Tonight on the TiFaux: The Good-to-Bad Story
Posted by Maggie
October 24th, 2007 at 02:00pm
In Dirty Sexy Money Gossip Girl Pushing Daisies
Our favorite show about a magical pie-maker that recently received a full-season order to the thrill of audiences nationwide, Pushing Daisies, continues its whimsy tonight. Speaking of pies, I saw Waitress last night. Also sweet. (And TV related: Nathan Fillion. Enough said, am I right?) I really need to learn how to make pies.
This morning I decided there were three types of stories. There’s the story where things are bad, then they get good (Heroes, House, Waitress). Then there’s when things are good, then they get bad (Gossip Girl, Dirty Sexy Money [both new tonight], Damages, Curb Your Enthusiasm). And there are stories where things are bad, and then they get worse (Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Arrested Development). I’m not sure if this distinction makes any sense to anyone but me, but I find it helpful in deciding what type of show I’m in the mood for. Lately I’ve felt some good-to-bad story fatigue. As much fun as these stories are, watching someone’s dreams get crushed over and over can be exhausting. You just know that Dan’s date is going to go horribly, Jenny is going to be humiliated, Nick will be forced to make ethically unsound decisions and neglect his wife and kid, and everything Juliet and Jeremy do will backfire. There’s nothing wrong with a bad-to-good story every once in a while.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming: NBC has been relentlessly promoting the campy-looking Phenomenon, which I gather has something to with magic tricks. Oh, I’m sorry: “They’re not tricks, they’re illusions!”
Waitress is the cutest movie I’ve seen all year. Loved it. And, of course, Nathan Fillion, because he is the best thing ever to come out of Alberta.
I already hate Phenomenon because the promos are so incredibly intrusive. They take up the whole bottom third of the screen and make me want to throttle the NBC promo monkeys more than I usually do, while screaming “YOU’RE COVERING UP KYLE CHANDLER AND I HATE YOUUUUUUU!”
Not to get all Rumsfeld on you, but are there stories where things are good and then get better? I guess this might be boring. Where’s the conflict, right? How about sit coms? Cartoons? Kevin Smith Movies? Surely such a story must exist somewhere…
In sitcoms things tend to start good, get bad, then end good again. Comedy in general is structured that way. Cartoons definitely tend in that direction too.
What stories start good and just get better? Presidential candidate’s autobiographies? Even they usually pretend to have overcome some adversity.
I’d have to go with press releases. That’s the only thing I can think of.
How about anecdotes told on the Tonight Show? (Although, I admit it has been about twenty years since I last saw the Tonight Show).