Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Sunday's episode (was it Sunday's episode?) really failed. Plot lines I didn't care about. Legal maneuvers that made no sense. Lack of commitment to basic character logic. (Why would Allen Shore allow his murderer ex-client to hang around the office? Doesn't he have the authority to kick him out?) Quirky character stuff that added up to nothing. An uninteresting new core character played by a bad actress given bad, earnest, on-the-nose dialog.

I think it's a sign of desperation when shows start bringing in too many new characters. You have to be able to trust your core cast to carry the show. It's easy to bring in new people, but your audience has no one to hold onto, no one to care about, no one to turn in to see.

10:37 AM

3 Comments:

He seems to have taken all of the quirks of ALLY MCBEAL and melded them with his heavier THE PRACTICE.

It doesn't work.

To David E. Kelly - we've seen your tricks before. Don't think that by putting on a new saddle you're fooling anyone.

By  Bill Cunningham, at 11:26 AM  

I think it's important for those of us who are pro's in this biz to go beyond the simple thumbs-up/ thumbs-down analysis of other's work, and look deeper.

Look deeper even than whatever set of rules WE think are needed to make good drama, and ask more probing questions.

Why did Kelly make these decisions? What did he gain that would be lost had he trudged down the more traditional route?

And even within a personal reaction one can go deeper:

Why do I reacting negatively to this type of storytelling?

Do I really think it's bad?

Or do I need to say it's bad, because it's telling me something that I don't like to hear?

Or do I need to think it's bad, because it takes me out of my comfort zone? Makes me rethink my rules of writing.

Personal taste is fine, as far as it goes. Problem is ... it doesn't go very far.

By  Robot Porter, at 12:16 PM  

Robot - I would look deeper except I've seen all of this material before:

On LA LAW.
On PICKET FENCES.
On ALLY MCBEAL.
On THE PRACTICE.
and now, in bits and pieces, on BOSTON LEGAL.

I know this is his milieu, but please, move on!

By  Bill Cunningham, at 11:21 PM  

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