Spider

The lost art of storytelling

Watching Flash Forward on Monday I had a nagging doubt throughout. That it would be rubbish. Not now, I was quite enjoying it, but sometime, maybe six months time, it would be rubbish. I would give up caring. And it began to ruin my enjoyment of the show. Could I really continue watching it under the strain of knowing its enjoyment would never last. Having read that they had the story arc written for 5 series worth of show just seems like an unbearable pressure - I'm going to watch this for 5 seasons? I don't think so.

Where I think the problem lies is in the structure. It starts with a huge event, and everything is downhill from there. It can not possibly sustain itself, the further it gets from episode one, the worse it must get. This is how it seems. It can not build to anything, it can not gain momentum, it can only lose that which it started with. The signs were there in episode 2 as we heard declared a couple of times, "We must stop this happening again," or "What could be worse? This happening again." All we have to look forward to is that which has already happened.
The problem seems to be that the huge event at the start of the show's run, guarantees a big audience at the start, and then you they maybe plot a graph of viewings falling off as the show deteriorates into a series of empty questions. The graph showing that they'll have lost the viewers to get them cancelled sometime during season 6, and then they'll rush some answers into the last couple of episodes and everyone will end up feeling cheated. The opposite curve, start the show off "slowly", gain momentum and then viewers through good reviews and word of mouth, build characters, involving storylines which aren't just a series of pointless mysteries is just too slow for some.
Heroes was my last brush with such a show. The first season worked well, kept up the interest throughout, finished pretty well. And then it went downhill. Can't even remember when I stopped watching, think it could have been the start of season 3, or the end of season 2, who knows. It was when all the talk of earth-shattering consequences got too much and it became apparent that the huge talk was a mask for a lack of anything substantial actually happening - a succession of "powers" as a substitute for characters, adding new abilities to old characters as the mood took - a mess. Concentrate on the small things and the big will come. Loss the small things and everything else crashes.
True Blood on the other hand, now there's a show. One can imagine a Flash Forward version which would have started with the Vampires announcing themselves, and then huge panic in the population and then... for season 2... werewolves, anyone? Whereas the actual version is great, a gothic soap opera, everyone thinking about sex all the time, graphic violence, great use of lighting for effect, tripping in and out of reality. And the "coming out" of the vampire in the past, the odd reminder of the politics through snippets glimpsed on the TV, but this isn't about the event, its about the people. After watching the first episode I remember thinking, "well, it was OK, for a first episode, it'll probably get better." And it has. It hasn't peaked in the first 5 minutes, unlike I sense Flash Forward may well have.
The point could well be illustrated by using the example of a recent film, District 9 - In District 9 the mothership is always present, inert on the skyline. It doesn't involve itself in the story or become the focus of the story till the very end. It's just there, while people live in its shadow With Flash Forward this shadow becomes the only focus, nothing else matters, the characters have no chance for a light of their own. In True Blood, we have a similar thing to District 9, the presence of the vampires "coming out" is simply a background, in the foreground is the characters and their stories. There is the possibility of escape, freedom for the story. The event enables, rather than smothers.

Keep it Goin' Louder

Video for Major Lazer/Ricky Blaze/Nina Sky "Keep it Goin' Louder" -



Nice tune (and for those who haven't already, buy the Major Lazer album like yesterday) and the video's low-key, but good, unobtrusive blending of cartoon and live action.

"Froze by desire"

The xx performing "Islands" off Later...



Theirs really has to be one of my favourite albums of the year. Absolute class. I think what I particularly like is their ... cool ... It's a cool borne not out of detachment, like so many others, but of attachment, a distance created to sing of the claustrophobia of attachment, being too close... This is a cool I can love: a cool that loves...
And Islands is one of the best tracks on there, though there are so many, it's a tough call.