EXTRA CRITICUM

"Girls" and the sitcom fantasy of being rescued from yourself

Girls is the antithesis of the modern sitcom, most notably in the way it depicts sex as awkward and only intermittently satisfying — as opposed to the happy, off-screen "banging" that's talked about on shows like How I Met Your Mother and is only occasionally disrupted by cute-as-a-puppy instances of impotence. This week's second-season finale closes with a skewed take on a romantic comedy cliché, as Adam responds to a phone call of distress from Hannah by dashing out of his apartment at night without a shirt on, taking the subway to her place, breaking down her front door, and lifting her out of bed in his arms.

The lowered expectations in binge-watching TV shows

You might think that binge-watching a TV series, or going through an entire season in one day, is a sign that the series is really good. That is, each episode is so satisfying that you can't wait to get to the next one.

But TV critic Jaime Weinman, in contemplating Netflix's decision to put all 13 episodes of its original series House of Cards online on the same day, suggests that binge-watching might be a way of managing expectations:

The benefits to society of watching made-up stuff

The Boston Globe's Brainiac blog gets at why I watch so much scripted television and avoid all news programming (though I read nonfiction constantly). Brainiac writer Kevin Hartnett summarizes the work of philosopher Richard Rorty, who argued that fiction can bridge political differences.

Flannery O'Connor: The first HBO showrunner?

Jim Shepard's essay in The Atlantic about the conclusion of Flannery O'Connor's unforgettable short story "A Good Man Is Hard To FInd" got me thinking about contemporary TV series in which the hero (more often, anti-hero) isn't allowed to change too much.

He focuses on what a criminal ("the Misfit") says about an old lady near the end of the story: "She would have been a good woman ... if it had been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life." Shepard's interpretation:

... He's not saying that a near-death experience would have turned her into a good woman. He's saying it would take somebody threatening to shoot her every minute of her life.

In other words, these conversion experiences don't stick — or they don't stick for very long. Human beings have to be re-educated over and over and over again as we swim upstream against our own irrationalities.

Is Mad Men written backward, and is that a bad thing?

On my regular blog, I weigh in on the "Would Joan really do that?" debate sparked by the most recent episode of Mad Men ("Let's remind ourselves that Mad Men characters aren't real"), and I would love to get the perspective of the E.C. community on the importance of character consistency on a TV series. I also have a question prompted by this passage (spoiler removed) in James Poniewozik's criticism of the episode:

"Top 100 sitcom episodes of all time" is now on Pinterest

My "Top 100 Sitcom Episodes of All Time" project is proceeding (now up to No. 47), but I seriously underestimated how much time it would take — something that I suspect a lot of E.C. contributors can understand. A big time suck is finding screen shots from each episode to accompany my blog posts. Fussing over the right look is a great way to put off writing.

Now I'm experimenting with Pinterest as another form of procrastination, but it's actually helpful in arranging my posts so that they're easier to browse. See the gallery of "Top 100 Sitcoms" here. Has anyone else found Pinterest useful as an organizing tool?

Top 100 Sitcom Episodes update, or how TV is forcing me to write every day

I've never been disciplined enough to set aside some time for writing every day. It's too easy to decide that I've done enough other work, and that no one will even notice if I don't post anything on my blog for a day (or a week). But I think I've tricked myself into a daily writing habit, thanks to my reckless commencement of a project that requires at least 100 little essays.

Is there a backlash against single-camera sitcoms?

Salon's Kartina Richardson doesn't like this season's live-audience sitcoms (few critics do), but she's hoping for a rejuvenation of the format:

When we watch these shows, we are part of an audience in a way that we aren’t in the more intimate viewing experiences that single-camera shows offer us. The theater-like form of the multi-camera show requires us to embrace artifice in an era where performance and deliberate creation are hidden.

As our society continues to create new ways to communicate while we remain in individual isolation, the multi-camera sitcom might be one of the last places many of us participate in a communal viewing experience (even if it’s a simulated one). Movies are increasingly viewed at home and hardly anyone can afford to go to live theater. As I struggled through “I Hate My Teenage Daughter,” I felt a tingle of that camaraderie that arises when we’re part of an audience.

Top 100 sitcom episodes of all time (a list in progress)

After months of bugging acquaintances for suggestions, I've finally started posting my list of the “100 Best Sitcom Episodes of All Time” at my personal blog. Each episode will get a separate blog post, counting backward toward No. 1.  A list of the programs revealed so far is here. 

I'll be posting the entire list at Extra Criticum, but please visit my blog if you're interested in the meantime. And I welcome comments from the insightful E.C. audience!

Here is the introductory post:

When I decided to make a “best sitcom episodes” list last year, I had two goals in mind. One was to make the case for the sitcom as an art form to people who were unfamiliar or dismissive of it. The second was to contribute to the making of a canon, or a consensus set of episodes that critics should be familiar with so that we have some shared points of reference.

Rob Lowe wastes 9 hours a day in the makeup chair

This People magazine "didja know" item is insane. Rob Lowe is playing former TV news star Drew Peterson for a Lifetime reboot:

To play the 57-year-old former Illinois police sergeant — jailed since May 2009 on charges he drowned his third wife, Kathleen Savio — the chameleon-esque actor, 47, goes through a nine-hour transformation every day.

Big shots who don't need social media don't understand why us nobodies use it

My guess is that New York Times executive editor Bill Keller gets all his phone calls returned. I'll bet that he has party invitations for every night of the week and has strangers trying to get his attention at every conference room and cocktail bar he steps into. I don't think he means to brag about this, but that what he's doing when he wonders aloud why we need stuff like Twitter and Facebook:

The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions. Unlike the virtual fireplace or that nesting pair of red-tailed hawks we have been live-streaming on nytimes.com, Twitter is not just an ambient presence. It demands attention and response. It is the enemy of contemplation. Every time my TweetDeck shoots a new tweet to my desktop, I experience a little dopamine spritz that takes me away from . . . from . . . wait, what was I saying?

"The Office": Good riddance, Steve Carell!

Vulture's Willa Paskin gets at the reason I'm watching The Office with dry eyes and a critic's curiosity rather than a fan's verklemptness:

Yes, the Michael Scott of season seven of The Office is slightly less boorish than the Michael Scott of season two. He has matured over the course of the series — and especially this season, thanks to having found his soul mate, and, of course, having to wrap up his story arc. Michael loves his staff like they are family — they are his adopted family; that's the show's essential premise — but he still remains capable of remarkable acts of insensitivity, which is, and always has been, an integral part of his character. Michael is not, and has never been, perfect. But as Michael Scott, Steve Carell has been nearly so. And over these last few valedictory episodes of The Office, Steve Carell and Michael Scott have gotten conflated. In the world of the show, a lovable buffon is moving to Colorado; in reality, a beloved TV star is going to make movies. Only one of these guys is getting the send-off he deserves.

A typology of stupid sitcom characters

Cross-posted at Robert David Sullivan.

Is 30 Rock's Tracy Jordan a racist caricature? Huffington Post contributor Zeeshan Aleem made the argument last year, complaining that "Tracy, the only black protagonist of the show, is invariably depicted as a hyper-sexual, mentally challenged, violent, emotionally unstable, irresponsible man-child." His essay got some more hits last week when Slate's Elizabeth Weingarten reported on 30 Rock creator Tina Fey confronting the issue on her book tour. Fey conceded that "Tracy Jordan is a ridiculous character" but implied that he's basically an extension of actor Tracy Morgan's public persona.

Their First Posts

It's interesting to recall where we began, when we first arrived at this site. What obsession started us off as a contributing voice in this online community?

Here, in chronological order, are the first posts of the first eight Extra Criticum authors to join the site. What were they pondering when they first came on board? Enjoy!

 

Sometimes, it's best not to start watching a TV series from the beginning

Cross-posted on Robert David Sullivan blog.

Jaime Weinman tackles a point of modern TV etiquette:

..now that TV series are taken more seriously as complete and coherent works, to say nothing of the fact that we can watch from the beginning no matter how late we discover the show, there’s an increased preference for getting the full experience of the story from beginning to end. Even where the show deals mostly or partly in self-contained stories, like Justified or almost any half-hour comedy, many new viewers prefer to start from episode one.