Friday Link Roundup: November 6, 2009

A bunch of kvetching today. I blame it on the crappy weather.

1. The Atlantic takes another look at how 30 Rock’s lost its way.

30 Rock’s still a great show, but it’s been uneven as of late and could be a hell of a lot better.

2. The Watcher thinks that Mad Men isn’t the best show on television anymore.

What show does he compare Mad Men to? My favorite, Sons of Anarchy.

3. The New York Times thinks Flash Forward is picking up.

Personally I think they’re crazy, but whatever.

4. Alan Sepinwall answers some questions, including a bit on Cable vs Network budgets.

Not groundbreaking information, but interesting none the less.

5. FX is developing a new Western!

How awesome is that?

This looks cool…

What’s your excuse?

I’d like to introduce you to Emily Hagins. Emily is a writer / director from Austin, Texas. She’s currently prepping her third film. A fan of old school horror flicks, Pathogen, her first film, was a Romero-esque Zombie movie with lots of blood and gore, while Party Killer was a play on the slasher genre.

Oh yeah. Did I mention that Emily started doing all this when she was just 12 years old?

It’s a pretty cool story. Emily just turned 17, but she’s already produced two feature length films that have seen limited theatrical releases. Impressive.

Her story’s also featured in an award winning documentary called Zombie Girl: The Movie, produced by Justin Johnson and Aaron Marshall, which won the Spirit of Slamdance Award at the 2009 Slamdance Film Festival.

There’s a great Q&A with Aaron over at Go Into Story that’s worth the read. And a big H/T to Scott Myers for posting such a cool story.

And it is a cool story. You’ve got a 12 year old girl who decided to go out there and make a feature film. And then she did it again. And now she’s doing it again.

How many of us can say the same thing? What’s our excuse?

If you want to be a director, then you could do a lot worse than emulating Emily Hagins.

Here’s a trailer for Zombie Girl: The Movie

A trailer for Emily’s first film Pathogen

And a Zombie Girl: The Movie Q&A from Slamdance:

No more excuses.

V the biggest freshman hit of the year?

It’s kinda looking that way.

In initial overnight ratings V, a remake of a 1980’s sci-fi series about an alien invasion, hit a 5 rating in the 18-49 year old age group that networks prize (because advertisers pay the most to reach it), the best number of any drama or comedy series introduced this fall.

The show also had about 14 million viewers, which was below the 18.7 million that the CBS drama NCIS LA attracted for its premiere. But that show, a spin-off, benefited from following its progenitor, NCIS, on Tuesday nights. The V performance was more impressive because as an 8pm show it pulled in the audience all on its own.

Way to go V. While I thought the pilot was a little uneven, I think the show has a lot of potential. Hopefully the problems behind the scenes (they just yanked their first showrunner) won’t impact the rest of the show’s run in a negative way.

V Remake Premieres Tonight

On ABC at 8/7 central.

So far reviews have been mixed.

Personally I’m looking forward to it, though not as much as I was before trying to slog through the pilot script (yeah…not that good).

Your mileage may vary.

PVRs Aren’t Killing the Television Star

A lot of the people think PVRs are responsible for the apocalyptic cloud the television biz has been working under lately. If people can record shows and easily skip the commericals then that’s what they’re going to do.

Yeah. Maybe not so much.

Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer. According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year.

When you add the fact that people are actually watching commercials on their PVR’d shows, and the fact that PVR market penetration has increased from last year (up to 33% from 28%), then all of a sudden advertising as a revenue stream is looking a heck of a lot more robust than previously thought.

Of course the question remains, why the hell are people watching commercials when they could so easily skip them?

The most basic reason, according to Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, a media buying firm, is that the behavior that has underpinned television since its invention still persists to a larger degree than expected.

“It’s still a passive activity,” he said.

PVR’s aren’t killing television because people are too lazy to press the fast forward button. Whodda thunk.

This is great news for almost all the networks. If people are actually watching the ads on PVR’d shows, then all of a sudden all those “live +3″ ratings take on a whole lot more importance than bragging rights. Those extra three days actually represent millions of viewers and therefore millions of dollars more in advertising revenue.

Almost across the board, the gains for playback are growing. The best preseason estimate for the current season, said David F. Poltrack, the chief research officer for CBS, was about a 1 percent increase from playback over the live program for the networks combined. Instead, many are in the range of 7 to 12 percent, with some shows having increases of more than 20 percent when DVR ratings are added. The four networks together are averaging a 10 percent increase.

“It’s the magnitude that’s really surprising us,” Mr. Poltrack said.

In the 18-to-49 group of viewers – the one prized by networks because most ad sales are directed there – Fox has the biggest percentage increase, from an average rating of 2.39 (which translates into about 2.5 million viewers) for its live programs to a 2.71 rating (about 3.1 million viewers) when the three-day DVR playback results are added in.

The numbers for ABC were a 2.5 rating live (2.87 million viewers) to a 2.81 (3.27 million) after three days. CBS had a 2.62 live (just over three million) and a 2.79 (3.2 million) after three days. NBC had a 1.79 live (2.05 million) and a 1.91 (2.19 million) after three days.

“Nobody knew the commercial ratings would be as robust as they are,” said Mr. [Alan] Wurtzel [president of research for NBC].

No one indeed. I’m sure this is catching a lot of people by surprise. PVRs were, after all, supposed to be the death of broadcast television, not a boon to it.

Of course it hasn’t been a boon to all the networks equally. Poor, silly, short sighted NBC is still getting hosed.

NBC, has seen a significant fall-off year to year in ratings with playbacks, Mr. Wurtzel said. “The Leno effect is the reason.”

When NBC added “The Jay Leno Show” at 10 each weeknight, it boasted that the show would be “DVR proof,” meaning that because the humor was topical, viewers were more likely to watch it live, avoiding much of the commercial-skipping that was expected to plague recorded shows.

Now being “DVR proof” looks like a disadvantage. Mr. Leno’s shows were among the few with three-day commercial ratings lower than their live ratings. Not enough people have been recording the show and playing it back to overcome the commercial-skipping being done by a percentage of its live viewers.

I think I can safely speak for NBC when I say: “DOH!”

While most of the credit has to go to all those lovable lazy bastards who can’t be bothered to push a button on their remote, some credit also needs to be given to the broadcasters and advertisers themselves.

They’re becoming devious little monkeys.

The Fox series Bones has experimented with inserting into the middle of a group of commercials a segment with the show’s main characters discussing the story so far. That can induce a sudden stop in the playback.

I know I’ve been fooled by similar gambits in the past. Cheap broadcaster tricks aside though, this is great news for television.

Thank god for all the lazy bastards.

What’s it really like in the room?

A television writing room is like no other place on earth. Whether it’s the overflowing creativity, the joy of making up stories all day, or the fact that you’ve got a bunch of bat shit crazy writers jammed together like cattle, it’s something you’ve got to experience to believe.

But, for those of you who haven’t been fortunate enough to sneak your way into an active writer’s room, I give you this.

Richard Manning has, as they say, “been around the block” a couple of times. And he gives a hilarious, heart breakingly accurate idea of what it can be like when you first step into a writer’s room.

In fact, it’s so funny, I’m just gonna quote the whole thing.

Picture, if you will, perky young Mary Sue, an aspiring TV writer who’s celebrating her first sale. She pitched a dozen ideas to veteran genre-TV producer Sam Showrunner for his new series Space Slayers, in which a ragtag team of teenage misfits travels the galaxy and battles alien mutants. But Mary Sue’s enthusiasm will soon be tested; she has no idea what terrors await in… The Writers’ Room.

Mary Sue’s successful pitch:“Griff and Angela [the series leads] must mind-link with K’Vax [their sentient, female, wisecracking spaceship] after a radioactive nebula erases K’Vax’s memories.”

There was more to her pitch – such as the mind-link forcing the aloof Griff and Angela to confront their true feelings about one another – but Mary Sue never got that far; Sam had interrupted. “Good hook, but amnesia’s soft. Needs more jeopardy. Hey! What if the nebula turns K’Vax evil? And she tries to kill everybody on board! So it’s dangerous for Griff and Angela to go into her mind; they might never come out. Terrific pitch! Sold!”

Mary Sue was ecstatic. “Great! I’ll write up an outline –”

“We don’t do outlines. We – me and the writing staff – break all our stories in the room. Once we get the structure down, you go off and write the script. Come in Tuesday at nine. Bring in a beat sheet. Not an outline, just the big moves. Some rough act breaks. Keep it simple. One page, tops, just to get things started.”

And so it begins…

9:00 am Tuesday. A punctual Mary Sue happily looks around her first Writers’ Room. Cheap, mismatched “executive” chairs surround a coffee-stained table strewn with old magazines, food wrappers, a Slinky, a broken water pistol, various Rubik’s-type puzzles, and other toys. The walls are a crazy quilt of actors’ headshots, set blueprints, costume design sketches, test photos of alien prosthetics… and three large whiteboards.

Two are covered with multicolored scrawls, circles, arrows, renumbering, and crossouts – the story beats for Episodes 5 and 6, in impenetrable shorthand: “5. BRIDGE: G + A expo. K ng 10 min no Froonium. H/L payoff? AB: J zapped.” The third is frighteningly blank – a naked canvas awaiting a plot. It continues to await until:

9:40 am. Two writer/producers saunter in: Madman Moe, a cheerful, inexhaustible fount of wild ideas, and Cyndi Cynic, a jaded naysayer who’s great at untangling plot logic. They get coffee and make phone calls until:

10:15 am. Sam Showrunner dashes in. “Sorry. Problem on the set.” To Sam’s surprise, Mary Sue proudly hands him a fifteen-page outline. “Wow. Lot of work here. Good for you.” He glances at the first page, tosses it aside forever, and hands her a marker. “It’s your story; you do the honors. Ready? Teaser’s easy. Fly through nebula, ship sparks, life support screws up. Act One –”

Sam stops. Mary Sue’s still neatly printing “TEASER” on the whiteboard. “Just put a ‘T’,” Cyndi suggests. “Then put ‘Nebula, sparks, life support NG.”

“Act One, Beat One,” Sam continues. “Ramon runs diagnostics. Technobabble. Thinks he’s found the problem. Fixes it. All seems okay. Beat Two. Spooky stuff begins. Suspense. Scary noises. Like a horror movie. So… hmm… Maybe Trixie’s below decks. Alone. What’s she doing?”

“Taking a shower,” Moe offers. “With Angela. And suddenly the lights flicker and the water turns cold.”

“That’s good.” Sam turns to an aghast Mary Sue. “Put that up. T and A, shower, lights.”

“Can’t do that,” says Cyndi, to Mary Sue’s relief. “I’ve got Trixie showering with Ramon in ep 5.”

Moe’s unfazed. “So make it the sauna.”

“What sauna?”

Sam likes it. “The Cargo Bay, redressed and smoked up. That sauna.”

Cyndi considers. “We could do different color smoke because K’Vax is pumping in poisonous coolant gas or something.”

Sam’s enthused. “Great. We’re rolling now. We’ll be done by six, easy.”

6:45 pm. Act One has seven beats on the board, Act Two has five, Three and Four are still blank, and nobody likes any of it. “It’s flat,” says Sam. “Bland and boring.”

“Excuse me,” quavers Mary Sue. “But I, um… have a thought…”

“Jump right in,” says Sam. “It’s your story.”

“Well… maybe Beat Two should be a character scene with Griff and Angela… because we need to set up their unexpressed feelings for each other…”

All stare at her. “We do? Why?”

“Um… because later, when they mind-link with K’Vax, they confront their feelings and realize –”

“In episode seven?” Sam’s incredulous. “Not a chance. Besides, this story’s already way too soft. We need conflict. Drama is conflict.”

Mary Sue’s getting crabby. “Well, what I pitched had lots of conflict. Internal conflict.”

“This is TV, not some romance novel. I want external conflict. Action. Danger.”

Mary Sue snaps. “Well, if K’Vax turning evil isn’t enough danger, why don’t we just throw in some nasty aliens with guns?”

Silence.

“She’s nailed it,” says Cyndi. “Problem is, we’re missing a villain.”

Moe concurs. “Evil K’Vax is great, but our heroes have to cure her, not kill her, which means they don’t get to defeat a bad guy.”

Sam nods. “But if a Gavork spy sneaks on board and brainwashes K’Vax, now we’ve got two problems – and somebody to fight in Act Four.” He slaps the table. “That’s it. Solved. Okay, everybody go home and think about it and we’ll finish this tomorrow. Nine o’clock sharp.”

It’ll take four more days of this to break Mary Sue’s story. Ultimately, Ramon, not Angela, will join Trixie in the sauna, to follow up on their shower scene in ep 5. Oh, and the mind-link with K’Vax will indeed force Griff and Angela to confront their feelings for each other – but once the mind-link’s over, they’ll forget it ever happened.

Mary Sue will grudgingly concede it’s a cleaner, punchier story than the meandering fifteen pages she came up with on her own.

And then she’ll have two short weeks to turn it into a script that makes it all work… but that’s another tale.

A big ole H/T to Will Dixon where I saw it first.

The Three Building Blocks of Comedy and the Decline of 30 Rock

So I stumbled across this interesting meditation on the elements of a successful comedy, and how they relate to shows like 30 Rock and Will & Grace. Anyways, the article’s stuck with me, and I figured I’d share some of it here with you fine folks.

The three building blocks of comedy that they mention are pretty self-evident (and really two of the three are the building blocks of any scripted show). The building blocks of comedy are “…the premise and the plots that stem from it, the characters, and the jokes.”

What? Premise, characters and jokes? Pretty darn obvious isn’t it? Thankfully the article doesn’t stop there.

A show needn’t have all three of these things functioning at a high level to completely work, but a show with say, a really solid premise and plots, but predictable joke-writing, will eventually stop seeming funny, no matter how well-crafted the plots are.

It’s a question of shelf life. Comedies (and dramas to a lesser extent) can’t exist indefinitely without the audience becoming so inured to the rhythms of the show that it starts to lose a lot of its comedic (or dramatic) potential. If you know what joke’s coming it’s not as funny.

How does one extend the shelf life of your series? With strong fundamentals. You can get a show on the air with two of the three building blocks, but if you want it to last you need all of them to be strong.

The longer a comedy is on the air, the more used to its rhythms the audience becomes, which either results in episodes that are boring and predictable, or a creative staff that goes out of its way to keep from falling into a slump, only to succumb to other pitfalls. Recent examples would include how The Office went astray by making all its characters into big, goofy caricatures in the late episodes of its third season and early episodes of its fourth season, or how Curb Your Enthusiasm could never find solid footing in its often-muddled sixth season. But worse is when a promising or even terrific comedy chases itself into oblivion, like Entourage did after its second season, or Roseanne did in its last three years.

So what does this have to do with 30 Rock? It hasn’t been on the air all that long, and I don’t think anyone thinks its pulled an Entourage quite yet. A lot of people would argue that the fundamentals of the show are strong, so why bring it up in the context of this article? 30 Rock’s safe, right?

Well, no, not really. The numbers for 30 Rock have never been great. It’s a niche show, and a very funny one at times, but it has yet to break out in a big way. And let’s face it, it’s been more than a little inconsistent ever since it came back from the WGA strike. In short, what this article does is try to take a peek under the hood in an attempt to evaluate the state of 30 Rock’s fundamentals. What if they’re not as solid as we think they are?

You can coast for a while on great joke- and gag-writing, especially if you have a cast that’s good at delivering those jokes. A good example of this is the now seemingly inexplicable early critical smash Will & Grace. While a lot of the appeal to critics early in the run of that show had to do with just how fresh and groundbreaking its premise seemed at the time, it’s easy to forget that in that show’s first two or three seasons, the jokes were pretty tight. The show’s writing staff was good at coming up with killer one-liners, and the core cast members were all great at delivering these overtly campy punchlines. But all Will & Grace’s characters were broad types, designed solely to be as big and goofy as possible to wring the most laughs out of every line. None of them felt recognizably human very shortly into the run of the show, and their relationships were just as strained. As mentioned above, all comedies eventually become predictable to their audience, simply because we begin to understand the rhythms of the jokes being told, so once the show reaches a point where we can essentially predict what the next line is going to be, it behooves a series to have strong characters and character relationships to fall back on. Will & Grace didn’t have this, and when the jokes began to become predictable, the show rapidly fell apart and revealed what had always been an empty center. (Weirdly, a very similar thing happened to Family Guy.)

Which brings us back to 30 Rock. I highly doubt 30 Rock will ever get as bad as Will & Grace eventually did, if only because the low ratings practically guarantee its cancellation if the critical community and Emmys ever turn on it in a real way. And unlike Will & Grace, 30 Rock has two and a half well-developed characters to fall back on at any point. Liz Lemmon (Fey) is a subtly new and different take on the career-oriented woman who still wants to have some sort of life – a type pioneered by Mary Tyle Moore in the 1970s – while Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is a coolly ruthless suit with a host of neuroses he somehow keeps perfectly buttoned up. Both of these characters are so consistently written and portrayed that writers as good as the 30 Rock staff would be able to write funny scenes between them in their sleep. In addition, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) is fitfully a well-drawn character, when the show is interested in providing some sort of basis for his outright lunacy. His impetuous childishness becomes much more interesting in the face of the fact that he’s a dedicated family man, but the series loses sight of this far too often, choosing instead to make him a manic man-child.

30 Rock quickly learned early in its run that its premise – woman tries to keep things rolling along backstage at a sketch-comedy show – was inherently limited and turned more into a show about people trying to survive working at a network where the mood is frequently apocalyptic. This was probably the right move. But it ended up stranding a lot of characters who no longer served the same purpose under the new premise. Most notable of these characters is Pete (Scott Adsit), a very funny guy who frequently has nothing to do. Also problematic: the awfully written Jenna (Jane Krakowski), who spends most episodes trying to oversell ridiculous material. Rather than develop the loons Liz and Jack work with into actual characters, though, the show chose to leave them mostly as one-dimensional joke machines, like the characters on Will & Grace. In season three, when the show apparently realized it couldn’t live on Liz and Jack scenes alone, the series split the two characters up and sent them into storylines with the show’s various other players, but because of the disparity in development levels between the characters, this often resulted in some weak storylines where, say, Frank (Judah Friedlander) would suddenly be looking up to Jack for no apparent reason. The show has also mostly forgotten many of the bit players in its large ensemble, unable to find space for them in its new premise.

So as it starts its fourth season, that’s where 30 Rock finds itself: in danger of turning into a slightly funnier Will & Grace. (The similarities between the shows don’t stop there either. Both have over-relied on guest stars to patch over poor storylines, and both have been warmly embraced by the Emmys and the mainstream critical community.) There are still plenty of laughs to be gleaned out of the show, especially when Liz, Jack, or Tracy are around, but simply because the show has been on long enough now that the audience can predict its rhythms, it sometimes seems like a series trying desperately to find another gear and failing. 30 Rock is still nowhere near a bad show, but it risks turning into a show where one-dimensional people spend a lot of time shouting at each other.

I’m not sure I’m completely sold on the articles argument, but I’m definitely leaning that way. I’ve felt that a lot of the supporting cast on 30 Rock could use a little more depth, and I definitely think that the shows’ premise has evolved since its premiere. Whether or not it’s going to wind up as the next Will & Grace I dare not speculate. Either way I found the article to be an interesting read (though this post is a bit of a ramble…apologies), and hopefully some of you will feel the same way.

Sunday Soliloquy: Friday Night Lights S1E01 (2006)

In honor of the return of Friday Night Lights, here’s Coach Taylor’s speech from the end of the pilot. This pilot, for my money, is one of the best, most moving television pilots of all time. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re doing yourself a major disservice.

And here’s how it plays out in the script. Interesting to see the slight differences, as well as the bit that was completely cut at the end.

Give us strength to remember that life is so very fragile. That we are all vulnerable. That we will all, at some point in our lives…fall. We will all fall. WE must carry this in our hearts…that what we have is special. That it can be taken from us and that when it is taken from us we will be tested. We will be tested to our very souls…

We will now all be tested.

It is these times. This pain. That we are able to look inside ourselves.

We are now going to find out who we are. If you’re interested in finding out who you are, I’ll be here tomorrow. Will you?

Personally I think cutting the last couple of lines was a great call. The speech doesn’t need it. It’s pretty much perfect the way it stands prior to that.

Good Shows You’ve Never Heard Of: The Palace

I’ve bumped into a lot of people lately who are still insisting that there’s no such television.

What complete and utter bullshit.

There’s plenty of great television around. We’re in a golden age of television. If you can’t find any great television to watch then maybe you just haven’t been pointed in the right direction yet, you’re not looking hard enough, or you’re just plain blind.

If all you need is a helping hand, well, that’s where I come in.

Welcome to “Good Shows You’ve Never Heard Of.” First up, ITV’s The Palace, a behind the scenes look at a fictional version of Britain’s Royal Family.

From ITV’s webiste:

Meet the most famous family on Earth. After the sudden death of his father Prince Richard has become King at the age of 24. Dearly loved by the nation King James III left behind his devoted wife and family.

King Richard IV now reigns. He is young, handsome, free-spirited with modern ideas about the monarchy. Unready for office he desperately wants to succeed but the Press cannot get enough of his youthful indiscretions and his family is at war.

The knives have been sharpened and they are waiting for blood.

We also see below stairs and behind closed doors as staff jostle for power, compete for affection, lie and cheat.

The Palace lifts the curtain on a fictional world. It’s a world we love so much but know so little about.

This show works on a bunch of different levels.

As a coming of age story

When we first meet Richard he’s a young playboy more interested in going clubbing with his younger brother than in his duties as Crown Prince. Then his father passes away and he’s thrust into the limelight, forced to shoulder responsibilities that he’s never wanted and is unprepared for. It’s a great set up for a series, and one that The Palace capitalizes on throughout its run.

As a political drama

The Palace never quite gets into West Wing territory, but what show does these days? What The Palace does offer is a great look at the UK’s domestic politics, how they relate to the press and lastly how they impact on the royal family.

As a family drama

The majority of the drama in this show revolves around the internal politics of the royal family. Struggling for power. Struggling to stay out of trouble. Struggling to stay out of the media headlines. This show takes the little every day, family disputes and then shows you what they might look like if they played out in the national spotlight.

As an Upstairs / Downstairs drama

Upstairs / Downstairs dramas have a long history in the UK where class still has more of a hold on society than it ever did in North America. It’s hard to hang your drama on the relationship between royalty and their servants when you have neither, but in the context of a British show it works wonderfully well. Especially when you enmesh it with…

As a romance

One of the largest parts of the series is the romance angle. You’ve got a young, attractive playboy Prince who suddenly becomes King. Talk about all of a sudden swimming in a limited dating pool, as king he can’t exactly go down to his local and pick up any random young hottie. The complications that arise from Richard’s active love life are great springboards for all sorts of stories throughout the series.

Add a bunch of strong, interesting characters to the numerous story engines detailed above, and you’ve got a hell of a series, and one well worth checking out.

The Palace plays on Superchannel.