TV We Watch is TV We Need
Gossip Girl: Season 1 (2007-2008)
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults
Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008)
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Battlestar Galactica: Episodes 4.1-4.10 (2008)
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Steve
Loving a show like Twin Peaks is no different from loving a movie like Portrait of Jennie - each unique, each abnormal. I can skirt the TV issue easily enough, say I like Gargoyles but would never watch 30 Rock, and shouldn't it be obvious why?
For two seasons I gritted my teeth through Battlestar Galactica's melodramatic squabbles, barked from the half-dressed script of some time-travelling Republican conventioneer. Not only did I disagree with Ronald Moore’s politics, I was bored by the window dressing. Steve insisted, so I persisted. The periphery fell in, and the ethical relativism of the show’s worst character became my first convincing religious experience, apparently through new writers’ acts of sheer, generous will (helped in part by the paucity of my own theological engagement, I’m sure). The man I hated most changed completely without changing at all. I changed, certainly.
Avatar is well-reared, if not particularly original: the Joe Campbell mythology playbook by way of Joe Camel, who knows that every franchise needs its Ewoks. The Sopranos was best when Tony dreamed, or else acted the innocent, so I’m not reflexively drawn to cruelty as my private Emmy money-shot, but the “blood bending” episode made Avatar smart by reducing the wow factor of well-executed animated martial arts to its lurching, crippling conclusion, which is the perverse, inevitable spectacle of a body lying physically ruined on the floor. The heroes are fated to be young and in love forever, but it is already the witch who comes out at the full moon who I remember most clearly.
And what about Gossip Girl? How far do I have to dig to excuse it? I can’t, which means that, given the right reason to watch almost any show on TV, I could probably find an excuse to keep watching it. Every show needs its romantic and its villain, and maybe Gossip Girl is prettier, or meaner, but Chuck and Blair aren't uncommon. A little elevated, maybe - taking a limo to the airport, staring down the girl over a pink houndstooth sweater - but so, in their way, are the friends you admire. And a lot of it is just junk, but that's no excuse not to hear K. Bell sing "xoxo" like a song.
In other words, I'm grateful it isn't all The Wire.
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults
Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008)
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Battlestar Galactica: Episodes 4.1-4.10 (2008)
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Steve
Loving a show like Twin Peaks is no different from loving a movie like Portrait of Jennie - each unique, each abnormal. I can skirt the TV issue easily enough, say I like Gargoyles but would never watch 30 Rock, and shouldn't it be obvious why?
For two seasons I gritted my teeth through Battlestar Galactica's melodramatic squabbles, barked from the half-dressed script of some time-travelling Republican conventioneer. Not only did I disagree with Ronald Moore’s politics, I was bored by the window dressing. Steve insisted, so I persisted. The periphery fell in, and the ethical relativism of the show’s worst character became my first convincing religious experience, apparently through new writers’ acts of sheer, generous will (helped in part by the paucity of my own theological engagement, I’m sure). The man I hated most changed completely without changing at all. I changed, certainly.
Avatar is well-reared, if not particularly original: the Joe Campbell mythology playbook by way of Joe Camel, who knows that every franchise needs its Ewoks. The Sopranos was best when Tony dreamed, or else acted the innocent, so I’m not reflexively drawn to cruelty as my private Emmy money-shot, but the “blood bending” episode made Avatar smart by reducing the wow factor of well-executed animated martial arts to its lurching, crippling conclusion, which is the perverse, inevitable spectacle of a body lying physically ruined on the floor. The heroes are fated to be young and in love forever, but it is already the witch who comes out at the full moon who I remember most clearly.
And what about Gossip Girl? How far do I have to dig to excuse it? I can’t, which means that, given the right reason to watch almost any show on TV, I could probably find an excuse to keep watching it. Every show needs its romantic and its villain, and maybe Gossip Girl is prettier, or meaner, but Chuck and Blair aren't uncommon. A little elevated, maybe - taking a limo to the airport, staring down the girl over a pink houndstooth sweater - but so, in their way, are the friends you admire. And a lot of it is just junk, but that's no excuse not to hear K. Bell sing "xoxo" like a song.
In other words, I'm grateful it isn't all The Wire.
posted by NPK at 9:30 AM
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