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I've watched more TV than usual this week. I started off with 10.5 a show that wasn't supposed to be funny. Then there was Angel 5.20 that a lot of people did not want to be funny. Finally last night was the series finale of one of the most honored comedies of all time.
To be honest I laughed the hardest at the first few minutes of 10.5, which was so predictable and poorly executed, that you'd have had to use your imagination and think like a child to even begin to take any of it seriously. It had really bad science, really bad special effects, really bad writing, and in some cases some really bad acting. A child or someone willing to accept it with all its flaws might have seen a decent starting point from which their imagination would fill in a good story. Someone with less patience might have written angry letters off to NBC for taking the favorite whatever off to show it during sweeps. But, for me it was so extorardinarily silly it entertained me for at least a portion of two nights. I couldn't stand such a thing every night, but once in a great while such trash fun for me.
To be honest I found the "Friends" finale a little empty. It isn't that it wasn't funny. The problem is that the material was what was funny eight or more years ago when the show was at its peak. Ross and Rachel getting together was a forgone conclusion. The method it was handled was more typical of the show than inspired. Before we've seen both ends of Ross' China trip at the airport, as well as Chandler's infamous trip to Yemen which came complete with a ticket buying joke. There was yet another birth on the show and like Phoebe's labor the woman carrying the babies wasn't going to take them home,. There was another surprise birth of a girl again. They brought back a chick and a duck again. The foosball table played a role again (although it didn't look a heck of a lot like the original, the little men were even the wrong colors!). If you hadn't seen years of Friends you'd think it was very funny and warm. Personally I have seen years of Friends and thought it was a sad end to a comedy that has seen better days. It was going through the motions, It was a retrospective that could have been saved for ten years from now, and been more effective... It was just time for "Friends to end. I'm glad Ross got Rachel, I'm glad Monica got the kids she always wanted, glad Gunther finally told Rachel how he felt, but for me it should have all happened three or four years ago when people weren't all saying how much better Friends used to be.
Which brings me to the Angel episode. Yes, I saw all the flaws everyone else did. But, for someone who has had real problems with the direction the show took in the past, I felt like there was still some life in the Angel series while watching on Wednesday night. No, there wasn't any deep emotion. Even Fred's parents arriving turned out to be an emotional non-event. But frankly, emotion is way over played on TV these days. There were plenty of emotional moments in 10.5 even if the surrounding story didn't support them very well. The Friend's finale had one emotional moment after another, but none of it really worked, because they were exactly the same darn emotions the show has been tugging at for ten years. The most recent episode of Angel was no classic, but it was clever, it brought up old themes as originally as was feasible, even came up with an interesting new character on screen, and one people wonder about off screen. I'll be sorry this year to see Angel go. I think it's vastly better than it was last year. But, if it goes out now, it won't be because the ideas were all gone and the charcters were too stagnant to lead to anything new for a another season.
To be honest I laughed the hardest at the first few minutes of 10.5, which was so predictable and poorly executed, that you'd have had to use your imagination and think like a child to even begin to take any of it seriously. It had really bad science, really bad special effects, really bad writing, and in some cases some really bad acting. A child or someone willing to accept it with all its flaws might have seen a decent starting point from which their imagination would fill in a good story. Someone with less patience might have written angry letters off to NBC for taking the favorite whatever off to show it during sweeps. But, for me it was so extorardinarily silly it entertained me for at least a portion of two nights. I couldn't stand such a thing every night, but once in a great while such trash fun for me.
To be honest I found the "Friends" finale a little empty. It isn't that it wasn't funny. The problem is that the material was what was funny eight or more years ago when the show was at its peak. Ross and Rachel getting together was a forgone conclusion. The method it was handled was more typical of the show than inspired. Before we've seen both ends of Ross' China trip at the airport, as well as Chandler's infamous trip to Yemen which came complete with a ticket buying joke. There was yet another birth on the show and like Phoebe's labor the woman carrying the babies wasn't going to take them home,. There was another surprise birth of a girl again. They brought back a chick and a duck again. The foosball table played a role again (although it didn't look a heck of a lot like the original, the little men were even the wrong colors!). If you hadn't seen years of Friends you'd think it was very funny and warm. Personally I have seen years of Friends and thought it was a sad end to a comedy that has seen better days. It was going through the motions, It was a retrospective that could have been saved for ten years from now, and been more effective... It was just time for "Friends to end. I'm glad Ross got Rachel, I'm glad Monica got the kids she always wanted, glad Gunther finally told Rachel how he felt, but for me it should have all happened three or four years ago when people weren't all saying how much better Friends used to be.
Which brings me to the Angel episode. Yes, I saw all the flaws everyone else did. But, for someone who has had real problems with the direction the show took in the past, I felt like there was still some life in the Angel series while watching on Wednesday night. No, there wasn't any deep emotion. Even Fred's parents arriving turned out to be an emotional non-event. But frankly, emotion is way over played on TV these days. There were plenty of emotional moments in 10.5 even if the surrounding story didn't support them very well. The Friend's finale had one emotional moment after another, but none of it really worked, because they were exactly the same darn emotions the show has been tugging at for ten years. The most recent episode of Angel was no classic, but it was clever, it brought up old themes as originally as was feasible, even came up with an interesting new character on screen, and one people wonder about off screen. I'll be sorry this year to see Angel go. I think it's vastly better than it was last year. But, if it goes out now, it won't be because the ideas were all gone and the charcters were too stagnant to lead to anything new for a another season.
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From:
no subject
I can't blame people for wanting to escape their own problems with watching someone else's emotional problems on the screen. But, sometimes I really get unhappy with being jerked around emotionally with no story to back it up. Like canned laughter, a little emotional manipulation can be a help and too much can just be annoying.
From:
Agreed
Exactly - it has to built up to. You have to earn the moment. The difficulty I had with Fred's death this season, for example, was the emotion seemed to be unearned. It wasn't really built up to so as a result you had the writer telling us to be upset, instead of letting us be upset. That said Hole in The World was a lot better than some of the manipulation I've seen elsewhere. TV is very guilty of this.
The reason the Rachel/Ross deal didn't work for example is it was redundant. How many times have these two broken up, gotten back together, broken up again? At this point, you sort of want them together so they don't screw up anyone else. LOL! It had become trite.
Same with the twins and the single mother giving them up - it was a repeat of what happened in the show before.
The Body...every moment was earned. The writer just let the characters react to the situation, told the story, instead of commenting on their reactions or telling us his feelings about them. It's a hard thing to pull off, I think. Showing not telling. So few accomplish it.