|
Volcott posted:Babylon 5. With outs in case any of the actors died or quit. Technically not, as Straczynski had to do S5 on the fly.
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 12:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 06:45 |
|
|
Jedit posted:Technically not, as Straczynski had to do S5 on the fly. 4 out of 5 ain't bad. Also, I think he just compressed a bunch of stuff he already had planned out for most of the meat on that bone.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 12:38
|
|
|
Maxwell Lord posted:TV shows where the writers knew entirely what they were doing from beginning to end: Bit different when you're running a murder mystery, though. Or even a Lost-style 'What is going on?' or Battlestar Galactica "They have a plan!" kind of thing. When you start a show on the basis of "You're not going to believe where this goes, guys!" then, yeah, I expect the show runners to know where it goes, no matter how vaguely that might be.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 12:43
|
|
|
It all happened on the holodeck so it doesn't matter who the killer was. Edit: the real killer was the friends we made along the way. Volcott has a new favorite as of 13:00 on Feb 22, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 12:51
|
|
|
Maxwell Lord posted:But that method also gave us The Prisoner which is possibly the greatest TV show of all time. It's pretty impressive how much of Breaking Bad was done on the fly without a long-term plan.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 13:00
|
|
|
I was thinking about popular syndicated shows I grew up with and, god drat, none of those Sherwood Schwartz style shows hold up as anything at all beyond camp. All the reruns I watched as a kid are horrible. Bewitched, The Munsters, Gilligan's Island, Hogan's Heroes, I Dream of Genie, Brady Bunch, Beverly Hillbillies....This stuff is poo poo and it's hard to believe it was ever prime time viewing. poo poo, The Flintsones holds up better than any of them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 13:08
|
|
|
Gorilla Salad posted:Bit different when you're running a murder mystery, though. There's no way Battlestar Galactica had a pre-written story arc unless the writers decided, "let's make 2 really good seasons, 1 mildly confusing one, and then just poo poo all over everything."
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 13:15
|
|
|
They lied. It was pretty much when I stopped watching that show, too, when I figured out not only did the Cylons not have a plan, the writers had their heads up their arses.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 13:48
|
|
|
BiggerBoat posted:I was thinking about popular syndicated shows I grew up with and, god drat, none of those Sherwood Schwartz style shows hold up as anything at all beyond camp. All the reruns I watched as a kid are horrible. All those shows went on forever, too. Just like all those contemporaneous rural shows that Fred Silverman eventually purged when he took over NBC (?) because even though they were still getting high ratings, they were too popular with old people so nobody wanted to buy advertising time. There's a concept that's not aged well: cancelling a show with good ratings.  There are so many old detective shows from the 1970s and 1980s that all lasted for years that I'd like to watch, but I can't help but imagine they're all more or less the same. I'm thinking about stuff like Barnaby Jones, Streets of San Francisco, Cannon (a.k.a. Nero Wolfe* if he ran and judo chopped people), McCloud (a.k.a. Coogan's Bluff: The Series), etc. Frankly, I have no idea what the best older detective show to watch would be if I was going to pick one of them. * One piece of trivia I recently learned is that the Nero Wolfe series on NBC in the early 80s starring William Conrad as Wolfe was originally going to star Orson Welles, who pulled out because he wanted to do direct adaptations of the books as 90-minute telefilms and the network told him no.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 14:09
|
|
|
BiggerBoat posted:I was thinking about popular syndicated shows I grew up with and, god drat, none of those Sherwood Schwartz style shows hold up as anything at all beyond camp. All the reruns I watched as a kid are horrible. Lets be honest here, TV as a whole was terrible through the 80's. I mean some shows like Star Trek or I Love Lucy* are fondly remembered, but for every one of those you had a bunch of ridiculous garbage that went on for years. I think part of it does stem from TV's origins in radio, and up through the 70's you had the prime demographic including people who tuned into live radio broadcasts and wanting easily digestible 30 minutes of "easy" humor. In that vein, Guy Lombardo and The Royal Canadians, a very popular jazz musician (although much maligned among jazz fans), was the main entertainment for New Year's eve broadcasts for nearly 50 years, because he started before TV. I think it's the 1975 recording of their performance of For Auld Lang Syne that you still hear to this day. EDIT: Beachcomber posted:You never went back to your *. *I find Lucy to be particularly hit or miss and I don't particularly care for it Iron Crowned has a new favorite as of 14:38 on Feb 22, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 14:24
|
|
|
Iron Crowned posted:Lets be honest here, TV as a whole was terrible through the 80's. I mean some shows like Star Trek or I Love Lucy* are fondly remembered, but for every one of those you had a bunch of ridiculous garbage that went on for years. You never went back to your *.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 14:34
|
|
|
Jedit posted:Technically not, as Straczynski had to do S5 on the fly. Actually, JMS did have all five years mapped out. The problem was that they didn't know if there was going to be a fifth season because the "network" was going away. So he had to squeeze the most important details into the fourth season. Much of the fourth season would have been in the fifth, and a lot from the fifth were things that would have filled that out. So he still got everything he planned for the five seasons into the five seasons, he just had to rearrange the timing on several plot points so he could have the main storyline done if TBS hadn't come in to do the fifth season. That was why he filmed "Sleeping in Light" in the fourth season but didn't air it until the end of the fifth.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 14:50
|
|
|
I believe season four was going to finish with the end of the Shadow War then season five was going to be about the conclusion of the Earth Civil War as well as the telepath stuff.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 14:53
|
|
|
Without anything to back this up except anecdotal evidence, it seems like TV in the 70's and 80's was a job. Like you got your character and if it was popular that was now your career for life. You might get little parts later on, but you pretty much were that character forever. Every day you got up and did the same thing. For instance, if you go to IMDB and look up some of those famous old TV stars, they'll have a few dozen credits to their name. Now go to a current B-level 30-something actor and they have 70 credits. TV is approached a bit differently now and the shows seem to reflect that. Actors don't necessarily get a popular role and assume that's their job for life. Just some examples, Bob Crane acted for almost 20 years and had 31 credits, but the guy who plays Howard on the Big Bang Theory has about the same number of years acting and 55 credits. Conrad Bain acted for 40+ years and had 31 credits. Bea Arthur had 36. But Betty White has worked into the current era and has over 100. There's a lot more opportunity for work these days, but it feels like TV is different too and it's not quiet as geared to just finding something to fill a spot for the next 10 years.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 14:53
|
|
|
Everything I love is prohibitively expensive/impossible to transfer to BD.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 14:58
|
|
|
Krispy Wafer posted:There's no way Battlestar Galactica had a pre-written story arc unless the writers decided, "let's make 2 really good seasons, 1 mildly confusing one, and then just poo poo all over everything." From what I am told, they did have a plan, but then when the show was successful the network or whoever made them ditch it and drag poo poo out much longer, which is why there are two seasons in the middle where people do nothing but drink and frown.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 15:00
|
|
|
Krispy Wafer posted:Without anything to back this up except anecdotal evidence, it seems like TV in the 70's and 80's was a job. Like you got your character and if it was popular that was now your career for life. You might get little parts later on, but you pretty much were that character forever. Every day you got up and did the same thing. For instance, if you go to IMDB and look up some of those famous old TV stars, they'll have a few dozen credits to their name. Now go to a current B-level 30-something actor and they have 70 credits. TV is approached a bit differently now and the shows seem to reflect that. Actors don't necessarily get a popular role and assume that's their job for life. I feel like part of that factor is the changing technology that brings moving pictures to the screen. TV was pretty well analog up until 20 years ago. I'm not an expert, but all the way until the 80's when VHS became pretty ubiquitous, TV was filmed on film and that had to be processed and edited and transferred into a format that could be sent out to all the affiliate stations. Later satellite replaced shipping physical copies, and now it's the internet. With digital recording and editing, you cut the time down by a lot. Digital also cuts down the cost of equipment and processing and all the other back end expenses that TV (and movies) used to require. So anyone with a bit of money can hire a B-level actor for an afternoon, and now a straight to streaming movie that no one cares about exists starring an actor people recognize. I don't really thing that the digital "film" revolution is a bad thing as a whole because it really does open up opportunities that weren't available 30 years ago for an aspiring film maker, but it increased the amount of chaff that needs to be waded through.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 15:10
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted:Frankly, I have no idea what the best older detective show to watch would be if I was going to pick one of them. Columbo. Iron Crowned posted:Lets be honest here, TV as a whole was terrible through the 80's. I mean some shows like Star Trek or I Love Lucy* are fondly remembered, but for every one of those you had a bunch of ridiculous garbage that went on for years. Those aren't 80's shows though. Was that a typo? Because there were a ton of good shows on TV in the 80's.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 15:16
|
|
|
Iron Crowned posted:I feel like part of that factor is the changing technology that brings moving pictures to the screen. TV was pretty well analog up until 20 years ago. I'm not an expert, but all the way until the 80's when VHS became pretty ubiquitous, TV was filmed on film and that had to be processed and edited and transferred into a format that could be sent out to all the affiliate stations. Later satellite replaced shipping physical copies, and now it's the internet. Production costs are definitely down. Syndication was a big deal too, so shows were built around a minimum 5 year run. Like there was literal hand wringing if a popular show started to lose steam after only 4 years because it might not make syndication. You needed at least 100 episodes for reasons. That also created a demand for 30 minute episodes versus a hour. Maybe you could charge more since stations had to fill even more time slots. So there's no way an anthology series like Fargo would ever be made. Or a short run series like The Good Place. Because no matter how good that is, there's no way they're getting 5 seasons out of that storyline.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 15:18
|
|
|
BiggerBoat posted:Columbo. This. Also watch for the fake exit. Det. Columbo owns the fake exit.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 15:20
|
|
|
BiggerBoat posted:Columbo. Also, The Rockford Files.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 15:22
|
|
|
BiggerBoat posted:Those aren't 80's shows though. Was that a typo? Because there were a ton of good shows on TV in the 80's. I know they're not 80's shows, I meant for TV as a whole, I plucked those two out as shows that are still revered today. Pastry of the Year posted:Also, The Rockford Files. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 15:24
|
|
|
BiggerBoat posted:Columbo. He's saying from the inception of television to the 1980s everything was mostly crap
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 15:27
|
|
|
Krispy Wafer posted:Without anything to back this up except anecdotal evidence, it seems like TV in the 70's and 80's was a job. Like you got your character and if it was popular that was now your career for life. You might get little parts later on, but you pretty much were that character forever. Poster child for this is William Roache. He's been acting for 60 years, and he has exactly eleven IMDb credits - one of them an uncredited role. That's because one of them (two, actually) is for the soap opera Coronation Street, in which he has played the same character since the first episode in 1960.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 15:35
|
|
|
The rise of streaming and cable making GBS threads itself to death have quietly caused massive changes in television, even sitcoms and children's cartoons seem to have more focus now on ongoing storylines and continuity, rather than sticking to a status quo. (Though not all of them, obviously, and a lot rarely have it change the formula of the show too much)
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 15:51
|
|
|
Measuring the amount of credits for some actors isn't the most accurate thing if it's pre-1990s. Soap operas are especially under-represented on IMDB. There are fans who have episodes tracked pretty well, but soaps are also hit with that so few survive. Wiping was a massive practice before the mid-1970s and a lot of info was lost with it. Don Knotts played a character on Search for Tomorrow for about a year. One episode is known to exist and I don't think anyone knows exactly when it aired. Non-American shows are also not represented too well, unless it's a series that had a reasonable amount of popularity. I know of many UK made-for-TV movies from the 1960s that aren't credited. And in both the UK and USA, live TV was still a thing in the 1950s. Very little chances of getting information out of that. Even into the 1980s it's a problem for non-popular shows. On an old tape, I discovered an episode of Danny Thomas' last attempt at a sitcom, One Big Family. It aired in the late 1980s. There is so little information about it out there that I have no idea which episode this even is.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 15:55
|
|
|
I feel like part of the change is that TV got shaken up a bit during the 80's. Up until the 80's you got your TV through an antenna where you unreliably got the 3 networks, and maybe some UHF channels. The VCR hadn't really become cheap enough for everyone yet, so most people watched it live or had to wait for the winter/summer rerun season. Cheap sitcoms shot on video were great for that because there's no stakes in them, and catching the odd episode you missed was always a treat. There was also large spaces assigned for movies, something you don't see on regular channels anymore. VCRs become cheaper, and now you can watch your shows whenever you want. Cable starts penetrating the market and now you have a clear picture for all the channels, plus new channels, and channels that show only movies! Then FOX arrives, bringing with it programming that doesn't fit the old mold like Married with Children, The Simpsons, and COPS. All that change in such a short period of time is unprecedented because TV hadn't changed in about 40 years by that point. Remember your channels usually went off the air around 1am and came back at 5am for the Farm report.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 16:08
|
|
|
RC and Moon Pie posted:Measuring the amount of credits for some actors isn't the most accurate thing if it's pre-1990s. The little known sequel to Leave it to Beaver ran for something like 6 seasons and all the episodes were lost to a fire. Lost to time...like tears, in the rain...
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 16:12
|
|
|
There's so many shows that had very long runs and were very popular that just aren't remembered at all today. The one I always think of is Murphy Brown, which ran for 10 years, was very influential and highly acclaimed, had its infamous feud with Vice-President Dan Quayle and won Candice Bergen a whole bunch of awards and is just a relic of the 90s now.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 16:16
|
|
|
Iron Crowned posted:All that change in such a short period of time is unprecedented because TV hadn't changed in about 40 years by that point. Remember your channels usually went off the air around 1am and came back at 5am for the Farm report. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 16:18
|
|
|
Iron Crowned posted:80’s TV shakeup There’s a website called Dead Homer Society run by a group of people that think The Simpsons should now be cancelled, and it has a series of articles detailing how the classic Simpsons became the “zombie” Simpsons we know today. While I think that the people behind this website are unfairly harsh to modern Simpsons and it really isn’t that bad, I do like the parts of this series which explain the pre-Simpsons TV environment and why the Simpsons was so revolutionary. It touches on a lot of stuff Iron Crowned mentioned in their post, and it’s a good read! https://deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/zs2/ https://deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/zs3/ Note: This article was written back when people still though Bill Cosby was a cool guy. Hey, The Cosby Show! There’s one that one aged like a fine milk.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 16:22
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted:There's so many shows that had very long runs and were very popular that just aren't remembered at all today. The one I always think of is Murphy Brown, which ran for 10 years, was very influential and highly acclaimed, had its infamous feud with Vice-President Dan Quayle and won Candice Bergen a whole bunch of awards and is just a relic of the 90s now. Um... http://deadline.com/2018/01/murphy-brown-revival-candice-bergen-creator-diane-english-cbs-2018-2019-season-1202267897/
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 16:30
|
|
|
Dan Quayle's way younger (71) than I was expecting given how ancient references to him seem.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 16:38
|
|
|
Krispy Wafer posted:Um... There's no greater evidence that something is a relic than doing a revival no one asked for decades later.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 16:44
|
|
|
Erebus posted:There's no greater evidence that something is a relic than doing a revival no one asked for decades later. Did anyone ask for any of these revivals we're getting?
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 16:49
|
|
|
Whiz Palace posted:Dan Quayle's way younger (71) than I was expecting given how ancient references to him seem. One piece of trivia I've come to enjoy is that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, despite each being president in three different decades, are all (approximately) the same age.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 16:54
|
|
|
Jedit posted:Poster child for this is William Roache. He's been acting for 60 years, and he has exactly eleven IMDb credits - one of them an uncredited role. That's because one of them (two, actually) is for the soap opera Coronation Street, in which he has played the same character since the first episode in 1960. Ken Barlow hasn't aged well I'm not sure about the storyline where Deirdre gets framed and goes to prison though, I remember that being pretty mad when I was a kid.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 17:02
|
|
|
Iron Crowned posted:Did anyone ask for any of these revivals we're getting? They're supposedly bringing back The Office too. That hasn't even been off the air for a decade. Shoulda just done The Farm like they were originally planning. Would have saved us from Backstrom. edit: Though, to be fair, I am looking forward to another terrible The Office thread in TVIV.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 17:04
|
|
|
Solice Kirsk posted:They're supposedly bringing back The Office too. That hasn't even been off the air for a decade. Shoulda just done The Farm like they were originally planning. Would have saved us from Backstrom. In a couple years it'll be nothing but revivals as networks try to figure out why no one watches their shows anymore.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 17:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 06:45 |
|
|
They taped over the literal moon landing. This is such a  thing for me, in the age of cheap video storage.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2018 17:10
|
|
