Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Wednesday night's all right for fighting.
posted by RICK : 10:30 PM
With February sweeps just about over (most of the networks held off their A-games this year so as to not confuse people really-really wanting to watch 14 consecutive hours of ice-skating) we are finally heading into the back stretch of the ’05-’06 television season. This hasn’t been a particularly good year for new programming (did anyone catch Emily’s Reasons Why Not?). Last year’s new shows, however, seem to be thriving (or the closest equivalent). Two of the best were Lost and Veronica Mars. Sharing the same time-slot, and quite possibly much of the same audience, the two series illustrate diametrically opposing forces of the same beast: the expertly crafted uber-mystery.
Lost went into season two as the obvious champ both in terms of audience size and cultural importance, spawning some of the most interesting water-cooler talk in what seemed to be ages. More important, it helped contribute to the current renaissance in narrative television (Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy also played a part—thanks ABC—but Lost was the weirdest, and for better or for worse, that made it the best—at least on broadcast). Lost proved that audiences not only want stories that build over time, but showed that they’ll stick around to see how things turn out. If this means that one fewer police procedural will make it to air in the future, then by-God they’ve done their job.
This season’s premiere episode started out with a literal bang in what should only be described as one of the single greatest reveals in the history of time-based-entertainment. Hyperbole aside, it was particularly kick-ass (for those of you who enjoy having your memory jogged, we started this season inside the mysterious hatch—unbeknownst to us at the time—following around some dude as he worked out and listened to an exceptionally catchy song by The Momma’s and The Papa’s only for the aforementioned ‘bang’ to cause this mystery man to grab a rifle and run though the complex’s hallways eventually resulting in our climb up the very tunnel we descended during the season finale three months earlier). Unfortunately, from that point forward the show took an ill-advised seven-episode u-turn in an attempt to answer questions we were never all that concerned about in the first place. Along the way we were introduced to the obligatory second-season “new characters,” like Ana-Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez), a woman so unlikable she couldn’t find a way to eke out a drop of sympathy from us even after we discover she was a former cop who was shot while pregnant (hopefully recent D.U.I. charges in Hawaii may cause Ms. Rodriguez to be written out of the show sooner than later. I’m hoping she’s written out by that giant polar bear).
The brightest spot of this season came from an episode that aired on February 8th, entitled “The Long Con,” in which Sawyer (Josh Holloway) steals a massive collection of guns on the island over the course of a—wait for it—long con. The episode, arguably the season’s best, worked because it wasn’t trying to shock you with a seemingly endless barrage of island-mythology, but instead by doing what the series did best in season one: using the framework of the island to tell complex character stories. That, and employing some old-school slight-of-hand where upon the big revelation you just can’t believe you didn’t figure it out sooner. “The Long Con” proved that Lost is still as sharp a piece of televised drama as one could ask for, and its stellar ratings suggest it isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
This, of course, leads right to Veronica Mars—the most recent entry into the peculiar genre of television programming also home to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, Smallville, Firefly, and Alias among others. Let’s call the genre “Whebrams,” as all of those shows either could have or did come from J.J. Abrams or Joss Whedon. They’re high-concept series, frequently with snarky leads, strong female characters and a good-dose of old-fashioned melodrama added in for taste. And aside from Alias (and Lost) they all air (or aired) on the one of the bottom three networks (Fox, UPN, WB), which in most cases has resulted in the creation of a popular (if select) niche. The drawback being that said niche overlaps almost perfectly from series to series but especially between Veronica Mars and Lost, likely resulting in certain shows drawing fewer viewers than they perhaps otherwise would. Not all of Lost’s audience will want to tune in for Veronica Mars, but I can only imagine that most of Veronica Mars’ audience will want to tune in for Lost, which is maddening for a fan of both shows (of course BitTorrent and the ever-present DVR make almost all of these worries a thing of the past, but seeing as how the ratings model fails to adjust to any of this makes the conflict remain).
Luckily Veronica Mars isn’t on the chopping block just yet, and next year’s merger of UPN and the WB into the ridiculously named “The CW” may end up addressing this issue. The catch is until Veronica Mars is moved to a different time slot it will be forever know as “The show I’m watching instead of Lost,” and can’t be judged on its own merits—merits that are quite good.
This season also got started with a bang and by ‘bang’ I mean ‘school bus full of kids getting driven off a cliff.’ The bus crash has been the driving force (PUN INTENDED) behind the action of this season, much as the Lilly Cane murder propelled the episodes of season-one. The writing is as tight as always. Part of what makes Veronica Mars so appealing is that it couldn’t be more unrealistic—just like Lost—and yet highly believable. Not only is Neptune High unlike your high school, it’s unlike anyone’s high school. Based on the thirty-seven episodes that have aired thus far, Neptune, California, has painted itself as Raymond Chandler’s wet-dream: people constantly missing, murders galore, and endless motives, and at the center of all of it is Veronica Mars herself (Kristin Bell) acting as Philip Marlow.
Like Lost, Veronica Mars’ peak this season came recently. In an episode entitled, “Donut Run” creator and non-Matchbox-20-lead-singer Rob Thomas wrote one of the most ingenious scripts of this or any season. The episode not only broke with the show’s tradition of having Veronica narrate each episode (a turn that only became evident in the episodes closing moments), but was packed with enough twists to make even Sawyer find his ‘Long Con’ to be mere child’s play. “Donut Run” was an episode so remarkable, all other television in 2006 should be rated against it-- yes, even the new Sopranos season. And it wasn’t just in the intricate plotting, Mr. Thomas included a myriad moments of inspiration. In one scene after Veronica is dumped by her boyfriend she goes to her room and puts on “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” by Al Green to sulk. But the song doesn’t come from an Al Green record, instead from The Virgin Suicides Soundtrack, obviously a gentle nod to the moment itself, but also points to the undeniable fact that high school girls LOVE soundtracks. These subtle realities placed within the context of a show that makes no bones about how utterly ridiculous it actually is, creates a kind of peanut-butter-and-chocolate relationship on the screen—tasty.
Aesthetically, both Lost and Veronica Mars are joys to looks at. Of course, being shot in Hawaii doesn’t hurt for Lost. There are no shortages of luscious greens to fill the frame and, well, for a bunch of people who have been stranded on an island for two months, they couldn’t be any easier on the eyes. Veronica Mars is able to push the visual boundary another way altogether though its refreshing use of wide-angle lenses. And not in a “Oh no, I’m so drunk, everything’s all wide-angle and I’m getting dizzy” sort of way, instead Veronica Mars looks much closer to Coen Brothers—like Raising Arizona—with its ability to place interesting characters within just-crazy-enough sets and then let the natural distortion of a short lens do the rest of the work. Barry Sonenfeld, the Coen’s one-time D.P. said it best in an interview on the Miller’s Crossing DVD, “Long lenses are serious, and short lenses are funny.” Wonderfully put.
Perhaps that’s really what this time-slot battle comes down to: the difference between a “long-lens-show” and a “short-lens-show.” Lost is serious television, no matter how maddening it may become, and audiences respond to that more than to a show that’s funny, or quirky, or god-forbid, funny and quirky. That’s probably the reason why there are rarely any comedies in the Neilson top-ten. Americans, the busy bunch that they are, figure if they’re going to give an hour of their life over to something every Wednesday at nine, it might as well be something grand, which is exactly why Veronica Mars can never live up to its ABC-fueled cousin despite it being, at least this season, much better.
Lost (season 2) * * * of 4
Veronica Mars (season 2) * * * 1/2 of 4
With February sweeps just about over (most of the networks held off their A-games this year so as to not confuse people really-really wanting to watch 14 consecutive hours of ice-skating) we are finally heading into the back stretch of the ’05-’06 television season. This hasn’t been a particularly good year for new programming (did anyone catch Emily’s Reasons Why Not?). Last year’s new shows, however, seem to be thriving (or the closest equivalent). Two of the best were Lost and Veronica Mars. Sharing the same time-slot, and quite possibly much of the same audience, the two series illustrate diametrically opposing forces of the same beast: the expertly crafted uber-mystery.Lost went into season two as the obvious champ both in terms of audience size and cultural importance, spawning some of the most interesting water-cooler talk in what seemed to be ages. More important, it helped contribute to the current renaissance in narrative television (Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy also played a part—thanks ABC—but Lost was the weirdest, and for better or for worse, that made it the best—at least on broadcast). Lost proved that audiences not only want stories that build over time, but showed that they’ll stick around to see how things turn out. If this means that one fewer police procedural will make it to air in the future, then by-God they’ve done their job.
This season’s premiere episode started out with a literal bang in what should only be described as one of the single greatest reveals in the history of time-based-entertainment. Hyperbole aside, it was particularly kick-ass (for those of you who enjoy having your memory jogged, we started this season inside the mysterious hatch—unbeknownst to us at the time—following around some dude as he worked out and listened to an exceptionally catchy song by The Momma’s and The Papa’s only for the aforementioned ‘bang’ to cause this mystery man to grab a rifle and run though the complex’s hallways eventually resulting in our climb up the very tunnel we descended during the season finale three months earlier). Unfortunately, from that point forward the show took an ill-advised seven-episode u-turn in an attempt to answer questions we were never all that concerned about in the first place. Along the way we were introduced to the obligatory second-season “new characters,” like Ana-Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez), a woman so unlikable she couldn’t find a way to eke out a drop of sympathy from us even after we discover she was a former cop who was shot while pregnant (hopefully recent D.U.I. charges in Hawaii may cause Ms. Rodriguez to be written out of the show sooner than later. I’m hoping she’s written out by that giant polar bear).
The brightest spot of this season came from an episode that aired on February 8th, entitled “The Long Con,” in which Sawyer (Josh Holloway) steals a massive collection of guns on the island over the course of a—wait for it—long con. The episode, arguably the season’s best, worked because it wasn’t trying to shock you with a seemingly endless barrage of island-mythology, but instead by doing what the series did best in season one: using the framework of the island to tell complex character stories. That, and employing some old-school slight-of-hand where upon the big revelation you just can’t believe you didn’t figure it out sooner. “The Long Con” proved that Lost is still as sharp a piece of televised drama as one could ask for, and its stellar ratings suggest it isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
This, of course, leads right to Veronica Mars—the most recent entry into the peculiar genre of television programming also home to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, Smallville, Firefly, and Alias among others. Let’s call the genre “Whebrams,” as all of those shows either could have or did come from J.J. Abrams or Joss Whedon. They’re high-concept series, frequently with snarky leads, strong female characters and a good-dose of old-fashioned melodrama added in for taste. And aside from Alias (and Lost) they all air (or aired) on the one of the bottom three networks (Fox, UPN, WB), which in most cases has resulted in the creation of a popular (if select) niche. The drawback being that said niche overlaps almost perfectly from series to series but especially between Veronica Mars and Lost, likely resulting in certain shows drawing fewer viewers than they perhaps otherwise would. Not all of Lost’s audience will want to tune in for Veronica Mars, but I can only imagine that most of Veronica Mars’ audience will want to tune in for Lost, which is maddening for a fan of both shows (of course BitTorrent and the ever-present DVR make almost all of these worries a thing of the past, but seeing as how the ratings model fails to adjust to any of this makes the conflict remain).
Luckily Veronica Mars isn’t on the chopping block just yet, and next year’s merger of UPN and the WB into the ridiculously named “The CW” may end up addressing this issue. The catch is until Veronica Mars is moved to a different time slot it will be forever know as “The show I’m watching instead of Lost,” and can’t be judged on its own merits—merits that are quite good.
This season also got started with a bang and by ‘bang’ I mean ‘school bus full of kids getting driven off a cliff.’ The bus crash has been the driving force (PUN INTENDED) behind the action of this season, much as the Lilly Cane murder propelled the episodes of season-one. The writing is as tight as always. Part of what makes Veronica Mars so appealing is that it couldn’t be more unrealistic—just like Lost—and yet highly believable. Not only is Neptune High unlike your high school, it’s unlike anyone’s high school. Based on the thirty-seven episodes that have aired thus far, Neptune, California, has painted itself as Raymond Chandler’s wet-dream: people constantly missing, murders galore, and endless motives, and at the center of all of it is Veronica Mars herself (Kristin Bell) acting as Philip Marlow.
Like Lost, Veronica Mars’ peak this season came recently. In an episode entitled, “Donut Run” creator and non-Matchbox-20-lead-singer Rob Thomas wrote one of the most ingenious scripts of this or any season. The episode not only broke with the show’s tradition of having Veronica narrate each episode (a turn that only became evident in the episodes closing moments), but was packed with enough twists to make even Sawyer find his ‘Long Con’ to be mere child’s play. “Donut Run” was an episode so remarkable, all other television in 2006 should be rated against it-- yes, even the new Sopranos season. And it wasn’t just in the intricate plotting, Mr. Thomas included a myriad moments of inspiration. In one scene after Veronica is dumped by her boyfriend she goes to her room and puts on “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” by Al Green to sulk. But the song doesn’t come from an Al Green record, instead from The Virgin Suicides Soundtrack, obviously a gentle nod to the moment itself, but also points to the undeniable fact that high school girls LOVE soundtracks. These subtle realities placed within the context of a show that makes no bones about how utterly ridiculous it actually is, creates a kind of peanut-butter-and-chocolate relationship on the screen—tasty.
Aesthetically, both Lost and Veronica Mars are joys to looks at. Of course, being shot in Hawaii doesn’t hurt for Lost. There are no shortages of luscious greens to fill the frame and, well, for a bunch of people who have been stranded on an island for two months, they couldn’t be any easier on the eyes. Veronica Mars is able to push the visual boundary another way altogether though its refreshing use of wide-angle lenses. And not in a “Oh no, I’m so drunk, everything’s all wide-angle and I’m getting dizzy” sort of way, instead Veronica Mars looks much closer to Coen Brothers—like Raising Arizona—with its ability to place interesting characters within just-crazy-enough sets and then let the natural distortion of a short lens do the rest of the work. Barry Sonenfeld, the Coen’s one-time D.P. said it best in an interview on the Miller’s Crossing DVD, “Long lenses are serious, and short lenses are funny.” Wonderfully put.
Perhaps that’s really what this time-slot battle comes down to: the difference between a “long-lens-show” and a “short-lens-show.” Lost is serious television, no matter how maddening it may become, and audiences respond to that more than to a show that’s funny, or quirky, or god-forbid, funny and quirky. That’s probably the reason why there are rarely any comedies in the Neilson top-ten. Americans, the busy bunch that they are, figure if they’re going to give an hour of their life over to something every Wednesday at nine, it might as well be something grand, which is exactly why Veronica Mars can never live up to its ABC-fueled cousin despite it being, at least this season, much better.
Lost (season 2) * * * of 4
Veronica Mars (season 2) * * * 1/2 of 4
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