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Gravedancing

I still don't have much use for Sarno the Talk Show Host, but watching Amanda and Daniel team up was so cute. Married couples on TV so often just exist in order to break up for one reason or another. I love the way they are writing their marriage as strong in spite of the tragedy.

And I'm not the only one scared by Grandma Adama, right?

The Dark Ages

Wow. Did they milk that for all it was worth. I'm not sure I've heard a narrator takes so much pleasure in the bubonic plague before.

Walking With Dinosaurs

Aw. They killed the cute widdle... vicious... carnivore.

Never mind.

Well, quite a bit went by over the last week or so.

Dollhouse - Epitaph Two

So it's over. I really think that once they put their head down and started telling the story they intended, the show got infinitely better. And there was a lot of potential ground to cover, as evidenced by how much had to be winked at or left out. For one thing, what was the deal with Alpha?

One strength of this episode was that it squeezed every last drop out of all the dialogue. Every sentence had to move the story forward - including enough information to keep the viewer oriented to this new world order - without descending into dull exposition. It's a fine line to walk.

Caprica - Rebirth

Really liking this show. They added both local color world building and plenty of humor, while not losing the heart of the characters. I was especially impressed at Amanda figuring things out so quickly. Any other show would have dragged it out For.Ev.Er. Instead, they play the fallout, which - let's face it - is the far more interesting part.

It also occured to me that the old-style look and feel of Caprica is very appropriately. The story so far reminds me a lot of those early sci-fi short stories from the forties and fifties that asked some of the same "What If?" questions.

A Year in Provance

Via Netflix. Old fashioned Brit comedy based on the book by Peter Mayle. It was sweet but not very challenging. A sort of palate cleanser of a show.

Australian Open - Men's Final

There's going to be an entire decade where tennis players measure themselves with, "And then I lost in the Final against Federer."

I admit I hit a wall with Battlestar Galactica a couple of episodes into the second season and never caught up with it. There was a lot of bleak in that show.

Caprica looks to be as willing as BSG to do horrible things to its characters in the cause of the story, but for the moment I'm willing to give it a shot.

The acting is fantastic - particularly the two main leads, Eric Stoltz and Esai Morales. The teen characters are not getting on my last nerve, nor do they exist primarily to be sullen, which is a relief.

And Polly Walker is playing absurdly named Sister Clarice Willow. I'm sitting there thinking, "Well isn't that neat? They cast against type and she seems so nice." Then, she does that thing she does where there's one flick of the eyebrow and you know she's up to no good. And probably bat-shit crazy to boot.

That should be fun to watch.

Girls vs. Suits

Happy 100th episode!

I'm such a sucker. I always roll my eyes at the start of the big musical number, then end up singing along.

How I Met Your Mother

Oh, I like Joanna Garcia. She has such pretty hair. This one started off well, hung together, and finished strong.

Accidentally on Purpose

I laughed. Quite a few times, actually, which surprised me as I was just about to give up on this. I think its because Billie's neurosis were a bit more logical this time. And she and her sister actually talked about them at length - though sis can get a bit shriek-y sometimes. Decaf, sweetie.

The Big Bang Theory

Penny and Sheldon is always a good combo. I suppose I like the idea that Howard has finally found someone. Now if they could only figure out what to do with Raj.

The Public Eye

Perrin finally pays off. I guessed maybe a couple of minutes out that Perrin was the doll. Not so early that I felt I had it all figured out;  just enough that I was eagerly waiting to see if I was right. They'd just made too much of Cindy, so she had to be a red herring. Alexis Denisof gave a great performance, even if I'm just not used to his American accent.

The intro to Bennett was smooth. Just the difference between her and Topher was like a wash of cold water.

The Left Hand

Bennett was such an interesting character. Her enthusiasm for Topher was so sincere, but her ruthlessness when it came to Caroline was chilling.

Enver Gjokaj was fantastic as Second!Topher. Him and Topher talking about Bennett? Golden. Particularly when you think that both he and Fran Krantz would have been talking to air while they were filming.

Next Week: Looks like Ballard and Echo make a connection. And Alan Tudyk comes back as Alpha.

How I Met Your Mother

The advantage of missing episodes is that sometimes you can swing back through and the reruns are new for you. I liked this, except for the way they kind of made Robin look like an idiot. I did enjoy the little reverse of Ted not talking to his future kids, but to Lily's classroom in the end.

Accidentally on Purpose

Another rerun, but I sat through it anyways, trying to figure out why I enjoyed this episode, but not some of the later ones. I'm afraid I didn't come to any pithy conclusions.

It's like the idea that you can have things fast and cheap, or fast and good, or cheap and good. But you can't have things fast, cheap, and good. On television, you can be smart and sweet. Or sweet and hot. Or smart and hot. But you can't be sweet and smart and hot.

(I suppose you could argue all these terms on an individual basis. Not everyone appeals to every viewer. This is about conventional definitions, rather than personal preference.)

Smart and Sweet

Ah, the little Winnifred Burkles of the world (Amy Acker, Angel). Bearing in mind that on TV "hot" is relative. All these people are hot in real-life, but on TV we see that oh-so-special brand of nerd who is suddenly Not Hot because they wear glasses. Or scrunch their face up a bit.

You might also - you know - say things. There's a syllable to hotness ratio. The more you use, the less you are.

You are, however, welcome to be a complete sweetheart, politely hanging off the hero's every word and pretending not to be crushed that he doesn't notice you there. Every so often you snap, usually at a moment that requires some humor to break the tension. But you never throw a punch, because when Sweet Smarties get mad it's a righteous anger that is for a Very Good Reason and not to be sullied by such base actions.

Unless it's sweeps week and we really really need a laugh.

Sweet and Hot

So good-looking. And so very not very intelligent. At the worst, you exist solely stand in the background, asking for translations of all the technobabble. Perhaps someone thinks exposition will be forgiven if it comes at the request of someone pretty.

At the best, you are poor Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Pennikett) on Dollhouse. Are you sure you were trained at Quanico? Because from what I've heard, they have pretty high standards. I fear your inability to think through your actions and perchant for stating the obvious five minutes behind the audience would be an issue for them.

Oh, but you mean well. You want to do the right thing and rescue poor Caroline from the Dollhouse and bring everyone to justice. It's a laudable goal.

It's just going to take a while, is all.

Hot and Smart

I'm thinking of Rome's Mark Antony (James Purefoy). Sure, you aren't going to win in the end, which is kind of sad because then you'll be dead. (And you were so pretty.) This is partly because you are - technically - the bad guy, but mostly because you are at the mercy of the screenwriters. Or the history books.

You are definitely hot, you get the best dialogue and you can take solace in the fact that your plans work. All except the last one, of course, when you get shot or stabbed or squashed under the giant radio telescope that you were using to take over the world.

I fear that you do deserve your fate. Lets face it, you're not very nice. That great dialogue is usually an insult and you are often cruel to your flunkies. Too bad you're never smart enough to see that a little kindness will take you as far as a lot of scheming.

In the meantime, if you could kick some sense into one of the dim ones on the way out the door?

I barely even have the energy for a good rant in FOX's direction. I've already discussed their psychotic scheduling decisions. What merits or flaws Dollhouse might have had, the show was being plugged into a system that almost guaranteed failure.

There is No Such Thing as a Commercial Interruption

Myth: Television does not exist to entertain. Or inform. Or enlighten.

Truth: It exists to sell advertising space.

Myth: Television is "free."

Truth: Television is advertising supported. The viewer isn't paying money. The advertiser pays in money. The viewer pays in time and energy watching the ads.

The distributor (FOX) gets ahold of some content (Dollhouse) and wraps it around some ad space. Presuming X number of viewers, it turns around and sells those viewers to the advertisers. "X number of people will see your ads," FOX says. "Pay me."

Yup. FOX pimps us out.

In order to preserve the profit margin, FOX will buy low (cheap content or cheap viewers) and sell high (plump sweeps weeks ratings). That's how the system works. That's the nature of the beast. (Newspapers, magazine, radio? All work the same way.)

But I Already Know This

You are not the average viewer. You read the internet. You follow ratings. You know who Nielsen is. You know what sweeps week means. You blog. You tweet. You HD. You know who the executive producer / creator of your favorite show is. You know what all the buttons on your remote control are for. You TiVo. You iTunes. You Podcast. You Netflix. You Hulu.

You are special. You don't count. Unless you really do have a Nielsen box, in which case you do count and this is likely all your fault.

The Leading Edge

It is my suspicion - completely unsupported by any statistical evidence - that the very people who are most likely to watch sci-fi and fantasy shows are also most likely to be taking advantage of the new technologies to watch them places other than their television set at the time they originally aired. That is why we are seeing genre shows being hit first and hardest.

Our friends the networks don't know how to count the people using these new streams in a meaningful way. "Meaningful" of course in the sense of "how much money are they worth?" Why wonder about DVR+7 or DVR+3? If it was about the show, it wouldn't matter. The show is the show whenever it gets watched. It's the commercials that have an expiration date.

Hulu.com, iTunes, Netflix, DVDs. These are of minimal to zero value to the networks for one simple reason: minimal to zero ad space.

The Butt End

The networks are making vague efforts to adjust to the changing media landscape. Though, let's face it, it hasn't really changed until your grandmother is doing it. (Or you are the grandmother.) In the meantime, they are forging along using the same old business model that has made them such obscene profit margins in the past.

So that means that shows like Dollhouse are going to get canceled. Not for any reason that had anything to do with whether it was a good show or not. Dumber shows stay on the air all the time. And so do smarter ones, for that matter. FOX is a business and they made a business decision.

(If I may presume to give advice to people I don't know, I would suggest Joss Whedon - in the interest of his own business - think twice about trusting FOX to air his programs in the future. But that's probably just me. He's probably just glad when anyone gives him money.)

Best Served Cold

I also suspect - also without proof - that this habit of chasing short term profits will eventually bite them in the butt. They are seeing high ratings, but mostly in comparison to other networks. Not compared to what they were in the past. The pool they are drawing from has been shrinking for decades and that doesn't appear to be changing.

Regularly pissing off part your audience by rubbing their noses in your "business decisions" will not win you any friends. And average viewers who don't think about it much will just as happily not think about it on their iPhones as soon as they get in the habit. Your brand loyalty is tanking, my friends.

We've seen distributor-based advertising-supported business models in newspaper and magazines crash and burn over the past ten years. Other publishing is quietly scrambling for digital distribution. Radio and music streams had to adjust. Now it's hitting higher level media.

It used to be that the sheer infrastructure required to create content and reach a large audience was too costly for anyone but a major corporation. Cost of an entry-level set-up was prohibitive. You'd never make your money back even if you were a "success."

That's changing. Not as fast as we'd like, but probably faster than they'd like. Premium cable channels are pushing artistic boundaries and making money. Lower level nets are getting more popular acclaim and - this is the important part - making money. We're just starting to see web-based series making the producers enough to survive and thrive. Let's remember that a success looks different to the average actor than to the average network.

More channels equals more possibilities equals the major networks don't get to set the schedule for much longer. Rupert Murdoch will probably die one of the richest men in the world. My guess is his kids will have a hard time keeping the family farm going.

What Do I Think?

Hey, look at that. I did have a rant in me after all. Complete with Goodbye Cruel World The End is Coming threat at the close. Go me.