At Last: A Sequel I Can Get Behind

It finally happened.

Yesterday, Netflix announced that El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie will air on the the streaming service on October 11.



Aaron Paul, who played Jesse Pinkman on the original show for five seasons and reprises his role for this sequel, summed up my feelings pretty well:

"It's a chapter of Breaking Bad that I didn't realize I wanted. And now that I have it, I’m so happy that it’s there."

I've long been funny about sequels and prequels and even second+ seasons of very good TV shows. Our entertainment industry has a long tradition of not knowing when the horse is dead, or they don't care if the horse is dead so long as there's a critical mass that will pay to see it (though their motivation could also be like that of Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom in The Producers). We end up with too many sequels or too many seasons of a tired TV show limping along, and we either forget what made it so good in the first place, or we just hope it will recapture some of the original magic, or we still somehow care about characters despite what second and third and fourth teams of writers/directors/creators turn them into.

But I have hope for this one. Not only because Breaking Bad creator, Vince Gilligan is really good at what he does, but also because the track record for television seems to be improving. After season two of The Good Place, I really didn't see how they could keep that premise rolling. They have. The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt has rolled right on. Season two of The OA was very good. And my most anticipated (and feared) sequel season, HBO's Barry, somehow managed to equal--and even exceed, at times--an excellent first season.

So, on October 11 I think I'll plunk myself down in front of the TV and see what happened to Jesse Pinkman. I'll be rooting for him, too, hoping he can find a way to shed the horrors he endured through five seasons of Breaking Bad.

How are you all doing?

Breaking Bad Revisited

Back in early August, I found myself home alone for an extended weekend, due to a work requirement that coincided with a family event. Sunday afternoon found me too physically tired to mow the lawn or do much around the house, and too brain dead to write or read; I reached for the TV remote instead--and soon found myself rewatching Breaking Bad.

I know a lot of people will say, "Why rewatch some TV show when there's so much good, new programming out there?" Indeed, there are only so many hours in a day, week, month, life; why spend it watching something you've already seen, especially something that takes so much time? (Breaking Bad ran for five seasons, 62 episodes, roughly 50 minutes per episode. I hate doing math that shows how much time I've spent on something, just as I hated looking at the "Time Played" counter on my World of Warcraft characters.)  Yet I regularly seek out the comfort of previous experience when choosing my television, film and reading material. Earlier this year, I finished a re-read of Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, and I'm currently re-reading It for seemingly the thousandth time. There's a good bet that, some time in the next year or so, I'll pick up either A Prayer for Owen Meany or Empire Falls again, too, even though  there are literally thousands of books I haven't read before coming out each year. Often, I'll just grab something familiar off the shelf when I'm in between new books, though sometimes I just get a real strong urge to read an old book once more (It came about in part because we watched last year's movie version, which was actually pretty good).

As a writer, there's great benefit in following those familiar paths. Watching the first few episodes of Breaking Bad, however, I found myself really viewing Walter's and Jesse's actions against the context of what those characters become as the series goes on. It's especially fascinating to see the breadcrumbs being dropped by the showrunners. One of the central questions of the show was who is the true Walter White? The mild-mannered, bumbling high school chemistry teacher, or the ruthless Heisenberg? I don't think I started asking that question until more than halfway through the series on my first run through; now, I've been looking for it since episode one, watching for clues, and I think "Walter White" may have been the mask worn by "Heisenberg" for fifty years. By the end of season two, which is where I am now, that certainly seems to be more than a slim chance.

Interestingly, I find I interact differently with books when I re-read them than I do with movies or TV. I suspect it has to do with the difference in impact images make on your brain than words, or that reading engages the mind in a different way. I will sometimes pick up something as foreshadowing, or the first appearance of a motif in the work, but for me, re-reading a book is much more like reading it for the first time than watching TV or a movie.

How about you? Do you experience TV, movies and books differently the second (or third) time around? Do  tell!B

The Bee and the Barr

Late last night, I gave in to an itch and rubbed my eye. I knew it was a mistake, but the eye had started itching madly right around the time Last Week Tonight started. Twice during the program I dribbled a little cool water into the corner of my eye, but it did no good: the itch remained. And though I knew the itch was the result of an allergy (I had cut the grass earlier in the day, and it was raining, and it's spring/summer), and though I knew exactly what was going to happen if I gave in, I stuck my finger in behind my glasses and rubbed.
Ahhh, such sweet relief! There is nothing quite so satisfying as scratching as scratching an itch. It's so...so...so. It's just so.

Here's the problem with this sort of itch, though: while it feels positively orgasmic while you're scratching it, it doesn't solve anything. As soon as I pulled my finger out from behind my glasses, three things happened: 1) the itch returned, as bad and insistent as before; 2) it now felt like a lash or something was stuck beneath my eyelid, even though I didn't have to check in the mirror to know this wasn't true, and 3) the phlegm factory in my head went into full-scale production mode, churning out mucus like Soviet factories cranked out tanks in World War II. I ended up taking Benadryl, and while it did the job, taking Benadryl at midnight means waking from a bizarre dream at 5:44 with no recollection of the alarm having gone off and a tongue that feels about as moist as the Mojave Desert. My head is clear of phlegm, but my brain is rather sluggish, which might explain this post.

The sad thing? All of this was predictable. I've been here before. It never ends well. Experience tells me there are certain types of eye itches that I must absolutely leave alone, and last night's was one of those. I knew it, and I reaped the consequences. But it felt so good!

Last week, Roseanne Barr and Samantha Bee both scratched some particular eye itch, Barr in her Twitter feed, Bee on her show, Full Frontal. (If you've been living under a rock, Barr's tweet was a racist shot at a former Obama administration official, while Bee dropped a C-Bomb on Ivanka Trump) Barr was fired from her show before the day was out. Bee is still employed, though she has lost a couple of big advertisers. She is supposedly going to address this on this week's show. At this point, I'm guessing she'll keep her job, since the network (TBS) joined her in falling on the sword. Unless there's enough of a backlash.

What was Roseanne thinking when she fired off her 2 a.m. Tweet? What was Bee thinking when she dropped the C-bomb on air? I can't say for sure, but I imagine it was a lot like me with my eye itch: it felt really good until the entirely predictable--and avoidable--reaction.

Slow starts

True confession time: My wife and I haven't been current with a TV show since about the time Seinfeld went off the air twenty years ago. Up until then, the Magpie (and then the Catbird) was small enough to go to be at some ridiculous hour like 7 or 7:30, giving us time to actually watch prime time TV. When the girls got older and extended their waking hours, we didn't fill it by watching TV. We read and played games with them, baths, and so on. Later, TV was lost by going to school concerts, ferrying kids to plays and rehearsals, sports, friends, etc. The absolute death knell for current TV came when we decided to drop cable in favor of Netflix. Cable had gotten way too expensive and we only watched maybe four or five of the hundreds of channels at our disposal, so it seemed kind of pointless to keep.

This meant we missed things, of course, or that we saw things, but after everyone else. We watched The Sopranos several years after the show famously cut to black. We watched Breaking Bad and Walking Dead about a season behind, since Netflix wouldn't show last year's episodes until right before this year's episodes were due to air. It meant I had to try to recognize potential spoilers in Facebook without seeing enough to actually spoil me.

One of the shows I was aware of on the air that I might have liked to watch "in real time" was Parks and Recreation, mainly because I always liked Amy Poehler. It started its run while we still had cable, but got swallowed up by life and World of Warcraft. People would talk about it, tell me how good it was, but one thing I heard from several people: it starts slow. You have to give it about half a season.

A couple of years ago, I was alone in the house for a weekend, was in between writing projects, and hockey season was over, so I fired up Netflix and watched the first two episodes. I was not impressed, but decided to push on because the show reputedly got good halfway through Season One, and Season One was only six episodes long. I was still unimpressed. One chuckle per episode is not enough; who's got time for an unfunny comedy?

Several months later, I went back and finished Season One and started Season Two (Boredom is a powerful thing). And then? It clicked. I can't say whether it was the actors more fully inhabiting their characters, or the writing getting better, or that it was like hearing a crappy song that you hate over and over again on the radio until you're singing along like you're one of the band (okay, it wasn't that), but the show got good, and I watched it fairly regularly, and just finished the series over the weekend. Plain and simple, it was a quality TV show. But oh, that slow start!

Slow starts are not something writers can generally afford. TV shows can generally get away with a slow start. Some big hits start out with humble beginnings, it's really a matter of generating buzz and keeping advertisers and network executives at bay until that buzz brings viewers. A book, on the other hand? Slow starts are tough to overcome. It's amazing to me in some ways that I sat through probably about four hours of TV programming time until Parks and Recreation "got good"--one the other hand, I don't think I'd sit and read a bad book for four hours.

What's made me think of all this is I got feedback from two beta readers on my latest manuscript, a manuscript I have very high hopes for. The feedback was good; the news? Not so much. One of them noted that they did not feel particularly invested in things until about 40% of the way in. Forty percent! That's almost half the manuscript! The other said they read the last third or so "like my hair was on fire and the only way to put it out was to get to the end" (I love that!). The problem? The first two thirds. Ouch.

I have long known that I have a tendency to write stories with long, slow, ramp-up times. Writing coaches fill blogs and books with fun little graphs of story structure that look like mountain ranges full of foothills, peaks, valleys and gorges, to show how you should build your story. They look more or less like this:

Mine? It looks more like a wheelchair ramp on the side of a government building, and that's not good enough.

TV by it's nature is a passive activity. You sit. You watch. You react (or not). Books, however, are different. Though you are sitting, you are actively engaged. A TV show can get away with a bad start. A bad start for a novel is generally death, unless you have very patient readers. (Some are. I just finished Barabara Kingsolver's 2012 novel, Flight Behavior. It took me three attempts over as many reading sessions to get past page 10, but was worth it in the end.)

The good news for me is I've got feedback, I've got my manuscript, and now I've got the opportunity to make that ramp shorter, steeper, and more bumpy. On to revisions!

THIS AND THAT:
*Weather, vacation, and working too many weekends meant that I finally got to mow my lawn this weekend, about a month later than I would normally get the first cutting, and at least two weeks after it should have been done this year. It gave me the excuse to go look at my chestnut tree, and it's potentially taking off:

OK, so I got new glasses, but apparently my photo skills just plain suck. I took my first photo of the year on Friday (even worse than this), and this one this morning. The tree has definitely grown between Friday and today.

*With my favorite team out of the NHL playoffs, I was kind of rooting for Winnipeg, but they crapped the bed against Vegas. I do not want an expansion team winning the championship, but I really dislike the idea of the second coming of Raffi Torres (i.e., Washington's Tom Wilson) winning, and I still hold a grudge against Braden Holtby for 2012. On the other hand, I would really like to see Alex Ovechkin win so that it would shut up the whole "selfish player, bad leader, shrinks in the big moment" narrative that, for many people, is really a result of the whole "enigmatic Russian" bullshit. Plus, if Ovechkin wins, maybe we'll get a new commercial featuring the Ovech-head in the bowl of the Stanley Cup!

*F&$%@^g Windows! A recent update by Microsoft totally borked our home network. The problem? All my writing is on an external hard drive attached to my wife's computer--and that drive (the whole network) became inaccessible. After banging my head for hours, I think I've finally figured it out. If you're having similar problems (and if you're a Windows 10 user, you almost certainly are), what helps is to not just search stuff like "Windows update killed my network" or "can't access network after Windows update." Find the actual update/build number. This last one was 1803, and the article that helped me was found here. Good luck.

Godless: Opportunity Missed

A couple of months ago, The Wife made me and The Magpie watch a trailer for a new Netflix show that was soon to be airing. Pretend for a moment you have neither heard about nor seen trailer or the show itself, and watch the trailer (just under two minutes):


I'm not necessarily a "Western Guy," but this made me sit up and take notice. Not just because it's a well-crafted trailer (it is), but also the concept, as presented here. You'd be forgiven if you did what I did and thought, "Whoa, an Old West town full of nothing but women trying to hold back the world of men! Count me in!"

On the surface, that's exactly what it is. La Belle, New Mexico lost almost all of the town's men "in five minutes" as the trailer tells us, in a mining accident. Two years later, only a handful of men are left, and we see the women making decisions for the town and doing things like rebuilding the church, which burned down (La Belle had a run of bad luck, it would seem).

There are interesting women doing interesting things. Outside of town, there's Alice Fletcher (Michelle Dockery, and it took me a long time to realize she played Lady Mary on Downton Abbey), running her ranch with her Paiute mother-in-law and her teenage son (Alice's husband was one of the few who did not die in the mine; he was shot in the back on the streets of La Belle, so she is not exactly tight with the ladies of La Belle). There's Maggie MacNue (Merritt Wever), who now wears her dead husband's clothes, can outdraw the deputy, and thinks things are running just fine, thank you very much. There's the town whore turned schoolmarm (Tess Frazer), and the high society lady, Charlotte Temple (Samantha Soule), who hopes to turn the town's fortunes around. These are capable women who have endured a terrible tragedy, yet they stayed on when there was really nothing left for them to stay for.  They persist, and their stories are interesting and deserve to be told.

Yet, if you actually watched Godless, you'd know that the music that should have been playing during the trailer is James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's Man's World," because at it's heart, Godless is a story about men. Most specifically, it's about the relationship between the awful Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels) and his wayward adopted son and protege, Roy Goode (Jack O'Connell), with a sidehelping of disgraced La Belle Sheriff Bill McNue trying to redeem himself. Seriously, at the outset, it looks like Bill's sister would make a better sheriff.

It's a good story, and it's (mostly) well-told, though there is an awful lot missing, and not just about the ladies. There's a lot of stuff dangled about Bill McNue that is never really resolved. The acting is high quality and the atmosphere is fantastic (though I will say some of the action in the climax looked a little cartoony and reminded me of some bad kung fu film I saw long ago. I also could have done without the obligatory romance between two characters, and the even more obligatory rape back story of one (of the characters). I enjoyed watching Godless overall, and would recommend it, though this is definitely a case where the trailer is misleading.

What about you? Did you watch Godless? What did you think?

Stranger Things 2: That's a Relief!

Last week saw the much-hyped and long-awaited return of last year's surprise Netflix hit, Stranger Things. A critical success that was also insanely popular, the show is a sci-fi thriller centered on three nerdy, on-the-cusp-of-adolescence boys who are searching for their missing friend, and the mysterious girl with strange powers who appears in town one day. When we watched the show last year, we loved it, even my kids, who didn't get all the 80s references the way my wife and I did (and why would they? They didn't live through it!). The show was fun, provided some genuinely scary, tension-filled moments, and, most of all, had those kids. They were cute. They were sweet--and sassy. They had great chemistry and believable dialogue. Even where some of the characters ventured into the realm of cliché (the rich, pretty boy jock; the indifferent parents; the nerdy science teacher), you could mostly roll your eyes and let it go. It was a fun ride.

I approached the second season with trepidation. My experience with series, whether it's television, books, or movies, is that they eventually fail. Sequels--and with the title Stranger Things 2, the show's creators branded this like a sequel instead of a continuation--rarely live up to the quality of the original. Happy Days jumped the shark. Twin Peaks lost its way for much of its second season before David Lynch pulled it out of the fire late in its original run. The X-Files collapsed beneath the weight of its ever-expanding mythology, and Orphan Black, which I admittedly have not seen since early in its third season, was threatening to do the same. So I was a little worried about what might happen.

My worries were magnified after the first episode. It started with high action, introducing new characters, then seemed to lapse into too much scene setting, too much catching up. I understand the need to do that; even in this age of always-available shows and binge-watching, showrunners can't assume everyone's going to do this. Still, it seemed a little slow and pokey, a little unfinished. As the end credits rolled and the Netflix counter ticked down to the next episode, I wasn't really sure I wanted to go on. But I did, and I'm glad.

We watched another episode that night, then a couple more the next day, and a couple more the day after that. We will possibly finish the season tonight or tomorrow. And despite the obligatory romantic entanglements that seems like an industry standard, one episode where it seemed a character figured something out way too easily, and one episode that really felt like filler to me, my fears were misplaced. The show quickly found its groove. It felt like the first season in tone, it's provided plenty of thrills and humor, and it's allowing the characters most central to the show--the kids--to grow. And it's done it all without feeling like a straight-up rehash of season one. Stranger Things has not jumped the shark.

Do you watch Stranger Things? How are you liking this new season?

[EDIT: 10/31]: Jemi's comment makes me realize I asked the wrong question. Consider this also: How do you feel about the continuation of some well-loved series/franchise? Have you ever been pleasantly surprised? Deeply disappointed? Thanks!
 

Monday Musing: TV Schedules

On Friday morning, I found myself listening to something curious on one of the local radio stations. Seemed the DJ from one of the five or six stations housed in one building (and, as far as I can tell, these are the only two actual on-air personalities on any of these stations; I think they are totally automated otherwise) apparently popped in to chat with the other DJ. I don't know if this is something they do every week, or if maybe a guest who was supposed to come in that hour to speak with each of them cancelled, or if they just bumped into each other in the hallway and said, "Why the hell not?"

They were talking about television. I missed most of the discussion, I think--since I don't know how long they were talking, I can't really say--but neither of them are big TV watchers at this point, at least, of commercial TV. They both admitted to binge watching: "We'll sit down on the weekends and go through six episodes of House of Cards," said one. A little later, one commented how they don't know most shows on TV, but he could still remember the schedule of shows he used to watch as a kid. "I Love Lucy was on at nine on Monday, Burns and Allen, Thursday at eight."

It got me thinking about television and how much things have changed, even over the last 15, 20 years. When I was a kid, even into my thirties, probably, television was largely something you watched on schedule. Sunday night, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom followed by The Wonderful World of Disney. Friday night had The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family back to back (my poor parents). And then there were specials--anything by Jacques Cousteau would have the entire family lined up on the couch. Later, of course, there was "Must See TV" and the new Fox network's Sunday Night shows (Bad Taste TV?).

Now, of course, schedule largely means nothing. It used to be you had one, maybe two chances to catch an episode of your favorite show, but if you were out on a particular Tuesday night at 8, you might have missed Fonzie jumping the shark on Happy Days, with no chance to see it until summer reruns. Now? No big deal. The latest episode of Big Bang Theory is probably available for free in half a dozen places (and maybe even legally!).

Is this good, or is this bad? On the one hand, clicking "Play Next Episode" is great if we just can't wait to see Rick and the gang fight off the undead and the living, or to see how Fiona Gallagher is going to save the family this time. It definitely maintains an excitement level. But do we lose anything? I don't know.

What about you? Do you watch TV according to their schedule, or yours? Do you watch TV at all?

Meanwhile, some music. Last Thursday was the 36th (!!!) anniversary of John Lennon's death. I heard the lovely rendition of his semi-finished song, Real Love, performed by Regina Spektor. She's got a marvelous voice, really interesting. Enjoy.

Post-Christmas Post

Christmas falling on a Friday may be the best thing, ever.

My organization gets both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as holidays, leading to an automatic four-day weekend (although, as my boss insists on pointing out every time a holiday comes up, we don't actually have to take the holidays on the day they occur if we don't want to). I like my job, I like the people I work with and the work I do, but I also really like to spend  time away from the office. That's just the way I am.

For me, I added in a full day off on Wednesday last week, which I had requested a couple of weeks ago. After being out sick on Monday, I considered going in at least half a day on Wednesday to make up for things not done, and then considered maybe taking half a day. Instead, I ended up taking the whole day, and it was a good thing I did, too. The Catbird and I had shopping to do, and what I thought could take just half a day ended up being an all-day affair. It all got done, and except for an emergency run to the grocery store early on Christmas Eve for That Thing That Somehow Kept Getting Missed on all the other trips (in this case, a can of pumpkin puree), there was nothing left to do on Christmas Eve except for some pre-holiday cooking, some present wrapping, and enjoying the day.

It's been a loafy weekend for us, spent watching far too much TV (in this case, the Magpie had us watch Psycho-Pass, an anime which reminded me more than a little bit of Blade Runner at times, and Jessica Jones. This is my second run-through of Jessica Jones, and I'm finding it to be just as good the second time around. Yes, folks, there is such a thing as good TV out there!

I am quite happy to say, meanwhile, that I managed to get some writing in here and there. Mostly I worked in dribs and drabs, and found myself going over the same thing several times (though it was kind of new ground, as I worked on a chapter that hadn't been in my original draft). Sunday morning was particularly good; I put down nearly 4,000 words to electronic paper, some of which were all new, some of which were rewrites. Is it any good? Hard to say. I'm into the last quarter of the book and I'm having a hard time seeing the forest. There's yet another "let it sit for a bit then read it all" in the not-too-distant future, but there's a light glimmering in the distance. Best not to look; best to keep my head down and stay focused on the chapters in front of me.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, enjoy the week, and have a safe and fun New Year's Eve/Day!

The Awesome Spectacular

Remember back when I wrote about the impending series finale of Breaking Bad, and how I was afraid of the writers/producers giving in to the hype and screwing things up? No? You can read it here .

Anyway, this is on my mind because of the last two episodes of that fabled show from across the pond, Doctor Who.

Two momentous events happened in the last two months. First, right before Thanksgiving in America, the show celebrated its 50^th anniversary with an episode called, "The Day of the Doctor". A brief round of applause, please. Fifty years for a non-news program or talk show is insanely impressive (and we'll excuse the 16-year hiatus the show had between 1989 and 2005), and showrunner Stephen Moffat no doubt felt pressured into doing something big. Now, when the episode opened, I had immediate misgivings, as we quickly found ourselves in a long sequence that featured the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) hanging from the TARDIS as it was being dangled beneath a helicopter over London. "Oh, boy," I thought. "This is going to suck." It had the feel of BIG TELEVISION EVENT SPECTACULAR! which meant, in my mind, that it was likely to be big on spectacular special effects, guest appearances, and other Cool Stuff, but short on the stuff that makes for a good program: story.

There were indeed some spectacular effects (well, maybe not spectacular; this is Doctor Who, after all, which can be almost as cheesy as original Star Trek), great guest appearances, and other Cool Stuff, and the story was sufficiently big, if not always sensible (this is Doctor Who, after all), but in the end I was quite pleased with the effort. Matt Smith, David Tennant, and John Hurt had great rapport as three versions of the Doctor (and I had forgotten how much I like David Tennant); Billie Piper did a really nice job as The Moment--I'm glad they didn't decide to simply resurrect her as former companion Rose; and it was great how they found a way to pay homage to all the old Doctors. I do have a major quibble with what I feel is a whitewashing of the Doctor, in a way, but this is not the time or place for that. Again, the episode was enjoyable to watch.

And then there's the Christmas special. The Christmas special this year was notable for being the final episode for Matt Smith as The Eleventh Doctor, and the introduction of Peter Capaldi as Twelve. Did I enjoy it? Ye-e-s-s. But I also felt that the episode succumbed to the need to make it a BIG TELEVISION EVENT SPECTACULAR! In my mind it suffered seriously from Kitchensinkitis as Moffat threw in everything: Daleks! Cybermen! The crack in the wall from Amy's bedroom! Weeping Angels! The Silence! Time Lords from another dimension! ***spoiler alert***Amy!***end spoiler*** The problem was, most of these things were there and gone. They didn't feel like integral parts of the episode's narrative; rather, they felt like things that were thrown in to make the story feel more Epic. It was mostly enjoyable, but I feel that, in their efforts to make it memorable, they failed to deliver on the promise. It was too crowded with stuff.

Well, I suppose we've got a couple of years to think about a proper send-off for Peter Capaldi's Doctor. Maybe they'll be able to apply that old principle, "Less is more."

Did you watch either of the Doctor Who holiday spectaculars? What did you think?

Fitting Ends

Every so often I see a blog post that dovetails nicely with something I've been thinking about. When it happens, I usually scrap whatever I was planning to blog about, if indeed I was planning anything. This week was one of those weeks.

On Tuesday, Jemi Fraser wrote about a disappointing experience with an author. Said author wrote a book that was working—things made sense, the story was good, she liked the characters, everything was working.

Until the last page.

What she ended up with was an ending that made no sense, an ending that undid all the work that the author had put in to that point, an ending that left Jemi quite disappointed. Everything she said clicked with something that I'd been musing on all weekend.

The something that started the musing in the first place was the news that the first half of season 5 of Breaking Bad had finally arrived on Netflix (just in time for AMC to begin the show's final installment of episodes, which started Sunday). I've been waiting for this for a while now, because I'm cheap and don't want to buy DVDs or pay premium rental fees. Anyway, starting Sunday I began watching season 5 and should be caught up pretty soon. (I'd be caught up already, but my wife, who has a hate/hate relationship with the show, can only watch one episode per night. It's probably better that way.).

I've written here about BB before, about how I think it's done a brilliant job of characterization and showing, not telling (yeah, it's a TV show, but it's still a great example of it). As the end draws closer, I've been wondering what kind of conclusion we can expect, and whether it will be a satisfying, fitting end to a great series, or if it will disappoint, like the book Jemi read.

Endings are hard to get right, and they are of critical importance. If your book ends poorly, it can ruin an otherwise-wonderful journey, as Jemi found. It doesn’t have to be a happy ending, but it has to be the right ending. There's always pressure to get it right, but new writers have a certain advantage: we write our books, especially our first ones, in a vacuum. We write with freedom, unencumbered by anything except our own desires to tell the best story we can. We hope for success, we hope for readership, but when a reader gets your book, the ending has already long-been written, and you're hopefully already elbows-deep in the next one.

The folks running Breaking Bad, however, have tougher conditions to deal with. Not only do they have to wrap up the series in a way that makes sense within the confines of the world they've built, they also have to satisfy a rabid fanbase, and put up with intense media scrutiny. Series finales (and this goes for books and movie franchises as well as TV shows) have become Major Events, hyped up to the nth degree by network PR departments in order to capture as many eyes—and advertising dollars—as possible. The normal, week-to-week show structure is frequently thrown out of whack by having a longer episode. Or turning it into a two-hour movie. Viewers are promised something big and extra special, and it's often hard for the writers to deliver. (Some have suggested that this is why it seems to be taking George R.R. Martin so long to deliver the final book—or is it two?—to his Song of Ice and Fire series; maybe there's truth to it, maybe not). Sometimes, the finale lives up to expectations (M*A*S*H); sometimes it falls flat (Seinfield). Sometimes, no one knows what to think (The Sopranos).

I've been wondering what kind of end we'll see for Walter White and the people in his world, and I have no idea what we're going to get (I have two episodes left in the first half of season five, so please don't spoil anything for me!). All I hope is that it's the right ending. It doesn't have to be big, it doesn't have to be spectacular, and it doesn't have to make me feel good (and indeed, it's really hard to see a 'feel good' ending coming out of this series). It just has to be right. I have some ideas in my head about what 'right' is for this show, though I'll keep them to myself for right now.

Have a great weekend, all.

Image by Dwros89, used under Creative Commons license.

The Disappointing Dome

Once upon a time there were TV shows. These shows aired in 30- or 60-minute blocks of time, once a week, roughly twenty-six times a year between early September and mid-May. They took a few weeks off here and there, for major holidays, and were occasionally pre-empted for special events and other programming. Each week's show was a standalone episode, though on rare occasions you would get a two-part episode. The problem was presented, the crisis ensued, and all was wrapped up within the span of the time slot. With few exceptions, characters did not change a whole lot over the course of a program's lifetime--Barbara Eden's Jeannie was about the same at the end as she was at the beginning, and so was Tony Nelson, Major Healy, and Dr. Bellows. Yes, there were some shows that broke this rule (M*A*S*H was one that did it quite well, in my opinion), but they were the exceptions.

For character development, for real storytelling, we got the miniseries. The first mini-series I remember was Roots, in 1977. Roots was huge. It was an event. It ran for eight nights straight on ABC, 12 hours of programming time, and had everyone talking about it. While there had been miniseries before, Roots ushered in the Golden Age of the Miniseries: Holocaust (1978). The Winds of War (1983). 'V' (1983, not related at all to 'V' for Vendetta; this was more like an expanded version of The Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man). The miniseries was the perfect way to bring some stories to life that were too big for both regular TV and the movies. As an added bonus, they often attracted talented people who were usually only seen on TV appearing as guests on talk or variety shows.

photo by papalars

When I saw that Stephen King's Under The Dome was getting the miniseries treatment, I was excited—and a little peeved.* Like those big stories cited above, the miniseries format seemed perfect for Under The Dome. King's book is full of interesting characters doing interesting (and typically despicable) things to each other, too dense to be easily adapted to a 2 or 2-1/2 hour movie, not without having to cut the character list way down. Could it be done? Sure, Hollywood can do just about anything. Should it be done? In my view, too much would be lost. But a miniseries? Yes, thank you.

And now that I've seen five—or maybe it's six—episodes, I'm not so thrilled. In fact, I'm quite disappointed. Maybe I've been spoiled by the kind of programming that exists on HBO or Showtime, where you get things like The Sopranos, or Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones. You just can't get that sort of grit on the broadcast networks. Yet you can get quality, and Under The Dome, despite King's name as executive producer, and despite being backed by the television arm of Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, is falling short.

This is not me complaining about how much it differs from the book, though I do that for the benefit of my wife, who scoffs at certain things that have happened (like Stephen King needs me to defend him). No, this is about the quality of the show. I expected better. The minseries format should allow for the story to develop at the right pace, and it's the pacing that feels all out of whack to me. The problem is that each episode should have been longer, either 1-1/2 or 2 hours long, like the miniseries in the days of yore. Under The Dome is only an hour, and on network TV, one hour means about 42 minutes of actual programming. The result is that each episode feels rushed, cramped like Drusilla's foot in Cinderella's glass slipper. Add to that the fact we're keeping track of so many characters (Barbie, Julia, Big Jim, Junior, Phil, Linda, Scarecrow Joe), we end up jumping so much that we don't get enough of any one of them. It's ironic that the miniseries could stand a trimming down of the character list, given that one of the strengths of the format should have been the ability to follow more characters.

Still, as unhappy as I've been with the production, I've continued watching. Part of the interest has been in seeing how it's going to end--I want to know. I figured I could put up with less than stellar acting, and with occasional, head-scratching bits of logic. Let's see how it ends. And then came the unexpected news, just the other day: it's not ending. Under The Dome has been renewed for a second season. Wait, what? How do you renew a mini-series? Oh, I guess it's not a mini-series after all, and never WAS a mini-series. It feels like a ripoff, like a bait-and-switch at a smarmy car dealer. Part of the appeal of the minseries is that you're going to get a full story, spread out over time, but that it's going to have a conclusion. Like the best books, a miniseries should end with us wanting it to go on, though we know it can't. Now that I've learned that Under The Dome has no end, I'm actually less compelled to keep watching.

Have you been watching Under The Dome? What do you think? Have a great weekend.

*I'll perhaps explain this another time.

12-12-12

So, I watched a good chunk of the 12-12-12 concert Wednesday night. I forgot it was on, to be honest, and only found it when I decided I needed some brain melt time, shortly after 8 PM. I turn on the TV and there's Bruce Springsteen, looking like he's the one who should be playing a mobster on The Sopranos, instead of his buddy, Little Steven, wrapping up Born to Run. I stuck around for the next four hours, until I was driven away by a deadly combination of fatigue, Kanye West, the truly awful 'Drunk Uncle' sketch, and one-too-many instances of Brian Williams saying, "You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a celebrity back here."

I did enjoy the show overall. I thought most of the musical performances were strong, though I also thought the comedic bits were universally unfunny. The cause is excellent, and I suspect the concert raised a lot of money that will hopefully get to the people who need it the most. There is, however, one question that's been bugging me since somewhere in the middle of the evening. I think it first popped into my brain when they started flashing the 'coming up' promos during stage changeovers:

Where were the women?

There were plenty of women in Madison Square Garden for the show. I saw them dancing, smiling, waving their cell phones in the air. They were at the phone bank, there were at least two who appeared on camera between musical acts. And there were a lot of women onstage, but aside from Alicia Keys, they were backup singers and part of the band. So, where were the women?

Now I know there's a lot of things that go into producing something like this, a lot of considerations that go into selecting the acts. Most of the acts were 'classic' acts--Springsteen, Clapton, The Who, the Stones, Roger Waters--giants in the industry, big box office draws, who appeal to the demographic that I presume is seen as having the most money to give. You're not going to stuff this event with teeny-bopper heartthrobs, because the teeny-boppers can't fork over the cash.

There's also availability. Bruce and Bon Jovi are local guys, you know they're going to turn out for something like this. So is Billy Joel. The Who and the Stones both happen to be touring the US right now, and Sir Paul McCartney can do whatever he wants, wherever he wants, whenever he wants--he's Paul freakin' McCartney, after all. So the biggest women stars in the business today--Adele, Gaga, Katy Perry, Madonna, and I know I'm missing many others--may not have had the right combination of interest, audience, and availability for an event of this sort. Still, the night was notable for what it lacked.

I hate to see these kinds of events, because it means something terrible has happened somewhere in the world, something that has caused suffering among large numbers of people. But it will happen again, because that's just how the world is, things happen. And it will happen again because people want to help, they want to contribute and make things better, and that says a lot about us. I just hope that, when it does happen again, we see a better balance on the stage.

++++++

In light of Monday's post about John Lennon, I came across a link to the so-called 'last interview' he did for Rolling Stone magazine, about three days before he was killed. It's a really interesting read, and some parts that struck me as being appropriate for all of us writers here. Check it out here.

That's all for me, have a great weekend, all!

The Day After

Most of you are not going to remember this commercial, because most of you (I think) are too young. I watched too much TV growing up, and have the kind of memory that allows me to remember things like this. I'd almost think it's a Guy Thing, remembering stupid stuff that is absolutely no use to anyone, except my wife does it, too, only she remembers different kinds of silly stuff, like the color of the carpet in the living room of the third house we looked at in Greenlawn twenty years ago. Anyway, for some strange reason, I thought this commercial was hysterical back when I was [a kid]. It seems strangely appropriate given the big Thanksgiving weekend.


You never can tell what's going to strike someone as funny, do you?

There's not much else to report on here. The Magpie came home on Tuesday. Not being me when I was her age, she's spent her weekend at home so far (I was better about family obligations than some of my friends, but I'd be out the night before Thanksgiving, and just about every night of the weekend), and we've had a very nice time. Writing? What's that? I'm definitely feeling a little rusty right now, but maybe that's a good thing. Anyway, that's all for me for today, I've got some digesting to do. There's still half a turkey and a boatload of sides to polish off. But no Alka-Seltzer in my future - I took them once in my life. Never again.

Have a great weekend, all!

Monday Musing

Good morning, all. Hope you had a pleasant weekend. No super-coherent post today (as opposed to any other time, hah hah), just some random bits and pieces from the brain.

*Don't you just love it when you get a new idea? I was reading a book yesterday afternoon that sparked a line of thought, that led to what could be THE NEXT BOOK. I wrote a page or two during my Writers' Circle yesterday. It's all very vague and mushy in my head, but there's something there. Time to let it drift off to the Back Room for a while - I've still got Barton's Women to sand down and I'm reconsidering certain elements of Parallel Lives (I re-read it - it needs some help), so I've got plenty to do while this idea matures, but it's nice to have.

*I can't remember the last time a spectacular, hour-long, series finale concluded a television program on a satisfactory note. Last night's Weeds finale was another disappointment. The concept was good: showing the extended Botwin family roughly ten years in the future. Sadly, the execution just wasn't there. The episode provided some laughs and a tender moment or two, but much of it felt forced. It does not leave me feeling hopeful for the upcoming finales of 30 Rock and Breaking Bad. It seems the more networks hype up finales, the more likely they are to fail. A few notable exceptions: M*A*S*H, perhaps Newhart. I think Cheers ended pretty well, though I don't really remember. It was a long time ago.

*Music note. Have you seen the video for Bob Dylan's new song, Duquesne Whistle? It's...disturbing. Musically, it's fine (and I like the Louie Armstrong vocals; it's an improvement over some of Bob's more recent work), but the 'story' in the video is kind of creepy.



*I've been considering a new look for the blog. I liked this template when I chose it, but it's time for a change. I'd consider asking my wife to design a fancy schmancy website (that's what she does, after all) that cuts the cord from Blogger, but it feels a bit presumptuous.

*Anyone have experience with online submissions managers? A short piece I sent out at the beginning of the summer went from 'Received' to 'Second review' at one of the markets (can't remember if there was a 'first review' stage or not; I had kind of forgotten about it). It has since dropped back to 'Received', which makes me think a rejection notice is heading my way. Oh, well.

*Funny thing with words: I'm listening to a radio station as I type this. They're plugging an End-of-Summer 'Cornholing' tournament. To borrow a phrase from The Princess Bride: I don't think that word means what I think it means. I've read too much Stephen King; it has a very different meaning in his work.

That's about it for me for today. Enjoy the week, all.

Lessons From TV: Breaking Bad

I'm a terrible TV watcher.

By that I mean I never keep up. I hear about shows I'd like to watch from somewhere or other, make note of the night, time and station, and then forget all about it until the day after it airs. I'm always behind. Of course, Netflix and Amazon and On Demand means the actual schedule is largely meaningless; miss it, and you can easily see it almost any time, and sometimes even commercial free.

My wife would tell you I'm a terrible TV watcher because of what I like. Beginning way back with a show called Millennium, which aired on Fox right after The X-Files for a few years, I've developed a penchant for dark drama and dark comedy. Millennium, Oz, and then dark comedies like Weeds and Californication (while I'm not sure either of those exactly qualify as comedy, they're much more humorous than Oz or Millennium). And now I'm hooked on Breaking Bad.

I watched season 1 of Breaking Bad last spring but sort of dropped it over the summer, even though I really liked it. I started season 2 right after vacation. After reading over the AW thread on "Why movies?" I referenced last week, I was watching Breaking Bad and had that 'ah hah!' reaction, and I realized I was watching a writing clinic. Sure, TV and movies are vastly different media from books, yet you can still learn from the best, and Breaking Bad may be the best show on television. Here are two areas where Breaking Bad excels:

Characterization. We're always told to flesh out our characters, make them real, three-dimensional people, with hopes and dreams--and flaws. Our 'hero' of Breaking Bad, Walter White, is definitely three-dimensional. He's a 50-year old high school chemistry teacher who is already working 2 jobs to make ends meet when he finds out he's got inoperable lung cancer. He's also got a baby on the way, a 15-year old son with Cerebral Palsy, and a crappy insurance plan. While he expects to be alive when his daughter his born, he knows he'll likely never see her take her first steps, and will probably not see his son graduate high school. He's been dealt a shitty hand, so maybe, maybe we can forgive him for his decision to apply his knowledge of chemistry to cooking up the best, most pure methamphetamine the world has ever seen. After all, it's bad enough he's going to die; he's also likely to bankrupt his family in the process. Cooking meth is the avenue to taking care of his family. We may not condone it, but we can certainly feel for the guy.

But, to be honest, Walter is not a guy I like very much, even without the meth. If he were my teacher, I'd probably call him a prick. He's a stickler for detail. Worst of all, and what is really behind his plight is he's proud, almost to the point of arrogance. It takes him weeks to reveal his condition to his wife. When he's offered a high-paying job by an old friend who's a multi-millionaire, Walter turns it down once he finds out his wife told his friend about his cancer, and he compounds this by refusing to let his friend pay—no strings attached—for his treatment. Walter will not accept charity.

And when it comes to dealing with his partner, underachieving former student, Jesse Pinkman, we see even more of Walter's bad side. Walter is selfish: he demands that everything happen on his terms, at his convenience. He shows, initially, little concern for anything but himself, and he's pigheaded to boot. There's Walter's way of doing things, and then there's the wrong way. These things make Walter a complex character. Quite frankly, he's difficult to like, and difficult to root for, yet I sympathize with his plight, and I feel badly for him when his marriage starts to crumble, even though he's the architect of his own demise.

Breaking Bad also excels at showing, not telling. Now, this may seem odd, the notion of a TV show telling, as opposed to showing, but they do, on a regular basis. Whether it's a lab technician on CSI or Law & Order breaking in with an "As you know, Bob…" moment, or an ADA jumping in to explain a point of law that the characters might be expected to know, programs 'tell' like this on a regular basis. On shows with highly technical things happening, it is necessary so that viewers can understand what's happening, but it's sometimes used as a shortcut to characterization or to reveal backstory as well.

Breaking Bad does precious little of this. We learn about Walter and Jesse and the others in how they react to the other characters, and the situations they get themselves into. We see how Walter reacts to the job offer from his friend; we see him berating and insulting Jesse for mistakes that are at least partly Walter's fault, because Walter doesn't communicate very well. We see Walter bemoaning to his money-laundering lawyer the fact that he's got a half-million dollars in cash that he can't really spend, and we sense that half the problem for Walter is that his family doesn't know the lengths he's gone to to earn that money. SPOILER: when he finally tells Skyler what he's been doing, you know that he wants her to acknowledge that sacrifice he's made. It's brilliantly done, not because he says it outright, but because you pick up the subtext. 

Good characters, showing, not telling, these are things we know we need to do in writing, yet every once in a while those lessons just get reinforced somewhere, sometimes in unexpected places. Breaking Bad did it for me. How about you? Any TV or movies that you've found provide great lessons in writing?

I just want to add that I'm sending good thoughts out to all you folks on the Gulf Coast as Hurricane Isaac heads your way. I hope it passes quickly and uneventfully.