I Blame Television

Well - this is becoming ridiculous. It has been 2 weeks since I have gotten anything written for this blog. Granted, I did take a long (longer) weekend last week, visiting ye olde homestead - but I've been back a week from that, and ought to have found something to say in that time. It is starting to be a problem.... I suppose every blogger has to write a few Whither Blogging? posts, and this appears to be one for me - I've been doing this thing for nearly 6 years, and after the first year, have managed to post less often every single year - and so far this year looks right on schedule. It's frustrating. I can usually find excuses - a class, moving, the weather - and they are usually honest enough - moving has certainly distracted me from doing this.... Not so much the time and effort of moving, though there has been plenty of that, but more the anxiety, distraction, disruption of it all. (Not helped by the fact that I did a lot of it in the middle of a biblical tempest - necessitating a lot of dragging things up and down stairs, even before I actually moved...) It's an excuse - it's an honest reason for not writing anything - but - then it starts to drift, you learn bad habits, you drift....

This is a better excuse - I have started watching TV shows. I have not watched first run television in years - I think the last TV show I watched new was the first season of South Park. Before that - The Larry Sanders Show and Dream On... before that - shoot, I don't know... Twin Peaks? Square Pegs? I use the TV to watch movies, sports, Jeopardy, old TV (Have Gun Will Travel lately...) and things like the History Channel or Mythbusters. I've been doing plenty of that lately, I have to admit - especially since I got the Fox Soccer Channel - I've become addicted to soccer... But I don't watch TV series - in fact, I deliberately avoid them. I'll go back and watch them later sometimes - but for a long time I have not been willing to devote the time to watching television at a given time or place. That has left me out of a lot of the visual culture of the last decade - no Sopranos; no The Wire; no Madmen, etc. (Deadwood, I watched on DVD.) I read critics saying that these shows are better than any movies being made - I think - right or wrong, they must be worth seeing. But the time, effort, etc. to see them is not worth it - it would cut into my movie watching, my baseball watching, something - it is a sacrifice, but I will make it....

But suddenly I find that I have watched the first 2-3 episodes of not one but 2 first run TV shows! How did that happen? Well - actually, it goes back to moving - when I switched by cable to this place, I upgraded the service a bit - added HD, and the new box came with DVR. (Nothing like discovering 10 year old technology today!) But - the HD was having problems - half the channels did not come in - Comcast had to come out and dick around with the wires for an hour to get them to come in properly. So - the technician comped me three months of HBO.

And so I find myself in position to watch Treme every week. And - thanks to the magic of DVR - I can watch it when I want to! Oh, this 21st century is so exciting! And the HBO thing is a very convenient (and welcome) bit of timing.... The other show I've actually caught a couple episodes of is a bit more accidental - I was visiting my brother last week - he is a huge Dr. Who fan so we watched the new Doctor's debut - and last Saturday, I was flipping through channels just time time to catch episode 2. Hard to say if that will last - I certainly haven't bothered to DVR it. BUt right now - I have been keeping up with 2 television series at once - amazing....

So now comes the question: are TV's advocates speaking true? Is television better than the movies these days? I'm hardly in a position to answer that of course, what with 3 episodes of Treme, 2 of Dr. Who (and a whole bunch of random Dr. Who episodes from the last couple years), a bunch of Family Guy and Phineas and Ferb reruns, and the Deadwood DVD set to my credit.... But - whatever. TV is TV after all -Treme and Deadwood aren't doing anything that significantly different from Hill Street Blues did 30 years ago. Better or worse, maybe, but here is the thing - television may be the same medium as film (moving pictures), but it is a completely different art form. At least, series television is. It is a different form - organized differently, and weighting its aesthetic and formal elements differently. None of these TV shows have anything of the visual power of a great film - but they have the ability to draw out and intertwine large stories, whole worlds, they can explore at depth. It is as if TV shows are novels - certainly, Deadwood, and Treme (going on these three episodes) are like novels - big, sprawling, intricate novels - Bleak House or Dostoevsky... Movies are like poetry. At least the good ones - foregrounding the material, making the most of visual and aural patternings, even before the story or content... I was thinking about how something like Treme compares to something like Dodeskaden - the Kurosawa film is a network narrative, like the TV show - but he has 2 hours to work with. Films - especially that kind of film (Nashville, Magnolia, etc.) have to be much more precise, and more "poetic" - to pack more into fewer images. Dodeskaden does that - has to cover whole lives in a scene or two, as the opening scene does (the "tralley mad" boy praying with and for his mother) - it demands a different approach, that makes it very difficult to compare the two...

Though I have to say - the different approach means that films (at least the good films) almost inevitably look almost infinitely better than TV can. Treme - like Deadwood - is very well made, well directed and shot and all the rest - but it is completely conventional looking. There's nothing special being done in the shooting and editing - and elite films almost invariably make sure the shooting and editing are memorable. Just a simple example - Treme might give me characters to think about and stories and teach me things about New Orleans I would not otherwise have known... but there are no Iguanas...