The Ending (if you want Spoilers)

Last blogs, Finale date 201308:19

I think since the Battlestar Galactica reboot, I purposely won’t get involved in a tv series until it’s over.

For some reason, now that everyone is getting all trope savy, we all want to know about that Finale. Will a new show even make it to the end of a planned season? Theoretically the end of the 4th season is the “100 hour” mark. Once it makes it to syndication, how is the series going? Is it deep into the season’s drama? Did they develop a good Big Bad for the season or better yet series?

It’s so tough to get a movie made with all the development hell steps, the worst thing a movie could do is blow it in those last 10 minutes. You can’t even get a sequel to make up for it if it doesn’t generate enough interest (income) to make one.

People can get hooked on the BEST series and then it’s ruined with the series finale. While were sucking Lost’s cock and critics were circle jerking around it, I kept remembering Battlestar and waiting…. And every time I hear about all the other anti- hero dad tv series, I think the same thing.

People weren’t even satisfied at the draw your own conclusion ending with Soprano’s. I read about viewers theories and apparently the foreshadowing came to the same conclusion real life did. There can be no Soprano’s reunion where Tony lives.

Also, all these dark series have taken their toll on me, albeit slower than “reality” tv did. That happened to me around the 4th season of Real World.

I can’t avoid all the tweets and articles about Breaking Bad. Is there any way the series could end that would satisfy half the viewers? The whole point is to watch the Big Main spiral into hell. What happens if they don’t do that? Or they attempt to “redeem him the right way?“ Remember the Shield?

It’s why I had to watch Harry Potters and I will have to rewatch them. That series just got better, even though 1) we know the ending (the “chosen one” vs. any evil?) and 2) it’s a collection of every English fantasy fiction trope as well as acting pool for the past 40 years. But, it maintained a quality and went out big and I have to study the success, from the first book to the last.

Harry Potter is apparently the big fluke because Rowling wasn’t known for much more (public media-wise) before that. So every time I look at a series everyone loves, I spend more time reading about what the creator has done before.

Game of thrones “guy” was known for writing before and people can look at his earlier work to try to gauge the quality of it now. And that leads to questioning if his writing (endings) have improved, or is he still trying to beat the dead horses of his earlier stuff? You know, like how a band comes out with a new album but all the songs are still the same? Do people even listen to a whole “album” anymore? At least we’re aware that many characters (that people got interested in) are going to die in the series, since there are cast of thousands.

It seems like a big deal is to have a cast of thousands, too. Simpson’s Springfield, Lost. It’s not enough to follow a dozen people on a show for some reason. A show has to have an expanded universe as big as Star Wars by the end of the first season. And yet, if the focus is shifted so much off the main characters, what the hell are people watching then?

I admit I read spoiler endings, now. It’s not to answer the big questions, it’s so I can see if those are the lessons/ answers I want or need to learn..

Advanced Wikia Sociology

I know, I flaked on you guys last Monday, so I’m writing this now and will start writing the next blog right after to hopefully have it up by Friday. 2 blog corpses for you to feast on this week.

What “ha’ happent” was like a mad scientist trapped in my project, I got caught up in writing about writing. It just exploded to a bunch of chapters I’m writing for my 2012 projects. I didn’t want to interrupt that flow. The original outline I still want to do after this, but this is about the cultures, tv cultures I got caught up in. It triggered a lot of personal memories and situations I couldn’t stop listing and typing about.

You guys have a lot of favorite tv series, like I do. There are some on tv I don’t understand and I focused on tv series, favorites and otherwise, that go well beyond the magical 4th/ 5th season that gets the 100 episodes required for syndication.

I think it started out as me asking myself what the differences are between Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy. I think I watched Simpsons w/ the original writers the first few seasons before I stopped, I got rid of cable after 9/11. I never got into South Park when the topics were more random. Now I actually like how focused their episodes are on a satire/ parody topic. I never got into Family guy, it seemed too random cutaway joke tangents to me?

All of those have wikia sites, I also looked a lot at Memory Alpha (every trek series wikia), How I met your Mother and I’m sure I can think of others. (Don’t get me started on this seasons HIMYM, it’s circling the drain.) I am obsessed with how detailed the timeline scrutiny holds up with those shows. And in studying all the recurring things in people’s lives, I got flooded with plugging in my own experiences I’m writing about.

I don’t think I had much writers block before, but it was tougher for me to discipline my self to produce a x amount of words every “”work” day.

But all those wikia sites have a lot of cool things I raped ideas from with people I know. Everyone has family members, a job, they live somewhere, they have vehicles. Most went to or are in school, they have jobs, financial and social statuses. They all like teams or participate in competitions.

Non fiction writing has interesting liberties I’m allowed to take. I can change a few identifying facts and names about people to protect them, like listing oh, where they eat as an example. I’m allowed to mish mash some facts as long as I have a point and a direction I’m going.

There are a lot of cool things tv series have that keep people coming back to, like lists of things. What are all the things on Earl’s karma list? How many ways can you say Legendary? What are the other Ferengi Rules of Acquisition? How many hundreds of shuttles Voyager wrecked? What are the other conditions of the rental agreement in Big Bang theory? How many ways can you kill off Kenny? How many chicks has Charlie Harper (and Sheen) banged? Oh, I have Vegas lists, certainly nothing like in any guidebook I’ve ever seen before, of any vacation spot.

TV shows have an artery of exploration. In M*A*S*H, you’ll have tons of patients that come in. Most shows have date of the week, cop shows have criminals and suspects, Cheers has customers to get drunk, Star Trek has aliens, ships and planets. It’s why I started watching Voyager & Twilight Zone on netflix, I missed mind challenging TV.

With all the one camera shows on now, the handheld, moving camera shows, with people sitting in the same living room or office every week- I can’t stand those shows. What’s sad is I love some of the actors and I can’t get thru a whole episode. thankfully, I don’t have cable to rot my brain with anything Kim Kardashian, Jersey Shore, or housewives. I sacrificed History channel and animal Planet to save, though.

Vegas has so many worlds in it, they all barreled in my mind in flashes when I can relate each place or event as a television episode. It’s why I reviewed on yelp. I also read books on writing short stories on how to condense stories, get the most out of each character, keep things going, involve all senses, take advantage of even the most minute conflicts. It’s all been real inspiring to me the past couple of months.

And I have my favorite writers and directors giving me DVD commentary “seminars” on the writing and production process. Don’t get me started on you tube, there are people putting out some impressively consistent things on a weekly basis.

Part of being unemployed is dealing with feeling like you’re not producing anything. This way, I can produce the best of what I want, my favorite things. Hopefully this year, I can start get paid from my writings.