tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post3454290954280587761..comments2024-03-19T01:35:16.890-04:00Comments on Cockeyed Caravan: A Tale of Two PilotsMatt Birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07319984238456281734noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-86466287760869525302011-10-15T13:32:36.091-04:002011-10-15T13:32:36.091-04:00Shucks, not only do I read the blog, Matt, I tell ...Shucks, not only do I read the blog, Matt, I tell my Young Authors email list to read "Storyteller's Rulebook." It's good stuff.Greg Hatcherhttp://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/category/fridayswith-greg-hatcher/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-55450829275212612802011-10-02T20:20:05.506-04:002011-10-02T20:20:05.506-04:00Hey there, Greg Hatcher, I didn't know you rea...Hey there, Greg Hatcher, I didn't know you read my blog! Y'all should click on Greg's name to read his excellent musings on book collecting, '70s pop culture, comics, pulps, teaching art, etc...<br /><br />And yeah, that pilot was a masterpiece of smooth exposition.Matt Birdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07319984238456281734noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-56804697563809610542011-10-02T20:08:30.869-04:002011-10-02T20:08:30.869-04:00I really wanted to use the first act of the pilot ...I really wanted to use the first act of the pilot for A GIFTED MAN in my writing class as a demo. I was awed at the way they got SO MUCH information in there without hardly any of that exposition-y dialogue you are pointing out in PERSON OF INTEREST. By the time A GIFTED MAN hit the first commercial you knew exactly who everybody was and what the doctor was supposed to learn by the end of the show, but it was also very much up in the air what would happen next. I adored it. <br /><br />I think it fell off a little the second week, but lots of shows do.Greg Hatcherhttp://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/category/fridayswith-greg-hatcher/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-63024445751342403372011-10-01T18:19:58.286-04:002011-10-01T18:19:58.286-04:00So Hurley didn't leave the island, right?
Oh,...So Hurley didn't leave the island, right?<br /><br />Oh, dude!<br /><br />:-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-23255004364126444272011-10-01T13:53:20.569-04:002011-10-01T13:53:20.569-04:00Holy cow did AGM go off the deep end this week. A ...Holy cow did AGM go off the deep end this week. A totally different show.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-15212632221896237812011-10-01T13:21:12.980-04:002011-10-01T13:21:12.980-04:00I watched all the trailers for the upcoming shows ...I watched all the trailers for the upcoming shows last spring but somehow, over the summer, I combined Person of Interest and Alcatraz into one show in my mind. I kept watching POI thinking, isn't Hurley supposed to be in this? And what does all this have to do with Alcatraz? Finally I remembered that was a totally different show.Matt Birdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07319984238456281734noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-15341768338101253082011-10-01T12:49:53.309-04:002011-10-01T12:49:53.309-04:00I've waiting to see what J. J. Abrams have don...I've waiting to see what J. J. Abrams have done with Alcatraz, (I get a bad vibe on this one). And yeah, Jim Caviezel is the anti-actor. Steven Seagal looks like Brando comparing with him.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-86449146634971984312011-09-30T21:05:25.430-04:002011-09-30T21:05:25.430-04:00I like j.s.'s description of the show. I wish...I like j.s.'s description of the show. I wish that was the show I've watched these past 2 weeks.<br /><br />This blog does a great job focusing on what makes a story work or not (the story structures that will hold it up) and that's great theory - but diagnosing both these shows underlines the harsh reality: your scripts awfulness or awesomeness won't matter if the actor and director don't execute. They could have received 100 notes ("say it more like Ben Linus", "try to act more like Jesus Christ, Crimefighter") and none of them would have been what was most wrong here: <br /><br />Caviezel is horrible. <br /><br />Alternatively wooden and sleepy< I've never been more convinced that an actor wanted to walk of set in every scene. In a part that cries out for Jason Bourne and we got Jason Bored. (If this was Whitney, I'd pause to wait for laughter from the "live studio audience".)<br /><br />And its not just CBS - on any network this pilot seems like a fake high concept show to me. They take their charge as making shows for the millions, so despite any high falutin' possibilities, it reads like what it is: expensive mash-up of "Numbers" (complete with awful graphics transitions) with "Hack" or "The Equalizer." But any of those shows has a more invested cast, which means the writer's voice may not matter.<br /><br />"A Gifted Man" has the opposite problem for me. I'm still not sure if this will be a good show or just a good pilot. Demme's direction was so good and Wilson was so sharp, a lot of hokey turns paid off. I'm curious to see how long that show can avoid being the Ghost Whisperer 2.0 - because "make me a better person" isn't a sharp season long arc.<br /><br />Also - for the record - I remain steadfast that the worst pilot this fall is the Playboy Club. At least an ineffectual procedural knows what it is. A drama that mashes together soap opera mobsters, showgirls, and American Dreams is too dreadful to have an equal.lthadeohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10794276143485078054noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-15488305879391423002011-09-30T12:55:44.499-04:002011-09-30T12:55:44.499-04:00I agree that the pilot wasn't all it should be...I agree that the pilot wasn't all it should be. If there was any excessive network influence it felt more to me like they demanded that the pilot be more like a typical standalone episode of the show than anything relating to the strong potential themes inherent in the concept -- paranoia, surveillance, privacy, pre-crime/predestination.<br /><br />The big mistake was making that first case too generic. It would even have been more interesting if the first case was somehow more about the Caviezel character getting caught up in a more complex crime before he joins the team.<br /><br />And, no, Caviezel won't always have to wait for someone to commit a crime because he's not an officer of the law. I can imagine cases where he takes it upon himself to intervene earlier, even maybe to save people from themselves.<br /><br />Your reference to pattern recognition and potential anomalies/mistakes in the system is still very much a possibility for the show. There could be all sorts of twists to the names of the people the system spits out and the reasons it names them.<br /><br />The concept is so brilliant and wide-open. It's so much closer to what's actually presently possible than to Philip K. Dick. It's a very small leap from P.O.I.'s system to what's known publicaly about U.S. capabilities in data mining, social network/link analysis and identifying/tagging/tracking technology that permitted operations like the Bin Laden raid and the one that killed al-Awlaki today.<br /><br />It's been a long dry spell for decent genre thrillers on TV. And I vastly prefer what I've seen so far from P.O.I. over a piece of pretentious junk like AMC's canceled RUBICON, which was supposedly so self-consciously styled after all those great '70s films like THE CONVERSATION and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN.<br /><br />Even with the somewhat disappointing pilot, P.O.I. is CBS' most interesting procedural since THE UNIT.j.s.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-16580063631664397402011-09-29T21:31:03.354-04:002011-09-29T21:31:03.354-04:00Eh... Everything you're saying is exactly what...Eh... Everything you're saying is exactly what I thought when I heard about the concept, but I didn't see any of that moral ambiguity in the actual pilot.<br /><br />And the concept that the machine spits out a serial number of someone who might a victim or might be a victimizer really guts the "stop the crimes before they happen" aspect. Each week, won't Caviezel just have to follow the p.o.i. around until something happens? <br /><br />Here's a more interesting version: the computer works by means of pattern recognition, but sometimes it spots very subtle patterns that nobody understands: three random newspaper articles that seem to have nothing in common, for instance, so the government just throws away those results. Our guys pick up those scraps and try to figure out the connection before something goes wrong. That would give them something to actually investigate and come with different theories about. <br /><br />As it is now, it feels like the Twilight Zone if Rod Serling stepped into frame and shot the bad guy at the end. "Ladies and gentlemen, let's watch this week's person and see what happens (then I'll step in and shoot and/or save them.)"Matt Birdhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07319984238456281734noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13294573.post-60960950948310035092011-09-29T21:13:00.209-04:002011-09-29T21:13:00.209-04:00I'm going to go out on a limb here and say tha...I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I really disagree about PERSON OF INTEREST.<br /><br />You've written before that shows like CSI and NCIS lack dramatic irony. Whoever said they aspired to it in the first place?<br /><br />It seems like you want P.O.I. to be more like a serious, serialized cable drama, something I don't think anybody (creator Jonathan Nolan, producer J.J. Abrams, CBS itself) thought they were making.<br /><br />And even though the show clearly announces its procedural nature, I don't think that's all it has going for it. There is strong potential built into the concept for an X-Files like mythology arc throughout the first season and the series as a whole. These stories would be about the backstories of both protagonists, how the system was built, who else has the technology now, and the ever-expanding reach of what the Washington Post has called Top Secret America. <br /><br />And for a mere CBS-y procedural, really, this show already has the ability to say more about our present paranoid national security state than anything else I've seen from popular genre fiction in any medium since 9-11.<br /><br />Not to mention the freshness at the heart of the genre concept: To have a detective/mystery/thriller story which will always play out more like a puzzle story, because on any given episode we'll never know who's playing what part -- good guy, bad guy, etc. -- until it's nearly too late. <br /><br />I've heard that this show tested better than any pilot in recent CBS history. And for once I can agree with whatever everyday people were pressing the "like" button throughout their focus groups.j.s.noreply@blogger.com