Letters to the Editor
tomreedtoon
Published Letters: 799 Editor's Choice: 80
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Two cringe-worthy shows.
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, this wasn't too bad a week from Havrielsky. Aside from her opening ("Soylent Green is YOU, you morons!") which had nothing to do with anything, apparently the editorial staff got out the cattle prod and made her do her job, and as a rare change she delivered.
Unfortunately, the two shows are some of the worst popular TV shows on the air right now. That may seem impossible to some people - if it's popular it must be good, right? - but that's the nature of criticism. Without recounting the incidents in the last season of Lost, the characters behaved like concentration camp inmates who permitted, even encouraged, their Nazi captors to torture and kill them, because...they loved each other and refused to leave without each other. I have rarely gotten more physically angry at a TV show than the incident of Doctor McDouchebag closing the hatch in the underwater prison, allowing his captors to survive drowning, so they couold recapture him and torture him again. And it's all because the writers didn't really have anything better in mind. And that's proven to be true of the rest of the show as well.
As for House, the tradition of the hyperintelligent person who is a crappy human being probably has precedents long before Sherlock Holmes. That doesn't make the character on this show any more tolerable on a regular basis. Medical mysteries are all over the broadcast channels; there's no reason to endure the bile of a bastard genius if you like diagnosticians. The only reason to watch House is to see at what point this jerk flips and reverts to being a serial killer, his true calling.
You Hav-lovers should be happy this time; she isn't the target of this post, only two shows that, although popular, have stupid or inhumane protagonists.
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The nicest surprise Salon has offered in ages.
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm glad Mr. Breathed is back, and writing material that combines the political and the personal without ruining either ingredient. A rare and precious gift.
Now, Mr. Breathed...one favor...could you apply some influence to have your only animated special, "A Wish for Wings that Work," re-released on DVD? It was only on a brief VHS release after it was aired. It deserves to be seen again.
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A sign about how bad the GOP is doing.
[Read the article: Ron Paul is blowing up real good]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The fact that all this attention is being focussed on a guy who wears a tinfoil helmet shows how bad a field of candidates the GOP is putting forth this year.
The only two "real" Republican candidates are Giuliani, whose mismanagement and pretense about September 11 are about to make him look foolish, and McCain, whose shopping trip outside the Green Zone cost him his credibility. The others seem devoted to trying to spin their candidacy however they percieve the voters want, trying to wear the cowboy boots of Ronald Reagan without slipping into the brush-clearing boots of Bush.
And then there's Ron Paul. He has the full support of Mr./Ms. Garrison of South Park, due to his promise to "get rid of all the Mexicans." By keeping everyone else laughing at his antics, Paul may let the Republican power-brokers pick the GOP candidate without any interference from Republican voters.
So the Republican convention will be quiet, and the Democratic one will be overrun by pickets and rioters outside (remember 1968? I do), which will destroy the chance of a Democrat winning the White House in 2008. Ron Paul will have done his job.
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Coolidge, yes, the writing is a problem on both shows.
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is on practically all television shows. But the problem may not be the writers. I suspect it's what happens when the script leaves the writer's hands. It goes through a lot of hands (hands with their own agendas) before it gets to the actors on the set. And sometimes, the actors get their own say on the script. Something simple like their character's language is pretty common. ("I don't think my character, Denny Crane, would say 'get jiggy with it.'") But some actors get very posessive of their characters, and warp the script into something the writer never intended.
Ask Harlan Ellison. Better yet, check his published script for the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever." His original script won awards. What was produced for TV, after mutilation, didn't. And his introduction to the script has some of the bitterest, angriest prose I've ever read in show business. Normally people swallow their anger, so they can keep getting job assignments from the people that screwed them. Ellison didn't care about that, and the results were volcanic.
Usually, responsibility rolls uphill, no matter how many flunkies get blamed and fired, so I always get suspicious of producers when a show starts turning bad. But it depends how hands-on they are. (I don't think Aaron Spelling even watched most of his shows, let alone visited the set.)