Monday, December 27, 2004
Movies vs. TV
For the historical record dept: At this point in our lives (December 2004), we were watching three excellent TV shows on DVD—Buffy Season Seven; Alias Season Three (generously loaned to us by Ignacio and Dr. Ana); and The West Wing Seasons 1 and 2 (generously loaned to us by Matt & Kat). They're all among the best of their genres; Buffy has the strongest characters and, therefore, to me the most heartbreaking storylines; Alias is high-speed beautiful people engaged in espionage; The West Wing is wall-to-wall intelligent people overworking to help the country the best they possibly can. As of this writing (3:42 AM December 27 2004; who knows when Blogger will be up to receive it as a posting?), we finished Buffy (and I feel a certain coldness in my life because there'll [probably] never be any more) and Alias Three (apparently Season Four will be on broadcast TV next month; I probably won't watch it until the DVDs); we're somewhere near episode 9 of The West Wing Season Two.
The average episode of any one of these is much better written (even Alias, which I would have considered the clear "runt" of this litter, until this season showed that creator JJ Abrams clearly did plan ahead; this season has made the show as a whole up to now feel like a single story arc) than almost everything I've seen in a movie theater this year. As I've mentioned to my friends before (and if the Google search worked on this blog, I might be able to tell whether I'd mentioned it here before :-S), most movie trailers I see in the theater make me want to never go to the theater again (presumably because the trailers feel like they're aimed at teenage idiots). For the average theatrical film, I come out wondering why we didn't stay home and watch the next episode of
Buffy / Alias / The West Wing.
The average episode of any one of these is much better written (even Alias, which I would have considered the clear "runt" of this litter, until this season showed that creator JJ Abrams clearly did plan ahead; this season has made the show as a whole up to now feel like a single story arc) than almost everything I've seen in a movie theater this year. As I've mentioned to my friends before (and if the Google search worked on this blog, I might be able to tell whether I'd mentioned it here before :-S), most movie trailers I see in the theater make me want to never go to the theater again (presumably because the trailers feel like they're aimed at teenage idiots). For the average theatrical film, I come out wondering why we didn't stay home and watch the next episode of
Buffy / Alias / The West Wing.
