Y SIN EMBARGO magazine

[a new multi-genre phenomenon]
Todayʼs best television shows differ greatly from the sitcoms of yesteryear, with each current episode often having more in common with a feature film than with pre-Twin Peaks TV in terms of plot and production. Contemporary serialized storytelling also has an edge over the traditionalmovie format: it affords a totally different, incompatibly multilayered, incomparably longer time frame for the development of the core plot, sub-story arcs and character. A hundred hours spreadover five years of two dozen forty-two-minute episodes also allows for much experimentation withgenres, with virtually all television shows presenting a balanced mix of drama, comedy andaction, and various sub-currents of perspective and style. Take the hospital drama: though veryfew shows are textbook examples of the genre, most at some point do write in either a sub-plot that puts the action in the hands of MDs for a few episodes or a device such as flashback to frame hospital drama sub-stories. Consider the coinage dramedy and the apparent dissonance it seeks to resolve, applicable to such stylistic confluences as Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives, Six Feet Under and Weeds. Really, itʼs the newest nod to the baroque. And if the classification of shows is becoming increasingly elusive, so is the character development ofactors, whose fictional trajectories are underscored by the actorsʼ own maturation over a period of entire years.

[the importance of audience influence]
In a way, the television programming of the mid to late naughts is also a revamped mass-playerChoose Your Own Adventure, with plotlines orchestrated in large part in response to real worldevents, reports of mass appeal and at-the-ready online plot speculation by every fan with time tokill and an internet connection. Spoilers float to the top of Google searches as people studycasting info, celebrity gossip, Hollywood notes and IMDB stats to extrapolate whatʼs going to happen next in the business—and, thus, which stars are going to join or get cut from a show.Others post in-depth analyses of purported foreshadowings or continuity errors, attempting to crack either the mysterious premise of an entire series or some facet of the agenda of the agentsbehind the show. [To wit: Jericho is extended for one extra season on the basis of populardemand. Then, mid-run, all plotlines are made to come to a swift and convenient end in one single episode by the eventual—both looming and hasty—decision to abort the series by CBS.Lostʼs Libby and Ana Lucia die after the actresses who portray them get arrested on a DUI. Fansget Jorja Fox back on CSI. Curb Your Enthusiasm references the success of “old TVʼs” multiple­platinum Seinfeld. The West Wing references the Clinton Administration. The Wire plays like a mockumentary of Baltimoreʼs corrupt worlds of legislation, crime-fighting and organized crime. The Writersʼ Strike affects the programming of just about everything for the better pert of two years. And in a feat of self-referential artistry, Entourage is a spoof on the behind-the-scenes Hollywood behind the programming itself.]

[sharing and the social role]
But does spending so much of our time in front of screens and tinkering with Bit Torrent protocolpreclude us from getting out and living our own lives? Do our relationships with the people onscreen cut into our actual friendships and family relations offline? So it would seem, but the truthis paradoxically different: after all, TV series are a popular topic of interest and hereʼs your chance to be in the know about whatʼs on and worth watching. Whatʼs more, should you be the bringer of the goods—an avid downloader with a talent for making the right recommendations andthe samaritan urge to burn DVDs, offer your hard drive or loan out your USB key to fellow fans—expect to make more friends, not less, for watching all that TV. Another fun pastime worth notingis actor-spotting, consisting of the searing joy one feels at being the first to call an actor fromanother show in a new role. Whether youʼre a single twentysomething watching alone or half of acouple that likes to kick back with a few [episodes], you need not worry that youʼre falling out ofthe social loop as you succumb to the urge to find out what happens next. Indeed, if you do, youʼre likely to be very much in the loop. Once upon a time, gossip was our show. Today it maybe that shows are the next gossip.

[the mechanics of downloading]
It begins with the dearth of anything to watch, and grows into a desire to be able to fend foroneself, because at some point the pain of going without begins to exceed the pain of learninghow to use a Bit Torrent client. A what? Exactly. In a process that is simple to few, mysterious to most who use it and panic-inducing in those who donʼt, single TV shows and entire seasons canarrive on our desktops in the form of handy and generally flawless .avi files. All thatʼs needed is a robust Internet connection, nothing to go wrong and some time. Selecting the optimal provider isa good idea, but itʼs something that most people donʼt feel like changing or canʼt begin to understand. Adjusting modem settings and client preferences takes either ample web savvy ordumb luck. And then thereʼs learning to search out viable torrents using a hassle-free,dependable site. Finally, storage can be an issue, as DVDs like to wander and burning extrasconsumes task memory and time. The new external hard drives, however, are an increasinglyaffordable option—and only growing more capacious with time. There are, of course, those who watch and delete, but they donʼt score as many samaritan points with their buddies, nor can theygo back and replay a clip on a whim, like real aficionados.

[timing and the intimate role]
Sometimes a viewer will consume an entire seven season series, with its 155 episodes and grandtotal of 109 hours, committing to watching .avis during nearly every free moment stolen over the course of one month. More typically, however, a watcher will discover a show after it has been onthe air for several seasons and the odyssey begins with a marathon spread over a week or two [or compressed into days], during which the characters are introduced thoroughly and with anintimacy that can only result from a dozen plus hours of careful study. Then, dashboard widgetsserve as reminders of every new episode available for download within a short several hoursfollowing the original US air date. So, first one gets to know the characters over one intimate week of all-nighters, then one visits greedily with them during a dozen to two dozen highlyanticipated twenty-or forty-or sixty-minute encounters at regular intervals over several seasonsspread out across several years. In a way that movie characters canʼt, TV show heroes become a whole lot like friends, as we come to associate them with memories from the last years our ownlives and, inevitably, as we grow attached to those who are most like us, or most like people we would like to meet.

Por Natalia Osiatynska para Y SIN EMBARGO magazine.

Popularity: 1% [?]