munchman’s TV Musings #10
by munchman
Happy start of 2017, m’luvs. Hope your year is going better than yer friendly neighborhood munchman’s. Yeppers, less than two weeks in and I’m already feeling dazed and confuzed like I got nuthin’ to luze.
What’s that? What I just said sounds like a political position of the unhealthiest kind? Nope, my state of mind has nada to do with the state of the U.S. union, kids. It’s the state of the Industry – yeppers, our sweet, innocent lil ole Entertainment Biz that has me so discombobulated.
See, we started this cool “TVWriter™ Writing & Showbiz News Feed” last week, and the more I go to it (the thing updates every couple of hours so I look at it a lot), the more bewildered I get. To put it another way:
- The current TV critical darling, about which news sources keep spewing (as in vomiting) out articles, is a series called This is Us, created and run by Bekah Brunstetter. The show demonstrates that Ms. Brunstetter is a My-T-Fine writer indeed. But she’s also a writer who works very hard to mislead her audience and turn what would have been a fascinating almost-really-real viewing experience about and for adults into an adolescent wheels-within-wheels puzzle for gamers whose attention spans have atrophied like my neutered dog’s ball sack. As my least-favorite-person-who-I-don’t-know would tweet: “So sad.”
- According to The Hollywood Reporter, “455 original series aired in 2016” including those on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, et al but not including the tons of web series that have appeared as well, a remarkably high percentage of which this munchlehead believes have been outstanding. We need a new definition of “TV,” people! One that accounts for everything electronically available to our millennial – and pre and post M as well – selves!
- And we also need to stop complaining about how there’s too much TV (whatever that is; see above) and how the market is going to self-destruct from over-abundance. Seriously, amigos, can there ever be too much art? Yeah, I called it “art.” Color me crazy, what the hell.
- Have you seen BBC’s The Real Housewives of Isis? Tasteless as a motherfucker, sure, and probably something most folks would throw in the trash and stomp on because attacking satire is always easier than trying to come to grips with the Real Evils of the World. But why all the fuss about one mediocre sketch? Does it really make sense to demand that “heads will roll?” over a joke in which, let’s face it, no actual heads actually rolled? Alas, poor fiction, I knew it well.
- The Disney Channel, which foolishly developed a sequel to the classic series Boy Meets World has now cancelled Girl Meets World because it didn’t get the ratings the network wanted. A show-ful of talented and hardworking cast, crew, and office staff workers is now out on its ass while the idiots who got the ball rolling close their eyes and continue walking on – in circles – just as before.
- Speaking of idiot ideas intended to attract viewer eyeballs, Netflix has picked up a South Korean series called Love Alarm. It’s an animated series about a love app, of course, and in xenophobic America love and foreigners don’t seem to me to be an ideal match. Maybe Netflix thinks the show will do well in China maybe? You remember China, right? A country that hates foreigners even more than, oh, what’s that orange-faced moron’s name?
- Chicago P.D. is repopulating its cast for the coming season. Basically, the show is jettisoning (melikes the way that word fails to roll off the tongue…try and say it fast: “Jett-is-on-ing”) its most popular cast members for supposedly creative reasons. Would that be “creative” as in “creative differences?” I.e., as in frustratingly higher and higher actor salary demands causing Dick Wolf to once again go to the wall to prove that it’s the scripts audiences tune in for and not the stars? Yeppers, munchiloons knows that strategy worked on Law & Order, but maybe this time around the writers will realize how much they’re getting screwed with paychecks way lower than the hundreds of G’s a week the leading faces on TV get and start some frustrating negotiations of their own? In fact, aren’t WGA negotiations coming up fairly (or unfairly) soon?
Oops, we’re outta space for this week. Tune in next time when yer smilin’ muncheroo will talk about the things he likes, Industrywise, so far this year. There’s gotta be something positive out there, in the Land of Love and Moneyh, right, peeps?
