Hello!
& welcome back to Rush Delivery. For
this week’s assignment we were to read a few articles concerning television
critics & their respective styles/tastes & jot down some thoughts about
what we read.
The 1st article assigned
centered on a television show critic named Alan Sepinwall. I could immediately tell I would enjoy Alan’s
style of writing upon reading his self-criticism of some of his early work
& how it caused him to label himself a “dumbass”…even if it was just at
times. Alan had a few shows he paid particular
attention to but his personal diamond in the rough was NYPD Blue, which he eventually became the leading fan-boy of. I can’t say I’m a huge fan as majority of
police procedural shows bore me to exhaustion (minus Dexter maybe, but since its primary focus is on a serial-killer I’m
not sure how well it fits into that category).
One of the more interesting aspects
of the article to me was the explanation of how difficult it is to be a critic
for certain types of shows. They even
compare Alan’s favorite NYPD Blue to
modern dramas such as Mad Men & Boardwalk Empire (2 big favorites of
mine) and say that even a popular classic such as the Blue can’t withstand
against the likes of modern dramas with the many twists, turns, and hailstorms
of activity they contain (Breaking Bad
comes to mind for me..).
The second article was actually a
blog post concerning the 1st article making things fit very well
together. In the blog I couldn’t help
but agree with Levin’s (the blog-author) statement that Sepinwall is an amazing
critic because he gets so intensely-in-depth with the shows he critiques. Levin cited Sepinwell’s Chuck campaign to save the show when it was failing as well as his appearance
on NBC’s Community for the same
purpose. I am not personally a fan of
either show but love the dedication Sepinwall shows for the programs he
loves. It reminds me of the “Bluth’s
bananas bit die-hard Arrested Development
fans pulled when the show wasn’t bringing in the numbers. Fans sent actual crates of bananas to FOX
studios in petition of cancelling the show and saved, if only for another
season (although it’s coming back as an exclusive series on Netflix, so yay!!).
The final steps for our assignment
(which I found quite intriguing) was to choose 2 hyperlinks found in either
article & explain why we chose them & what they showed us. My first choice comes from the original
article concerning how Sepinwall is able to write-up on 15 shows per week. The actual hyperlink stated “advanced
screeners.” I really clicked on it
because I was curious about how Sepinwall acquires his advanced
screenings. I couldn’t see a respected
critic as a media pirate but I wanted to see.
The link led me to Sepinwall’s Twitter account (a social media form I
could care less about) and merely stated that he had seen the week’s new
episodes of Community, Parks & Rec, & The office in advance and would post
those reviews that night. So my prying
did not really answer my question as to where he gets his copies but I could
only assume that the network is providing them as they know Sepinwall is a fan
of those series in particular.
The second link I chose because it
was an interesting label/term that I wished to know more about and it came from
the blog. The actual link states “pop-culture
scholar” and intrigued me because I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, I mean
anyone who obsesses and consumes a large quantity of pop-culture could be
considered a scholar in that topic. The
link led me to the background bio on a television blog by a one Mr. Miles
McNutt entitled Cultural Learnings. The blog’s goal, as stated in the bio, is not
to simply recap the show but to place it within the context of the series, the
season, its genre, and on occasion broad literary and cultural
philosophies. I found that an excellent
description until I read a few posts and could only categorize them as strange
and twisted rants about the show mixed with ludicrous guesses on where it may
turn next. I did find many of the posts
quite comical but in general it was not for me.
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