Tuesday, June 26, 2012
TWENTY PEOPLE COULD SAY THAT THEY LIKED ME, ARTIE, AND I AM TELLING YOU I'D STILL BE THINKING SEVENTEEN OF THEM WERE LYING: Flavorwire's (single page!) list of the top ten tv shows about the making of tv shows demonstrates that there aren't, actually, ten such great shows yet, as Alan Sepinwall's similar 2009 list confirms (though he, at least, remembers Max Headroom).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Thanks for the single page note.
ReplyDeleteHow can anyone make a list like this without The Dick Van Dyke Show?
The defining paradox of the modern era of TV: I watched every episode of the Comeback, which was, to its core, unwatchable. That was the meanest-spirited show that ever was. There's an old saw among actors that you have to be able to sympathize with your character. The writers and Kudrow, though, made that character with nothing but spite, and then delighted in putting her down and kicking her for an hour a week for an entire season. So the show ended up being a thought experiment: what happens if you endlessly torture something that is perfectly engineered to merit derision? The answer is that you learn that you don't have to have sympathy for the subject to develop a strong revulsion for the torturers. Everybody involved with that bitter, hateful show should have to write a letter of apology to somebody.
ReplyDeleteExcept me, since Valerie was an interesting, sympathetic character.
ReplyDeleteReally? So talentless, so self-important, so inconsiderate to everybody around her, so entitled. It read to me like some successful people in Hollywood were making fun of slightly less successful people to make themselves feel more awesome.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't we also include "Seinfeld" in the mix -- even though only a couple of seasons were about making a TV show? I think it merits mention just for the scenes with the "real" Kramer and George trying to teach the fictional Kramer and George how to be Kramer and George.
ReplyDelete