The Null Device

Posts matching tags 'drama'

2009/9/30

Blogging ambulanceman Tom Reynolds on the clichés found in TV drama, with an emphasis on medical drama:

I think that there are two reasons, first that TV producers think that viewers are stupid, secondly that the writers carry paintbrushes.
I remember, as a child, watching Rolf Harris on a Saturday afternoon creating works of art using 4" paintbrushes. Big sheet of paper, slopping the paint everywhere and then, as if by magic, a painting would appear.
Big tools, used well to create wonderfully subtle works of art.
Writers today also use those 4" brushes, but they use them not for portraits, but to paint walls. Huge strokes slabbered on with no finesse. Before I visited NBC's character biographies I could guess the characters 'personalities'. You'd have the maverick, the womaniser, the hard as nails female, the unsure rookie, the heartless administrator, the drinker/gambler/philanderer. The list goes on. Oh, and we must not forget the racially diverse cast of good looking people.
Look at those character types, you can see them appearing in pretty much every show.
And yes, 'Casualty' does still make me grind my teeth - 'blonde sexbomb'. 'joker', 'socially awkward nerd in glasses' who, in the their second episode tell us what their personalities are by talking to a psychiatrist. Next series I think they'll stop giving the characters names and instead they will instead walk around carrying placards with their character traits written on them.
Elsewhere in the post, he posits an updated version of Chekhov's Gun which applies to such shows:
'Chekhov's pregnancy' - 'If there is a heavily pregnant woman in the first act, she will get trapped in a lift/locked building/under rubble and will then give birth'. (Needless to say, on TV pregnant women race through the stages of labour in fifteen minutes, not the more normal twelve hours or so)

clichés drama hollywood stereotypes tv 0

2005/3/15

LiveJournal Drama Generator; for those who don't have enough drama in their online lives:

Oh yeah. it's so not fair that I have this morning off but nobody wants to do anything :-(. I'll just sit home alone and write poems about death.
that jerk jwz gone and said that I got caught backstabbing pfarley. And yeah. You might guess I don't give a flying f*** what they think anymore. I'm over that.
Oh and Why does imomus keep posting images in their journal?! I keep telling them I'm on a modem! I'm going to unfriend them to teach them a lesson!!!!!!!!!!
And also everybody has asked why I'm leaving the furry fandom but the answer is simple: Some of you know who you are and why I'm leaving FOREVAR.

drama emo humour livejournal random text 0

2004/1/12

Could this be the apotheosis of LiveJournal drama? Seminal teen-angst vampire-novel author Poppy Z. Brite kicked out of LiveJournal group, presumably because the moderator wanted the honour of smacking her down. Champagne comedy, folks. (via bOING bOING)

(I didn't even know Poppy Z. Brite had a LiveJournal; though, in retrospect, it'd be more surprising if she didn't have one. Which makes me wonder: does Trent Reznor have one?)

drama emo goth livejournal poppy z. brite 7

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