You'll never see them again
-
The Netflix show, House of Cards, in the first few minutes of the first episode, Kevin Spacey stumbles on a hit-and-run and there's a badly injured dog. He puts it out of its misery.
According to Netflix who wanted it removed, it led to a major drop off of people dropping off the show. But to the showrunner, that's the point.
Now, people drop off that show when Kevin Spacey appears so whatever.
a major drop off of people dropping off the show
Uhh.. what? So more people kept watching?
-
Conversely
Producers find a new show idea that looks interesting and could be popular .....
Writers: yeah we got this idea that could be turned into an hour and a half hour long film ... it's very interesting, great plot dialogue, and there's a great twist
Producers, executives: Great idea! I love it! But it would give us more content if you could turn it into a series instead. Take the whole film and stretch it out across seven one hour episodes.
Writers: how?
Producers, executives: just cut it up into seven parts, slow everything down and make a dramatic cliff hanger at the end of every episode.
And then, Kai Patterson comes in and cuts it back down into a pretty good standard length film which I see as a win.
-
The Netflix show, House of Cards, in the first few minutes of the first episode, Kevin Spacey stumbles on a hit-and-run and there's a badly injured dog. He puts it out of its misery.
According to Netflix who wanted it removed, it led to a major drop off of people dropping off the show. But to the showrunner, that's the point.
Now, people drop off that show when Kevin Spacey appears so whatever.
Why the point?
-
I mean, this is entirely untrue. There's a bit in the first episode of the renewed 4th season of Family Guy joking about it. This was 20 years ago. FOX had already stumbled on the "people are more excited about the first season of a show" formula that Netflix wouldn't adopt for another decade.
And that's not even considering the graveyard of television in the 80s and 90s. Shows nobody even knew about until they'd been cancelled (American Gothic, the Original Battlestar Galactica, Freaks and Geeks) or shows that flared out from the enormous budget (Alf, Dinosaurs) too soon, but developed cult following after they were gone.
Survivorship bias is a hell of a drug.
On the plus side, it makes fishing for the TONS of shows that never got past a couple airings surprisingly entertaining.
Crap was so ruthless seasons weren't fully ordered, written or filmed by the time they were on the air because shows would get cancelled overnight, so they were fully ramped up and working without knowing if they'd end the season they were doing at the time. Between that and how much cheaper everything was it's no wonder no film actors would be caught dead in a TV show until prestige television broke out of that mold.
-
This post did not contain any content.
I'd rather have them kill shows immediately than right before the final season. See Westworld, Expanse and (almost) Snowpiercer. I'm currently really anxious about Yellowjackets.
Firefly still hurts though.
-
I know the 26 ep a season shooting schedule was hell on actors, but it really allowed for more variety in episodic shows. There could be good eps and stinkers in a season without it impacting the overall show. Plus it gave you more time to weave in on-going plots while also giving room to explore specific characters more thoroughly.
It worked for sitcoms and Law and Order, but generally I prefer the tighter writing that can come with shorter seasons.
I'll take 10 excellent episodes over 26 fair-to-good episodes any day.
-
I know the 26 ep a season shooting schedule was hell on actors, but it really allowed for more variety in episodic shows. There could be good eps and stinkers in a season without it impacting the overall show. Plus it gave you more time to weave in on-going plots while also giving room to explore specific characters more thoroughly.
It also guaranteed work for those actors. A 3 season show meant you had steady work for 3 straight years and could still do auditions when you had time. This 10 episodes every 3 years is dumb
-
Why the point?
My guess is that if you didn't like the dog scene, you wouldn't like the rest of the show. The tone is the same.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Twin peaks?
-
This post did not contain any content.
RIP KAOS
-
I'd rather have them kill shows immediately than right before the final season. See Westworld, Expanse and (almost) Snowpiercer. I'm currently really anxious about Yellowjackets.
Firefly still hurts though.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Firefly still hurts though.
With age comes wisdom. I realized some time ago that we get to love Firefly because it never lived long enough to be bad. No one talks about famous actor James Dean becoming an ultraconservative asshole, being closeted racist, or a serial abuser of women. He died before anything like that could happen. Firefly is the same way. It lives in our hearts with all of the potential it could have been. Contrast that to Game of Thrones which had a wonderful start and a dreadful and forgettable end.
How many people today would say "Lets binge watch all of Firefly from beginning to end!" vs "Lets binge watch all of Game of Thrones from beginning to end!"?
-
I'd rather have them kill shows immediately than right before the final season. See Westworld, Expanse and (almost) Snowpiercer. I'm currently really anxious about Yellowjackets.
Firefly still hurts though.
The Expanse would need at least 3 seasons to catch up to the books. I'd rather they stop at the actual end of an arc (which is followed by 30 year time skip, mind you) than half ass through and botch the ending of the entire series.
-
Why the point?
Its the idea that not every character should be likeable and not all media should be without friction.
I... generally think stuff like that in the first few episodes is really stupid. Mostly it just turns things into misery porn and is a great way to alienate your audience. I think a much better approach is to lure the audience in so that they don't quite realize when Walter/Saul/Kim became truly irredeemable monsters... even if that tends to lead to people never realizing it.
And I think it is extra disingenuous to pretend that House of Cards was some daring show that bucked all the norms. It wasn't HBO levels of sexposition but they definitely were playiing up the "you can't watch this on network TV" from the first episode.
Print, not TV, but one of my favorite authors is Harry Connolly and his Twenty Palaces series had a pretty infamous chapter that was all one long run on sentence (I forget how many pages but I want to say 5-10?). You don't necessarily realize it in the moment but it is a hard read that is mentally tiring and it perfectly suits the contents of the chapter. Apparently basically every single beta reader hated it and he has alluded to it being why his Agent and Publisher dropped him and... I probably would too. I loved it but it very much hurt the overall pacing of the book to a large degree.
But that was also 3 or 4 books in. Not the first chapter of the first book (which was a child burning to death horribly... Yup. Connolly definitely got a hold of some incriminating photos or something).
-
This post did not contain any content.wrote on last edited by [email protected]
I'm currently re-reading Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos, and something struck me. If this had been made into an HBO/... show, like, 8 years ago, it could have been a genre- and generation defining TV event akin to Game of Thrones.
But if it was to be produced today? It would be a cringe, plastic-feeling knock-off akin to Netflix' Last Airbender.
-
Conversely
Producers find a new show idea that looks interesting and could be popular .....
Writers: yeah we got this idea that could be turned into an hour and a half hour long film ... it's very interesting, great plot dialogue, and there's a great twist
Producers, executives: Great idea! I love it! But it would give us more content if you could turn it into a series instead. Take the whole film and stretch it out across seven one hour episodes.
Writers: how?
Producers, executives: just cut it up into seven parts, slow everything down and make a dramatic cliff hanger at the end of every episode.
Opposite problem, too. Take what was supposed to be a series and shrink it down to a movie. The Section 31 movie comes to mind. It's so much better if you view it as if it were the pilot for a new series, but that's never going to happen.
-
Firefly still hurts though.
With age comes wisdom. I realized some time ago that we get to love Firefly because it never lived long enough to be bad. No one talks about famous actor James Dean becoming an ultraconservative asshole, being closeted racist, or a serial abuser of women. He died before anything like that could happen. Firefly is the same way. It lives in our hearts with all of the potential it could have been. Contrast that to Game of Thrones which had a wonderful start and a dreadful and forgettable end.
How many people today would say "Lets binge watch all of Firefly from beginning to end!" vs "Lets binge watch all of Game of Thrones from beginning to end!"?
Yeah, but half a season?
-
It also guaranteed work for those actors. A 3 season show meant you had steady work for 3 straight years and could still do auditions when you had time. This 10 episodes every 3 years is dumb
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Yes, it was a guaranteed paycheck... until the show ended. And doing a movie in the off months basically only worked for a Clooney level talent where anyone who ever interacted with him realized he was a generational talent that guys and gals would swoon for. Everyone else MAYBE could get a bit part if they knew the production crew (see: The Schwim on Band of Brothers). And then, if you were lucky, you were basically typecast by the time the show ended and stuck either playing the same character or needing to find a company that wanted to take a chance on you reinventing yourself... which lined up with the weinsteins of the world.
And all of that assumes that you aren't in a role that requires you to spend most of your off time staying in shape and having more or less the same appearance in case pick-ups are required. Otherwise you have entire VFX teams working to... remove a mustache.
That is why there is increasing pushback to Marvel Movie contracts from a lot of actors. Yes, it is a guaranteed paycheck (although those get smaller and smaller with each geneartion) but it is also the only thing you can really do for however many years in case you get called up that you just got one of your appearances added to a TV show everyone will hate.
Which is more or less where we are at. Sure you sometimes have something like a Zendaya where the Disney Channel actress you got for your lead suddenly becomes the most popular actress on the planet and you have to work around her schedule AND all the supporting actors who became high B listers. But mostly you are just dealing with talent who care more about their careers than making sure they are available for the one episode you want them to come back next year.
Its why so much of the Game of Thrones fandom (and original creator...) clearly don't have much production experience. Yes, it would have been cool to have arcs like Lady Stoneheart. But the chances of Michelle Fairley being interested in coming back four years later for two episodes is nigh zero AND would have given her way more negotiating power than studios want. Same for all the other one off characters who come back two books later.
-
Firefly still hurts though.
With age comes wisdom. I realized some time ago that we get to love Firefly because it never lived long enough to be bad. No one talks about famous actor James Dean becoming an ultraconservative asshole, being closeted racist, or a serial abuser of women. He died before anything like that could happen. Firefly is the same way. It lives in our hearts with all of the potential it could have been. Contrast that to Game of Thrones which had a wonderful start and a dreadful and forgettable end.
How many people today would say "Lets binge watch all of Firefly from beginning to end!" vs "Lets binge watch all of Game of Thrones from beginning to end!"?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]This is how I've always felt about it too. All of Whedon's other shows had twists that made the audience hate entire seasons; there's no reason to believe Firefly would have escaped that pattern.
So instead of being sad it died early, we can be glad we can still imagine where it could have gone in the best case scenario. The vision in our minds will likely be better than what we would have got if it'd continued.
No need to worry about Jayne's inevitable face-heel turn, or whatever other terrible subplots could potentially have cropped up in later seasons like River developing explicit (rather than merely suggested) incestuous feelings for Simon, or Inara betraying the crew for a cure to her disease (before being welcomed back a season later), or Kaylee getting killed off out of nowhere because Whedon loves doing that to characters of her archetype, or YoSaffBridge becoming a core crew member after we learn her tragic backstory even though her awful personality hasn't changed at all.
And that's not even getting into what the network execs, who hated the show, would have done with their meddling. Things could have been so much worse. Fans should console themselves with the fact that the show at least died with its dignity intact, and we even got a movie that resolved a few of the major hanging threads.
No one talks about famous actor James Dean becoming an ultraconservative asshole, being closeted racist, or a serial abuser of women. He died before anything like that could happen. Firefly is the same way.
Something like this would have happened even if Joss Whedon wasn't revealed to be a scumbag. Adam Baldwin, the actor who played Jayne, went on to become a major mouthpiece for the alt-right and a mainstay of conservative Twitter. IIRC he's even the one who named GamerGate (not that the name required even a modicum of creativity).
-
Yes, it was a guaranteed paycheck... until the show ended. And doing a movie in the off months basically only worked for a Clooney level talent where anyone who ever interacted with him realized he was a generational talent that guys and gals would swoon for. Everyone else MAYBE could get a bit part if they knew the production crew (see: The Schwim on Band of Brothers). And then, if you were lucky, you were basically typecast by the time the show ended and stuck either playing the same character or needing to find a company that wanted to take a chance on you reinventing yourself... which lined up with the weinsteins of the world.
And all of that assumes that you aren't in a role that requires you to spend most of your off time staying in shape and having more or less the same appearance in case pick-ups are required. Otherwise you have entire VFX teams working to... remove a mustache.
That is why there is increasing pushback to Marvel Movie contracts from a lot of actors. Yes, it is a guaranteed paycheck (although those get smaller and smaller with each geneartion) but it is also the only thing you can really do for however many years in case you get called up that you just got one of your appearances added to a TV show everyone will hate.
Which is more or less where we are at. Sure you sometimes have something like a Zendaya where the Disney Channel actress you got for your lead suddenly becomes the most popular actress on the planet and you have to work around her schedule AND all the supporting actors who became high B listers. But mostly you are just dealing with talent who care more about their careers than making sure they are available for the one episode you want them to come back next year.
Its why so much of the Game of Thrones fandom (and original creator...) clearly don't have much production experience. Yes, it would have been cool to have arcs like Lady Stoneheart. But the chances of Michelle Fairley being interested in coming back four years later for two episodes is nigh zero AND would have given her way more negotiating power than studios want. Same for all the other one off characters who come back two books later.
Its why so much of the Game of Thrones fandom (and original creator...) clearly don't have much production experience. Yes, it would have been cool to have arcs like Lady Stoneheart. But the chances of Michelle Fairley being interested in coming back four years later for two episodes is nigh zero AND would have given her way more negotiating power than studios want. Same for all the other one off characters who come back two books later.
I always wondered how they planned to pull that off with the Wheel of Time show. I know it's a moot point now, but there's a big one that left and came back way later. There are also some smaller examples, but I feel like with the bit parts you could probably get someone that looks similar enough.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Also TV now: This show/movie did well 40 years ago so we rebooted it with people who never saw it, a shitload of special effects, and totally missed why it was popular in the first place.
