Beyond the opaque incoherence of Season 2, my quick take on why it was so bad was that, last year, Harrelson and McConnnaughey are good enough actors and Cary Fukunaga a good enough director that they all realized they were working on a piece of pulpy cheese and approached it from that direction, making it all seem to work. (That it didn't really is beside the point.) This season, although most of the actors were good enough (despite the reliance on non-Americans - and seriously, did Farrell become more southern every week accidentally or on purpose?), they all believed the press and took the whole thing deadly seriously, which killed it.
I do not expect a Season 3. --Dave Sikula On Tuesday, August 11, 2015 at 10:10:39 AM UTC-7, PGage wrote: > > On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 1:41 AM, Adam Bowie <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > >> (SNIP) Some of the criticism I've read is particularly misjudged. Yes, >> you have to work with the storyline. It's not all laid out before you. But >> I like that. Even in this gold/diamond age of television, storylines in >> television are still mostly have straightforward narratives: A to B to C. >> There's nothing wrong with playing with this. I do wonder sometimes if it's >> the need to concentrate - you can't be using a second screen with a series >> like this and get by (That's why I hate in-programme "Tweeting" of anything >> other than reality/sports). >> >> As to why the internet has "decided" that this was an awful season? I'm >> not sure. I do think polarised opinions drive click-throughs and >> "engagement," so it's an easy default option. And having read Jon Ronson's >> So You've Been Publicly Shamed which I think was very good for the most >> part, I'm not convinced that's really a relevant comparison. The book >> explores a different side of human nature. (The dentist probably doesn't >> quite fit this criteria either because one way or another he thought that >> killing the lion was entirely legitimate.) >> > > I have been trying to stay away from sounding like I was saying that > people who did not like S2 were too stupid or lazy to understand it, but I > do think there is something to your point. I have also read a lot of > criticism that the plot was not just too complex, but did not make sense. I > found that this was the kind of show I could not have on as background > noise while doing other things - I had to turn away from my computer and > actually intently pay attention. After several episodes I had to go back > and re-watch some parts. I think the biggest criticism I have is that so > many of the characters that were on the periphery of the on screen action, > but central to the larger plot, were hard to distinguish from each other, > both visually and by name. I found myself keeping the wikipedia page open > just so I could double check the identities of the various names that got > mentioned. I think this habit did help me follow the key plot reveal near > the end (who killed Caspere, and why?). > > On reflection I probably should not have used the lion-killing dentist as > an example of what I was trying to get at here - it was just the most > salient example available in memory when I was typing. I was not > referencing the practice of online shaming at all, but rather the > phenomenon of internet flock-behavior, and what determines it, positive or > negative. On its merits there is no real objective basis for someone to > both LOVE S1 of TD and HATE S2. One could hate both, love both, or love the > first and think the second was not as good. But the strong, passionate, > negative reaction to S2 on the part of people who loved S1 seems to me > unexplainable by anything in these programs themselves, and can only be > explained by the larger group dynamics of the internet. I am convinced that > a lot of the people trashing S2 never even saw S1 - and this morning I > heard someone bashing S2 who later admitted that he had only watched > episodes 3 and 4, and stopped because it did not make sense to him (I > wanted to scream "Dude - its not NCIS!). I am imagining that some cool > taste-maker twittered their dislike for S2, and the flock adjusted their > flight in accordance. > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
