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There is something about even the best shows on CW that is off-putting. It's not just that they are aimed at teenagers with the hopes that young adults will also watch. It's not just that they tend toward melodramatics, in the sense of leaning heavily on emotion. The whole TV industry is as unbalanced these days as it was in the 1950s and CW being a niche market is more of an extreme case of the same thing rather than an innovator. Going back to the word melodramatics, I want to say that a lot of what the CW does is melodrama. But that's not right. Melodrama technically deemphasizes characterization for plot, action and emotion. What we have far too much of these days is a little different. We have show after show overlooking plot and especially plot continuity for characterization, action and emotion. Let's call that emphasis on characterization, action and emotion "neo-melodrama" for lack of a better word.
In the typical classic daytime soap opera, long term plot means zip. You have story lines, but their whole intent is to have the audience in tears during the maximum number of episodes not to make sense or to tell a story that everyone will remember for years and years. It doesn't matter whether the audience is crying for joy or saddened sympathy, the emphasis is most often on tear jerking. Folks who love to watch daytime soap opera, love that kind of thing and that's fine. I'm not the only one who calls what's going on at night on TV, soap opera, but it's usually not really the same. We have longer term plots, that seem to mean something, but in the end don't. It's really all still about this emotion or that emotion. But on night time TV it's a broader range of emotion, not so constantly trying to produce happy or sad tears. I don't know whether it's a lack of attention span these days, or a willingness in the target audience to forget everything that's happened for the emotion of the moment, but I can't deny that neo-melodrama is popular.
Shows on the CW are mostly neo-melodrama, plot lines seem to be drawn up a year at a time, like Joss did on Buffy. But unlike Joss, they barely seem to give a damn about what happened the year before. The characters remain fairly true to themselves, the action stays at the same levels, but the stories frequently make no sense from one year to the next. It's like reading fanfic from eight different people in one afternoon. The characters are all the same, but the stories in no way fit together. If you like reading one fanfic after another from all kinds of people, you're probably a fan of neo-melodrama. And that's fine. I would just like to say that these days there is too much of it on TV.
(Spoilers for Arrow in this paragraph.) I enjoyed the first season of Nikita very much. When the second season got going, I could hardly stand it. Why? Because while the characters were mostly the same, the story was turned upside down. Same characters in a totally different world, behaving as if they remembered little of the old one beyond the names of the other characters. Arrow has gone that way, too. We spent a whole season with Laurel an advocate for the down-trodden and having her believably deciding over time that she loved Oliver and not Tommy. This year suddenly she's working for the DA's office, and she's so wrapped up in self pity she can't be bothered with Oliver. She broke down and admitted last episode she was acting weirdly because she felt responsible for Tommy's death. Fine. But does she now get to progress toward something like her old life? No, now she's an alcoholic and her go-way-leave-me-alone excuse for staring to drink (cause she wasn't abusing alcohol before) is that her dad was an alcoholic. Better done than Willow's addiction on Buffy, but far more abrupt. Next item: Laurel's sister was dead, dead, dead and lost at sea, last season. Now as of last night's episode, her sister is alive and a superhero, who can't go back to her family because of the things she did when everyone assumed she was dead. Really? If that wasn't enough twist, we had one at the end that I must say was totally expected, a classic comic book twist, that no one over the age of ten should find too startling. Even if it was expected it still turns the main plot of the season upside down, in a season in which we've already had too much of that kind of thing. I enjoyed Arrow last season, but like in Nikita, the neo-melodrama has become next to unbearable for me. Worse, I can definitely foresee the same thing happening on Reign, the only other CW show I watch, should it survive to a second season.
Score for the episode as a stand alone: B+ ...good as it ever was if you like neo-melodrama.
Score in the context of the whole series for me: F ...just about enough to make me quit watching the show.
In the typical classic daytime soap opera, long term plot means zip. You have story lines, but their whole intent is to have the audience in tears during the maximum number of episodes not to make sense or to tell a story that everyone will remember for years and years. It doesn't matter whether the audience is crying for joy or saddened sympathy, the emphasis is most often on tear jerking. Folks who love to watch daytime soap opera, love that kind of thing and that's fine. I'm not the only one who calls what's going on at night on TV, soap opera, but it's usually not really the same. We have longer term plots, that seem to mean something, but in the end don't. It's really all still about this emotion or that emotion. But on night time TV it's a broader range of emotion, not so constantly trying to produce happy or sad tears. I don't know whether it's a lack of attention span these days, or a willingness in the target audience to forget everything that's happened for the emotion of the moment, but I can't deny that neo-melodrama is popular.
Shows on the CW are mostly neo-melodrama, plot lines seem to be drawn up a year at a time, like Joss did on Buffy. But unlike Joss, they barely seem to give a damn about what happened the year before. The characters remain fairly true to themselves, the action stays at the same levels, but the stories frequently make no sense from one year to the next. It's like reading fanfic from eight different people in one afternoon. The characters are all the same, but the stories in no way fit together. If you like reading one fanfic after another from all kinds of people, you're probably a fan of neo-melodrama. And that's fine. I would just like to say that these days there is too much of it on TV.
(Spoilers for Arrow in this paragraph.) I enjoyed the first season of Nikita very much. When the second season got going, I could hardly stand it. Why? Because while the characters were mostly the same, the story was turned upside down. Same characters in a totally different world, behaving as if they remembered little of the old one beyond the names of the other characters. Arrow has gone that way, too. We spent a whole season with Laurel an advocate for the down-trodden and having her believably deciding over time that she loved Oliver and not Tommy. This year suddenly she's working for the DA's office, and she's so wrapped up in self pity she can't be bothered with Oliver. She broke down and admitted last episode she was acting weirdly because she felt responsible for Tommy's death. Fine. But does she now get to progress toward something like her old life? No, now she's an alcoholic and her go-way-leave-me-alone excuse for staring to drink (cause she wasn't abusing alcohol before) is that her dad was an alcoholic. Better done than Willow's addiction on Buffy, but far more abrupt. Next item: Laurel's sister was dead, dead, dead and lost at sea, last season. Now as of last night's episode, her sister is alive and a superhero, who can't go back to her family because of the things she did when everyone assumed she was dead. Really? If that wasn't enough twist, we had one at the end that I must say was totally expected, a classic comic book twist, that no one over the age of ten should find too startling. Even if it was expected it still turns the main plot of the season upside down, in a season in which we've already had too much of that kind of thing. I enjoyed Arrow last season, but like in Nikita, the neo-melodrama has become next to unbearable for me. Worse, I can definitely foresee the same thing happening on Reign, the only other CW show I watch, should it survive to a second season.
Score for the episode as a stand alone: B+ ...good as it ever was if you like neo-melodrama.
Score in the context of the whole series for me: F ...just about enough to make me quit watching the show.