There is a discussion taking place about the “correct” way to watch and write about series television. (This being the Internet in 2012, “taking place” might already need to be changed to “took place”.) A reductive statement of the parameters of the “write about” discussion is that some people write weekly recap reviews that focus on each episode as it arrives, while other people wait for season’s end before offering an opinion. I tend to the latter … if you go back through the archives, you’ll see that I usually write something at the beginning of the season, and at the end of the season, but that I don’t often break down specific episodes.
The discussion was inspired by comments from David Simon, one of the best show-runners ever (The Wire, Generation Kill, Treme). It came to us in a common Internet roundabout way. Simon gave an interview to a New York Times reporter. Times writer Jeremy Egner picked up on one aspect of that interview that interested him, and offered excerpts after presenting his own contextual introduction. Some critics then commented on the Egner excerpts, and Simon gave another interview, this time to Alan Sepinwall, where he was able to return his comments to his intended context.
The context was partly that Simon was irritated by a “bracket” imitation game that pitted 32 characters from The Wire in a contest that mimicked the format of the NCAA basketball tourneys. Omar “won” the contest. Simon felt that such a game diminished what he had tried to do over the course of five seasons, turning a detailed dramatic probing of inner-city problems into a popularity poll. In the process, he seemed to be attacking people who have come to the series after its initial run:
I’m indifferent to who thinks Omar is really cool now, or that this is the best scene or this is the best season. It was conceived of as a whole, and we did it as a whole. For people to be picking it apart now like it’s a deck of cards or like they were there the whole time or they understood it the whole time — it’s wearying. Because no one was there in the beginning, or the middle, or even at the end. Our numbers continued to decline from Season 2 on.
Simon’s context was the bracket tourneys, which wasn’t clear from Egner’s piece (although Egner added an online update for clarification). But what also seeped through was Simon’s frustration at how audiences “used” his show, and, rightfully so in my opinion, why he wished they’d been around back when The Wire was struggling just to get another season on the air.
Simon expanded on his comments, explaining that he found the trend of instant episode recaps to be unfortunate.
He then gave an interview to Alan Sepinwall, who is not only one of the best TV critics in the country, but is someone who got his start writing weekly NYPD Blue recaps on Usenet when he was in college (this was my first introduction to recapping, and I’ve owed Sepinwall a debt ever since). Simon stated, “I think there's a fundamental disconnect with what certain types of longform television are now trying to build and the way in which they're consumed by the audience.” His reference point was the novel, and how series like The Wire are novelistic (I know what he means … I once included the first three episodes of The Wire in a survey course on American Literature):
No one would read three chapters of a novel and go, "What so and so's trying to say here." No book reviewer would try to assess any work based on the entry point of a piece of a prose. Is television prose? No, but you can't tell me there isn't some correlation between the way certain television shows now are being structured and the way multi-POV novels are being structured. …
If television reviews could be done at the end of each season, they could say more and do more. And I don't just mean they'd just be full of praise. They could even be more critical of things, and say, "This show's ambition was X, and it failed to achieve X, and here's why." It's only possible to do it at the end, and that's all I'm saying. Often, people experiencing each chapter in real time feel the need to tell you where they think it's going, or why it shouldn't go there, or why it should go somewhere else.
Simon is not rejecting criticism, particularly the kind of artful, informed criticism of a Sepinwall or Mo Ryan or Tim Goodman. And he’s not saying we should avoid the online equivalents of the Monday-morning water-cooler discussions. But he is clearly frustrated by the attempt to explain a “longform” series via weekly recaps.
Maureen Ryan had her usual smart response, asking that we “give the ‘TV shows are just like books’ analogy a rest.” She argued that “an episode of television can stand on its own, as a complete work. To assert otherwise is to denigrate one of the medium's finest accomplishments.” And then, “An episode is not a chapter of a book. Generally speaking, individual book chapters are not meant to stand on their own. But an episode of television has a great deal of validity as an individual work, and there's nothing wrong with treating it like the discrete unit that it can be and often is.”
I find myself straddling the middle, here. As noted above, as a blogger I go for a once-at-the-start, once-at-the-finish approach to seasons (and rarely write about individual episodes). But as a fan of these longform series, I am hooked on the best of the recaps (the afore-mentioned Sepinwall, Ryan, and Goodman, along with whoever has the job at Salon this week, and Myles McNutt, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few).
In his interview with Simon, Sepinwall said something very important about a series (The Killing) that first enthralled, then bored, and finally infuriated many critics: “I didn't like ‘The Killing,’ but I wrote something last month saying that Veena Sud shouldn't be making the show in response to me; she should be making the show she thinks is the best one to make.” I’m with him on that, even though I, too, was pissed enough at Sud and her show that I haven’t returned for Season Two. I don’t want David Simon to make a series for me. I want David Simon to make series as he wants to, and his track record suggests I’ll like whatever he offers. And I understand why Simon would be frustrated when others don’t see his work in the manner he might like … this happens when your work goes public. In my grad school days, I might have argued that Simon and his audience are co-authors, but I’ve pulled back from that over the years. Now, I’d just say that my Treme is different from your Treme, but without David Simon, there is no Treme.
But there is a place for criticism, and the best criticism is its own art form. And I don’t think David Simon would disagree.
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