True Blood - this week's
Jul. 30th, 2012 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Have given up on Sorkin's Newsroom - I don't like anyone and I find it boring. The pilot was great, but the episodes following it lost me. Too preachy, too sappy, and too relationship oriented. Plus I think Sorkin has some unresolved gender bias issues he needs to sort through.
2. True Blood however, is highly entertaining this season and the tightest written of its entire history on air. I don't know what happened. But all the stories are working for once.
* Sam's - I found amusing. Sam's storyline has always been either creepy or weirdly funny.
* Alcide is actually hot when he's not with Sookie. Although I think we saw more of his body than anything else in his storyline, luckily it is a hot body.
* Bill works better as sinister and a bad guy than a good guy. He's more interesting as a villain. And Eric works better as a good guy or reluctant good guy. It may be how the actors play it. Skarsdale has these huge and expressive eyes, you can barely see Moyers.
At any rate, I'm enjoying the vampire storyline and the Eric/Bill bi-play. Not sure how they are going to bring Bill back from this season. Will state they are sort of following the book's interpretation of the character - by the later books, Bill was an out-and-out jerk and ERic was the sweetheart.
* Sookie's storyline is the least interesting, possibly because I don't like or care about the character all that much. Will state I'm curious who the vampire is - Russell, Bill, or someone else? Rather like the Jason/Sookie bi-play though.
* Love Pam/Tara...which is alternately touching and creepy...Pam is slowly corrupting Tara.
Turning Tara into another version of herself. Also the two bitchest/snarkiest female characters in the series, not to mention my favorite, together. What's not to love.
* Terry/Lafayette story finally comes together - which worked for me. Both were equally scary and creepy and fit Southern Gothic perfectly.
The series has gotten more Southern Gothic and less satirical...which I think is why I like it better. Satire doesn't work in large doses for me, I tend to get bored. It's like all humor actually. Which may explain why sitcoms are only a half-hour long. You stretch it to an hour, you lose the joke. Or pull it too thin. Snark? In Bunheads and Newsroom there's too much of it. If you snark all the time, you sound like an ass. You have to temper it. This is why characters like Cordy, Anya, and Spike were not on all the time and their snark was often lightened with self-deprecating wit. Humor is always a balancing act, I think. Not sure if I communicated that well or not.
Okay, off to bed.
2. True Blood however, is highly entertaining this season and the tightest written of its entire history on air. I don't know what happened. But all the stories are working for once.
* Sam's - I found amusing. Sam's storyline has always been either creepy or weirdly funny.
* Alcide is actually hot when he's not with Sookie. Although I think we saw more of his body than anything else in his storyline, luckily it is a hot body.
* Bill works better as sinister and a bad guy than a good guy. He's more interesting as a villain. And Eric works better as a good guy or reluctant good guy. It may be how the actors play it. Skarsdale has these huge and expressive eyes, you can barely see Moyers.
At any rate, I'm enjoying the vampire storyline and the Eric/Bill bi-play. Not sure how they are going to bring Bill back from this season. Will state they are sort of following the book's interpretation of the character - by the later books, Bill was an out-and-out jerk and ERic was the sweetheart.
* Sookie's storyline is the least interesting, possibly because I don't like or care about the character all that much. Will state I'm curious who the vampire is - Russell, Bill, or someone else? Rather like the Jason/Sookie bi-play though.
* Love Pam/Tara...which is alternately touching and creepy...Pam is slowly corrupting Tara.
Turning Tara into another version of herself. Also the two bitchest/snarkiest female characters in the series, not to mention my favorite, together. What's not to love.
* Terry/Lafayette story finally comes together - which worked for me. Both were equally scary and creepy and fit Southern Gothic perfectly.
The series has gotten more Southern Gothic and less satirical...which I think is why I like it better. Satire doesn't work in large doses for me, I tend to get bored. It's like all humor actually. Which may explain why sitcoms are only a half-hour long. You stretch it to an hour, you lose the joke. Or pull it too thin. Snark? In Bunheads and Newsroom there's too much of it. If you snark all the time, you sound like an ass. You have to temper it. This is why characters like Cordy, Anya, and Spike were not on all the time and their snark was often lightened with self-deprecating wit. Humor is always a balancing act, I think. Not sure if I communicated that well or not.
Okay, off to bed.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 10:32 pm (UTC)Which I guess may be the same thing? The West Wing was more subtle, but it does bear keeping in mind that Sorkin didn't do the West Wing alone, John Wells was also involved. And Sorkin left in the midst of the 3rd Season due to a cocaine addiction and inability to deliver scripts on time.
For pure Sorkin - Sports Night. Which was also ranty at times.
The rapid-fire dialogue was definitely part of the West Wing, but I think the collaboration tempered it.
The thing about television writing is it really is about who makes up the writing and production and acting team and how they complement and work together. You can't just follow one writer about, any more than you can one actor or director - in tv - I've discovered. Oh, I do, but I'm always deeply disappointed. LOL! Britian? Maybe, since they do do things differently than we do. Moffat seems to write almost all the episodes of his series. But not so much with the US writers.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 10:39 pm (UTC)Sports Night never actually grabbed me as much as it did most people I know (but then I'm not a fan of 'sport').
Yeah, most of the British TV shows I've loved have been the work of one writer, or a small contained group of collaborators (like Monty Python).
no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 12:21 am (UTC)I like his rapid fire dialogue. But Sports Night...didn't stick for me.
I watched it, but I don't remember it.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 01:16 am (UTC)