Colossal TV Show thread

nocera
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Colossal TV Show thread

Postby nocera » Wed Jun 30, 2021 10:34 am

Source of the post Shows are usually better when there is 20+ episodes in a season.
I very much disagree with this. The reason a standard season has gone from ~22 episodes to ~10 is because quality dips in 20+ episodes. You have more filler episodes, you have writers forced to fill space rather than tell their story. Give me a tight ~10 episode season with concise story arc any day over meandering seasons with way more episodes than necessary.

You also get more bang for your buck. Each episode gets a bigger slice of the budget. Or better yet, you attract better talent, both in front of and behind the camera. You think Fincher is going to sign on to a 20+ episode series?

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Colossal TV Show thread

Postby skullman80 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 10:36 am

I think 12 to 14 is a good sweet spot for a season. 10 can be a bit rushed depending on the show. 20+ though for most shows is wayyyyyy overkill and just gives you a bunch of filler.

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Postby MR25 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 10:55 am

Yeah, if you're going to make 20 episodes for your season, you might as well just turn it into a movie series at that point.

Dickie Dunn
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Postby Dickie Dunn » Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:08 am

Agree on the 10 to 14 count and also wish the episode order could be variable based on what the writers come up with. But like real variability, not the fake variability that D&D used to get GOT over ASAP. For example, even the generally excellent Daredevil suffered from a filler episode or two every season in order to hit the 13 episode mark. Season 1 or 2 even had an episode that barely crossed 30 minutes.

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Postby PFiDC » Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:11 am

12 is the perfect season IMO.

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Postby Beveridge » Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:18 am

I always thought USA when Psych and other shows were going had the perfect formula at 16 episodes. 8 in a row with midseason finale, 2-3 month break, 8 more to finish off the season. Then your 5-6 month between season gap.

I hate shows that have ~36-39 weeks from start to finish because you end up with large gaps of time. A good flow happens until the holidays and then it's chaos of 1 week new, 2 weeks off, 2 weeks new, 1 week off, 1 week new, 3 weeks off, 2 weeks new, 1 week off or some frustrating variation.

I actually don't care if a season is 10 or 20 episodes, break it up into 2-3 chunks and get it over with in straight shots.

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Postby NTP66 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:26 am

Psych should have nothing less than 52 episodes per season, with a minimum of 20 seasons. I will not hear any objections to this.

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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:34 am

Bosch season seven was pretty good, just too short at 8 episodes. Perfectly sets up the new spinoff, and that’s probably why the series was shortened by two episodes.

Some great acting by Titus Welliver during one particular scene where you can visibly see him clenching his jaw in anger; I was angry too.

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Postby Dickie Dunn » Wed Jun 30, 2021 11:52 am

Psych should have nothing less than 52 episodes per season, with a minimum of 20 seasons. I will not hear any objections to this.
There’s always exceptions to the rule.

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Postby Beveridge » Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:13 pm

To my Psych friends, caught this on the previous episode of A Million Little Things:

We finally watched this the other night. It's escaping me at the moment, but he also threw in another Psych line moments before this one.

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Colossal TV Show thread

Postby tifosi77 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:24 pm

The problem with American TV is that they insist on squeezing blood from a rock. The creators of Lost only wanted to run for 5 years, but ABC (or whatever network it was) forced them to run longer, and so the story got complete sideways. The original UK Office (which is the superior Office) only ran for 2 seasons for a grand total of 12 episodes. Same with Fawlty Towers; 2 seasons, 12 total episodes. Over here, for some reason we value quantity of quality, and that kind of sucks. Even something that is limited - Breaking Bad - they insist on splitting the final batch of episodes up into 2 mini-seasons to make it seem like there's more content. It's stupid.

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Postby dodint » Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:26 pm

How the hell can Fawlty Towers have only 12 episodes? :lol:

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Postby tifosi77 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:28 pm

Because John Cleese knows when to call time.

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Postby NTP66 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:28 pm

To my Psych friends, caught this on the previous episode of A Million Little Things:

We finally watched this the other night. It's escaping me at the moment, but he also threw in another Psych line moments before this one.
Yep, he does something every few episodes. He did his psychic fingers-to-head thing an episode or two before this one. I love it.

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Postby tifosi77 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:29 pm

Also, re Fawlty Towers

Not only were there only 2 seasons, there was like a 3- or 4-year gap between them.

nocera
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Postby nocera » Wed Jun 30, 2021 3:06 pm

The problem with American TV is that they insist on squeezing blood from a rock. The creators of Lost only wanted to run for 5 years, but ABC (or whatever network it was) forced them to run longer, and so the story got complete sideways. The original UK Office (which is the superior Office) only ran for 2 seasons for a grand total of 12 episodes. Same with Fawlty Towers; 2 seasons, 12 total episodes. Over here, for some reason we value quantity of quality, and that kind of sucks. Even something that is limited - Breaking Bad - they insist on splitting the final batch of episodes up into 2 mini-seasons to make it seem like there's more content. It's stupid.
Yep. This is one reason why I really appreciated The Good Place. That easily could've kept going but Michael Schur knew the story he wanted to tell and ended it after 4 seasons despite high ratings and consistent award nominations.

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Postby blackjack68 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 4:33 pm

Was it that much after? Did he leave to make a movie or something?
Think it was 8 years later.

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Postby NTP66 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 4:40 pm

I had to look it up:
It turns out there was a reason why Caruso behaved so badly on the set of NYPD Blue. According to Steven Bochco, it was because he wanted to be removed from the show. In his memoir, the producer writes:

"He never said it to me directly, but the simple truth was, Caruso felt he was too good for television...He wanted to be a movie star. And his plan was to alienate the writers, producers, and his fellow castmates in hopes that we would dump him from the show.”

Towards the end of the first season of the show, Caruso asked to be relieved of his contractual obligations, but the show's producers refused to let him leave. They didn't want to jeopardize the future of NYPD Blue because, after one season, the show had become a breakaway hit.

It was at this point that things became more difficult. When working on the second series scripts, Caruso's agent got in touch with the producers to let them know about the actor's new demands. If he wasn't to be let out of his contract, he wanted it to be restructured.

Under a new deal, Caruso wanted a pay rise from $40,000 to $100,000 per episode. He also wanted Fridays off, a 38-foot trailer, his own office suite, a dozen first-class plane tickets, and private security to protect him from his fans. The agent informed Bochco that, if these demands weren't accepted, the actor had another series of demands, which included time off the show so he could concentrate on his movie work.

Understandably, Bochco rejected Caruso's demands and even threatened to sue the actor if he didn't return for season 2. But as things became more difficult between the actor and the program's showrunners, push eventually came to shove. After many other battles with the actor, they agreed to the termination of Caruso's contract to let him pursue his hoped-for film career. Their final stipulation was for him to do the first four episodes of season 2 so they could properly write him out of the show. Caruso agreed, although his behavior was still less than warm on the final day of his time on the show. Bochco said in his memoir:

"When he had shot his last scene of the fourth episode, he turned without a word and left the set, the stage and the lot. He didn't say a single word of thanks or a goodbye to his castmates — nothing."
So yeah, he was a NTP66.

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Postby blackjack68 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 4:42 pm

And then came crawling back to TV.

dodint

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Postby AuthorTony » Wed Jun 30, 2021 4:54 pm

TIL David Caruso has retired from acting.

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Postby tifosi77 » Wed Jun 30, 2021 7:03 pm

"You can't fire me, I QUIT!"

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Postby NTP66 » Fri Jul 02, 2021 8:57 am

First I've heard this:


Vanity Fair: What’s next for you? Is there a season five in the works for Fargo?

Noah Hawley: Yeah, I think so. I don’t have it yet. I have pieces that will have to survive. They’re not connected. I think it would be good to create an ending, and deliberately come to something, knowing it’s the last one and see how one might wrap up this anthology. What’s next for me, it looks like, is [an] Alien series for FX, taking on that franchise and those amazing films by Ridley Scott and James Cameron and David Fincher. Those are great monster movies, but they’re not just monster movies. They’re about humanity trapped between our primordial, parasitic past and our artificial intelligence future—and they’re both trying to kill us. Here you have human beings and they can’t go forward and they can’t go back. So I find that really interesting.

Where are you in that process?


I’ve written a couple of scripts, the first two scripts, and we’re looking to make them next spring. When you get to something with this level of visual effects, there’s a lot of preparation that has to go into it. What’s been really illuminating is to see that the entire film industry had to take a year off and they are now trying to jam two years of production into one year. So it’s very hard to look on the planet earth and see where you might make something in the next six months. Everyone is racing to make up for lost time. So, I figure let that bubble burst a little bit and we’ll do it right.

Is there anything else you can share about it? Is it part of the Ripley story, or will it be original characters in a different time and place?

It’s not a Ripley story. She’s one of the great characters of all time, and I think the story has been told pretty perfectly, and I don’t want to mess with it. It’s a story that’s set on Earth also. The alien stories are always trapped… Trapped in a prison, trapped in a space ship. I thought it would be interesting to open it up a little bit so that the stakes of “What happens if you can’t contain it?” are more immediate.

Deadly things that can’t be contained and the whole world at risk? Sounds relevant to the past year.

On some level it’s also a story about inequality. You know, one of the things that I love about the first movie is how ’70s a movie it is, and how it’s really this blue collar space-trucker world in which Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton are basically Waiting for Godot. They’re like Samuel Beckett characters, ordered to go to a place by a faceless nameless corporation. The second movie is such an ’80s movie, but it’s still about grunts. Paul Reiser is middle management at best. So, it is the story of the people you send to do the dirty work.

How does that relate to your series?

In mine, you’re also going to see the people who are sending them. So you will see what happens when the inequality we’re struggling with now isn’t resolved. If we as a society can’t figure out how to prop each other up and spread the wealth, then what’s going to happen to us? There’s that great Sigourney Weaver line to Paul Reiser where she says, “I don’t know which species is worse. At least they don’t **** each other over for a percentage.”

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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Fri Jul 02, 2021 12:59 pm

Sounds riveting.

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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Fri Jul 02, 2021 7:52 pm

I love Paul Calderon’s character in Bosch. Just a slick old dude, and I hope he shows up on the spinoff.

He was Paul in Pulp Fiction - “My name is Paul, and this is between y’all.”

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Colossal TV Show thread

Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Tue Jul 06, 2021 3:10 pm


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