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Unread 29 Sep 2005, 01:49   #61
MrL_JaKiri
The Twilight of the Gods
 
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Re: So, what are you stealing today ?

Quote:
Originally Posted by s|k
But honestly, kudos for admitting that it is stealing, many others wont go that far, and I can find no fault with you.
You make the pedant inside me angry. The pedant that represents the rest of me, ditto. "IP Violations" is the term, my dear chap, or at least a variation on that is.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dante Hicks
So if they could prove that Maria Carey CD sales dropped when she had a negative review in the New York Times, would that make it OK to try and ban them?
It would be entirely consistent methodology, as they appear to be going by little more than post hoc ergo propter hoc, but I suspect you realise that already.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dante Hicks
Mostly it just seems to be Family Guy without the "this is bad as that time I..." bits (which are probably the best things about Family Guy).
If we're not counting the newest series of family guy (or SG: The Untold Story) then I probably agree, although I'd expand it a bit to include the general cut-to-gag-cut-back bits. Of course, that's also what makes Family Guy so up and down in terms of quality, both as a series as a whole and in terms of individual episodes. When all that's there is the gag, if you don't like the gag the entire scene is wasted. Obvious example of this kind of thing: that bit in the C&TCF reference episode where Peter runs home, and falls over outside the path to his door subsequently spending 10-20s holding his knee and making pained noises. Unless you like the specific joke, there's nothing there. It's dead time. Add in that a fair proportion of the jokes involve an extremely specific reference to a part of american popular culture that may or may not have crossed the pond, and you can see the problem.
That is, of course, part of what makes Futurama the best written comedy television show that I know of. None of the scenes are dead time - there's always exposition, or background gags, or character building. Even The Simpsons didn't manage that, there were cutaways to jokes tending to the non-specific that, whilst maybe amusing in isolation, broke the flow of the episode. An episode which has this problem which springs to mind is the one where Homer gains the heart bypass. There's too many instances to describe it in detail. Also, it's on Theodore which I don't have with me. Or on my DVDs of that series, but as for some reason Fox DVD commentary tracks fail to work on all of my simpsons disks and futurama series 1, there's little reason to have it to hand.

The reason I've chosen to ignore series 4 (and the associated feature) is because it just isn't as good. I don't know if this is because the writing team has changed, or whether they've just run out of ideas, but, aside from the ever decreasing number of good or intelligent gags, they've tended to fall into two categories. The first of these is just doing the same kind of thing that they've done before, but doing it less well and more often. eg: in (I believe) Stewie Griffen: The Untold Story, Peter gains a segment on the news called something along the lines of "Grinds My Gears". EVERY time this is mentioned, the conversation follows a '"Mention show" "Spurious exposition line", Peter then saying "This is much better/worse than the time I was on (TV show popular in america about the time the writers were probably growing up, probably a game show)". It's lazy, really lazy. And comedy doesn't work with lazy writers. It's no coincidence that the best comedy is written by people (Douglas Adams, the Pythons, Matt Groening, David X Cohen and the rest of the Futurama team) who put an immense of time into writing and rewriting. People who make sure that no matter what you're writing, you're writing it well. A group perspiration version of something like Decline and Fall, or any other of Waugh's books.
The second problem comes with what I presume (from the content of the show) to be their movement from "family based prime time" into a later slot, persuaded by the demographic who watch it, or the ratings the DVDs acquired, or maybe the executives realising that just because it's an animated show about american life doesn't mean it's the new Simpsons. I digress. The problem is simple, and it is this: vulgarity has replaced intelligence, or at least some stab at intelligence. Instead of an attempt at a joke that doesn't rely on more than social taboo to even have the possibility of being found amusing, we have incest gags, or the like. See point 1 for my commentary on lazy comedy.

Also, why the hell doesn't Nathan the Prophet get more recognition? "Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet annointed Soloman king" it (1 Kings 1:38) goes, but do you hear anything about the person you'd think would be more important? Oh no, we just get the lowly priest's name battered into our heads when the actual talent behind the project is ignored. "I likes that Zadok the Priest from that there set of coronation anthems from that nice mister Georg Friedrich Händel, it gives me a nice bit of tune to listen to when I'm out milking my chickens." Were I Nathan, I would defintely be annoyed at this turn of events, possibly resorting to legal action or at least having a "three in a bed romp" with Courtney Love and Winona Ryder, selling the pictures and story to the red tops in an attempt to raise my public profile. It would also make me look more "edgy" and "hip" with the youth of today and thus be the popular alternative candidate should I enter the running for Archbishop of Canterbury or, mayhaps, Pope. We all know Ratzinger's not going to last forever, and I'm a ****ing prophet, give me my ****ing recognition cocksuckers.
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