Oh oh! I thought of something to blog about!
Of course, it's contingent on 2 things:
1. You watch Grey's Anatomy
2. You've seen last week's episode (pt. 2 of the 3 part ferryboat arc)
Ok, who's still with me? Just checking.
So, as we all know (all because those who don't have probably left), the end of the last episode had the "Holy ___ " moment when Meredith woke up in what appears to be the O.R. of the afterlife with Denny and Kyle Chandler sitting next to her
I'm going to go out on a limb here and saw this: Meredith will not be dead at the end of the third episode. It's entirely possible that I'm going to be wrong. After all, the line at the beginning of the episode, "There's more I have to say; so much more. But... I'm disappeared." (Yes, I download episodes so I can play them again when I need to quote them. Ok, that's a lie. I download episodes because I work at night and can't watch anything live) is the pitch-perfect line for the "killing the main character" tease. Certainly a title character's death would not be unprecedented but I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened to a show of this size and audience level ever. So, Shondra and her crew would probably go down in the history books if Mer died.
That being said, I don't think that's happening. Certainly the only reason why Mer would be killed would be if Ellen Pompeo wants out of the show because there are so many more stories to be told with the character of Meredith Grey and her presence is invaluable on the show. I don't think she's be frivolously killed for shock value (not that this is frivolous. I mean, 3-episode arc?! That's much more time than other shows spend on stuff like this).
Ok, so I've made the argument that Mer isn't dying. I think it's logical to think that Meredith isn't dying. It's like when you watch a movie and you see the actor who's listed first in the opening credits in the middle of a crowd shot at the beginning. You think "There he is, the hero of the movie." He's going to be the focus of the movie, with all the events of the plot happening around him, as if the eye of a maelstrom. Meredith Grey is the same character. She's not dying and I don't think anybody truly truly believes she will. (Once again, I could be dead wrong. Grey's has done a fantastic job so far in defying expectation.)
So, we think that the boat sinks at the end, that the hero gets the girl, that the villain's killed, that Meredith will be revived. Why is it such a big deal then? I think Grey's has done it right. We can pretty much postulate the ending. But they still manage to have their audience guessing. We're on the edge of our seats in a way that hasn't happened in awhile (except reality TV. Which is, in most other ways, stupid). I think the irony and cynicism of 90's popular television has killed the art of suspense. We think we know it all and shows that appeal to us are the ones that play against those expectations in a post-modern methodology. The counterpoint isn't "You think you know what's going to happen? Bet you never saw THAT coming." The counterpoint becomes "You think you know what's going to happen? Let's ridicule the very notion." Seinfeld, Friends, Will and Grace didn't have the CLIFFHANGER episodes. They had episodes that dealt either in absurdly expected notions or patently bizarre notions. Hyper-realistic or hyper-absurd episodes deconstructing the very format of the sitcom and sitcom tropes.
Grey's Anatomy, however, ushers a new sensibility of television. The 2000's of television. We're watching shows the relish in drama and suspense. They don't undercut with irony. Rather, they relish in what's expected and only turn on a dime at the end, keeping those who think they know better forever guessing. 24, Alias, Sopranos, Grey's Anatomy, etc. are shows that don't try to be smarmy intellects but rather try to break new ground. Not that there's anything wrong with po-mo deconstruction sensibility. Arrested Development took that whole idea to a whole new level creating the show-within-a-sitcom-within-a-show, look-at-how-smart-we-can-be attitude, making a new sort of hyper-hyper-awareness. Which is a very roundabout way of describing the show. The new wave of drama, however, has been defined by simply indulging.
This might be time to just say that my own personal view on television and television plots is that the most successful ones were the ones that were able to either 1.) inject absurdity into normal situations or 2.) inject normalcy into absurd situations. This may seem obvious but it's difficult to juggle the levels. It's the difference between the hyper-realistic and the hyper-abstract. Friends, for instance, was hyper-realistic. It took a realistic situation, a group of friends, and zoomed in so far that absurd things could happen without affecting the borders of realism. Most sitcoms fall into this category. They usually happen in normal, everyday settings but the settings are zoomed so far in that you don't see the work setting. You simply see the single-dimensioned absurdness of characters. Dramas usually take the opposite approach. They take the absurdly frantic settings in life, settings with mystery and assumptive secrecy (such as hospitals or law offices, where viewers who are not doctors or lawyers have imagined being in those lives and decisions seemingly exist on a world-changing level) and try to zoom far enough out where the framework of the workplace provides analogous interplays with the characters.
I just realized that this somehow turned into my treatise on what television is. I did not expect that. Oh well. Where was I?
Anyway, the reductive nature of sitcoms (coupled with the increasing popularity of sitcoms) in the 90's caused television to become... snarky. (On the dramatic end, shows had to be attitude-driven or "gritty," causing tons of strange NYPD Blue spinoffs.) Shows had to be self-deprecating in order for critics and viewers alike to say that a show was intelligent. While it did serve to allow people to think about television on a new level (some would say, an artistic level), what happened was that television started to treat itself as a lark. And what happens when you think negatively about yourself? Other people start thinking negatively about yourself too. That's how we wound up with reality TV. Self-deprecation to the point where it became cool to parody the intellectual-deprived nature of self-deprecation. (Did that sentence make sense? I'm not actually editing this post because I normally don't. Perhaps I should've.) Modern era shows, 2000 and beyond, have attempted to stem the blood loss caused by all these self-inflicted wounds in the skin of television as an art or literary forum.
The moral of this long, unusually complex worded post is that television is starting to become more and more intelligent. Which I'm grateful for. Watch television. It's good again.
(You know I thought of an exception for all that. Sci-fi. Sci-fi TV has been able to avoid stereotypical ebbs and flows. Perhaps it's because it's a niche market.)
OK, this whole train of thought will need to be worked on more. After all, if all this is true, where does Ally McBeal fit in? X-Files? ER? I'm not willing to rework and revise, however. Not at 12:54 in the morning. So this will probably lead to an amendment post later on. I'll link them.
1. You watch Grey's Anatomy
2. You've seen last week's episode (pt. 2 of the 3 part ferryboat arc)
Ok, who's still with me? Just checking.
So, as we all know (all because those who don't have probably left), the end of the last episode had the "Holy ___ " moment when Meredith woke up in what appears to be the O.R. of the afterlife with Denny and Kyle Chandler sitting next to her
I'm going to go out on a limb here and saw this: Meredith will not be dead at the end of the third episode. It's entirely possible that I'm going to be wrong. After all, the line at the beginning of the episode, "There's more I have to say; so much more. But... I'm disappeared." (Yes, I download episodes so I can play them again when I need to quote them. Ok, that's a lie. I download episodes because I work at night and can't watch anything live) is the pitch-perfect line for the "killing the main character" tease. Certainly a title character's death would not be unprecedented but I'm pretty sure it hasn't happened to a show of this size and audience level ever. So, Shondra and her crew would probably go down in the history books if Mer died.
That being said, I don't think that's happening. Certainly the only reason why Mer would be killed would be if Ellen Pompeo wants out of the show because there are so many more stories to be told with the character of Meredith Grey and her presence is invaluable on the show. I don't think she's be frivolously killed for shock value (not that this is frivolous. I mean, 3-episode arc?! That's much more time than other shows spend on stuff like this).
Ok, so I've made the argument that Mer isn't dying. I think it's logical to think that Meredith isn't dying. It's like when you watch a movie and you see the actor who's listed first in the opening credits in the middle of a crowd shot at the beginning. You think "There he is, the hero of the movie." He's going to be the focus of the movie, with all the events of the plot happening around him, as if the eye of a maelstrom. Meredith Grey is the same character. She's not dying and I don't think anybody truly truly believes she will. (Once again, I could be dead wrong. Grey's has done a fantastic job so far in defying expectation.)
So, we think that the boat sinks at the end, that the hero gets the girl, that the villain's killed, that Meredith will be revived. Why is it such a big deal then? I think Grey's has done it right. We can pretty much postulate the ending. But they still manage to have their audience guessing. We're on the edge of our seats in a way that hasn't happened in awhile (except reality TV. Which is, in most other ways, stupid). I think the irony and cynicism of 90's popular television has killed the art of suspense. We think we know it all and shows that appeal to us are the ones that play against those expectations in a post-modern methodology. The counterpoint isn't "You think you know what's going to happen? Bet you never saw THAT coming." The counterpoint becomes "You think you know what's going to happen? Let's ridicule the very notion." Seinfeld, Friends, Will and Grace didn't have the CLIFFHANGER episodes. They had episodes that dealt either in absurdly expected notions or patently bizarre notions. Hyper-realistic or hyper-absurd episodes deconstructing the very format of the sitcom and sitcom tropes.
Grey's Anatomy, however, ushers a new sensibility of television. The 2000's of television. We're watching shows the relish in drama and suspense. They don't undercut with irony. Rather, they relish in what's expected and only turn on a dime at the end, keeping those who think they know better forever guessing. 24, Alias, Sopranos, Grey's Anatomy, etc. are shows that don't try to be smarmy intellects but rather try to break new ground. Not that there's anything wrong with po-mo deconstruction sensibility. Arrested Development took that whole idea to a whole new level creating the show-within-a-sitcom-within-a-show, look-at-how-smart-we-can-be attitude, making a new sort of hyper-hyper-awareness. Which is a very roundabout way of describing the show. The new wave of drama, however, has been defined by simply indulging.
This might be time to just say that my own personal view on television and television plots is that the most successful ones were the ones that were able to either 1.) inject absurdity into normal situations or 2.) inject normalcy into absurd situations. This may seem obvious but it's difficult to juggle the levels. It's the difference between the hyper-realistic and the hyper-abstract. Friends, for instance, was hyper-realistic. It took a realistic situation, a group of friends, and zoomed in so far that absurd things could happen without affecting the borders of realism. Most sitcoms fall into this category. They usually happen in normal, everyday settings but the settings are zoomed so far in that you don't see the work setting. You simply see the single-dimensioned absurdness of characters. Dramas usually take the opposite approach. They take the absurdly frantic settings in life, settings with mystery and assumptive secrecy (such as hospitals or law offices, where viewers who are not doctors or lawyers have imagined being in those lives and decisions seemingly exist on a world-changing level) and try to zoom far enough out where the framework of the workplace provides analogous interplays with the characters.
I just realized that this somehow turned into my treatise on what television is. I did not expect that. Oh well. Where was I?
Anyway, the reductive nature of sitcoms (coupled with the increasing popularity of sitcoms) in the 90's caused television to become... snarky. (On the dramatic end, shows had to be attitude-driven or "gritty," causing tons of strange NYPD Blue spinoffs.) Shows had to be self-deprecating in order for critics and viewers alike to say that a show was intelligent. While it did serve to allow people to think about television on a new level (some would say, an artistic level), what happened was that television started to treat itself as a lark. And what happens when you think negatively about yourself? Other people start thinking negatively about yourself too. That's how we wound up with reality TV. Self-deprecation to the point where it became cool to parody the intellectual-deprived nature of self-deprecation. (Did that sentence make sense? I'm not actually editing this post because I normally don't. Perhaps I should've.) Modern era shows, 2000 and beyond, have attempted to stem the blood loss caused by all these self-inflicted wounds in the skin of television as an art or literary forum.
The moral of this long, unusually complex worded post is that television is starting to become more and more intelligent. Which I'm grateful for. Watch television. It's good again.
(You know I thought of an exception for all that. Sci-fi. Sci-fi TV has been able to avoid stereotypical ebbs and flows. Perhaps it's because it's a niche market.)
OK, this whole train of thought will need to be worked on more. After all, if all this is true, where does Ally McBeal fit in? X-Files? ER? I'm not willing to rework and revise, however. Not at 12:54 in the morning. So this will probably lead to an amendment post later on. I'll link them.
posted by Chris "Krang" Yang | 12:54 AM
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