Today’s Deep Thoughts
GOP congressmen & senators appear to be very feisty these days. They’re so cute at that age. Hold on, these are middle aged men acting like they’re in junior high? Yikes.
The Future Of The Networks
Now that the strikes in the entertainment industry have been settled and everyone is getting back to work, the various cogs and gears are refiring. CBS has already announced return dates for their primetime shows. We will soon see some semblance of normalcy. There is one underlying question. Did the work stoppages on the heels of the COVID era shutdown hasten the broadcast network’s collective crumbling into irrelevance?
I don’t intend to overdramatize things. The networks will continue to draw large audiences. The simplest way to look at this is to use the NCAA basketball tournament as an example; the championship game alternates year to year between CBS & TBS. The years in which the game airs on CBS have significantly higher ratings. What is in clear danger is original primetime programming.
Ironically enough, after years of trying to emulate the more established networks, the lineup on the CW network could now serve as the template for the future. When Nextstar took ownership they went on a cancelling spree. Now there are only a small handful of shows left over from the old regime; the schedule largely consists of imports and inexpensive reality programming.
Don’t be surprised if the legacy networks start to look like that a few years down the road. The way they have had to piece schedules together during the strikes are a preview of what’s to come. An increasing reliance on reality shows, and scripted series will largely be reboots of existing IP or franchised shows presented in blocks, such as the way NBC runs an entire evening of Chicago series or Law & Order spinoffs. Eventually every city will have its own entry in either the CSI or NCIS universes. If you’re looking for groundbreaking creativity, no need to bother with the Big 4 networks, look instead to cable networks or your favorite streaming service.
The Shuttering Of Jezebel
Last week news came out that G/O Media had shut down the Jezebel website. I’m not its target demographic, so my only experience with its content would occur when a piece would go viral. Because of that I can’t vouch for its quality, but I do know that not only did the site have universal praise but it also filled a vital niche. Now more than ever, with such a backlash towards women’s rights and basic women’s healthcare, it’s important to have a site which focuses so strongly on women’s issues, making this a terrible loss for this specific moment in time.
The first sign of trouble came a few months ago when editor in chief Laura Bassett submitted her resignation, stating that the corporate overlords were treating her staff terribly. This is just one more bullet point to add to the litany of G/O Media’s sins.
Jezebel may be the first major piece of its portfolio that G/O pulled the plug on, but it’s not the first that it ruined. Deadspin is a shell of its former self. The AV Club is essentially a vessel for some of the most uninteresting listicles you think of. Even The Onion, which remains the crown jewel of the G/O empire, isn’t what it was in its glory days. It’s still consistently funny, and often smart and timely, but it’s also grown increasingly reliant on slideshows.
I have to believe there’s gotta be some entrepreneur with deep pockets willing to finance a brand new feminist themed website to make up for this loss. As many of you may be aware, half of the world’s population is female. Seems there might be an audience there. There is such a tendency to overlook the female demographic, however.
Which leads to the story of the terrible box office numbers that The Marvels put up in its opening weekend. My concern is that Hollywood will take the wrong lessons from that. There are several reasons why the movie is proving to be a relative flop. Superhero fatigue sure looks like a real thing, and Marvel in particular has really oversaturated the market. Actors’ inability to promote their projects during the strike didn’t help; there have been plenty of movies opening this summer that drew smaller audiences than they would have in a normal year. And it has also gotten some of the worst reviews and audience scores of any film in the MCU. I’ll leave it up to you to decide to what extent those poor numbers are due to trolls who can’t stand their movies to be ruined by a surplus of icky lady parts.
In other words, it can’t be chalked up to just one factor. I could be wrong, but I think too many of the Hollywood gatekeepers will simply say that audiences stayed away because it’s a female led movie. They will look at Barbie as an anomaly. We’ll know more when we see what types of movies get greenlit over the next several months.
Foiled By The Road Runner Yet Again
On a related note, you may have seen that Warner Brothers Discovery was initially planning on doing another one of their tax write offs by killing their upcoming Coyote vs. Acme film starring John Cena. This situation was a lot different than the one involving the Batgirl film. In this instance the film was not only completed, but it had been testing very well. Recall that one of the reasons WBD used for pulling the plug on Batgirl was that it was unreleasable. Never mind that this decision was made before the filmmakers inserted CGI, of course an effects heavy film will look shoddy at first. But I digress, this one resulted in enough pushback that WBD folded.
Perhaps emboldened by the gains made from the strike settlements, the creative communities responded heavily to this decision and fought back. There were even reports that some filmmakers were planning on canceling meetings with Warner executives. If accurate, threats to take business elsewhere must have resonated with WBD. They slightly reversed course; Warner will still not release it, but they are shopping the project, so it will see the light of day after all.
I don’t know if this is an isolated incident, or if it will prove to be the beginning of the end of a business model that only serves to benefit the business people at the expense of audiences and artists alike. A philosophy that it’s more cost efficient to bury an already completed project than to show it to the public is a broken one indeed. Besides, do you really want to piss off John Cena of all people?
TV Of the 21st Century - Malcolm In the Middle
When I choose shows for this feature, it’s done knowing that in most cases I haven’t watched any episodes since the show had originally run. Because of that I sometimes wonder how well it would hold up today. Such is the case with Malcolm In the Middle. Would the distinctive aspects of the show that seemed so special at the time still stand out?
It’s probably overstating things to call this groundbreaking, but it is true that it contained elements that were rare at the time but are now standard in many highly praised television series - breaking of the fourth wall, single camera usage in a comedy, Bryan Cranston.
At its essence, the show was pure anarchy. The titular Malcolm was the third of four children (all boys) in a working class household struggling to stay above water. The oldest had been sent to military school, which made Malcolm the middle child in the household. A genius level intellect, he offered his observations of the chaos to the viewers.
And it was a completely chaotic atmosphere. The house was in constant disarray, and the family was controlled by a domineering mother. One sight gag that I loved was that one time the camera slowly pulled back from an exterior shot of the house to reveal For Sale signs in the yards of the homes on either side.
Like any outstanding show it was filled with memorable characters perfectly cast. People have a tendency to focus on Cranston due to his subsequent stardom, and he was outstanding as Hal, the father who had no control over his home. But the bigger standout was Jane Kaczmarek as mother Lois. She ran the house with an iron fist, yet at the same time was the quintessential mother bear, willing and able to protect her brood from anyone who dared look down on the family. I did also always love the running plots with oldest son Francis. At the show’s onset he had been exiled to the aforementioned military school because he was a bit of a wild child. It was the most demented school imaginable; as the series went on he also spent time working on a dude ranch run by an eccentric German couple.
Because of its star, MITM aged better than most other shows focused on young people. Frankie Muniz is such a small guy that he always appeared much younger than his actual age. So in the later seasons the show could still pretend that he was a kid. And I should mention Bryan Cranston once again. He was so indelible as Hal that it affected my viewing of Breaking Bad. I suspect I wasn’t alone in this regard, but it took me a long time to understand that Walter White was a bad guy after all. Despite all the damage he created (watching Jane die for example) it took me until some time in season 3 that I finally stopped thinking to myself, “This is Hal! The guy with such out of control body hair that his wife needed to shave his back every morning! The guy who constantly took up, and quickly gave up on new hobbies! That guy! He’ll eventually do the right thing!” I know it’s silly to not separate actor from character, but sometimes I just can’t help it.
Plus there were also several appearances by Cloris Leachman as Lois’s mother. And don’t forget that Kenneth Mars channeled his old Young Frankenstein days as that Getman dude ranch owner. And a theme song from They Might Be Giants? Just a well done show all around.
Originally aired on: Fox
Currently streaming on: Hulu
Closing Laughs
That’s all for now, all you good people. Have a great day & I’ll see you all on Friday. Peace out!