We think people on TV are our friends

I recently had one of the stars of Rough Science walk into my office and ask a question. But what's interesting about that is not my excitement at meeting a TV star who I respect and admire. It's how I felt like I knew her.

I saw her, and immediately knew I recognized her. And my brain, to make sense of this insane impulse, decided she was someone from another museum that I've worked with in the past. But I'd never met her before, just watched her on TV. My brain's reaction to working with someone for weeks and talking to them for hours is the same as passively watching them on TV for hours, years after they did something cool.

I felt sad to have my weakness to TV made so obvious to me. I was happier when I was ignorant of how much I love TV and how personal a connection I feel to the stars of the shows I watch regularly. But I have to confess that it's true. My brain reacts the same to David Tennant as it does to people I actually know.

We need to know this. We need to remember the power of media, and teach kids how powerful it is. It controls us too much already, and I fear it has only grown in power in recent years. TV "news" is poisoning society. Hopefully the internet will wound TV enough that this power can be disrupted.

Science Fiction TV

Bryan Fuller wants to make a new Star Trek. The idea is fascinating.

Fuller has made some brilliant TV shows in the last few years, although he does have a history of being canceled. Although just because Fox likes destroying good television doesn't mean it's not good. And while Pushing Daisies failed to grow an audience, the creativity in that show was frenetic. It was absolutely bursting with energy and ideas, characters that were endearing but surprising. I'd be curious to see what Fuller does with Star Trek, but sadly expect it to play for 6-13 episodes before vanishing into the mist.

I wonder if it all boils down to the fact that TV is anathema to art. Most people don't turn to TV for novelty and weird experiences that expand their brain. Most people want TV to comfort them. Disturbingly, when we watch favorite TV shows, our brain responds to familiar characters in the same way that it responds to the faces of our friends in the real world. Hopefully things like Dr. Horrible present the possibility of a future of actual creativity in entertainment.

30 Rock

I watched the first 2 episodes of this show when it first debuted. I didn't care for it.

Recently I watched several episodes via Netflix when I was home sick, and now I'm hooked. The rhythm and wit and strong characters have endeared me to them. I think the show is a great show, and it's just the sort of thing that works better week-to-week rather than in a pilot.

When you write weekly TV, even novelic stuff like this where the characters grow and build and change, the stories leave off each week with the world basically the same, this week's struggle ended with victory or defeat. In a pilot, you create that world for the first time, with your heroine coming to a new town to take her first job since the war and her father dying. Or whatever. The rhythm of creating that world is much different than the rhythm of living in it. And it takes a cast time to create a rapport and awesomeness.

Which is why it's a shame that good shows too often aren't given the time to build to the awesome. So people like me can't come back later in their run and discover them. I wish me, and everyone else, had watched Firefly and given it the ratings to survive. But I didn't even realize it existed until it was dead. At least some good shows, like 30 Rock, survive.

Switch TV on time

I have to agree with the decision in the House today to proceed with the digital TV switch. As screwed up as the process has been, and as predictable as the running out of money for converter box coupons was, it makes no sense to go back and stop it now.

If they'd contemplated moving the deadline two years ago, that would be fine. They in fact did move it a couple times. But with less than a month to go before all analog TVs switch off, they should just bite the bullet. If Congress gets backlash from millions of seniors who can't watch TV anymore, that's their own fault for making the choice in the first place. Shouldn't have listened to the cell phone lobbyists who were hungry for the bandwidth. Don't blame anyone else when you lose your reelection campaign.

Damn you, ABC.

It's so very frustrating that ABC has canceled Pushing Daisies. It is one of the best shows on TV, but between the writer's strike and the Country Music Awards, no one watched it.

There's talk of wrapping up unfinished storylines with a comic book or a movie, a la Serenity. But it's a damn shame that brilliant works of art are shut down instead of being allowed to flourish and weave their stories out into full bloom.

Dexter

Through the power of Netflix, I've been watching Dexter lately. The first season, anyway.

It's a very well made TV show. It totally lives up to its pitch: a show about a good serial killer. One who only kills serial killers.

Lots of subtle, clever symbolism, and lots of tortured morality. It manages to get you to feel like the murderer shouldn't get caught, and root against the police. Although he is in the police department.

So complicated. I'm sure I'm conditioning myself to be afraid, but at the same time the acting and writing are so good. And they're taking ordinary fears about fitting in, being an impostor, not knowing how to act around other people, and turning them up to 11. And spilling lots of blood and showing lots of naked people.

So, definitely in the "guilty pleasure" file.

The Science of Fear

The Science of Fear, by Daniel Gardner, is a book that every science educator should read. (Way better than the last Fear book I read, that documented inaccuracies, but didn't explain why we fall for them.)

Gardner lays out in an engaging manner how human psychology reacts to danger, or the idea of danger. We assess potential risks instinctively based on a few rules that were well suited to the African savanna where it evolved, but are a horrible match for mass communication technology.

We react to stuff based on how familiar and common and good or bad it seems, not how dangerous it actually is. And when we teach people about the scientific knowledge on risky things, we have to deal with these emotional reactions.

TV news will mess you up. Don't watch it. The human mind can't be denied its instinctive reactions.

Original work better than remakes

I read a review of a weird video game, and how it's way better than a Star Wars game with a similar concept. Some mushroom guy uses psychic forces in a way cooler way than Jedi use the Force. At least in video games.

Reminds me of how Slings and Arrows, the brilliant Canadian TV show, was everything that Studio 60 wished that it was. Slings and Arrows is a bitingly witty, tragicomic tale of a theater company that is failing, and the internecine political scheming of the directors, actors and everyone else involved.

It succeeds because the writers create brilliant, flawed characters, who often fail. Studio 60 set itself up to tell the story of great heroes flailing nobly against the evil military-industrial corporate monolith, and couldn't create characters that perfect and keep them interesting. Also, Slings and Arrows is funny.

I suspect that's why Mark McKinney, who co-wrote and starred in Slings and Arrows, was brought in to Studio 60 half way down the tube. Shame that he couldn't help fix it.

Emmy Nominations

Sure, all the news stories are telling you the same angle.

Cable has a lot of nominations for Emmys this year. Mad Men, John Adams, blah blah blah.

But Sarah Silverman's Matt Damon song got 2 nominations. How is that not news?

Stupid TV - be less scary

A new book talks about Fear, and what we're afraid of that we don't need to be. I'm glad there's a new one, because the last one I read was 10 years old, and while illuminating, it didn't address lots of current things.

You can take an online quiz about the relative dangers of different things, to see if you're afraid of the right stuff.

As we already knew, TV leads the media pack in sensationalizing dangers, and scaring the crap out of you, because that's what gets people to watch, and people watching equals money. TV is an emotional medium of pictures, not one of reason and ideas. I sometimes wish TV had never been invented. Certainly I'd be willing to lose Twilight Zone and I Love Lucy and the half dozen other great works of TV for the millions of crappy ones.

Slings and Arrows

I love Slings and Arrows. It's a TV show about a theatre company putting on Hamlet. But then stuff in the lives of the actors starts reenacting Hamlet. It's funny and clever and feels true. A director who went insane playing Hamlet questions his sanity now that he's being haunted by a ghost.

Really good acting, too. Good job, Canadian TV. And mad props to Peter Carlin, who pointed me in the direction of the show in the first place.

Trade Offs

Security is about trade-offs. If you put a lock on your door, it takes you longer to get inside when you come home. If you put bars on your windows, you can't escape through them if there's a fire.

We balance our desire for security with the costs of security all the time. Except we usually act not to make ourselves truly safe, but we act based on what makes us FEEL safe.

This essay spells it out. Human instinct is really bad at statistics. Planes are way safer than cars, but we don't feel that way, so we don't act in a way that reflects the truth.

Plus some people have their own idea about how we should use our resources and what we should trade off. And they make us feel afraid of stuff we shouldn't fear.

Sigh.

Story

I love this web site. It explores various familiar story telling devices, and cites examples of TV shows that use them.

My personal favorite is a list of different TV shows that have copied the plot of Rashomon.

Pushing Daisies continues to be awesome

Whenever I hear or read Shakespeare, it infects my mind. I find that his rhythm is so strong, so individual, such a clear voice, that I pick it up and speak in a slightly Shakespearean voice.

Pushing Daisies has its own voice. It's a very quick, fast paced, voice. And it's a very absurd voice. Every time I watch this most excellent TV show, my brain comes alive with speed and energy.

And the pie shop where the main characters live and work is called The Pie Hole. In this week's episode, the competition to find the best horse racer in the world was The Jock-Off 2000.

The show seems to be well suited to slick sonorance. Alliteration always makes awful into awesome. Well, the show's better written than my blog. But they do brilliantly satire the manufactured cuteness of corporate entertainment.

Watch Pushing Daisies

The new TV show Pushing Daisies is totally awesome. You should watch it. Hopefully it won't get cancelled, and will continue to be awesome.

The concept is complex and surreal. And the execution is beautifully dreamy. The dialogue sparkles, and flies by in a witstorm. This show is as if Sports Night and Wonderfalls had a child together. And then that child had a nightmare. But a really interesting nightmare that you want to watch.

Its creator created Wonderfalls, which is both a mark of craft and excellence, and a possible harbinger of doom. Wonderfalls was witty, brilliant, and cancelled after 4 episodes. Pushing Daisies features one of the leads from Wonderfalls, and other talented people. It's also produced by Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed Men in Black, which is part of the weird dreamlike feel of it. I look forward to enjoying it in the future.

Speaking of smart TV that's cancelled, Nathan Fillion is now on Desperate Housewives. His acting is always brilliant. Whether it's on good shows that die too soon, or on truly awful crap. I've enjoyed Desperate Housewives in the past, so I hope this means that Mr. Fillion's luck is changing, rather than him joining a show just as it starts to suck.

Wonderfalls is great

A coworker pointed me towards Wonderfalls, which is a great, unique piece of TV that showed briefly on Fox before they killed it, like every other good show they have. Well, I enjoy Family Guy and House. But Firefly deserved much better, and they sat on Wonderfalls for a year before airing 4 of the 13 episodes. And they're brilliant. Truly weird, original, and brilliant. I suppose a woman who works in a souvenir store at Niagara Falls and hears voices from souvenirs telling her to do things is hard to promote, but it seems like they didn't even try.

I haven't even watched past the 6th episode, but it's definitely fantastic stuff.

We don't remember so well

It turns out that we don't remember stuff that well. Well, we remember in very particular ways. If something is repeated a bunch, we remember it. Except we don't remember negatives. Which leads to problems when websites have Myth Vs. Fact quizzes. We don't remember which one is true, and which one is false.

Which reminds me that getting your news from radio is better than TV. Doesn't surprise me at all. Radio is a verbal medium, one of thoughts. TV is a visual medium, one of emotions. In order, people know more facts if they use radio, then print, then TV. With one strong exception: The Daily Show/Colbert Report. What's up with that? Are our satirists better journalists? Or does their unvarnished honesty cut through the repeated messages of our politicians to the facts?

Is any TV art?

In thinking about whether video games can be art, I have a question. Has any TV been art? Another question: has there been any TV show which will be timeless - still relevant and worth watching decades from now? The TV equivalent of 12 Angry Men, or the 7th Seal, or even The Philadelphia Story?

I suspect Six Feet Under may qualify, and possibly Seinfeld and I Love Lucy. And in television you can tell stories of a novelic scope, where multiple characters develop over multiple arcs over years, instead of a single character arc that a movie or short story can tell.

Are my predictions right? Do you have other suggestions? Ah, if only I had more than 2 readers.

Good TV

I finally watched my tape of the first episode of this season's the 4400. It's pretty good.

I'd been wondering to myself if the show I remembered as good science fiction from the 1st season was still good. I remembered that the story had changed a lot, from individuals dealing with the mystery of the future, to a titanic battle between two sides over the nature of the future.

Then I saw the symbols. Where the first season had symbols of individual lives, people struggling with the nature of change and trying to catch up with their own lives, this season starts off with stories about faith, religion, holy war, and two groups in one country deeply divided. Two sides with radically different beliefs about the future, where the future should lead and what our choices mean for our own morality.

I saw metaphors for Osama and Bush, including some wonderful lines about Messiah envy. And now that I've seen Firefly, I realized that the producers of the 4400 have cast Summer Glau to play a character eerily similar to the one she played on Firefly - a schizophrenic girl with superpowers.

Battlestar Galactica is good sci-fi

I've been enjoying DVDs of Battlestar Galactica for the past few months.

I really enjoy the show because it uses science fiction to comment on current lives. I like aliens and spaceships and time travel, but it's most moving when the stories told are normal, human stories. Stories that relate to us. (Like the stories in the first season of The 4400.

Battlestar manages to tell the story of 9/11, of Iraq and Afghanistan and other struggles in the world today, only in a land of homicidal robots that look just like us. And in a time and place where the total number of living humans is less than 50,000. (Excellent way to raise the stakes.)

It's interesting playing catch up, because there are a lot of sleeper agents on the show, and I keep accidentally finding out major surprises online. It's also really interesting seeing two characters who each represent some aspect of George W. Bush's personality, facing off against each other.

Props to the actors, writers and crew of that show, for making good television. (I guess that is why they won a Peabody.)