Bo

I think I will. My guess is I’m not the first to think of such an idea. I’ll check through some of the TV articles to see what’s already been done. For now, gotta sleep. Work comes early. Have a good night and thanks for shootin’ the shit. I’m new to the site and it’s a cool welcome into the community.

I will. I think maybe the problem was I tried to binge watch it. The story was written and meant to unfold in a weekly manner and I think, with some shows, that is vital. Actually…that’s a decent idea for a topic. Has the nature of television, and television writing, fundamentally changed with the rise of streaming services and binge watching? For example: I tried to watch Orange is the New Black and I couldn’t stand it. I made an honest effort to analyse and critique it honestly and for the life of me I couldn’t do it. I think part of that is the fact that I’m white, straight, and male; clearly not the target audience. But, I believed there was more to it. I challenged my wife to watch season 2 as if it were an old school show. I challenged her to watch it only once a week. I challenged her, and OITNB, to delay gratification. She did so for two episodes and the next week forgot entirely about the show. Mind you, she was obsessed with this show, placed it among her top 5 all time after binging season 1. I submit there is a distinction between shows written with an eye towards weekly delivery and shows written for streaming services. I don’t watch as much TV as I would like, but if you do, maybe I could see if the topic is approved and you could run with the idea?

Word. I dunno I just kinda lost interest in the characters. My wife got really into it and watched the entire series on Netflix. Entirely possible I saw more than I recollect. I remember Season 1, I remember the episode I referenced, and I remember liking Sawyer and Kate. Other than that, it’s all something of an Abrams-fueled blur of mediocrity.

I approach your question, is the novel dead?, in much the same way I approach the question: what is poetry? We see in modern poetry a dismissal of the rules of rhyme, meter, and the rules of poetry. While this produces some amazing writing (Maya Angelou and Gil Scot-Heron come immediately to my mind), it also muddles the very elements which make poetry as a genre so beautiful, specifically following certain restrictions and manipulating words to achieve a unique aesthetic within those restrictions. To make an analogy: if someone were to run from foul line on a basketball court to the other foul line, take flight, and stuff the ball into the basket, an on looker would rightly describe the act as an amazing feat of athletic prowess. However, if the dunking individual did not dribble and faced no opposition, they would not have been engaged in a game of basketball. Why? Because there are rules to basketball; rules which play a vital role in defining the act itself. Is the novel dead? No, I don’t think so. But readers and writers must recognize that when we expand the definition of a novel without end in some quest for ultimate inclusion, we dilute the meaning of novels until the term means nothing at all.

Does that make sense? I apologize if I’m rambling, this is just off the top of my head and your article deals with questions I have often asked myself. Good show. Great job.

I’ll never forget watching The Breakfast Club for the first time. My dad got a few movies he loved (TBC, From the Hip, Young Frankenstein) growing up and he kinda explained all the cultural stuff. That Era and Hughs’ generally produce a strange sort of nostalgia by proxy. Good article.

I had trouble getting through any of season 2. Season 1 was exceptional, though. There was an episode in which two characters were buried alive due to paralysis from some kind of spider. I think that was my favorite. Sawyer and Kate were my favorite characters by far. This strikes me as a show that couldn’t quite catch up to its own potential, much like Alias. Is there a trend here?

Excellent analysis. I didn’t play the first, but I did purchase the playable comic for the second and was able to make the “big decisions.” In the second, the Paragon/Renegade scores were based on a matrix serving as a zero-sum game. Thus, players were encouraged to play on a consistent side in order to (SPOILER ALERT!!!!) destroy/preserve the Collector base with an intact team. There is a glitch of which one can take advantage during Samara’s loyalty mission in ME2: after defeating Morinth, if one asks Samara if she is ok (or whatever the dialog option is on the upper left) the conversation will end, but Shepard will have the option to stay in the apartment and look around. Doing this gains Shep +2 Paragon points. Going back to Samara and repeating that same process a few hundred times allows the player to fill the Paragon meter entirely, play everything prior to and everything after the loyalty mission as renegade, and complete the game with both meters full, or nearly so.

Have you ever played Alpha Protocol? If not, you should do yourself the favor. It uses a similar dialog engine as ME, but there are some differences. The most important of which is that AP puts the player on a timer to make their decisions. I highly recommend it.

Excellent article, H4zel. Always a pleasure to read good writing on a game I for which I have such passion.