TV Round Up…
Alrighty. Figure I’d put this up for posterity’s sake. These are the shows that currently occupy my viewing time. I rarely turn the TV on unless there’s something I actually want to watch on, and these are it. Them. Thingy.
Must Watch
The shows that I absolutely cannot miss.
Chuck
I’ve already spazzed my pants over how much I like Chuck, so I’ll just leave it at that. I will say that, as it’s on at the same time as The Big Bang Theory, I usually watch BBT and then wait for one of the later showings of Chuck. (This is why having Satellite sometimes doesn’t suck; I get a three hour timeshift on everything.)
Dirty Jobs
I often make the mistake of watching this while eating dinner. Still, I’ve loved this show since I found out they pixellate it when anybody vomits. Now if they’d just scramble the vomit audio, it’d be fantastic.
Flashpoint
Absolutely genius show. The editing, the acting and the writing all make me positively gleeful. Also, it made me cry once. I never cry. (I can count the number of times TV/Film have made me cry on one hand. And still have three fingers free.) It’s come a long way from the pilot episode that I described as ‘Eliot DiMauro, The Pink Ranger, and a guy that looks like Josh Charles walk into a hostage situation…’
Read more
Don’t judge a book by its cover… But feel free to judge a TV show by its title sequence. (Part 2)
["...hopefully in the next couple of days." apparently does not take into account a loss in the family, sliding into two weeks in New York, and the onset of the dreaded flu. AND 23 hours without power in temperatures peaking at -17 degrees celsius. Go, go Toronto! Last time I try to give anything close to a definitive answer. Fr Srs.]
And so it continues: gloriously abstract TV titles that contribute effectively to the creation of the thematic identity of the program. (Continued from Part 1 here.)
I’ve been thrown for a bit of a loop here as one of the title sequences I had searched down is no longer available on YouTube thanks to a copyright claim by NBC Universal. Thanks, ever so much. Just for that, I’m not even going to mention the title of the show, or give it some free advertising. No need to thank me, I’m only paying you the same courtesy you pay your viewing audience. (When will you learn? No, seriously. I want a succinct, precise answer.)
I will however pimp shows from some of your competitors outside the jump: Pushing Daisies. Dexter. True Blood. Carnivale. Flashpoint. Dirty Jobs. Nip/Tuck. The Big Bang Theory. Grey’s Anatomy. Supernatural. Stargate: Atlantis. Twin Peaks. Psych. Reaper. Robot Chicken. The Young Ones.
All of those are on other networks. Some of them don’t even fit the criteria for this post. Some of those have been cancelled. Some of them haven’t been on TV in decades. What matters is I like all of them.
Also, you suck.
MOVING ON.
The remaining titles are after the jump. I haven’t figured out what to replace the [SHOW THAT WILL NOT BE NAMED] titles yet, so there may only be four. I sorted it. There are five.
Don’t judge a book by its cover… But feel free to judge a TV show by its title sequence. (Part 1)
First up, apologies for the lack of updates. I was a little bit busy moving to Canada. I’m in Toronto and I have bought boots and a jacket and gloves and I still manage to nearly lose my limbs to frostbite every time I step outside. I reserve the right to shout “The sky is falling!” whenever it snows. Like right now.
Moving on!
I love TV, that’s no secret. I love episodic and serialised drama, comedy, pseudo-horror, and the like. I love watching the characters grow and develop within the realms of their own little worlds and plots. I love the little intrigues and mysteries and the various permutations of the basic narrative structure.
I love title sequences.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been putting together a list of title sequences from various TV shows that use the minute or so of title time to go beyond a simple ‘This is X person, This is Y person, they are in this show’ structure and use the time to create a textual representation of the character of the show itself. These types of titles tend to use the juxtaposition of images to create a mood and an ideology–a thematic identity–for the show beyond the pecking order of the main stars.
These may seem like fairly obvious and straightforward concepts; in our celebrity driven culture, the title sequence is designed primarily to let the audience know who is in the show coupled with a vague idea of what the show is about. But, and this is what grabs me by the short and curlies and makes me sit up and pay attention, some title sequences go far beyond these basic expectations. Some shows abandon the ‘Heroic Headshot, Shot from Show, Sympathetic Headshot, Shot from Show, And Anthony Stewart Head as Giles, Title of Show Plate’ format, and create tiny snippets of art unto themselves. They divulge the character of the show as an entity in itself and, often, draw you into the world of the show as something beyond a way to sustain the live characters and the plotlines.
Now, this whole fascination I have with short form textual analysis stems from my study into Eisensteinian Montage as applied to Music Videos. It’s a long (and potentially boring for anyone not interested in film theory) story, but if you want to know more, my essay on the subject is here. I’ve also recently found Art of the Title which goes beyond the restrictions I’ve set (only TV, abstract form) to show the titles of films and TV as mini works of art.
Now, I’ve compiled a collection of ten television title sequences that best display (in my opinion) the use of the title sequence as a means to firmly present the character of the show as a whole through abstracted means; i.e. no headshots, textually rich, and aiming to develop the character of the show as a whole. The only limitation on this little study was what I was able to find on YouTube and my own viewing habits.
Due to the fact that I’m apparently a long winded bag when it comes to analysing and squeeing over things I enjoy, I’m splitting them up into two posts.
Beyond the jump, are the first five. All the videos are embedded. So, dial-up beware.
Movies are a one night stand. Television is an abusive relationship.
Television.
I’m sometimes appalled by how much I love television. Well, not all television; I’m not as enamoured with some genres as I am with others, I don’t particularly care about the wheeling and dealing the buyers and planners do to get the content on air (as long as they don’t sacrifice whichever show I’m watching to make way for ad content; Channel Seven, I’m looking at you), and I have very definite preferences about what I like within a show. I’m always trying to qualify what I watch and why because, ironically, the thirty second grabs for current affairs shows have me convinced that television is inherently evil. Granted, I’m not twelve any more and I don’t have to run what I’m watching past Mum (even then, her approach was that if I could present a cogent and coherent argument for why I wanted to watch something, I was allowed to watch anything. Anything.), but I still have the, perhaps bizarre, notion that watching TV will rot my brain and turn me into some slobbering, hip-jutting, gum-popping, trend-following, moron wearing a cheap, Supre ‘Girls on Film’ t-shirt without any idea that it’s a song about pornography by Duran Duran and not an assertation of feminism and support of Helen Mirren.
I prefer to think that’s not the case. I prefer to think that Television is a pit stop between here and there; disseminating ideas and information in bullet point so that I can go to a more reliable source and find out more. This is as much applicable to fictive television as it is to the news and documentaries. Actually, probably more so since I don’t rely on television (in the broadcast sense) to bring me documentaries and the news as it stands is barely a step above tabloid journalism in its current sensationalist nature: disaster! disaster! injustice! sport. weather. human interest!
It’s really not that much different from the “issues based” drama I’ve seen in my time; it takes a little longer to disseminate, but it makes the same points, but with more over-acting and fewer … well, I can’t actually think of what there’s fewer. SVU practically does panel discussions, 24 does intercuts, and most of them have intractable, perfectly coiffured hair. Dramatic television shows take on social and political issues at greater depth, and often greater (if biased, but when is anything in the media not biased?) accuracy. Why am I supposed to believe that there is any less merit in watching narrative television rather than the news?
I have no idea.
But, anyway. I didn’t actually want to get caught up in a rant about the news. At least I managed to avoid reality television; that would probably have just been a vitriolic deluge of bilious invective, which, while fun, probably wouldn’t have helped.
But, I digress.
Leadership. Television.
There are shows I watch with regularity. There are shows I watch on and off. There are shows I fell hard for in the beginning, but stopped watching for one reason or other. There are shows that annoy me, shows that I adore beyond reason, shows that make me want to put the remote through the TV screen with great force, and shows that don’t even rate a seconds pause when I flash through.
A lot of the time, it comes down to two things: writing and character. I can forgive a lot of things if its well written and the characters are owned by the actors. Sure, I’ll point out the flaws and mock them within an inch of their lives, but I’ll generally keep watching.
There are, of course, a few exceptions.