Twenty-Six Miles Of TV
We spent most of our glorious holiday weekend sinking deep into tv gluttony. I have to admit there's a special kind of intimacy when you're both under the weather, each curled up on a couch and watching massive amounts of television. No, it's not making love on the beaches of St. Tropez. It's kind of more special than that. It's feeling free to feel cruddy around another person and not worry about it.
So we watched 11 hours of Friday Night Lights and the first 3 Rocky movies.
FNL is very good, but if you watch it from the ground up, you really need to give it four episodes or so before it starts to take hold in a meaningful way. I feel sorry for shows like this, because I think that's why they have a hard time getting an audience out of the gate. People turn in for the first episode or two and lose interest. Another word of warning: the first six episodes are shot in a VERY cinema-verité way with herky-jerky camera moves, blurred-focus and other artsy deals. I'm old-fashioned enough that I feel those types of things are a detraction. Apparently the FNL oversight team realised that and toned it done for subsequent hours. Good idea. If you're hurting for viewers, don't alienate people with your excessive proud-of-yourselfness.
Rocky movies....what can I say? They're Rocky movies. I've seen each of these about 40 times, partially because of the overwhelming lust I had for Sylvester Stallone throughout my teen years. It broke my heart to find out that he's a real-life hobbit. Seriously, the dude is like three feet tall. Since I'm a sucker for tall guys, I just couldn't sustain the fantasy. I'm sure my husband is happy that our love isn't threatened by the Italian Stallion.
We watched Rocky, RII and RIII on Comcast OnDemand. Those sick bastards only provided Closed Captioning on Rocky II. Do you realise how badly those movies need Closed Captioning? Stallone is a huge mumbler. I'm very superstitious about New Years' Eve. I have the weird idea that how I spend the minutes leading up to Midnight are an indicator for how I will spend the subsequent year. I guess this means that I will spend 2007 trying to figure out what the heck Sylvester Stallone just said.
posted by Kat Coble @ 9:52 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Nice weekend. I don't get the time for TV like I want, but FNL sounds like one of the shows I would enjoy.
Those Rocky movies will always be special to me. I just downloaded a few of the songs from the Rocky soundtrack for my iPod. I love that stuff.
I watched FNL from the beginning, so I feel this moral superiority over all of you catching up....
That said, the show is great and I think it gelled in the second episode. I admit the first episode was good but the second where we saw it expand to beyond just being about the prep for the game was where it hooked me and lured me in.
And yes, they have toned down the camera movement.
Don't forget tomorrow is a new episode!
I watched FNL from the beginning, so I feel this moral superiority over all of you catching up....
Heh, me too. And The Wire. How cool am I?(/preening) I have to say, though, that FNL had me hooked even before the credits of the first show. That long, long opening sequence, with the two boys driving to practice and talking, and the talk show on the radio going on and on about the game ... I don't think I've ever seen such a lovely bit of extended indirect exposition in a TV show before. The kids, their lives, the team, and the whole town, all wrapped up right there. I knew immediately that even if the plot took a while to get going, I would be right there waiting for it. It also cemented Landry as my favorite character right off the bat.
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