Tag Archives: Genre

May 2, 2014 · 1:25 pm

What Genre Is This?: How We Classify Webseries

Since I originally wrote a Tumblr post about it, I’ve been following college-set Romeo & Juliet adaptation webseries Jules and Monty, which wraps up its eighteen-episode run on Monday (May 5th). As that Tumblr post suggests, some of this has to do with a general appreciation of what the project represents, and the way the webseries form gives real college students the chance to produce and then distribute something that can reach potential fans in the same places where other big-name projects can be found. However, the show itself has been a compelling take on the material, and has been pushing at a question I’ve been puzzling over regarding webseries—and television more broadly, really—for some time.

It began with two relatively concurrent events. The first was the release of Episode 14 of the series, in which Jules is confronted by her brother, Cliff.

The episode is notable for the presence of a trigger warning, preparing its audience for the violence within. In a Tumblr post, executive producer Imogen Browder explains the logic behind the trigger warning:

“I knew that if that scene had affected me so much in the room, and I knew it was coming, then we would be doing a disservice to our audience to not give at least a simple warning—and based upon the reaction we’ve received, I’m glad it’s there. It was important to our team that we protect our audience, as no one wants to go on to YouTube expecting to see another montage and instead watch something that could potentially have a seriously negative effect upon them.”

In a response to that post, director Evey Reidy notes that the trigger warning conversation is ongoing within the theater community at Tufts (where the webseries and its cast and crew are based), placing this as part of a broader conversation within the world of the cast and crew. In both cases, the creative team reveals their belief protecting their viewers outweighs any sort of narrative purity (which would have, one presumes, maintained the shock of the moment rather than “spoiling” that Cliff would strike Juliet in the midst of their argument, a decision that reflects many adaptations of the source material).

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Filed under Web Series

Tagged as Comedy, Drama, Genre, Jules and Monty, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Webseries

September 10, 2011 · 12:42 am

Defying Definition: Louie, Finales, and the Pleasure of the Multitudinal

Defying Definition: Louie Season 2

September 10th, 2011

I haven’t written about Louie all season, which makes me one of the only people who hasn’t done so.

Sometimes when this happens I’ll go into the archives and find vast collections of half-written reviews sitting in my “Drafts” section, like all of those failed attempts to discuss How to Make it In America last summer that never got past “Hey, isn’t that theme song awesome?”

However, there are no half-written drafts for Louie, despite the show pretty easily cementing itself as the best comedy of the summer (and probably the second best drama as well), and in tagging this post I discovered I’ve never written a post specifically about Louie. Admittedly, I fell a few weeks behind at least twice over the course of the season, which made the idea of covering it weekly all but impossible (despite the fact that I actually had screeners for the first four episodes). That being said, I do think that this is symptomatic more than it is causal, as I never really felt a particular need to be “caught up.”

While internet chatter created a great deal of temptation, the fact that episodes piled up on my DVR is not a point of disinterest but rather a lack of motivation. Without any sort of serialized element that could be spoiled, and without any continuity that would convince me to catch up on more than one episode on a time, I sort of developed my own pace, stopping and starting wherever I saw fit. Individual episodes proved more engrossing, but immediately turning on the next episode seemed unnecessary. There were logical stopping points, and so I stopped, often for longer than I had initially intended.

However, I was caught up in time for tonight’s season finale, and I do want to write at least a little bit about the show given that the second season has been pretty tremendous. Specifically, I’m interested in the ways in which the show’s lack of “continuity” creates some particularly interesting questions when it comes to a finale. Within television genres, only sitcoms are really exempt from any form of continuity when it comes to finales, and even they often angle towards ongoing storylines or future developments in a finale in this day and age. Considering the finale raises questions about the generic qualities of the series and the formal debate ongoing regarding its structure, which in turn leads into a comparison of my own and a discussion of comparisons in general, which as a whole represents the collective impact of Louie‘s season and finale: there’s a heck of a lot to talk about.

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Tagged as Airport, Analysis, Form, FX, Genre, Louis C.K., Narrative, New Jersey, Season 2, Season Finale, Short Stories, Television, TV

August 12, 2011 · 5:07 am

Cultural Checkup: USA’s Suits and White Collar

Cultural Checkup: Suits and White Collar

August 12th, 2011

Although I’ve stopped watching Burn Notice, and ceased my bizarre commitment to the dull Royal Pains this summer, and didn’t bother with Covert Affairs’ second season, and didn’t even bother with Necessary Roughness (which I thought looked terrible), I remain really quite interested with USA as a network. With White Collar, they have a show that I think hits a lot of interesting buttons, and with Suits you have a show that seems to be aiming for the same goal. They’re shows that I like a great deal in particular moments, and that are in two very different stages of development.

However, as I drop in on both shows this week, I’ll admit that I find them a bit frustrating. While Suits has a lot of potential, its youthfulness shows signs of uncertainty in regards to questions of genre and narrative, problems that White Collar continues to carry even as it clearly leads the network’s offerings in terms of quality. I know that the general approach to USA programming is not quite this hyper-critical, but I’ve stored up a few too many things to say about the two shows, so I figured the Cultural Checkup was a good way to get through them.

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Filed under Suits, White Collar

Tagged as Analysis, Cliffhanger, Cultural Checkup, Ellie, Genre, Harvey, Lewis, Mike, Mozzie, Narrative, Neal, Peter, Sarah, Season 1, Season 3, Television, TV, USA Network

December 10, 2010 · 2:27 am

Community – “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”

“Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”

December 9th, 2010

As if Community weren’t meta enough, my immediate response to “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” was a desire to sit Dan Harmon down in a study room and journey into his mind in search of the meaning of Community.

I say this not because the episode undermined or threatened pre-existing notions of the series, but after the episode I wasn’t sure if what I’d seen was the very embodiment of the series’ general approach to comedy or something completely unique. Because it looked decidedly unique, I first leaned towards the latter category, but then it was put into context with the sense of generic parody that Daniel T. Walters wrote about this week, and even Abed’s general trend of seeing the world through pop culture that friend of the blog Cory Barker wrote about on his publicly-available term paper.

The episode was lovingly crafted, comically inspired, and willing to delve into some darker emotional territory, but I ended up feeling that this ended up in a liminal space between what Community wants to be and what I often fear it will become. It was sort of like I was Ebenezer Scrooge, and the episode manifested as ghosts of Community Past, Present and Future all at once.

And I don’t know whether to be extremely excited or mildly concerned.

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Tagged as Abed, Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas, Analysis, Animation, Christmas, Dan Harmon, Episode 11, Genre, Gimmick, NBC, Rankin-Bass, Review, Stop-Motion, Television, TV

October 31, 2010 · 2:31 am

On Zombies: Community and The Walking Dead

October 31st, 2010

I’ve already written enough about Halloween episodes (both in my review of The Office at The A.V. Club and in my piece on Halloween-themed TV episodes at Antenna) that writing a review of Community’s “Epidemiology” in that context seems like a waste of time. In fact, part of me feels as if it’s too late to really add anything new to the discourse.

However, having now watched the first two hours of AMC’s The Walking Dead – which premieres tonight at 10/9c with a special 90-minute opener – I think that I want to talk about zombies, and their function as genre. In a movie, zombies are easy: you introduce zombies, chaos ensues, heroes emerge, a conclusion is reached (which is either the heroes proving themselves capable of subsisting within a zombie-infested nation or the zombie outbreak being contained, presuming a happy ending is desired). Admittedly, I’ve only watched a handful of zombie movies thanks to being largely averse to suspense, but the point I want to get across here is that there’s a clear timeline. There is a situation, there is a conclusion, and you move on from there.

When you move this notion into television, however, you’re forced to live in that space, which is a problem that The Walking Dead will have to face should it join the rest of AMC’s lineup. Community, of course, is a very different situation, but it is nonetheless interesting to note that seriality plays a pretty substantial role in how their zombie story is told, and so I think tackling them both simultaneously will speak to some of the things which impressed me about Community and some of what concerns me about The Walking Dead.

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Filed under Community, The Walking Dead

Tagged as Abba, AMC, Analysis, Andrew Lincoln, Bear McCreary, Comedy, Credits, Dan Harmon, Epidemiology, Frank Darabont, Genre, Halloween, Jericho, Lennie James, NBC, Premiere, Review, Rubicon, Series Premiere, Zombies

August 8, 2010 · 1:38 pm

HBO at TCA: Story, Genre and Scheduling

August 8th, 2010

I’ve been following along with the news out of the Television Critics Association Press Tour through Twitter, but to be honest there hasn’t really been anything that’s caught my attention: while I’m incredibly wary of the changes being made to Human Target, I’ll save any judgment until I actually see them in action, and since I haven’t seen the fall pilots I can’t really offer any opinion on how the panels seems to have changed my view on each series.

However, on the final day the HBO executive session ended up being a really interesting one: not only did HBO programming guru Michael Lombardo confirm that Entourage’s next season will be its last, but he also offered up some intriguing quotes about their planned Spring launch of Game of Thrones as well as a curious statement regarding the network’s approach to scheduling. With the networks, there’s this sense that they’re there to sell the critics on their already announced lineups, but with HBO there’s a laid-back confidence which could be read as cockiness, and it makes for a more interesting environment in terms of the kinds of discussion it creates.

So, let’s take a gander at what an Entourage movie and a question of genre vs. storytelling tell us about the channel’s approach as compared with its pay cable counterparts.

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Filed under Entourage, Game of Thrones

Tagged as A Song of Ice and Fire, Analysis, Boardwalk Empire, Cable, Camelot, Drama, Genre, HBO, Press Tour, Scheduling, Showtime, Starz, Storytelling, TCA, Television, Torchwood: The New World, TV

March 31, 2010 · 2:06 am

Spring Premiere: V – “Welcome to the War”

“Welcome to the War”

March 30th, 2010

I was tweeting earlier this week, in response to some questions from Chris Becker about why we start or stop watching shows, as it relates to what I’d call “Replacement Theory.” For ABC, they are desperately searching for a show to replace their hit Lost, which is still pulling top notch demo numbers that any network would kill for. And so next year, when Lost will be over and ABC won’t have that viewership, they’re looking for a replacement show, something that will pick up those viewers and keep the momentum going.

However, with FlashForward having bottomed out on Thursday nights, V is the last great hope and ABC knows it: they’re airing it after Lost, they heavily promoted its return (including during nearly every second of tonight’s episode of Lost), and they’re doing everything in their power to sell this show as the future of science fiction at ABC. But, for every advantage there is a disadvantage: no show has ever done well after Lost, that heavy promotion pissed off many Lost viewers angry that it was obscuring the screen, and the network has failed to launch a single science fiction series other than Lost successfully, proving that perhaps science fiction doesn’t actually have a place at the network.

Or perhaps the problem is just that “Replacement Theory” requires a certain degree of separation: V might pale in comparison to Lost now, but perhaps judged on its own merits the show could prove a refuge to fans in the post-Lost era. “Welcome to the War” is unable to live down the problems which plagued the series in its opening four episodes, but Scott Rosenbaum does an admirable job of reminding us that this premise is actually compelling and that there is the potential for its characters to become more interesting as time goes on.

We’re just not quite there yet.

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What’s my Genre Again?: The In(s)anity of the Saturn Awards

The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films comes together every year to recognize the best in genre entertainment (in both film and television) at the Saturn Awards. This is, at least in my view, a noble endeavour, and the awards have offered a space where shows like Battlestar Galactica and movies like The Dark Knight have been awarded deserved prizes that may not have been awarded at the Emmys or Oscars thanks to what is considered a bias against genre entertainment in general.

The problem is that, over time, the Saturn Awards have stretched the meaning of genre so far that it legitimately has no meaning, welcoming both genuine confusion and some outright derision based on some of their categories. The sheer volume of nominees and the rather ridiculous range of categories means that this year the Saturn Awards skew dangerously close to the Oscar while simultaneously veering dangerously towards an opposite and unflattering direction, while on the Television side their definition of what defines as genre may be the most confounding awards show process I’ve ever confronted, as demonstrated by this year’s nominees.

Rather than seeming like a legitimate celebration of science fiction, fantasy or horror, the Saturn Awards read like an unflattering and at points embarrassing collection of films and television series which reflect not the best that genre has to offer, but rather a desperate attempt to tap into the cultural zeitgeist while masquerading as a celebration of the underappreciated.

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Filed under Award Shows

Tagged as /Film, Avatar, Breaking Bad, Brothers, Chuck, Genre, Heroes, Leverage, Movies, Nominees, Saturn Awards, Television, The Closer, The Hurt Locker, The Messenger, The Tudors, True Blood, TV

September 26, 2009 · 12:53 pm

The Game vs. The Players – A Cultural Learnings Reality Roundup

RealityRoundup

The Game vs. The Players

A Cultural Learnings Reality Roundup

In our weekly glimpse into the world of Survivor: Samoa, Top Chef, and Project Runway, it’s important to distinguish between the game and the players of that game. Every episode of all three shows is essentially about the way the producers construct the game (the challenges, the conditions, the time limits, even the casting itself), and the players are forced to interpret and operate within that game as they see fit. So when you find yourself frustrated with a fairly boring season of Project Runway, or impatient with a season of Top Chef, or find Survivor’s villains too much to handle, you need to ask yourself if this it the result of the game or the people who are playing it.

In all three episodes of these three shows this week, we saw situations where the game took control of the players, and where their sewing, their cooking and their scheming felt so clearly defined by the game that I was simultaneously interested and bored. It’s the ultimate test of any group of reality contestants, though, to be forced into a situation the producers have designed: do they strike out on a unique course, indicating that they’re a real rebel, or whether they fall right in with the expectations put in front of them.

It’s a process which makes me doubt Runway, trust Top Chef, and change my mind about a few Survivor players.

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