tv shows within tv shows: an ocd thread for jaymc and nabisco

Ok, not to get too philosophical about it, but this is the kind that trips me out, because it makes me start thinking that there's this whole other level of artifice to TV where the characters we're seeing aren't those characters and aren't what they look like, but are some other level of representation of the fictional characters, who look like something else entirely, and when they watch Goodfellas the actors in it don't actually look anything like them.

― nabisco, Friday, December 12, 2008 7:18 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wasnt this the usual conceit when novels were all written as found documents and letters and shit?? like, watson's sherlock holmes stories talk about things which would implicate innocent people and invade the privacy of the people talked about but watson specifically notes that he's changed names & details in the public accounting of holmes' real-life actual factual adventures

great thread btw

I think those things just crept up toward the beginning of novels as a popular form because otherwise the novels didn't seem properly justified to people. Real information was real; poetry was clearly art; but what was the point of writing down a whole long story when everyone knew it wasn't true? I think those early novels of epistles, ship's logs, oral histories, etc. just covered for the novel until people got comfortable with the novel as an existing format. (And it still took a while longer for writers to break out of recording things as if they were documenting a real history, and start taking real visible liberties with POV, tense, etc.)

What happens if Liz Lemon watches NBC at 9.30pm on Thursdays? What does she see?

MILF Island? TGS w/ Tracy Jordan?

I totally had this problem with Twin Peaks when I was a teenager. Mostly b/c my hometown sucked so much, probably, but I had a seriously unhealthy obsession with that show and saw eerie parallels due to the fact that I had a friend die in a car accident who sort of symbolized the Laura Palmer, town grieves over death of popular high school student thing. The thing is, I liked that universe so much more than my own at the time, that I think I was legitimately depressed b/c my reality wasn't more like it.

I later came to terms with this while on a trip to Seattle for a friends wedding, when I made a two-day sight-seeing excursion to various locales used in the series.

Not so much with television or films these days, but I still get like this sometimes with certain books.

I think those things just crept up toward the beginning of novels as a popular form because otherwise the novels didn't seem properly justified to people. Real information was real; poetry was clearly art; but what was the point of writing down a whole long story when everyone knew it wasn't true? I think those early novels of epistles, ship's logs, oral histories, etc. just covered for the novel until people got comfortable with the novel as an existing format. (And it still took a while longer for writers to break out of recording things as if they were documenting a real history, and start taking real visible liberties with POV, tense, etc.)

― nabisco, Friday, December 12, 2008 7:46 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well yeah dude im familiar with the history of the novel im just saying the idea that a work of art can be a representation of a real world - like, the reason why the sopranos characters played by actors who were in goodfellas dont realize they look exactly like the dudes from goodfellas is because there are actors dramatizing people in the "real world" who dont look like the dudes from goodfellas

didnt finish that thought

just that your stoner logic has a precedent in classic joints like sherlock holmes

Oh, I see what you mean.

Part of what's funny, visually speaking, is that while we're all fine with the thought that there is (for instance) a real-life person named Ray Charles who is only being approximately conveyed by Jamie Foxx, there is something slightly funnier-feeling about dwelling on the idea that there is (for instance) an independent fictional character named "Tony Soprano" who is somehow different from James Gandolfini portraying him. But there shouldn't be anything funny about this at all, given that we all constantly watch things where different actors portray the same character.

^^ Thinking about this makes it all stupider, I think, best to just be tripped out in the moment

do those geico cavemen on the tv show live in a world of talking geckos.

and richard greico

i had a similar problem with comic books (around age 8-10.)

The Tommy Westphall/Tom Fontanaverse

I embarrassed myself w/how crazy I went over Steve Carell in Knocked Up

great thread! had totally forgotten about that freakish Buffy episode

about the Allison Janney on Studio 60 ordeal, did they ever explicitly say "West Wing"? I only remember some line sort of like "bet this doesn't happen on your white house show?" which doesn't really imply she was on the same West Wing as the actor Bradley Whitford who is currently playing the showrunner of the show the real her is hosting

this is a great thread... this is the sort of thing i always always think about in passing but have never gone as insane as you guys about. and im glad you're out there doing it.

I've been watching the first season of The West Wing lately, and while it's initially no big deal to just accept that there's a whole fictional equivalent of the U.S. government and media, they do make reference to former U.S. presidents, including (for instance) Nixon.

Which makes me wonder: when did the alternative universe split off from the real one? The show debuted during Clinton's administration, and Bartlett seem like a stand-in for Clinton in some ways, so we can assume that Clinton has never been president during the show's fictional universe. But what about Reagan or Bush Sr.? This gets especially tricky if you think about members of Congress who served under Nixon, guys like Ted Kennedy or Robert Byrd: are they still in the Senate?

Another thing that hasn't been explained, although perhaps it will be: at the beginning of the show's run, Bartlett has been in office for a year. Assuming the show takes place in the current day (it debuted in 1999), that means he would have been elected in 1998, which decidedly is not a U.S. election year.

From what I remember of the West Wing, I think its election plotlines were shifted two years from real life elections. So the Bartlett re-election plotline ran in 2002, and they had midterm storylines in '00 and '04. But I don't know if these were the actual election years in the show's reality, or if the show was not meant to take place at the same time it was running.

tbey must mention guys like reagan no?

Unless I've missed it, they haven't so far (I'm like three episodes away from the end of S1).

Reading Wikipedia with one eye closed to avoid spoilers:

In general, The West Wing attempts to create an alternative reality, in which there is a subtly different set of historical truths in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. In particular, the show tries to suggest that the last "real" president in its timeline is Richard Nixon, and to chart the careers of its principal players in the light of that decision. Nevertheless, there are occasions in which more contemporary presidents are implied.

Despite the attempt to establish a fictional timeline, minor evidence of real-life post-Nixon presidencies can sometimes be found in the show. In the second-season episode "Galileo," a portrait of Bill Clinton can be seen hanging on the wall of the White House Situation Room. Also in the second season, "The Stackhouse Filibuster" features a plaque identifying CJ Cregg's briefing room as the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, which could imply the existence of a Ronald Reagan presidency. In the sixth season episode, "A Good Day", a picture of Jimmy Carter can be seen hanging on a wall in the White House.

Doesn't The West Wing have that episode where they parade their own fictional presidents at a funeral? Bartlett needs help and has to confide in them all, but gets stuck with him from rosanne and what seemed like the george bush sr. equivilant (this is just from my rubbish memory, so it could be way different)?

there's also a west wing episode in the second or third season where the bartlett admin needs tv time for something and someone mentions that NBC always has a hole to fill wed @ 8:00 or 9:00 - the time that in our reality the west wing was on. which i always thought was a neat example of tv show acknowledging the weirdness you guys are talking about

the oc did that well - when they used to watch 'the valley' at the time the oc was on in america. and even had cameos from that fictional show.

n I'll be totally fascinated by, say, the SVU episode where future-ADA Novak is on trial for raping a guy.

That has always bothered me. Like, wouldn't anyone notice that Casey looks exactly like the evil rapist lawyer?

Or was she a stockbroker? Either way though, it was just one of those little things that pulled me out of the story a little bit.

Re The Valley: I don't remember them saying it was in that particular timeslot, but yeah, that was clever. There was even Sherman Oaks, which was the fictional equivalent of Laguna Beach.

Although the idea of a fictional TV show within a real TV show serving as an ironic commentary on the latter probably owes something to Invitation to Love on Twin Peaks.

plato to thread

this is a great thread!

i like how futurama and simpsons are both fictional in each others universes, like bender finding the early 90s bart doll in the junkyard or the pimply teen on the simpsons depressed because "they cancelled futurama"

about the Allison Janney on Studio 60 ordeal, did they ever explicitly say "West Wing"? I only remember some line sort of like "bet this doesn't happen on your white house show?" which doesn't really imply she was on the same West Wing as the actor Bradley Whitford who is currently playing the showrunner of the show the real her is hosting

no, they definitely explicitly say "West Wing" at least once

Last time this bothered me was in an episode of Doctor Who where Martha made reference to the Harry Potter series, without once taking a look at the Doctor and noticing he looked not dissimilar to Barty Crouch Jr.

Last season of The Sopranos you have Tony and Christopher driving around listening to the soundtrack to The Departed.

This all goes back to His Girl Friday when Cary Grant describes Ralph Bellamy's character as "He looks like, uh, that fellow in the movies, you know, uh, Ralph Bellamy."

what does The Sopranos have to do with The Departed?

That the moment ground the episode in late 2006, but that the characters live in a world without The Sopranos (though a senile Uncle Junior in one episode thinks he sees himself when Curb Your Enthusiasm is on TV).

Curb Your Enthusiasm hasn't avoided this entirely - the actress who played Sue-Ellen Mischke turned up in the last season playing a doctor Larry went out with a couple of times.

Played Sue-Ellen Mischke on Seinfeld, I should say. The braless Oh Henry candy bar heiress.

Borges quote my professor brought up the other day:

"Josiah Royce, in the first volume of his work The World and the Individual (1899), has formulated the following: “Let us imagine that a portion of the soil of England has been levelled off perfectly and that on it a cartographer traces a map of England. The job is perfect; there is no detail of the soil of England, no matter how minute, that is not registered on the map; everything has there its correspondence. This map, in such a case, should contain a map of the map, which should contain a map of the map of the map, and so on to infinity.” Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map and the thousand and one nights in the book of the Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictions."

I had one of these moments when watching an episode of Heroes that mentioned Star Trek just after George Takei's character had been onscreen. Woaaaaaah.

I think one of my favourite types of jokes to make is commenting on an assumed intertextuality between all fiction and reality (you can probably get a good idea of how unfunny I am from that). For example, John Mahoney starring as dad to a teenage girl? "Does she grow up to be Frasier then?" And so on.

I think those things just crept up toward the beginning of novels as a popular form because otherwise the novels didn't seem properly justified to people. Real information was real; poetry was clearly art; but what was the point of writing down a whole long story when everyone knew it wasn't true?

Surely people were familiar with plays, yes, knowing that those people weren't "real" nor the events "true?"

Oh, hey. It's not really a matter of people being unfamiliar with the concept of fiction. (Although keep in mind that if you go back a little way you honestly do get religious people who find the very idea of fiction to be a problem.) And plays are a performance, which gives them a somewhat different history. It's more that you had a time when books were mostly religious, or non-fiction, or poetry, or things like satire that were intended to have real propositions; and there weren't a ton of them; and the idea of writing whole prose texts claiming that real-sounding modern-day things happened, even though they didn't, was ... well, still sort of new and unusual, in certain places.

So I guess I phrased that badly -- it's not an issue of rejecting them as fiction, it's that the format was new, and it needed to kind of mimic the way true accounts looked in order to seem acceptable for a while. I assume that if an early novel did a lot of the things modern novels do with point of view and consciousness and whatnot, it would have seemed insane: it'd seem frivolously false because how would the speaker know all that stuff, and because there wasn't any general sense of the novel as a high art in itself.

If you go back far enough with plays, too, they become kinda instructive parables rather than just fictions, which is also true of prose stories -- parables and tales and allegories ... but the jump to the novel format is still one that takes a moment

This all goes back to His Girl Friday when Cary Grant describes Ralph Bellamy's character as "He looks like, uh, that fellow in the movies, you know, uh, Ralph Bellamy."

He also mentions having had dark dealings with an "Archie Leach*" who then committed suicide

*Grant's real name dont u kno

i just thought of a realllly weird example -- that movie 'the wackness' has a scene in which method man plays a jamaican drug dealer w/ an (over the top) accent, and hes chilling listening to Biggie's "The What" and Method Man's verse comes on and the kid asks him about what it is -- really bizarre

I haven't seen the movie, but I seem to remember reading that that was intentional.

well how could it not be??

I was always kind of bothered by Super Dave not playing Super Dave on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

If Larry wanted to invite Marty Funkhouser (presumably to entice a golf tip out of him) to a Super Dave show could Marty go?