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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 15:59:47 GMT -8
Alex C:
Buzzard's guts, people - what is it that you hath wrought in my absence?!!!
I go to bed after making my last post, and then wake up to this?
It's going to take me some time to read and digest everything that has been put out here, and start firing off responses. Real life is intervening, so not going to happen for some time yet.
But I will return...
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:00:03 GMT -8
Jeremy:
Okay, big post time. I won’t be responding to Boscalyn’s initial post (which I mostly agree with, anyway), but I’ll share my thoughts on the crux of this thread – namely, the question of whether opposing opinions matter that much in regards to determining the best show ever.
In regards to Mike and Freudian’s debate, I pretty much agree with Mike, a fact that should not surprise many of you, since I tend to agree with Mike on pretty much anything that doesn’t involve Mad Men. I’m not sure why I tend to support his opinions so often, although it may be in hopes that he will someday refer to me as a “talented dude”.
Anywayyyyy. I, personally, have no qualms with hearing opposing opinions which regard TV shows or movies I don’t think much of as being “the best show/movie ever”, so long as it’s well-argued. In fact, I love it. It’s always nice to hear from someone who derived great personal pleasure from a certain work of art (sorry, Freudian), and to hear them articulate it in a refined manner is one of the great pleasures of critical analysis.
Now, chances are highly improbably that said someone will convince me of said opinion. But for me, that’s not the ultimate goal of debate, or even the most satisfying one. No, the point of debating the merits of something is to come away with a better sense of that other person’s tastes, their experiences – the reasons they loved it. If, after several rigorous minutes of argument, we can agree to disagree, I’ll walk away happy.
With that said, it’s very difficult for me to argue the merits (or lack thereof) of something that doesn’t personally resonate with me. This is because when I’m analyzing a television series, said analysis is operating under the assumption that said series had some sort of effect on me – some hold that affected me in the delicious form known as “entertainment”. When I analyze a series, I’m analyzing the aspects I liked about it, in order to get to the nitty-gritty of why I liked it. Ergo, if I don’t like a series, there’s nothing for me to really analyze about it, except for why I don’t like it – even if the very idea of not liking it proves contrary to others’ opinion.
Now, as many of you know, understand, and want me to stop mentioning, I don’t like The Wire. I recognize it as a very well-made series, but it’s just not for me. Now, bearing this in mind, can I support its contention for being the Best Show Ever? That’s a tougher question than you might think. There’s a part of me that wants to say “yes” – this being the critic in me that recognizes the show’s greatness. But there’s also the relative person in me, the one who accepts things based on whether or not they fit to my tastes. That part has a harder time doing so, because that part refuses to accept such a thing as “best”. Is The Wire the most-worthy-of-appreciation show ever? That, I have a good chance of agreeing to. But best? I could not in good conscience say that.
Now bear with me. Do you want to know what kept me watching The Wire for three full seasons, despite the fact that it consistently turned me off? It wasn’t the general praise surrounding it. It wasn’t the annoying and thoughtlessly immature fans on Reddit who, if my evidence proves correct, are racist homophobes who have coital relations with animals while shouting anti-Semitic slurs at their underage female slaves.
No, it was Alan Sepinwall’s reviews. After finishing each Wire episode, I would hop online and read Sepinwall’s review of that episode. He would praise the show to the point of evangelization, and I completely disagreed every time he called the show “entertaining” or its characters “very likable”, and so on.
So you’re probably asking: Why did I read these reviews if I fully disagreed with their ultimate points? Well, quite simply, because they were good. Very, very good. They were well-reasoned, and well-argued, and they made some highly interesting points. But most importantly, they took a show I had no interest in analyzing and laid out a good and proper analysis for me, allowing me to enjoy the show despite the fact that I never enjoyed watching it.
So I may sometimes disagree with people on what the “best show ever” is. But no matter how much I disagree, hearing their opinions can offer a kind of new light on the subject at hand. And to my mind, that’s what the true essence of debating is all about.
P.S. Reddit sucks.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:00:20 GMT -8
Scott:
Two notes:
1. I hereby propose the following theorem - If you get Jeremy talking long enough and it is not specifically related to the show he is currently reviewing, eventually it will relate to how he doesn't like The Wire and therefore Reddit.
2. You finished Season 3? Great. I will never try to convince you to watch any more of The Wire again. I can't however, promise that Stringer avatar will not make a return at an appropriate point.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:00:35 GMT -8
Jeremy:
Other Scott wrote: I hereby propose the following theorem - If you get Jeremy talking long enough and it is not specifically related to the show he is currently reviewing, eventually it will relate to how he doesn't like The Wire and therefore Reddit.
I hereby propose the following theorem - If you pour a cup of water on Scott's head, he gets wet.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:00:56 GMT -8
Kyle:
This is going to be rather brief, but I made my arguments pretty clear on the comments section of “Chosen.” Simply put, to me, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the best show ever. And can I just add that Buffy is one of the most academically sited TV shows of all time, if not THE most academically sited. I’d say that’s pretty telling...
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:01:17 GMT -8
Bosc:
Goddamnit, Jeremy, I agree with everything you said too! How are we supposed to get to 100 posts in 24 hours without semantic arguments!?!?
What I will say is that I love reading opinions that are different from mine, provided they're civil and well-argued. It's easier to do this with television reviews than, say, social justice issues because art is (unpopular opinion time) more or less without real-world effects independent of one's feeling.
Freudian Vampire wrote: And so the great Critically Touched civil war was begun.
Buffy. The West Wing. Freaks and Geeks. Angel. Long ago, the forum nations lived in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Freudian Vampire attacked.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:01:32 GMT -8
Kyle:
When I said “sited,” I meant “cited.” *shakes head at utter stupidity*
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:01:44 GMT -8
Scott:
I changed my mind. In the CT Civil War, I'm not going to be the guy sitting in the middle. Put me on whatever the opposite side of Jeremy is.
Wait, it's the anti-Buffy side? Oh well, some sacrifices need to be made.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:01:56 GMT -8
Zarnium:
Not to sound like a broken record, but I think Jeremy more or less said what I was trying to say earlier, only in a way that's actually understandable. All the well-reasoned arguments in the world just aren't going to change whether a show resonates with me or not. And if I may continue to leech off of other people's posts, I also like what Mike said earlier about Buffy being "intimate." That's pretty much exactly how I feel, too. I've never connected with or cared about another group of characters more, and that's what propels Buffy to the top of my list more than anything else.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:02:08 GMT -8
Jeremy:
Zarnium: Yeah, I was thinking of your earlier comments when I wrote mine. (I like to think that my reviews skirt the line between avid fanboy and professional critic, although it's probably more of a case of the former initiating the latter.)
Boscalyn: if it makes you feel any better, I disagree with your proclamation that Key and Peele is the smartest show on television. I only watch it occasionally, and I think it's quite good, but even on the comedy front, I can think of a few shows that have it beat. (Community, most notably, although technically that show isn't airing on TV anymore.)
Scott: Ow.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:02:20 GMT -8
Mike:
Quote: I’m not sure why I tend to support his opinions so often, although it may be in hopes that he will someday refer to me as a “talented dude”.
You'll have to be content with "writes sentences with the fluency of soft butter" and "the best at making terrible puns that make me laugh anyway." We'll work towards "talented dude" -- Noah has a reservation on that one for the moment.
This may border on incestuous at this point, but I agree with everything Jeremy just said. Including the parts where he agreed with what I said. Hence the wordcest.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:02:47 GMT -8
Keith:
[Noah wrote:
Thanks! I think a full response to your point would be repetitive to my forum post, but I will make one other point here. I conceded in my chosen comment that you could design a rubric in which Buffy would be objectively worse than other shows. To me, it's a question of deciding what's really important in life. To quote George Sand (sorry about quoting a lot, but I'm getting sore fingers):
“Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.”
Another way of saying it is, I guess we just don't care about the same things.]
I wouldn't go so far as to say we don't care about the same things. A big part of the reason I enjoy your comments about Buffy, and its value as art with regards to its ability to prove transformative to a relatively broad audience, is that I agree with the analysis, and you elegantly stated more or less the precise reason I think Buffy is such a worthwhile show. And not coincidentally, why I view Mike's incredibly detailed reviews and analysis to be worth reading.
However, I think it is a mistake to separate the art from the medium, when it comes to assessing the quality of a particular work. If the only thing about your story worth telling was the story itself, then you wouldn't make it a TV show, you'd write a book, or a magazine serial (do those even exist any more?). To make an analogy, if you publish a collection of van Gogh prints, you wouldn't call it great literature, or even a great book, despite the fact that it contains intensely valuable and meaningful works of art. Regarding the transformative value of something, you wouldn't say that the anti-drug commercial where two kids get high and one shoots another to be great art just because it was transformative in persuading kids not to do drugs (assuming it did). Analyzing the value or worth of a particular work necessarily requires that you include the parameters of the medium in your analysis. Otherwise, the medium loses all value, and I just don't think it is a correct conclusion that TV and film add nothing of value to the written/spoken word.
Which means that you have to account for the fundamental facets of the medium when comparing TV shows. TV tells a story, so just as with literature, the elements of story figure large. Things like plot, characterization, thematic content, and narrative structure matter. As TV is a visual medium, the way a show looks also matters. Makeup, cinematography, and special effects matter. As it also relies on people acting out the story, the quality of the actors' performances also matters. Indeed, the artistic merit of the work matters, too. Maybe moreso than many other aspects of what goes into a TV show. But it's not the ONLY thing that matters. This isn't just rubric creation, either - these are all real, tangible elements of TV that come together to make a show what it is.
So given all of that, how do you differentiate shows? I think like anything, you have to take the entirety of the thing when judging it. If you simply judged things by their best parts, Dexter wouldn't be remembered as a train wreck. Similarly, you can't just look at Buffy at its best when trying to compare it to other shows. I would grant you that, if the discussion were about the best consecutive run of episodes in a show, then you could credibly stack up Buffy, from "Fool for Love" straight through "Once More, With Feeling" next to any stretch of any show I've ever watched (which sadly, has yet to include The Wire). The back end of Season 2 and the first third of Season 7 are likewise of pretty high quality, all things considered.
The problem is, the rest of the series just doesn't make it. The fact that the series finale and lead-up thereto are clumsily plotted, and many of the characters poorly written, is a huge strike against. I think any series that fizzles in its final episodes almost by default can't be considered in the conversation of BSE, but that's far from the only reason. The show looks amateurish for the most part. That has little impact on my enjoyment of the series, and I don't doubt they probably did a great job with a very low budget, but appearance matters in a visual medium. The acting is for the most part good, although there are some memorably bad performances by David Boreanaz at the beginning, and Tony Head seems to mail in much of the last 2 seasons.
I could go on and on, but my goal is not to trash Buffy, any more than my intention in pointing out some of the flaws of The Sopranos was to trash that show. I happen to love The Sopranos and think it is an amazing show that was of incredibly high quality on a consistent basis throughout its run. Same thing with Breaking Bad. It's that consistency that sets them apart, and makes them belong in the discussion of BSE. Buffy, while of high quality a fair amount of the time, and while quite clearly capable of delivering some of the best episodes of TV ever made, nevertheless doesn't have the same consistency.
Even if I concede that Buffy far surpasses the other shows in transformative artistic content, being better art does NOT, in itself, make it better TV. TV is so much more than simply the transformative capacity of the art. And trivializing that part of the medium in the name of ranking Buffy among the best TV shows ever made, ignoring the inconsistent quality of the show and even of the art that you value so highly, doesn't really account for everything that makes a TV show great.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:03:02 GMT -8
Keith:
I don't know if the Interwebs allow me to tl;dr my own post, but I will anyways.
tl;dr. I care about the artistic value of Buffy a great deal, but don't think it's right or fair to translate my response to the art into an objective measure of the quality of the show as compared to other shows.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:03:15 GMT -8
Mike:
Keith, no show is flawless -- every single one has its flaws. (e.g. I could rattle off 10 notable problems I have with Breaking Bad just off the top of my head). It then boils down to which flaws are critical enough to take it out of contention for top of the pecking order in show quality. That's when subjectivity comes rushing back into the discussion.
At the end of the day, we can both have a different "best show ever". We can even both be "right", provided we each make an articulate, intelligent, and impassioned case for our choice. I don't see anything wrong with that. I'd rather be learning from each others' experiences rather than trying to claim smug superiority by telling them that they're 'objectively wrong' for their opinion, as has often been the tone within this thread.
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Post by Jeremy on Mar 19, 2017 16:03:28 GMT -8
Monica:
Wow, this was a really interesting topic to read.
Personally, I believe that certain factors and flaws simply hold more weight to one individual than they would to another, which makes deciding which show would be the "best ever" far too subjective. While certain shows are obviously objectively out of the running to ever be held in such high regard, when it comes to the ones thoroughly discussed throughout the thread, considering any one of them to be the best would be absolutely justifiable. I suppose I'm trying to say that I view shows in certain tiers, in which I can understand anybody believing that any top-tier, high-quality show would be the best ever created. At that point, it would just be a simple matter of personal opinion. I wholeheartedly understand FV's criticisms regarding Buffy, while I also understand Mike's opposing stance on the topic.
With all that being said, I'd absolutely support Buffy being discussed as one of the greatest shows ever created, as I view it as one of the best myself (as well as my personal favorite).
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