Rambling About Television Shows Again

Can Network Television just not handle cutting edge TV programming? Did “Kings” fail because it was on Network Television as opposed to Showtime or HBO? I just watched the second to last episode and got to thinking about it. Looking back, I see that that overall plot was pretty good; it was just that the rest of the production didn’t live up to that. I just deleted a large section where I nit-picked what I didn’t like; because, that isn’t really what I wanted to write about. I am really interested as to why this show failed.

There was a bit in “The Long Lead Story,” episode 5 of “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” where the president of Entertainment Programming for the fictional NBS, Jorden McDeere (played by Amanda Peet), wants to buy the pilot of a show called “Nations” about the behind the scenes workings of the United Nations. The debate in the show is about how HBO wants the show and that it doesn’t belong on Network TV. When she first comes out and asks for Danny’s help in convincing the writer to let them buy it, he says, “No.” When asked why he says, “Because HBO is better.” At another point in the show she says, “I don’t think that the people who write TV are smarter than the people who watch TV.”

But when I see “Kings” and wonder what happened that made the show into the mess that got it canceled to nobody’s surprise, when I see a show as unbelievably good as “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” get canceled due to low ratings, and when I see the high ratings of all the reality TV shows; I wonder if the statement above is true… at least for Network TV. Over on the high end pay channels like HBO and Showtime we have shows like “Deadwood,” “Rome,” “Dexter,” “Californification,” “Weeds,” “The Tutors,” “Entourage,” “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and “Trueblood” to name more than a few. Even basic cable has great stuff like “Rescue Me,” “The Shield,” “Battlestar Galactica” and “Mad Men.” To be fair there have been some good shows on cable that got the axe before their time such as “Dead Like Me” and “Farscape” to name two.

There is a lot of well written TV out there across all genres, but it appears to only flourish on cable. Could these shows not survive on regular Network TV? If not, why? Is it the audience? I hesitate to blindly place blame with the network executives. I know they want their shows to succeed even if they sometimes appear to be working hard against that. I don’t really think it was entirely their fault for canceling “Terminator, the Sarah Conner Chronicles.” I think the writers have to take some of that blame as well; because, they appeared to be dragging out too much of the personal character issues at the expense of the action we would expect in a TV show about time traveling killer robots from the future. But for all I know that could have been the network guy’s fault too. Something obviously went wrong and now the show is gone. Dollhouse was moving along just as slow until the last two episodes, but thankfully that survived the axe and hopefully Josh and the gang will pick up the pace a bit next season.

I loved Westwing but even it suffered from low ratings in its later years. I was never that impressed by 24. If you haven’t seen the YouTube clip of David Cross’ reaction to “Arrested Development” being canceled, you really should. What else? I haven’t watched “Lost” since season two, thanks to the even worse Australian Network TV (whole other rant) but I hear people complaining about it all the time. In the beginning the show was going too slow and dragging everything out and now they are complaining that it is going too fast and confusing everybody. Speaking of Joss Whedon, there was “Angel” that I still don't understand while another network didn't pick up and of course “Firefly.” I am trying to think of a other shows... there was the one about the American Embassy years ago that I think I liked, that one where Gena Davis was President which I thought was horrible, and a few others that have already slipped my mind.

Back to the audience issue, is network TV just for those people who want some instant satisfaction entertainment without all the baggage of having to concentrate too deeply on the show or its ongoing back story? Shows like CSI and Law and Order seem to fit that bill, “done in one” as they say in the comic book industry. Sure it’s an on-going show, but the whole story is pretty much done in one episode and you don’t lose anything if you miss any shows in-between. That is pretty much true for most sit-coms as well. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with this. But is it the fate of Network TV to be saddled with nothing but that type of show while the harder stuff is confined to cable?

Anyway... sorry was just rambling there. I always have this fear that I am going to be trying to get a job as a writer at sometime in the future and somebody is going to read my blog, see these rambling posts, and not hire me. Dear Mr. Editor from the Future, If I was writing this for you I would have structured and paced it a whole lot better, not to mention actually proof read it. Okay, that should solve that problem. Now I am just going to go toss a penny into the fountain and make a wise that Aaron Sorkin will come back and do another TV show.

Queueing Up the Portable Boob Tube

I have been loading up my iPod and iPhone with various TV shows in preparation for my trip and stay in Brazil. I really like to be able to sit down and watch an entire series.So far I have bought and downloaded Dexter season 2, the start of Burn Notice season 2, Mad Men season 1 and the start of season 2, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and am in the process of downloading Rome seasons 1 and 2. I cheated though and already watched the 2nd season of Dexter. I have the second Dexter audio book, Dearly Devoted Dexter, as well. I get the impression that the TV show is only based on the first book though. Currently am re-listening to the first 3 books in Saga of the Seven Suns since I now have the all 7 audio books in the series. Actually I have a bunch of audio books I haven't listened to yet.

But back to TV shows; iTunes offered the first episode of Primeval for free, so I watched it last night. It was alright, but I don't think it was good enough to purchase the whole season. I do find it interesting that UK Sci-fi still has a unique identifiable "something" about it. Even if you magically stripped out the accents, locations and other stuff that would identify it as being make in the UK you could still tell. Not implying anything bad, just saying.

I am sure they will be plenty of actual work to do once I'm in São Paulo, but there are many hours on airplanes and I do anticipate nights collapsed in bed exhausted but not quite ready to sleep. So I am also considering getting all 5 seasons of The Wire. I watched most of the 1st season before moving to Australia, and have caught several 2nd season episodes since. I also heard podcasts where some of the writers I like talking about how good it is.

Anybody have any other suggestions of stuff I may have missed in the last 4+ years I've been in Australia? I am looking for really strong character driven dramas. I've seen some of Weeds and Rescue Me that have peeked my interest. I have already watched The West Wing (still my all-time favorite TV show), Deadwood, Dirty Sexy Money, and Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I also own all of the new Battlestar Galactica series on DVD of which I've seen about half of. Its been a while since I watched it, too long ago for me to start where I left off but not long enough ago that I feel like starting over from beginning.

Supanova 2007

The Supanova pop-culture expo (or as the rest of call it: sci-fi and comic book convention) was this last weekend at Supanova. I was on a panel about ‘why video game character’s work’ on Saturday. There were much better topics for other panels but thats my luck. I spent all day Sunday working our booth where we were running 4 versus 4 Vortex matches of Fury.

There were lots of people saying how great the game looked and I told them that the Sanctuary and War Zone in this version has already been replaced by much much much better stuff. Some of the new levels that are starting to come out now are looking really awesome. If you haven’t signed up to get into the beta you should head over to www.unleashthefury.com right now and get it done! The pre-beta version isn’t that far away and it will support lower machine specs than the previous alpha version.

Other things at Supanova was Alex Maleev who is a noted comic book artist know for his Daredevil run with writer Brian Michael Bendis. His credits also include Superman vs. Predator, Avengers Illuminati, The Crow: Flesh & Blood, Silver Surfer and the upcoming Halo 2! I got him to do a sketch for me that I will eventually get around to scanning onto the computer. I told him I took one of the Marvel Civil War: The Confession pictures off his website and colored it. He told me I should send it to him and actually sounded like he meant it. I told him He should do a coloring contest with some of his artwork. He said I should do a coloring contest. We finally settled on me trying to get the Bullpen Bulletins podcast to do a coloring contest; which I did and they seem to think it’s a good idea. I need to rework my colored version though, something I did while killing time and watching TV isn’t really my best effort.

Ron Glass (Shepherd Derrial Book from Firefly/Serenity) and Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian from Star Wars) were at the show. I wasn’t able to get away from our booth because there were only two of running things on Sunday, but I got one of the guys on the Battlestar Galactica XBox Live team who was standing in line to get Aaron Douglas (Galen Tyrol from Battlestar Galactica)’s autograph to get Ron Glass to sign his Serenity comic book cover for me.

Marv Wolfman, writer of DC's famous Crisis on Infinite Earths among many other notable accomplishments in the comic book industry, was there hanging out in a back corner of the Pandemic Game's booth. He had a panel where a good number of people showed up but he was mostly sitting by himself at the Pandemic booth. I have the New Teen Titan's issues he wrote back in the 80's, but they are in storage in Vegas. I didn't have anything in the small part of my collection thats here in Australia that he's written. I talked to him for a few minutes asking him why he was at the Pandemic booth. He said he is doing a project with them that he can't talk about yet. I bought the scripts from Nightwing #129 and #130 from him just to have something for him to autograph. I'm going to have go find those issues. I've always been kind of interested it writing for comics and like to read issues along with the script just to see the different ways different writers do it.

Overall though I was disappointed I the show. I was really hoping to find some back issues on my want list but it’s a pretty small convention and not a lot of non-local vendors whose shops I haven’t already searched showing up. The girl who showed up last year dressed as Cammy from Street Fighter 2 was there in costume again this year. Yes the costume was exactly like it is in the video game and yes she had a body that could wear that type of costume. I went through puberty all over again.

Battlestar Galactica Site Live

The website for Auran's upcoming XBox Live Arcade version of Battlestar Galactica is now up in running.

I havn't gotten an XBox 360 or any of the new generation systems for that matter. At first I didn't miss not having one. Fueled by my anger with region codes I was able to avoid them. But now as more and more cool games are starting to come out I feel the loss. Or maybe it is just that there is no really cool PC games I am looking forward to in the immediate future.

Like Football with Swords

I know I said wasn't going to post every little Fury news article from now on, but I really liked the analogy. Can you imagine it? First down would go from being a good thing to "Oh man poor Bob... he was first down!" Though in Australia with Australian Rules Football first down does kind of work that way. BAM! Cheers mate!

And to be fair I said I wasn't going to post all the Gamecock links and this is actually normal media not even specifically video game media. Speaking of that, you can expect to be blasted by Gamecock 'pimping' Fury here real soon as we are going to be their first game to market and GDC is rapidly approaching.

Anyway this was on the front page of the theage.com.au's technology section. Nothing new at all and it talks more about Auran the company than specially about any of our games.

And while I’m at it here is an interview Tony did with IGN last week where he talks about Fury, Xbox Live Arcade Battlestar Galactica and Gamecock Media Group.

Auran's Battlestar Galactica game

Just a quick little post about this announcement that went out over the weekend:

Officials from Vivendi Games division Sierra Online officially announced plans to release Battlestar Galactica over Microsoft's popular Xbox Live Arcade service, as well as the PC this fall.

The space combat simulation, which is based upon the hit series airing on the Sci Fi channel, is being created by veteran Australian developer Auran (Trainz Railroad Simulator), and will feature both single and multiplayer gameplay as either the humans or Cylons.

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Stayed tuned for more incoming information...