TV series gone awry
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@Jennkryst said in TV series gone awry:
@Faraday Flash Forward did well because it was one season. Now imagine 5+ seasons, each one retconning the real reason one obscure thing in season one happened. That’s the thing about mystery boxes - you need the whole thing set up in advance, and most people… don’t.
Yes, but my point was that even within the first season they did a good job of setting up and paying off the mysteries. At least for the story of season 1, they had a plan. Same with Prison Break.
Contrast that with a show like Falling Skies where it ended s1 with the main char getting on an alien ship without any flipping clue where they were going with that idea. Or Lost, or BSG, where it’s clear they painted themselves into a storytelling corner because they had no plan from the start.
I get why shows do this. It’s hard to plan things that far in advance, especially not knowing if you’re going to get renewed past half a season. It’s just frustrating from a storytelling perspective.
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@Faraday It also helps that Flash Forward was a book written a decade before getting picked up for a series. So like… it HAD a bunch of complete ideas and rules in place.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
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@Jennkryst said in TV series gone awry:
@Faraday It also helps that Flash Forward was a book written a decade before getting picked up for a series. So like… it HAD a bunch of complete ideas and rules in place.
The series is only very, very loosely based on the novel in terms of its plot and characters. But yes, certainly, we can agree that having a complete set of ideas and rules in place for your mystery helps greatly in presenting a coherent storyline. Related, I found this take on mystery box storytelling interesting: The Mystery Box Is Broken, and Here’s How to Fix It
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@Faraday said in TV series gone awry:
Or Lost, or BSG, where it’s clear they painted themselves into a storytelling corner because they had no plan from the start.
Just @ me next time, this is how I usually DM/ST. >_>
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Westworld went from a beautiful and intricately crafted show in s1 to a parody of itself in s2 to a weird action-oriented side story in s3 to-- I mean, this current season has some potential, but the magic is long gone.
Once the showrunners decided that what people liked most and wanted more of was alternate time lines and identity-based twists, the show became entirely about those things for a spell, to its detriment-- and then attempted to simplify, missing the point in the other direction. I just want a pretty meditation on free will and the evils of capitalism guys, plz stop making me feel dumb for continuing to give you chances to provide
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@renaveleigh I absolutely adored season 1 of Westworld.
Then it just… lost me. Season 2 was okay. Not bad, but definitely not must-watch, OMG every time a new episode came out.
Season 3 and beyond just left me scratching my head a lot, and I gave up.
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Every season I think ‘maybe I’ll give Westworld another chance’ as it ropes in another actor I love, who will inevitably get one really good showcase episode, and every year I check out because of the sheer deluge of nonsense.
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Boston Legal.
I hope the rampant misogyny was meant to be a joke because jfc.
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@junipersky A joke, or an accurate representation of the legal profession?
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God I hope it isn’t THAT bad IRL…
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@junipersky said in TV series gone awry:
Boston Legal.
I hope the rampant misogyny was meant to be a joke because jfc.
It’s been a long time since it was on but I did watch it back in the day since James Spader was so very good.
What stands out for you from that perspective?
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@junipersky I never watched it but I highly doubt that misogyny in the legal profession can be exaggerated.
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The number of times the #2 to Danny asked various women around the office/community to have sex and/or was openly commenting on their bodies in relation to how much he would do them.
The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was when a guy came in wearing women’s clothing and Danny kept calling him a “sicko”.
I didn’t get past there, and so maybe the guy hurt a child or something for real, but that is where I noped tf out.
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@junipersky I honestly don’t remember these scenes - it’s been years. Just as a follow-up question, were these incidents portrayed in a positive manner?
I.e. were the bigotry comments made by a character we as the audience were supposed to feel sympathetic towards or agree with? Or were they done to show he was flawed and had issues?
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If they were made to try to make the character seem flawed, they did a terrible job at it. I felt no sympathy for them because they made no acknowledgement that the actions they took might be even slightly problematic and there was no growth I saw (episode 8).
The women characters seemed mostly sympathetic, which is what kept me watching as deep as I did.
The ‘sicko’ comment is where I drew the line, not with what I know and feel about communities that don’t fit the stereotypical mold.
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Strange to think that lo these 18 years ago, that was probably completely acceptable within the Zeitgeist of pop culture.
That’s not to say it’s not still a problem now, but there sure was a lot more of it in the early 00s.
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For sure this didn’t age well!
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@Rathenhope said in TV series gone awry:
The last few episodes of the Battlestar Galactica “re-imagining”. I’m still angry about how they squandered it all so very very quickly at the end there. It was such a lazy ending that didn’t meet up with any of the show that had happened before it.
I read an analysis where someone said that the way that the writing team came up with ideas was “put it in because it’s cool and we’ll figure it out later!” and then they got to “later” and they hadn’t figured it out.
The fact that they had no idea WTF they were doing was made obvious in their lazy retconning of who fathered Callie’s kid, which they had to scramble to fix once they finally decided who the Final Five actually were.
I hold that show up as the reason why, if you’re going to rely heavily on foreshadowing and mystery that your audience will expect to pay off in a big reveal, you need to have your end-game in mind from the start. Sure, you can add details, twists, and layers as you go along… but if you don’t know what the answer to your story’s central question is when pose it, you have at least a 95% chance of fucking it up at the end.
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@Aria said in TV series gone awry:
@Rathenhope said in TV series gone awry:
The last few episodes of the Battlestar Galactica “re-imagining”. I’m still angry about how they squandered it all so very very quickly at the end there. It was such a lazy ending that didn’t meet up with any of the show that had happened before it.
I read an analysis where someone said that the way that the writing team came up with ideas was “put it in because it’s cool and we’ll figure it out later!” and then they got to “later” and they hadn’t figured it out.
The fact that they had no idea WTF they were doing was made obvious in their lazy retconning of who fathered Callie’s kid, which they had to scramble to fix once they finally decided who the Final Five actually were.
The thing is. they didn’t even need to retcon that. That’s the worst part. ‘They only have babies if they are IN LOVE’ was an established rule for Hera. So that just means Callie and Tyrol actually did love each other. I just solved this non-issue. Huzzah.
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@junipersky said in TV series gone awry:
If they were made to try to make the character seem flawed, they did a terrible job at it. I felt no sympathy for them because they made no acknowledgement that the actions they took might be even slightly problematic and there was no growth I saw (episode 8).
The women characters seemed mostly sympathetic, which is what kept me watching as deep as I did.
The ‘sicko’ comment is where I drew the line, not with what I know and feel about communities that don’t fit the stereotypical mold.
That’s fair. The only reason I ask is that, while I barely remember much about the show’s specifics, I do recall it having a pretty liberal bent in general (Spader’s closing monologues were amazing, I recall at least that). But it’s quite possible I missed such undertones completely at the time.
