Some links, for now | The House Next Door

By Matt Zoller Seitz on February 2, 2006 in Links for the Day Jump to Comments (0)

In NYPress, I write that Tommy Lee Jones' Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is a suitable Peckinpah tribute if you haven't seen a Peckinpah movie recently. Jennifer Merin talks to Steven Soderbergh about Bubble, which I disliked, and his distribution plan, which has never made sense to me no matter how many different people try to explain it. Armond White asks what makes Kenny Chesney's 'Who You'd Be Today' as great a record as 'Little Deuce Coup' and then gives a convincing answer.

Over at the Star-Ledger, my TV beat partner Alan Sepinwall delves into the world of network TV music supervisors, revealing the various factors involved in choosing and clearing particular songs. He follows it with a profile of one specific music supervisor, Alexandra Patsavas, soundtrack DJ for The O.C. and Grey's Anatomy. I have some fun at the expense of two canine makeover shows, PBS' Underdog and National Geographic Channel's The Dog Whisperer.

At PopMatters, Cynthia Fuchs actually finds fresh things to say about 24. At the New York Daily News, Richard Huff asks a question that is, for an American TV columnist, heretical: Is Jon Stewart comic enough to host the Oscars? And a belated recommendation: At Slant Magazine, Sal Cinquemani asks if Arrested Development is as good as everyone says, or if it's just really, really fast.

Update: Alan shows Veronica Mars some well-deserved love, and I wonder why somebody doesn't just pull the plug on ER. James Woods' performance as a dying A-list character actor is amazing, but how many of these do the producers expect us to sit through without rebelling?

Update: Over at Slate, Jim Lewis has a thorough and insightful appreciation of the late Nam June Paik, pioneer of video-as-art.

Update: The New World blog update: Liverputty compares/contrasts Edward Copeland's anti-Malick stance with The House Next Door's relentless (and for some, off-putting) cheerleading, picks a winner, and includes an affectionate parody of Malick's voice-over narration while he's at it. Also, some new, elegantly written analyses of Malick's visuals and editing strategies in the comments section of my 01/25/06 Malick post, "Just beautiful."

Matt Zoller Seitz is the founder of The House Next Door.

This talk of "Mr Show" tempts me to publish a new 5 for the day item, something like, "agonized laughter." That HBO series is on a the shortlist of shows and movies that made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to injure myself.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2006-02-04 07:54:00 Did Someone say Mr. Show? That show had me, more than once, literally rolling on the floor and laughing my ass off. I even fell out of my chair once (I had to in order to roll on the florr). Arrested Development has given me a few genuine LOLs over its brief tenure, but it's mostly extremly clever in a way that few shows have ever been. I've found myself admiring it more than laughing at it.
Posted by Grand Epic on 2006-02-03 08:42:00 Matt: I concur about the profanity. The bleeping made it funnier. It was as if the show itself was denying the reality of the characters. Another force pushing against the family.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2006-02-03 08:02:00 Neither fatalistic nor jerky -- despite all my hootin' an' a-hollerin', I'm pretty shocked it made it 2 1/2 (?) seasons, too. I know I'm ignorant to the intricacies of telebroadcasting, but one thing that really irks me is that there are bucketloads of shows that never get better than mediocre ratings, if that, and yet they stay on the air. Surely there's a place, even under a cupboard or something, for this show. As it stands, it's being punished for not being an across-the-board phenomenon, which is like putting, say, Mr. Show on prime time and wondering why it's not getting Lost numbers.

That said, when/if it heads to Showtime, I'm going to sincerely miss their creative ways of excising profanity.

P.S. I love how the box for the new edition of Dune actually advertises, as per the extended, Lynch-hated TV version, "Directed by Alan Smithee, Written by Judas Booth."
Posted by matt prigge on 2006-02-03 02:44:00 Sean: I agree about the dynamic changing. I suspect video on demand, downloads and other subscription/point of purchase type options will be the wave of the future.

Matt: Is it fatalistic or jerky to say that maybe AD was one of those series that was too eccentric to be on commercial broadcast TV in the first place? If it was on cable with those numbers, it'd be considered a phenomenon. Fox could've handled the show better, to be sure, but I have to admit, they stuck by it longer than I thought they would, without much return, and I'm still kind of stunned that they greenlit it in the first place. Ron Howard connection or no.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2006-02-03 01:44:00 Sean: "And if the show takes off and becomes a hit for some other network, Fox ends up with egg all over its face because that proves it was obviously their marketing failure, and not the show."

Let alone if Fox brings it back itself. (I'll never understand why people flocked to Family Guy instead of Futurama. Was it all that math talk?)

Interesting NYT Magazine article here (for those with site subcrips). The gyst is that through all those AD fan blogs, petitions, loyalty oaths, etc., some of it instigated by Fox itself, the blame is ultimately to be foisted on the fans' shoulders. You impotent geek, can't even get a couple more million people to watch your favorite show. (Slate's Dana Stevens also does a good round-up on the issue, from which I've mercielssly cribbed some of my factoids.)

In other news, I see many retailers -- Amazon and Tower Records, at least -- have dropped the price ridiculously low, surely at the behest of the studio. At one point, you could get both available seasons on disc for $30.
Posted by matt prigge on 2006-02-03 01:19:00 Edward: they won't commit so deals can be struck with other networks like ABC and Showtime that might be interested in picking the show up.

I doubt they'll ever let such a thing happen... there's no upside for them. And if the show takes off and becomes a hit for some other network, Fox ends up with egg all over its face because that proves it was obviously their marketing failure, and not the show. I wouldn't hold your breath.
Posted by Sean Burns on 2006-02-03 00:59:00 The thing that has really annoyed me about Fox's handling of the show -- because they did make some effort, especially during the first season, and they were patient enough to give it two more seasons -- is how mealy-mouthed they are being about whether or not it is canceled. They say it probably is, but they won't commit so deals can be struck with other networks like ABC and Showtime that might be interested in picking the show up.
Posted by Edward Copeland on 2006-02-03 00:54:00 Matt P: "There's also the way it's been ruthlessly manhandled by Fox's programming department. Let's not take the show off the air for a month right in the middle of the Charlize Theron plot, why don't we.

This year has really reminded me of the TWIN PEAKS death throes -- as those network geniuses have made it such hard work to figure out when the show is even going to be on the air that only the most devoted fans can be bothered to keep up.

Its another reason I've all but given up on regular network shows these days (trying to follow THE WEST WING is a similar scheduling nightmare. It seems to air every three weeks or so.)

I agree with Edward about the whole dynamic changing. Between pay cable channels and satellite radio I've had to seek out and subscribe to most of my home entertainment. The days of the big-tent programming on the free airwaves are quickly coming to a close.
Posted by Sean Burns on 2006-02-03 00:46:00 I love Arrested Development, but I do see how it would be difficult for someone coming to it late in the game to truly appreciate with all the references to past events. I have a friend who wasn't impressed by AD at the outset and didn't watch it but after all the hoopla, decided to tune back in this year. I warned him he might be lost. He was and he didn't like it any better and stopped watching. With today's fractured TV universe, I don't know why they have to bother making shows for everyone anymore. The whole dynamic has changed and choosy TV viewers should really be a valued demographic of their own since shows like AD would be the only chance advertisers have to reach them.
Posted by Edward Copeland on 2006-02-02 22:59:00 Matt: You say, "If you don't align yourself with its speed, you're not going to get the show anyway." A good point. Unfortunately I was never able to align myself as you describe. Watching the show was like running on a treadmill at high speed and not really getting anywhere. Or it felt that way to me, obviously not to others.
Posted by uncleej on 2006-02-02 18:15:00 Matt: "There's no reason to unslink a slinky, either." That's what I call grandpa wisdom. And I mean that as praise.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2006-02-02 17:30:00 As per your second reply: that might be the case. But, to pull from your earlier Marx Bros. comparison, ever take a look at their shooting scripts? They're not always funny on paper. There's no reason to unslink a slinky, either.
Posted by matt prigge on 2006-02-02 17:26:00 I have no doubt that its speedy density is what has kept it from attracting a larger audience. But I think it also has more to do with people sitting down for a couple minutes, being bewildered, and thinking (whaddaya know?), "I really should've started watching this show from the beginning." Click. I don't pretend to think this could have ever become a massive hit, but had more people given it some more time, to see if they can catch onto their wavelength, I'm pretty sure it could have turned in ratings that would've at least have kept it from the chopping block.

There's also the way it's been ruthlessly manhandled by Fox's programming department. Let's not take the show off the air for a month right in the middle of the Charlize Theron plot, why don't we.

On the second season DVD set there's a hilarious and highly cathartic rant from David Cross that puts the blame solely on the marketers.
Posted by matt prigge on 2006-02-02 17:23:00 Matt: Not to take anything away from AD as an achievement -- it was surely one of the better shows on TV during any of its seasons -- but that one line in the Slant piece asking if if it was really good or just fast rung my critical bells. On some level, I guess I wondered the same thing myself; there were times when I'd find myself laughing at gags that in retrospect didn't strike me as all that funny, and I think the show's headlong momentum might have elicited that laugh, rather than anything inherent in the writing or acting.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2006-02-02 17:09:00 Matt: Interesting claim. I'm not sure I agree with it. I watched fairly steadily throughout the show's run, and while it didn't bother me that I got tangled up in the lightspeed narrative quite a bit, I was aware that it was happening, and it did sometimes make me feel a bit, well, excluded I guess. I think you're right that the exact architecture of the show's narrative isn't all that important -- no more so than, say, the plot of a Marx brothers film -- but I do think it's one of the major factors keeping the show from connecting with a mass audience.

That's not a good or bad thing, just a thing; the producers made their bed and rather brazenly decided to lie in it, and that decision was one of the reasons the show was distinctive. And it's more and more common these days. With regard to narrative architecture, THE X-FILES, ALIAS, DEADWOOD, THE WIRE, 24, LOST and VERONICA MARS all made similar decisions; all are great or at least intringuing series that are somewhat daunting to newcomers, because they do not offer the one-off, open-and-shut, single-episode arcs that have defined television storytelling until recently.

Regarding "Bubble," I should have been more clear. I understand that releasing the film simultaneously in theaters, home video and video-on-demand is a bold and possibly reckless experiment, but I am not sure how it could possibly pay off, except in one way: because newspapers and some TV outlets inexplicably feel obligated to review every new movie that opens (a privilege not afforded to every new play, book or television show)the ancillary release of "Bubble" is guaranteed a certain amount of free advertising. I suspect that if you buttonholed Soderbergh or Mark Cuban after a few drinks, they'd confess that they never expected to make any money from theatrical, that the whole point was to sell this thing directly to arthouse regulars via DVD, video on demand, etc., while employing freebie theatrical media coverage as a de facto PR platform.

The problem with that strategy is, if and when newspapers disappear, and if and when theatrical exhibition really dries up, the strategy will be useless.

I realize I'm making a lot of presumptions here, some of them probably wrongheaded, but you asked what I meant, so there it is.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2006-02-02 17:03:00 I totally disagree with uncleej's claim. Starting with the opening credits, AD goes to greater lengths than most to overexplain everyone's connections, past plot developments, the origins of a joke, etc., etc., etc. Granted, it's done in whiplash style, but if you don't align yourself with its speed, you're not going to get the show anyway.

I, for one, was able to hop on at a random point, as were a couple friends. In fact, it was a friend who put it best: initially he thought he had to start watching from the beginning to get everything, only to realize, after a couple minutes, that it's all nonsense. (Not meant pejoratively.)

You're also wrong about it not being the best show on TV, but that's another debate. Steve Holt!
Posted by matt prigge on 2006-02-02 16:32:00 What don't you understand about the distribution of "Bubble"?

What I don't understand is the hoopla for "Arrested Development." Yes, it's better than most comedies, but it's not the best on TV. And if you weren't on board from the beginning it's impenetrable.
Posted by uncleej on 2006-02-02 14:30:00

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