Since seeking refuge in my precious free time has become a bowel-clutching need, I have begun watching shows streamed over ABC.com. I'm pretty devoted to Brothers and Sisters, Men in Trees, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, Pushing Daisies, and Samantha Who. It's much easier to watch only what you want to watch when you don't have to actually use at TV to watch TV. This TV watching has led me to observe an unnerving trend. Ok, two unnerving trends. First is that I'm watching Desperate Housewives, a title I just snickered at before I gave it a chance. Now, I'm addicted, though I still think it's a stupid show. The second trend? With the writers' strike in full swing, shows on ABC are beginning to adopt plot lines that seem to write themselves around a single, dramatic plot device dropped into the show's timeline like a turd into a punch bowl.
Desperate Housewives, though a stupid show, was charmingly devoted to the domestic politics that surround a few bitches on Wisteria Lane. The last episode featured a tornado, but it didn't stop the politics--oh no! They were still exchanging bitchy banter and killing one another while the storm raged. The mayor was poetically slain by a picket fence-wielding funnel cloud (wtf!?) and Lynette's entire family was buried when the house above the basement they were sheltering in collapsed on them. See?? Even the prepositions stacked atop one another to describe this writing are hard to understand!
In Men in Trees, Jack's research ship on the Bering Sea got sunk by a rogue wave (yes, for those of you who are paying attention, they're actually ripping off Poseidon, a movie sporting a cameo by Fergie) and Marin is at home, exasperatedly waiting for him to call her. Get it? She doesn't know his ship sank, and he's fighting hypothermia and guilt after letting one of his teammates die of blood loss. Hilarity ensues.
On Ugly Betty, Willamina bribes a doctor to steal semen from Bradford's dead body so that she can impregnate herself for revenge ("revenge semen!") on the Meade family for not signing over Mode magazine when she asked nicely. Oh, and for good measure, she also laid the smack down on Betty White, who made a joke about lesbian fan fiction regarding herself and Bea Arthur.
They also brought back "My So-Called Life" (online only, Fridays, don't miss it!) and pretended that it was new.
So, I ask in conclusion, is all of this bullshit written by scabs? Producers? Executives? Brain amputees? It's like whoever is "writing" these scripts is just trying to get back at the writers for leaving, and so they're going to screw up the plot so badly that it will never recover. Which will inevitably end with a plague of time-travel just as the strike is resolved, and we'll have another Heroes on our hands.
10 December 2007
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3 comments:
-"ripping off Poseidon"
can you really rip-off a remake that badly? i mean, i know you have no knowledge of the classic film Poseidon is based on, but you know it exists, yes?
-"Lynette's entire family was buried"
i don't watch this show anymore, but thank christ, her kids were annoying and her husband was an asshole. hooray for felicity huffman!
-("revenge semen!")
i should totally scab-write TV shows. i came up with that idea like a year and a half ago.
you need to watch tv from other networks. ABC is crap. download some 30 rock! it WON THE EMMY.
They might still be working through the episodes that were already written before the writer's strike began. I know some shows had a lot more episodes done than others (The Office vs. Ugly Betty, for instance), so when they run out of scripts they'll probably start showing reruns. This is already being done with The Office, by the way, since it was one of the first shows to 'expire.'
And I find the 'revenge semen' plot a stupid idea. Even if Willamina does produce an heir, what would it matter? The heir would be a baby, and I don't see how an infant helps her gain control of the Meade empire. Maybe I'm unaware of some sort of legal precedent here?
Kai--
The enigmatic legal precedent aside, the point was that it was crap writing.
Amanda--
I'm aware that "The Poseidon Adventure" existed prior to "Poseidon" and that it, too, wasn't a very good movie. The term "rogue wave" appeared in the remake, however.
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