Limitless Anticipation

[Lisin]

Anticipate here!

[Kromm]

This looks kind of awful (and like we've seen most of it before elsewhere).

 

[me5671]

Other than Bradley cooper's involvement, this show doesn't have much going for it from my perspective. The plot is unoriginal and derivative. There isn't much pulling me in. I am surprised that CBS pushed Person of Interest to mid season for this.

[Free]

This looks kind of awful (and like we've seen most of it before elsewhere).

 

 

Other than Bradley cooper's involvement, this show doesn't have much going for it from my perspective. The plot is unoriginal and derivative. There isn't much pulling me in. I am surprised that CBS pushed Person of Interest to mid season for this.

 

It is based on the movie, but still, it's the same 'genius' does procedural crime drama cliche.

[Netfoot]

Wow, I've only just noticed the title of the next episode:  

The Assassination of Eddie Morra.

 There isn't a speculation thread, so I ask here: What can it mean?  It will be episode #12 and both IMDB and Wikipedia claim 22 episodes, so

is Bradley Cooper abandoning the show?

 After all,

we haven't seen much of him for several episodes now!

 

Perhaps we should have a speculation thread.

[sjohnson]

It is based on the movie, but still, it's the same 'genius' does procedural crime drama cliche.

Sorry, but in mystery novels the genius detective and police procedural are not the same thing at all. Nor do I see why it should somehow be different in TV. Something like The Wire first season with all the detail lavished on warrants and allowed legal uses of wiretaps is a procedural. CSI with all the detail lavished on forensic tests is a procedural. Limitless doesn't try to fake the procedures. Using "procedural" like this is the cliche. It doesn't mean anything more than "It's not popular, so I don't like it!" Or possibly it means "I like to root for the villains, not the cops!" 

[Free]

Sorry, but in mystery novels the genius detective and police procedural are not the same thing at all. Nor do I see why it should somehow be different in TV. Something like The Wire first season with all the detail lavished on warrants and allowed legal uses of wiretaps is a procedural. CSI with all the detail lavished on forensic tests is a procedural. Limitless doesn't try to fake the procedures. Using "procedural" like this is the cliche. It doesn't mean anything more than "It's not popular, so I don't like it!" Or possibly it means "I like to root for the villains, not the cops!" 

 

Well for starters, The Wire is totally different, it's a gritty and realistic approach.  As for CSI, it pretty much popularized the genre.

 

I NEVER said anything about 'faking' procedures, you seem to be taking my quote completely out of context.

 

As for 'genius' detective/police procedural, that was not a knock against the genre or this show, that was more an observation as to the genres themselves.

[Kromm]

Wow, I've only just noticed the title of the next episode:  

The Assassination of Eddie Morra.

 There isn't a speculation thread, so I ask here: What can it mean? 

Why not make one?  Thread creation here is not limited to moderators.

[sjohnson]

Well for starters, The Wire is totally different, it's a gritty and realistic approach.  As for CSI, it pretty much popularized the genre.

 

I NEVER said anything about 'faking' procedures, you seem to be taking my quote completely out of context.

 

As for 'genius' detective/police procedural, that was not a knock against the genre or this show, that was more an observation as to the genres themselves.

 

But, though I have no desire quarrel with you personally, The Wire is not totally different, it is very procedural. You're the one using the term "procedural" in a way totally different from a real procedural. I know it's not your personal invention of a usage for "procedural" that doesn't have any meaning. But, try as I may, the only sensible meaning for "procedural" in sentences like this is "crime show." Unfortunately, claiming that Limitless doesn't get buzz because it's just another genius crime show is so vague an observation as to be useless. After all, some crime shows are very highly rated and some crime shows are very highly praised and some crime shows are considered very cool (although it's rare for the same crime show to be all three at once.)

 

At another site, a poster tried to claim that "procedural" meant "episodic." Well, I don't think that's the actual usage, and he was more or less trying to make something up for himself. Besides, even if it were true, Limitless isn't very tightly serialized, but like most TV these days, it is loosely serialized. (Tightly serialized means you can't switch the order of individual episodes around without making a huge mess; Loosely means you can switch some episodes around, so long as they don't contradict a handful of key plot developments, such as the death of a major character or a new romance or whatever. Episodic means the order within a season doesn't really matter.) Also, the real thing about serialization is whether the serial is open-ended, has no end in sight, or whether it is just a multi-part single story. Soap operas of course are the great model for open-ended serialization.

 

Even worse for discussion, trying to use "procedural" as a synonym for episodic not only ignores issues like degree and kind, it falls into the Alan Sepinwall psychosis of claiming that serialization is better despite the fact that almost all serial dramas end badly. I mean, St. Elsewhere's snow globe; Roseanne explaining the whole series was a novel; Sopranos' black screen; X-Files' ...whatever misery that was. 

 

Of course, my beef is with the cliche, not you. 

Edited December 23, 2015 by sjohnson

[Free]

The Wire is not totally different, it is very procedural

 

Yes it is, it stands out, it's much different than other procedurals like say CSi, in your example.  The Wire, is done in a gritty, realistic way.  Each season focuses on a different social and political themes.

 

At another site, a poster tried to claim that "procedural" meant "episodic."

 

It depends, some procedurals are like that, there are obvious exceptions.

 

Unfortunately, claiming that Limitless doesn't get buzz because it's just another genius crime show is so vague an observation as to be useless.

 

Technically it doesn't have much buzz compared to other shows at the moment.  The only buzz it has so far is from Bradley Cooper appearances, of course it can always pick up if it happens.

 

Even worse for discussion, trying to use "procedural" as a synonym for episodic not only ignores issues like degree and kind, it falls into the Alan Sepinwall psychosis of claiming that serialization is better despite the fact that almost all serial dramas end badly. I mean, St. Elsewhere's snow globe; Roseanne explaining the whole series was a novel; Sopranos' black screen; X-Files' ...whatever misery that was.

 

That's his opinion.  As for the shows, it depends, what you listed are disappointing endings, some shows can still have good endings.

[sjohnson]

That's his opinion.  As for the shows, it depends, what you listed are disappointing endings, some shows can still have good endings.

The thing that makes Sepinwall nuts is that it doesn't make any difference to him if the endings are terrible or not. Serialization is making one big story but he doesn't look at the whole story. It's like saying you loved the movie, then admit the ending was terrible. It's not that either opinion is objectively wrong, it's that you can't hold both at the same time.

 

Enough serials have bad endings that the assumption open-ended serialization is good is unjustified. But maybe it's just my opinion that most serials end badly. Lots of miniseries end well (not the same thing as happily!) but then, is it just a single story instead of an open-ended serial?

 

(By the way, not too long ago Sepinwall was driven, by boredom I expect, to admit that having an episode with artistic impact frequently involves such basic considerations as having an ending, that is, a certain degree of episodicity. He hedged it about too much to be useful for discussion. And after all it's not like he was the originator of the cliche. It's a market driven phenomenon, he's just the most notorious spokesman.)

[Free]

Enough serials have bad endings that the assumption open-ended serialization is good is unjustified. But maybe it's just my opinion that most serials end badly. Lots of miniseries end well (not the same thing as happily!) but then, is it just a single story instead of an open-ended serial?

 

Miniseries have the luxury of having a set ending, whereas many serials goes on for a while or can change directions within seasons from the original plans.

[Irlandesa]

The thing that makes Sepinwall nuts is that it doesn't make any difference to him if the endings are terrible or not. Serialization is making one big story but he doesn't look at the whole story. It's like saying you loved the movie, then admit the ending was terrible. It's not that either opinion is objectively wrong, it's that you can't hold both at the same time.

Why not? It's really about whether or not you watch things for the journey or the destination. So you can say that a serialized show was great but you didn't like the ending because you liked the way the story progressed and built on its themes but felt the ending didn't live up to what had come before. You can also feel like a good ending is necessary to feel satisfied with the overall product. But for those who don't prioritize endings, they are basically not judging a show, which may have lasted years, on one episode.

Neither way of watching a show is objectively right or wrong. It's just a way of watching a show (or reading a book or yes, even experiencing a movie.)

I'm more of a journey girl because I don't care if it's a procedural or serialized, I think most endings underwhelm.

Limitless is working both episodic and serialized.

Edited December 24, 2015 by Irlandesa

[sjohnson]

Why not? Two reasons. First, if it's really about the journey, not the destination, you don't need an ending, you just stop. It sounds like you just ignore the finales but that's more or less like ignoring any of the bad episodes, then saying the series was good. Or saying this scene was great, so the whole episode was great. Maybe there's a point there, but I think it needs justifying case by case. If you start a trip to New York City but end up in Buffalo because, you don't just say it's about the journey. 

 

Second, and more important, the finale of a serialized show is a resolution of its themes. Or, more often in practice, the contradiction of its themes, or the failure to resolve its themes, or even the sudden replacement of its themes by new ones. But a finale is supposed to be the capstone or summation. It's the punch line to the joke. Saying otherwise is saying the end of a story is beside the point. It is the frame, the context, for the whole experience. 

 

I suppose what you're saying is that it's possible to watch a series for the characters, particularly the scenes where they emote or change, ignoring the overall narrative. Basically you don't assign larger themes to the series. In my experience, this approach tends to lead to the characters repeating the same story, or their characters being rewritten. Dexter rejects X rather abandon his code in seasons one, two and three for an example of the first. And Dexter giving up killing with no consequences is an example of the latter. I think this sort of thing is what we call soap opera. I've been hooked on soaps too, but for them it's pretty much a matter of personal taste which characters you like (or hate,) and there's not much else to say except I like (or hate) X.

[Irlandesa]

 Maybe there's a point there, but I think it needs justifying case by case. If you start a trip to New York City but end up in Buffalo because, you don't just say it's about the journey. 

I'd argue that if I started a trip to NYC and ended up in Buffalo, the reason I end up there is absolutely because that's where the journey took me. And maybe I'm disappointed because I ended up in Buffalo but that doesn't mean I don't think fondly back on the times I spent in Niagra Falls and in the wineries in the Finger Lakes region or recreating Dirty Dancing movies in the Catskills.

 

It's just people who experience a work of art completely differently.  For instance, if person A and person B love Harry Potter and person A also likes Lord of The Rings because the magical lands  remind them of Harry Potter, that doesn't mean I'd necessarily always recommend Lord of the Rings as a follow-up to Person B who also liked Harry Potter.  Person B might like the boarding school aspect of Harry Potter and therefore Looking For Alaska might make them happy in a way Lord of The Rings would not.

 

But I feel I'm at somewhat of a disadvantage. I don't ever recall the discussion in which Sepinwall said serialization was better. I know he prefers serialization but he has also spoke well of some procedurals. And he has knocked unstructured serialization that can sometimes be found in streaming series. 

[sjohnson]

Original edition of his The Revolution Was Televised is where I get Sepinwall's ideas. He never, in analyses of multiple shows, looked at the serials as a whole. And all his examples of the Golden Age of TV Drama were open-ended serials. On the other hand, he may have spoken favorably about some episodic shows at Hit Fix. But I don't really follow that site, so I'm the one at a loss. Again, though, I don't think he's ever been favorable to any incontestably genuine procedural other than The Wire...and If I remember correctly he downgraded that show for its procedural elements. I think he was rather more impressed with the dialogue, especially the vulgarity. It was Sepinwall who convinced me inadvertently that we are living in the Golden Age of TV Melodrama.

 

PS Obviously you feel very strongly that even if you ended up in Buffalo, a place you didn't like, you can console yourself with memories of the trip there. You feel how you feel and I can't quarrel with that. 

Edited December 26, 2015 by sjohnson

[snarktini]

Just rewatched the movie for comparison. (It's the holidays, I'm bored.) I like the show so much better!