You Ever Notice...and What's the Deal...

[D'Snowth]

This may sound like a heckle, but I have to say that I'm a little surprised that despite being a celebrity and Dr. Oz's daughter that Daphne Oz seems to losing her baby fat rather slowly; it seems like most celebrities like her have a bikini body just two weeks after giving birth anymore.

 

[Drtooth]

I kinda stole this from TVTropes, but I've finally found Antenna TV on the cable (seems like it's just a digital channel from New Hampshire), and I've been able to see Newhart for the first time in forever.

Now, considering that I got this from TVTropes, I'm not the only one to kinda think this, but...

Considering that Newhart is just a dream of Bob from the previous show, does the fact that the not too bright Handyman just so happens, in-universe wise, look and sound exactly like Bob's friend Peeper... does that mean he subconsciously has difficult feelings about him?

 

[minor muppetz]

So I've always assumed that the title Malcom in the Middle meant that Malcom was a middle child, except that he wasn't. When the show began, there were four children, and he was the third, so he was never the middle child at that point. It may seem like he's the middle child because Francis no longer lives with the family, but he's still a major character on the show. And you can't have a "middle child" with four kids, right? Later on, Jamie was born, and with five kids, Malcom finally was the middle child. But I assume that the writers/producers/creators didn't know that there'd be a fifth one when the show began. I assume that Jamie was born because the actress playing the mother was pregnant (or am I wrong? did they plan this all along? Did they eventually realize what I'm talking about now and add a fifth child to fix their mistake?).

And on the subject of a "middle child", lately I wonder, if the third pregnancy for a woman ends up bringing twins or triplets, does the second child count as a middle child?

 

[D'Snowth]

My ears have recently discovered the sounds of Emilie-Claire Barlow: a terrific Canadian jazz singer. Americans apparently only really know her for her secondary career as a voice actor (in cartoons I've never even really watched), but her singing career is pretty well-known up in Canada. She's pretty varied too, her music can be slow and smooth (like what you imagine someone singing in one of those kinds of night clubs beatniks like to hang out at), or bouncy and toe-tapping. Yep, she's got more talent than most other artists do in their little fingers.

Now, it just begs the question: why couldn't we Americans get her instead of Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen?

 

[D'Snowth]

We discussed in another thread how a majority of the folks at TV Tropes have never even heard of Nostalgia Critic, which brings to mind a very valid point I've been trying to make for a while now:

So, what's the deal with dumping shows straight to Netflix now? How can a serious, full-length, budgeted show with real professional people involved manage to survive on Netflix? As I've said time and time again, despite being a common household appliance in today's world, not everybody in the world owns a home computer, and let alone, not everybody is tech savvy, or knows how to use the internet (my mom has somehow managed to learn how to use Facebook on a phone, but when it comes to using it on the computer, I have to help her out half the time). So, again, what it boils down to is if a show is on Netflix, it's only going to reach a small percentage of the masses: everybody has network TV (not everybody has cable, however), and that's where the masses are... not only that, but even if you don't have cable, network TV is pretty much free once you make the one-time purchase of a TV set and another one-time purchase of a converter box... Netflix on the other hand, not only do you have to pay for it, but unlike Blockbuster and other similar video rental business when they used to exist, you can't just get a membership and use it whenever you feel like it, you're obligated to use Netflix regularly.

Yeah, sure, the internet offers people a lot more creative freedom that no longer exists in the business of television, but again, only a small percentage of the general public is going to see what's put on the internet.

 

[Oscarfan]

It may not seem like it's "current" for people to use Netflix and whatnot, but it's the future, like it or not. My generation is already going to be cutting the chord on cable and lord knows the future generation will be doing it too.

 

[D'Snowth]

Technically, we're from the same generation.

But that brings to mind another observation...

Many previous generations have labels and names to identify themselves, for example, the generation born during WW2 is known as Baby Boomers... then after that generation, it's like they ran out of names, and started giving them letters instead, like Generation X (60s to 80s), Generation Y (80s to 2000s) and Generation Z (2000s to today)... that's the last of the alphabet, so in the next ten years or so when the new generation will be up for consideration, what are they gonna start calling them? Generation Alpha? Generation Beta? Delta? Fox? X-Ray? Zero?

 

[Drtooth]

TV isn't exactly watched on TV anymore. While it means we get a bigger selection of shows, streaming will wind up devolving into backdoor deals between streaming sites. Which I don't like at all. You're going to have to pay as much for watching all your shows as cable (divided by how many streaming sites there are), and you're still going to deal with the telecoms to keep you hooked up. That's the unfortunate, unavoidable negative.

The jump to the internet platform for TV shows does seem like a gamble, but so isn't getting a show greenlit anyway. While I can't exactly vouch for Dreamworks feeling burned by CN and Nick for the disappearance of HTTYD The Series and Monsters vs Aliens the series (though I can't imagine they're happy the shows are co-owned by another company they've since broken ties to), putting their original programming that they own out there seems like a sounder business model. There's NO WAY that Arrested Development would have survived back on television, as Fox just couldn't wait to frag that show off the network because it wasn't a singing competition. And House of Cards is extremely popular because of it's Netflix availability. Though I don't see why cable movie channels passed that up.

I'm actually more concerned about the status of children's original series than adult ones. Adult fans that like shows like Arrested Development and Community will follow them to the internet. Dreamworks has all these original programs based on movies, and they're really good. I'd hate to think that there's no audience for them. Especially since Turbo is far better as a cartoon than a movie (no small part on Titmouse, I'd say). That seems like a very good place for animation to thrive, since the three channels that still run the stuff only have a handful of shows.

 

[D'Snowth]

And House of Cards is extremely popular because of it's Netflix availability. Though I don't see why cable movie channels passed that up.

I watched an interview with Kevin Spacey recently, and it's not as if networks passed it up, it's that they wouldn't let him do the show he wanted to... except Netflix. Apparently, all these network execs wanted him to do a separate pilot to test the series, but he said they already had a story to tell, and they wanted to start telling it in the first episode and let the story continue in the ensuing episodes, and Netflix was the only one who would let him do it that way.

Then again, that does bring to mind another problem in that it's impossible to do a show the way you want to today, because the entertainment industry has gotten more and more corporate: if you pitch a show to a network and it gets picked up, the show going to the air is not going to be the same show you pitched, because the network is going to make all the changes they see fit, and not let you have a say in it, despite it being your show... and they're going to own it too, leaving you with nothing. Again, yeah, the internet gives you considerably more creative freedom and control for your own work (which, I think some people take a little too far, but that's another discussion for another day), but once more, you're only reaching a very small percentage of the public... again, apparently the majority of the TV Tropes community don't even know who Nostalgia Critic is, I can't imagine that every single average joe you'd bump into on the street would know him either.

 

[Drtooth]

Then again, that does bring to mind another problem in that it's impossible to do a show the way you want to today, because the entertainment industry has gotten more and more corporate: if you pitch a show to a network and it gets picked up, the show going to the air is not going to be the same show you pitched, because the network is going to make all the changes they see fit, and not let you have a say in it, despite it being your show.

It was always like that. Always. It just gets more notice now since the stories of how screwed up something was are usually not known in their own day, but information that used to only be prithee to TV types is well spread out today with the internet.

And it's a shame, since some of those old stories are quite interesting. And sometimes, this sort of thing can be for the better. Tom Poston was almost Maxwell Smart. And I love the guy and everything, but he would have been a poor fit for the character. G.I. Joe as we know it (well, this is more a comic book example) was supposed to be S.H.I.E.L.D. and Nick Fury. Why else do you think it was called Cobra? It was meant as an expy of Hydra. And let's not forget Freakazoid. Would that show have been memorable had it been a more serious but slightly wacky superhero? No. Freakazoid was only a great show because no one knew what the heck they were doing to the point that the second season, while good, lacked the wackiness because it actually had story structure.

I really do like how the internet series get more freedom than they would with networks. Something like that's not bound to last, of course. I really wish that there was a way for Dreamworks to resuscitate the Monsters Vs Aliens cartoon for Netflix, though. I hate that they had such great potential and wasted it on random gags of the week. I heard HTTYD is going to move there. Bet the Croods will get its shot on the service.