Television that is Never Television - a new era is dawning

I've been watching House of Cards, the Kevin Spacey-starring series on Netflix co-created by David Fincher, which is (a remake of a British show and earlier a novel) about a ruthless and powerful congressman who decides to respond to a professional slight by utterly tearing down those he now perceives as enemies and destroying anyone who stands in the way of his rise to power.

It's good stuff, and Kevin Spacey, one of the few recognizable mainstream American actors who truly radiates gravitas, is a terrifying monster despite (as of yet) committing no act of violence except for his introductory act of putting his neighbor's dog out of its misery after it is hit by a car.

This past weekend also saw the release of the long-rumored, long-awaited season four of Arrested Development, a show that we all discovered was one of television's most brilliant comedies only after it had passed the event horizon into cancellation.

The line to draw connecting the shows? Both are "Netflix Originals," being shown on the Netflix streaming service without ever being broadcast on a network or cable. Technically speaking, neither of these is really a television show anymore, and that fact actually lets some of the rules slip a little.

Act structures are more film-like than TV-like, in that there is no explicit act break, and thus you can play a little with the formatting (Premium Cable of course also operates in this way, so perhaps it's not entirely new.) Beyond that, though, run time is now totally up in the air and flexible. On television, a show that occupies a half-hour block has to be pretty close to 21 or 22 minutes, and an hour-long show is really more like 42-44. Conventional television not only relies on commercial breaks (the old cliché is that television is there to sell you soap, and the shows are just there to keep you watching the commercials - hence "soap operas,") but also discreet blocks of time that a show has to fit within. A television episode needs to be crunched down to fit within its allotted time, or in other cases, a thin episode must be padded out to fill out its block of time, and that's something that even HBO has to deal with.

But with a streaming show, you have no such problems.

The thing is, people of my generation like to watch shows via Netflix. The idea of scheduling your time around a television show is, even for people like me who are actually invested in the art-form intellectually and professionally, burdensome and antiquated. We like to be able to watch (and re-watch) a show when we so choose, and thus a service like Netflix is ideal.

This distribution format also works tremendously for more serialized programs. One of the old tensions running in TV is the conflict between making sure that someone can drop in and enjoy an episode on its own and making sure that those who watch the series regularly are rewarded for their investment.

The dawn of the "TV on DVD" era in the last decade or so made the latter far more practical, and as a result, you started seeing far more shows that embraced serialization. This streaming era is a logical extension of that concept, but until now, it's still been the home of only shows that were already shown in a conventional way. Arrested Development's fourth season, for instance, is kind of a fascinating experiment in what this new form of the medium (or is it a new medium entirely?) can allow you to do.

But as with any new things, the ground rules have yet to be established. Both House of Cards and Arrested Development came out in one big chunk - allowing people to either marathon through them or consume at their leisure. On one hand, this does give the viewer great freedom, but one could imagine that without the breathing-room afforded to some shows, the enjoyment could suffer. Half the fun of a show like Lost, for example, was calling up your friends afterward and hashing out all the newly-revealed details to come up with your theories.

With this "big chunk o' show" style, it's unlikely that you'll be synched up with your friends except before either of you have watched the show or after you've both finished.

It's a grand experiment, but honestly I think it's clear that this is the direction that TV is going in, and kudos to Netflix (and I think Amazon is doing similarly) for reaching toward this new future of episodic entertainment.

Darkness, and the entrance into said thing

Today I saw Star Trek Into Darkness, the second of J. J. Abrams' series of, as I've heard them referred to, "reborquels." Make no mistake, it's a fun movie, with enjoyable, banter-y dialogue, some cool actions scenes, and a heaping helping of fanservice. Yes, Benedict Cumberbatch is great (as he tends to be.) But I think some of the same criticisms I had of the 2009 Star Trek film apply here as well. It's an action movie, first and foremost, and things will not slow down for any long period of time.

Spoilers will follow, so if that's something you care about, stop reading now. Yes, I'm going to tell you who Cumberbatch's character really is, and a bunch of other stuff.

What's in a Name? Especially when "The" comes before it?

(Revamped) Doctor Who's seventh season (or series, if you're British, which I think they do just to confuse people - the same way they spell color "colour,"as if it's meant to sound like "allure")  is an odd beast, considering how really, it was two short seasons.

Oh, naturally, Spoiler Alert, etc.