On the subject of ratings . . .
Ty advises us that an e-mail came in at the end of last week noting that Bill Carter "praised ER and charted its artistic rebirth." No, he didn't.
Carter, writing in The New York Times, noted the fact that the show's ratings are surprising everyone this season. Carter, a business writer, based his story on the ratings. (That should be obvious from the headline: "From Life Support to Miraculous Recovery for 'ER'."). The e-mailer referred to our review from last fall "TV Review: Time to pull the plug on ER."
ER is probably one of the most noted shows at this site. We noted the rebirth before it aired (we noted it before it was filmed -- hunt it down for yourself, it's noted in this site's most popular editorial) and we also made a point to note the compelling storyline of last season (see "Third Estate Sunday Review: One voice applauded, one not heard?," "TV Review: There's always a platform for some" and "Third Estate Sunday Review: TV commentary: About the women").
That storyline, more than anything else, provided excitement for the audience -- an audience that had been growing bored with the show.
Michael Franti & Spearhead's "Yell Fire" (written by Michael Franti, Carl Young and Dave Shul) declares: "Revolution never comes with a warning, Revolution never comes with an omen." We'd agree. We'd also note that Water Cooler Critics (we're not referring to Carter who is a business writer) never bother to do more than repeat hype.
Believe us, outside of our friends at ER, we don't know anyone that's as happy about ER's revival. But if it's coming as a surprise this fall, it's only because your TV commentators of the Water Cooler Set refused to cover the storyline that revived the show last season and fueled interest.
Last season, while there was time to gas bag about every breath a (White) male took, the most involving storyline was ignored by the Water Cooler Set. (And many gas bags on the left but the right-wing sure paid attention and slammed the show, predicted its demise, go down the list.) The ratings victory didn't result from the fact that ER's airing opposite one of the worst shows on the big three (we think Kidnapped may be the worst). Long gone are the days when the big three was the only game in town. ER earned the ratings rebirth not via scheduling fortune but due to an artistic rebirth and if you had real TV critics as opposed to Water Cooler Critics, Bill Carter's business article wouldn't be the first you were reading of it in a daily paper.
We have no idea why gas bags on the left ignored it. They seem to be pushing hard for the "class" view they, and only they, see at play in Veronica Mars this year. We'll also note that the Hot issue of Rolling Stone continues to sell Moronic Mars as a show about a lead character that, quote: "Veronica has had to deal with the death of her best friend, the disappearance of her mother and being drugged and raped at a party -- and that was just the first season."
Proving both that the "Hot" issue stopped being hot shortly around the time Michael J. Fox graced the cover of it many moons ago and that writer Gavin Edwards is happy to repeat the show's spin if not watch the show he's praising. Raped? We covered that last year.
The Water Cooler Critics misled you last year (and have continued to do so -- check which ones praised, for instance, Swift Justice -- and swore it would be a hit) and they continue to do so. Moronic Mars is being hailed as a "hit" because its audience is up a little. That's due to the fact that the CW reaches more markets than UPN did and that Moronic follows the powerhouse Gilmor Girls. What's less noted is that Moronic Mars can't retain the Gilmor Girls' audience.
What the Water Cooler Set also fails to grasp is that Moronic is on its last legs. (The suits at the CW grasp it and they're nervous about the show.) The character's no longer in high school. Even all the hype can't protect it now as it enters the Supernatural world of life post-high school. The phase that these supposed 'social commentary' series face when they leave the easy world of high school where even the most mundane and obvious point is hailed as insight. Glib and sassy in the mouth of babes (we mean adults playing high school students, but if Kristen Bell does it for you, take it to another level) rarely works after graduation.
What we (Ava and C.I.) do here is offer our opinions. Feel free to disagree. We don't, and haven't, tell you something will be "a hit." We do, just like the gang at The Times, work those phones. (And also talk to people in person and have been known to visit the sets.) We look at the show that airs, we look at the scripts, we talk to friends involved with the show and we talk to people at the network. (In fact, unless we state, "We know no one involved in this show" take it for granted that we know people with the show we're reviewing.)
Some people give more weight to our reviews than we do. That includes angry readers as well as friends. Some friends point to one of our reviews as causing a marital break up. (Oh, the power we must have!) We nearly lost a friend over another review which was seen as coming at a time when a show teetering might have a shot at a second season (it didn't get it). We do and will take calls from friends who feel wronged. (Such as when this review went up.)
In terms of readers, we know our regular readers. We got to know them early on when we did read the e-mails. They're not looking for the buzz around the mythical Water Cooler. They're looking for shows that offer more than flash and a pull quote in next week's Entertainment Weekly. We're writing from a feminist perspective ("a" not "the") and our regular readers have responded to that. If a regular reader e-mails a suggestion, we do it take seriously. (That doesn't mean we end up praising the show -- and some suggestions come in asking us to address shows that provide flash and no entertainment because the reader feels it's past time that a show got called out.) We also will follow up on Jim's requests from time to time. (We would have preferred never to have watched CSI: Miami, CSI and CSI: NYC. Life is just too short.)
Ty made a list of questions popping up in e-mails and we're attempting to address that to cut down on the e-mails directed to us (which we don't read). Last week, we helped out with the e-mails (attempting to avoid those about the TV reviews) because there were just so many. Since the burden largely falls on Ty and Dona, Jim suggested we write a piece that can be noted in replies for the future.
If you disagree with our opinions, you may very well be right, we may very well be wrong. Ty has encouraged many who've disagreed passionately to start their own sites and get their opinions out there. If you're disagreeing to get a reply from either of us, you're wasting your time. We may hear about it from Ty, but we'll never read it (unless we end up short one weekend and do a feature on the e-mails as we've done twice before -- see "Third Estate Sunday Review: Digging into the TV Review e-mail bag" and ""Ava and C.I. dip into the mailbag to respond to 'Cowpoke' Rob").
If you're the press, we're not interested in being interviewed. If you're looking for a quote, we've said what we thought already in whatever review that you're writing in about. One journalist continues to insist that we could expand on "several points" in an interview. If we wanted to expand on something, we already have a forum to do so. You're also making a mistake, when you quote a line, that many who stumble to the site do, thinking we know what you're writing in about. We don't read over these reviews after they're posted. Some reviews we don't even read over before posting due to deadlines and the time crunch. Elaine and others have noted that they can quote a line from our reviews and we may laugh at the humor in it (we may not) but we usually don't recognize it as coming from us. So quoting a line by us, in an e-mail intended for us, probably wouldn't even jog our memories if we read your e-mail.
Ty corrects typos (thank you to Ty) and generally does that mid-week. He checks first to make sure it is a typo and not an inside joke. Many of our reviews have 'typos' that aren't 'typos.' They are clues and inside jokes for friends (often times, friends working on the show we're reviewing). Those aren't changed and they won't be. If you see a word mispelled or an allusion that strikes you as slightly off balance, it's generally an inside message that you can read as not intended for you. If you see inverted letters in this piece, that's usually a typo and it's usually a section that one of us (C.I.) typed.
If you're a blogger or anyone doing something non-profit, you have our permission to repost in part or in full any TV commentary we've done.
But we don't read the e-mails coming in to this site on TV reviews. We stopped doing so some time ago. Due to a backlog, we did help out last week by responding to e-mails coming in on topics other than TV reviews. In doing that, we did see that someone who still wants to argue over Smallville, all this time later, is still e-mailing. Ty confirmed that the guy has e-mailed every month since that review ran (March of 2005). We're happy that he is so passionate about Tom Welling but we'd suggest he use this time to enjoy Welling while he's still onscreen. A few years from now, when Welling can't be found anywhere except in reruns, you may look back on these days and wish you'd spent more time drooling over your hottie and less time writing us. We have no idea what other arguments the man has made, but in the e-mail last week he was suggesting that Martha's interest in Clark's barely clad body was a sign of "how deep" the show is and an intended nod to Oedipus Rex. We'd suggest that he's spent far too much time obsessing over one episode.
When we write a review, we're done with it. We keep a copy of any episode we note for at least seven days in case we have gotten something wrong. If an e-mail comes in asserting we have something wrong, we watch it again to check. One of us (Ava) watched an episode not due to an e-mail but due to a quote from a program being reconstructed by a network. When it was reviewed, we had added an extra "uh" or something and we noted that in a correction.
If you're writing after seven days, you missed the boat, the ship has sailed and life has gone on. With one exception (see "TV Review: America's Funniest F**king Videos," "Industry Shocker: America's Funniest Videos? Not that American" and "Confirmed: America's Funniest Videos disguises foreign videos to its audience"), we don't hold on to copies past the seven day marker. If we're working from scripts and episodes, we often face a dilemma because the scripted line and the line stated are often not the same. (In one review, we noted no quotes because an actor regularly screwed up the scripted line. This wasn't a case of riffing or adlibbing, the actor involved couldn't get the lines straight and we were shocked that it made to broadcast because it threw off all the actors responding after any line was delivered.) When that happens, we'll note what made it on air and not what was scripted because audiences aren't reading scripts, they're watching a program. (A friend called to tell us we had a quote wrong in one review from a script he wrote. We had seen the script and we suggested he watch the episode, the line was changed in filming.)
The only influence friends can have over shows is telling us that (if it's a new show) it's picking up steam and we should wait to review it. (We feel burned in one regard when we were going to tackle a drama. It hasn't been fixed and it's going to be burned off quickly by the network.) As noted earlier, and many times before, we won't review The Gilmor Girls and we also won't review anything by David E. Kelley. If we don't think we can objective, we don't bother. That doesn't mean we'd slam or we'd praise, it just means that we doubt our objectivity.
We generally don't know what we're writing until we write it. Prior to the five of the core six relocating, most of the watching was done with us (Ava and C.I.) watching while we were on the phone together. In those days, we generally just watched one episode and sometimes read scripts as well. Now days, we watch together and are watching multiple episodes. We both take notes while we watch. We comment during that. And we usually follow up with some questions to people involved with the show and/or network people. At that point, we still don't know what we're writing.
When we grab time to go off and write during the writing sessions for the edition is when we decide what we're going to write. There is at least one review (probably more) where we were luke warm to a show but both assumed we'd have something positive to say; however, during the writing process a "yeah, but one point" came up too often and the show got a negative critique. Those "but one point"s often have to do with the way women or minorities are portrayed. Those are important points and need to be noted.
Equally important is whether or not the characters can hook you in. As we've noted many times, viewers form bonds with their favorite TV shows. Sizzle's not going to cut it, hype's not going to cut it. If a show gets recommended by us it's one that we believe will involve viewers.
If you find a show you like, you're probably going to invest some time with it. Water Cooler Talk will drive up the ratings of the Seinfeld finale as everyone tries to look cool and prepares to gas bag the next day at work, it won't do you much good in terms of steering you to a show you can be involved with. (For the record, we loved Seinfeld but hated the finale -- especially the tacked on, filmed later, ending that sidelined the character of Elaine.) Generally speaking, any time the Water Cooler set uses the tired "post modern" term, you should run for the hills because there's no life in the series and what they see as artful commentary is just a show dead in the water. (And bad acting that they mistake for deadpan.)
"Where do you get off saying . . ." is often the theme of e-mails. We're sharing our opinions. There's not one we'd retract. We've been honest in our opinions so we have no need to. That usually means going up against the hype. We're comfortable with that and honestly appalled at what passes for most TV criticism these days in print. (That's not a slam at The Times. We've noted before that, while we often disagree with Alessandra Stanely, we enjoy her writing and that we enjoy most of the arts criticism at The Times.)
We don't review cable. That's a case of responding to this site's original readers. From the start, they've been young (many with families) and they look to TV as the entertainment outlet -- broadcast TV because they can't afford satellite or cable. We keep that in mind when we review. They are our intended audience. We generally review pretty much everything that airs on Fridays because that it is a big night for them. There's not a trip to movies most weeks (if ever), there's not money to hire a babysitter and eat out. They're not interested in the flash or the sizzle, they're interested in whether or not they can sit in front of the TV and be entertained.
We also note flesh counts when possible because we're aware that some watch with their children and may be uncomfortable with that. (We'd personally prefer TV offered more flesh and less violence. And, as we once noted, we really wish Jerry Bruckheimer would get his murder out of our sex.)
We take very seriously what The New York Times called (last December) the death of broadcast TV because we fully grasp that the 'entertainment explosion' is leaving many behind.
We're amazed that, outside of that Times editorial, others haven't bothered to explore it. We're both familiar with a broadcast of a really bad NPR show that treated it as good news for all. Considering the actual make up of NPR listeners (as opposed to what the network hypes as their average listener) we feel they failed their audience by refusing to explore what happens when people (and there are a lot more than many seem to realize) are faced with deciding whether to be part of the 'explosion' or be 'frivilous' and pay the energy bill?
So if you're writing in to suggest we review some show on cable, you're wasting your time and Ty's time. We're really not taking suggestions this fall. We're trying to find shows that are in danger. If we like the show, we want to be sure to weigh in early and hopefully steer someone to them. If we hate the show, we want to be sure to review it now. Why?
Summer of 2005, we really did worry that we'd have to take up a daytime game show or soap opera one week because there was so little we hadn't tackled already. This week we review Shark which CBS is considering pulling the plug on. It may mean we miss a show that we might like but it also means that this summer, if Shark's cancelled and show X is still on the air, we can grab X then. Writing 52 TV commentaries a year requires a lot of TV shows.
This was originally part of the Shark review but then Ty handed us a list of questions and Jim said (rightly) that it needed to be its own feature. To return to ER (which prompted this), our opinions are not always going to be agreed with and they shouldn't be. If you're someone who never agrees with our opinions then praise for a show from us means you should avoid it and a slam means you should watch. We don't waste time in our reviews telling you "This is going to be big in the ratings!" because, though ratings determine a show's life, they don't determine whether or not its worth watching. (Those who doubt that, should grab a list of the top ten show for each year of the eighties and see how many, even with all the cable networks, are actually airing now in syndication. We're thinking of two heavily praised shows in particular that never made it after they finished their runs.)
While we're happy to admit that we may be wrong at any time, we won't take the fall for things we didn't do. ER had a rebirth and anyone who read this site last spring should know that we noted it. Water Cooler Critics and gas bags weren't interested in that. We noted that in real time as well. We made a point of noting the fact that the right-wing was gunning for the show. For people against the war (we are) or supposedly against the war not to note the storyline that got people talking (or note that people were talking about it) is really strange and we noted that as well. While most were gas bagging about a comedian's performance, we noted that ER was addressing the war. That was the rebirth of the show and a renewed committment to the characters. We don't expect a business writer to be aware of it, but we do wonder why those steering to you to various TV shows and clips couldn't find the time to?
[For the record, we disagreed with Bill Carter's "'West Wing' to West Coast: TV's Aueter Portrays TV" -- disagreed here and at The Common Ills. That was a case of a business writer taking the word of a 'genuis' as gospel when fact checking would have prevented the need for a correction. He wasn't the only one and something was missed, in his coverage and the Water Cooler Set's of the gas bag show, that we'll note in our year-in-review. "Business writer" is not used as a pejorative, merely to note that Carter writes about the industry side, he's not writing about the art. Lastly, click here for Kat's review of Yell Fire! and pick up a copy if you haven't already.]