Pushing Daisies’ second stanza featured a comparable level of wit, an adequate level of characterization, a mildly disappointing dialogue devolution, a massively predictable procedural story, a case of overnarrativitis, and one overly long musical number. What does this all mean?

Pushing Daisies is still the best new show of the season…but they’ve got some work to do.

[There are light spoilers below, but this is really designed as more of a preview than a recap. So, if you want to know what to expect, keep reading.]

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October 9, 2007 · 12:40 pm

Chuck – “Chuck Versus the Tango” and a sidenote on Aliens in America

“Chuck Versus the Tango”

October 8th, 2007

I don’t have too much to say about Chuck, but I haven’t formally discussed a single episode thus far and felt this was a good time to do so. The series emerged out of its first week with a decent second stanza, but I feel the need to point out that this week’s episode was just plain good: it maintained the energetic pace of the pilot without any of the large-scale action pieces, and after last week’s repetitive fare added some new elements to the mix.

Chuck was the highlight here, as Zachary Levi delivered a great comic performance as the perpetually in danger government secret keeper. The situations in the episode, while technically stretching the show’s premise, were perfect: it put Chuck in conflict with his friends, in awkward and new situations with the tango, and to new points in his relationship with Sarah. It was essentially an episode of Alias but played for comedy. Chuck had to learn new skills and techniques, but instead of doing so to great effect he klutzed his way throught it.

And it was funny: Alias always had its humorous side, and played to full effect it’s allowing Chuck to come into its own. Having never purported to being a plot-driven series, the character-building is great: the villainness was portrayed well, the plot was simple enough to follow, and it felt like the kind of adventure that we actually like watching. I can only hope that tonight’s episode of Reaper can convince me just as well as Chuck did.

A Note on “Aliens of America”

I watched the second episode of The CW’s new comedy last night, and I’m confused. I knew the second episode went for broad comedy (The apparent homosexuality, according to the school, of Raja and Justin), but it still felt a bit off compared to the subtlety of the premiere. Raja was played just a bit too culturally lost for me, and it felt a bit too simple.

However, on the other side of the coin, the episode displayed a bizarre schizophrenic sense of comedy. On top of the broad comedy, the episode contained a Willem Dafoe joke and a reference to “Say Anything.” Normally I’d view these as signs of the series maintaining a sharp perspective, but within the overall tone of the episode it felt off. The people who would find the broad comedy funny, in other words, would be unlikely to have been a fan of early Cameron Crowe or Willem Dafoe, Spider-Man notwithstanding.

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October 9, 2007 · 11:40 am

Sound Off! Week – Hey! Nielsen – A Land of Confusion

Sound Off! on Hey! Nielsen

A Land of Confusion

Yesterday, in discussing the problem of points of origin, it was inevitable that we’d leak into today’s issue. The established knowledge of other sites is a barrier of entry, but it is only one cause of the confusion that many fans delved further into within the comments section yesterday. Hey! Nielsen’s general design is, in itself, confusing even without any pre-existing views on what social networking represents.

WelcometoCO, a Jericho fan, found that “the Comment, Reaction, and Opinion options sound and seem like one and the same to me, and it took a long while before I could find any explanation that attempted to differentiate them. For that reason, I had already “klutzed” my way through the site and probably violated the intent for each of the options offered — becoming one of those dreaded Jericho ‘spammers’ who were so roundly criticized.”

What I want to do, based on this comment, is actually look at the intention behind the Opinion, Reaction and Comment options to attempt to figure out why they’re there, what they should be used for, and how they are confusing even once you’re used to the system (I’ll be getting to the spamming tomorrow).

Opinions

Opinions are something I equate to a message board post, but they’re also an unfortunately blank template. The purpose of an opinion is simple: expressing one’s opinion. And while I know that it is taboo to tell people what to say, I am personally open to a bit more guidance as to what makes a good or bad opinion.

Opinions have ranged from detailed analyses of new series or premiere episodes to simple statements of like or dislike without any further analysis. Are these examples of good or bad opinions? We don’t really know.

“The main detractor, as many have already said, is a lack of topic direction,” fan BlackLid noted in yesterday’s comments section. “Regardless of the site, what all social networking areas have in common is a category and then a subject to which other users can respond. There are clearly acceptable categories and clearly unacceptable ones.”

This seems like a great way to further provide a framework to opinions: opinions about the cast could be separated from general opinions, for example. It doesn’t fix every problem, but it might provide more thought being put into each individual opinion: as BlackLid pointed out, a series of dropboxes would help in streamlining this process.

Reactions

Reactions, meanwhile, are somewhat easier to understand: you agree or disagree with an opinion. However, the problem with Reactions is that I often don’t quite know what I’m reacting to. If someone posts a negative opinion of a series, and I disagree with it, is that registered as a negative reaction to the show or to that opinion? I’m still not entirely sure, but I think it is relevant information that would (for me) clarify the situation.

Comments

I think that, in comments, there lies a great deal of the site’s content potential. In commenting, people are able to enter into a discourse, and there is a sense that each opinion is in fact a discussion, which elevates that discourse to a more interactive level.

But no one is using them: an opinion might have sixty reactions, but only 5 comments. For me, comments are an integral part of people understanding this process: you could make a great opinion, but commenting on others is just as important to the discourse that will follow. If you want to create a social networking community, comments are essential. I think that a larger focus on the importance of this element, even though it is more difficult and time-consuming than a two-click reaction, would help avoid the spamming issue as well (Which, as noted, we’ll get into with greater detail tomorrow).

Conclusion

This is not to say that it is impossible to figure the system out. There exists a certain level of quality in the organization, and it’s certainly possible to have a decent discussion. But, in the interest of more people being involved, it would be great if these three new forms of communication could be both better explained and streamlined to be as representative as possible of their true purpose. There is, in other words, light at the end of the tunnel.

“I was [confused], briefly,” says Supernatural fan Shoi. “I can see where it’s a little difficult to tell how to leave feedback, but I figured out it by going slowly and taking my time. ”

Shoi set a good example, as did several of the other fans who contacted me. However, in a world where many people don’t take their time, I believe we have plenty of suggestions on what Hey! Nielsen could do to improve. For more, continue reading below.

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October 8, 2007 · 10:08 pm

Heroes – “Kindred”

“Kindred”

October 8th, 2007

Heroes gets off the ground with two story threads that were left hanging for its opening two episodes: Niki and Micah Sanders, the fate of their patriarch up in the air, and Sylar, dragged into the sewers after last year’s finale. Before the first scenes come to a close we get our answers: D.L. is dead, and Sylar lives. Neither of these are surprising, but the latter in particular is quite frustrating.

My view on Sylar’s resurrection can be found here, remaining unchanged since that post was written, but this episode could have made up for that. It could have used his return to chart a new path for his character, and a new path for the series. Instead, we get a complete ripoff of every superhero origin story inhistory (And Three Men and a Baby) which Sylar makes a single appearance in the opening half hour. And that? Results in yet another extremely frustrating episode of Heroes.

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October 8, 2007 · 9:51 am

Sound Off! Week – Hey! Nielsen – The Problem of Points of Origin

Sound Off! on Hey! Nielsen

The Problem of Points of Origin

One of the problems that Hey! Nielsen faces is that the fans who reach the site are almost all primarily arriving via other forms of social networking: Message Boards, MySpace, LiveJournal, etc. The problem is that many of these people, then, are used to the systems already in place, and a whole new interface (And a confusing one: opinions, ratings, comments are all unique measurements to the site, as we’ll get to tomorrow) is nearly impossible to understand immediately.

The Problem 

Supernatural fan Franzi, a Livejournal user, notes that “the way livejournal works, it would never occur to one that a new opinion is like an entire livejournal post; at best, we’d think it was the start of a new comment thread and at worst, a single comment. Quite simply: we do not use social networking sites or message boards to any significant degree.” This problem is not new: a great deal of television fans are not tech savvy twenty-somethings who can easily adapt to a new social networking system.

Jericho fans, meanwhile, heard about it through their most universal form of communication: the CBS Message Boards where much of the Nuts for Jericho campaign originated (Although it has grown into a large and great series of other sites).

“I first heard about Hey!Nielsen on the CBS/Jericho Message Board,” says Jericho fan WelcometoCO. “Somebody’s posting listed a link in which you could express your interest in Hey!Nielsen.”

While Jericho fans come primarily from a message board environment, they still faced the same problem: spurred on by calls to action, they jumped into Hey! Nielsen and saw it as an avenue for their fandom. This is fandom that has been well-developed within a certain environment, but when unleashed on something different in even a direct fashion it will (inevitably) run into a few hiccups.

The Root of the Problem 

Therefore, when it comes to the problems that Hey! Nielsen needs to address, the root of their confusion issue (Which will be discussed in further detail tomorrow) is that their learning has often been limited to certain systems. The large glut of social networking sites have not forced everyone into conformity, but rather created a dozen different skillsets that are not always transferrable.

In developing the site, then, this really needed to be considered. There is nothing that really explains what Hey! Nielsen is: it’s really an amalgam of Digg, with a little bit of Facebook/MySpace thrown in for good measure, but taking two popular mediums and combining them does not mean people will understand. Fans are a diverse group of people, and any new social networking site needs to reflect this within its design and mission statement.

The Solution

A relative tutorial that explains what each of the site’s options is compared to other social networking forms. When I first equated “Opinions” to message board posts, fans were shocked that this was the case: if that had been done in the first place, I don’t think that there would have been the same level of problems. Creating an entire new lexicon of terms might sound like a good idea, but all it creates is confusion. Understanding those differences and adapting the system to reflect that is a great way to solve the problem fans have put forward.

For all of the Jericho and Supernatural fan responses regarding how they came to Hey! Nielsen, keep reading after the jump.

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October 7, 2007 · 8:08 pm

Brothers & Sisters – “An American Family”

“An American Family”

October 7th, 2007

You may have noticed that, until today, Sunday was recap free here at Cultural Learnings. However, based on stats and my own general interest in the shows the night has to offer, Brothers & Sisters has earned a coveted spot in the lineup. Of course, I use a very relative form of “coveted.”

And as far as family activities go, there is nothing more American than a road trip. Considering that the last road trip the Walker family took resulted in the discovery of an incredibly valuable plot of land and roadside bar antics, in spite of Tommy being present. With Justin being transfered to San Diego after his accident in Iraq, the Walker family (A more desirably group including Kevin, Kitty and Nora) descends onto the city in their minivan. And yes: Nora Walker is a total backseat driver. And it is lovely.

But what this episode really represents is a return to the show’s successful formula: faced with a crisis, the Walker family devolves into a mess of neuroses which sends them into a tail spin. It’s a formula that could be hopelessly grating, but the stellar cast always manages to elevate the material. In this case, the road trip ran into a political land mine, Tommy ran into a young and blonde land mine at Ojai, and Sarah ran into an ex-wife/Rebecca related land mine while meeting with Joe.

And do you know what? When a show does these things with this much grace, I can’t possibly complain.

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October 7, 2007 · 10:54 am

Sound Off! Week: Jericho and Supernatural Fans on ‘Hey! Nielsen’

On a personal level, I think that Hey! Nielsen is an intriguing social networking experiment that, unfortunately, doesn’t fit the type of television discourse I prefer. It is a system based on popularity and volume, whereas I tend to search for more analysis-based discussion. Some users are of the same mind, but it seems like the mass hysteria keeps those elements from resonating.

But this is reasonable, because the site really isn’t designed for me. Rather, it is designed for fans who want a new way for their fandom to be measured. So, when it came time to analyze Hey! Nielsen’s performance over its first two weeks, I decided to go right to the source: the fans of Jericho, oft-covered on this blog for their passion and determination in reengaging their show, and the fans of Supernatural, who fear that their show could end up in Jericho’s boat eventually.

But the site has not met their needs, which is a consensus amongst all of those who responded to a call for feedback posted to various social networking forums. The earliest of the heavy users, these two groups have a lot to say although the main message is clear: fans want a clearer format, a better sense of direction, and to receive something out of the system. Whether or not these problems are solved may well dictate whether Hey! Nielsen can gain any level of relevance within a crowded social networking market.

Over the next week, I am going to highlight five different problems that face the site for new users, and will be posting the feedback I received from a range of Jericho and Supernatural fans. So, come back each day for another glimpse into a fan’s experience of a new social networking forum, and perhaps offer your own views if you’re a user yourself. The more opinions we get, the better Hey! Nielsen can implement these changes. This is a public beta, after all: the whole point is that feedback can and should change the existing model.

And I want to make sure that this happens.

Cultural Learnings’ Sound Off! Week

Jericho and Supernatural Fans on Hey! Nielsen

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

  • The Spamming Question

Thursday

  • Does Hey! Nielsen impact television REALLY?

Friday

  • Suggestions on Improving Hey! Nielsen

So stay tuned to Cultural Learnings for all the feedback over the next week, and be sure to have your voice heard in the comments section! We want to make sure that the voices of these fans are heard loud and clear, so that Hey! Nielsen can live up to its full potential in the months to come.

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October 5, 2007 · 10:10 pm

Season Premiere: Friday Night Lights – “Last Days of Summer”

“Last Days of Summer”

October 5th, 2007

The world of Dillon, Texas is askew as Friday Night Lights starts its second season…well, actually, no its not. Dillon is taking a backseat, more or less removed from the series’ credits in favour of shiny pictures of its actors. The show operates as if its finale had established a laundry list of character problems, but the only real drama was for the Taylor Family and Panther Football.

And yet, Jason Katims has chosen to add drama for every single other character: Matt and Julie are drifting apart thanks to a Swede, Landry is trying to impress his father by trying out for football, Street feels left out by the new coach, Tyra is being stalked by last season’s attacker, Buddy is stalking his future ex-wife, Riggins has become a drunken lout (again), and only Lyla has found solace (Although not much) in Jesus.

I know that there needed to be an obvious problem to solve when Coach Taylor returned, but the show has been thrown into too much turmoil too quickly. This used to be a series about a town that, while football crazed, was at its heart full of decent people. Instead, it’s about scandalous teenagers and people in over their heads. My faith in the series can’t help but wane in this moment: have they forgotten what made the show what it was?

Well, the answer is no…they’re just taking a little while to get back to it. And, well, I’m okay with that. I think. Until the murder.

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October 5, 2007 · 9:57 am

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose: The Return of Friday Night Lights

A year ago, I would have never thought I would be writing this blog post. Having seen the pilot for NBC’s Friday Night Lights, I felt like I had seen everything I needed to of the Dillon Panthers: I thought it was just a football version of The O.C. and nothing more. I am more than willing to admit that I was horribly wrong.

Today, mere hours from the show’s much-anticipated second season premiere, I want to make something clear: Friday Night Lights is the drama in which I have the greatest amount of faith at this present moment. Jason Katims took a premise and sent it in directions that could have been disastrous. However, what was made clear as I rewatched the first season on the (Amazingly priced, Money Back Guaranteed) DVD is that it never let me down.

I remember every single time when I groaned or rolled my eyes when the show began to address issues that I worried they were not capable of. When the show approached the issue of racism, and where it delved into Smash’s use of steroids, red flags went up: these were incredibly sensitive subjects, something that doesn’t quite mesh with high school football. What Katims and Co. proved, however, is that nothing could distract them from the purpose at hand. They followed the motto of the Panthers:

“Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose”

Believing in their devotion to the show’s continued quality, I head into its second season fully believing that no matter what storylines they may encounter, the people of Dillon, Texas will continue to present the most realistic drama on television.

Thus, as the show starts its second season, I have faith that things will stay on track. The show is about family, love, devotion, community, change, rebirth, race, abuse, and a certain game played with a pigskin. I’ll still likely flinch when I see things like the NBC commercials which promote “Murder” as one of the show’s newest developments, but I won’t doubt that they’ll get the job done.

I could write about what makes the show so very fantastic, but Cynthia Littleton at Variety’s On the Air blog has already done it in intricate detail. If you haven’t seen the show yet, I’d almost suggest you skip Cynthia’s great article and pick up the ludicrously cheap DVD set or watch the episodes on NBC.com in streaming video. This is a series worth money, time and energy, but catching up requires very little of all of them.

C’mon: Show us some Panther pride, America. I’ll have a full recap/reaction tonight, as well as a ratings report tomorrow.

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