Yeah, must be sweeps week on TV.
How do I know? Well, the surest sign was the spanning of a story across three different shows in the CSI franchise. All three of them are having the same story cross over between the three shows over three nights. Miss a night, you miss the story. Don’t like the show? Tough. Take it like a man and watch anyway.
It’s not a new trick. I remember comic books doing this most of my life. As far back as I can remember, comic books ran a single story arc across multiple titles. Sometimes they’d unify the continuity of the titles. For instance, Spider-Man had no fewer than three titles back when I first recall reading them. But none of them were consistent in continuity, so when something came across all three titles, the writers had to huddle up and make the story make sense for the title and where it occurred in their time line. In the 1990s, things got flat ridiculous. And when you kill off a character? Well, that creates mayhem, ala Superman and its multiple titles, circa something like 1992.
But with three separate shows on the same network in the same franchise, nothing has to be so dramatic or difficult. I’m sure the coordination of the writing is challenging. I did notice, however, the association of the three franchises with one another did nothing to elevate the suck-factor of the first episode. (My wife and I stopped watching the Miami version of this show because it became … well, sucky.) So having the characters cross over didn’t help the show at all; it still sucked.
But it’s all right. It never helped the comics the way they wanted it to, but maybe it will help the CSI franchise. It certainly hooked my wife. She’s watching it right now, as I type this, and there are two more on tap.
What cheap TV tricks do your shows use to keep you tuned in, engaged, involved in the show? Which ones really burn you up? Which are you fond of?
-JDT-
All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.
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Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again – I like knowing the answers.
So, because I don’t do movie theaters well, and because I don’t like knowing just the plot or story of a book or movie, I have a tendency to tell people who want to describe a movie experience to me to go ahead and give it all to me. I want everything … including the end. If you’re not going to give it all away, don’t tell me anything. I’ll wait for it to come to cable or go find it online or whatever.
With that in mind, there are several movies I’ve wanted to see over the past couple of years. Well … okay, I’ve wanted to know about them, not necessarily to sit through them. Some examples would be 9, a Tim Burton affair I believe, and Orphan, and Let the Right One In, and so on. So, when I want to know and don’t have the patience to wait for them not only to come to cable but to move to the premium channels or free movie selections (hey, I’m unemployed, all right?), I go check out The Movie Spoiler.
The problem with this site is, the spoilers are all written by site users. Anyone can do it. You go see the movie, you send them the trailer. They post it. Raw. Typos, grammatical nightmare constructs and all. It goes up. So, when you read the spoilers, you have to try and decipher what’s being described. Very interesting. A lot of work, sometimes. But in the end, I have an okay idea of what the movie’s about.
The good news is, I get the endings, and can decide based on what I see whether or not I want to watch the movie. Investing a couple of hours of my life into something that sucks doesn’t excite me. So I use this site to good effect. It’s how I knew I wanted to see the Nicolas Cage movie Next, and how I knew I didn’t really care one way or the other about the same actor’s movie Knowing. (If I catch it, great; if I don’t, meh.)
My wife is great at getting to the point with me about books too. She reads approximately sixteen gazillion books a year, and while her tastes and mine differ pretty widely, she’s very good at giving me the straight skinny (ha! me, “skinny”! rriiiiiiight!) on the ones I want to know about. So I feel I’ve read a lot more books than I have and I’ve seen a lot more movies than I have. Truth is, I just know how they end.
I spent some quality time with the spoiler for 9 and The Box this weekend. I’ll probably look up a few others while I’m there. What the heck? It only takes ten minutes and could save me hours of wasted viewing time.
How ‘bout you? Do you like to know the ending? I’m that way with all things, including life. I want to know the answers, know the future, know the twists and turns. Maybe you like things darker and more mysterious, or enjoy the discovery of what lies ahead whether in art or in life.
Sound off, let me know, and I hope you had an amazing and happy weekend.
-JDT-
All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.
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