is it just me or did tv get good all of the sudden

Personally, I find something like Brideshead Revisited immensely more satisfying than any 'Golden Age' drama, inasmuch as it's able to have a novelistic arc where the ending is not compromised by lack of foreplanning.

Though I don't know, probably plenty of novels are conceived on the fly as well.

Have you tried The Leftovers yet lex? It has a similar open-ended sense of its emotional reality, with less smdh (although definitely some.)

no, the premise got me pretty hyped and then i saw the name LINDELOF and fled

yeah thankfully I think Tom Perotta's involvement has helped to keep Lindelof in check (at least so far). S1 was surprisingly disciplined for the most part.

many classic 19th c. novels were planned in advance but not totally, and thus written/composed on the fly (sometimes in connection with serialized publication, begun before the novels were completely finished)

i think the totally-conceived novel, down to the level of systems of symbol and lexical choice, psychological nuance, etc., somehow harmonizing with narrative mode, plotting, etc., is of more recent vintage, or at least late 19th c into mid-20th (flaubert, joyce, pynchon), and it has not been the predominant mode of novel-writing, just because it's not feasible to invest that much in a novel beforehand. and once writers get going the imperatives of career tend to keep them on their toes, without the kind of time to worry over perfection.

re: the leftovers, the premise made me think more of the returned, which also so far - albeit only one season in - has a sense that we're not heading for closure as such

It's definitely not dissimilar from The Returned in that way

i think the totally-conceived novel, down to the level of systems of symbol and lexical choice, psychological nuance, etc., somehow harmonizing with narrative mode, plotting, etc., is of more recent vintage, or at least late 19th c into mid-20th (flaubert, joyce, pynchon)

Ulysses (at least the early chapters) was serialized!

yeah i was thinking he was a weird case. he also has the distinction of total-planning his last two books but having to kind of rush them off to press in a hurry (just to get the things of his hands iirc)

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i've been bothered by this author's master-narrative-mongering, and i think i know a bit better why after a few weeks - many of these shows have something veeeeeeeeerrry 'premisey' about them, the kind of thing that at its limit would be explained from week to week at the show's opening and in the first act, just to make sure the audience doesn't get lost on the level of the basic buy-in, though of course many of them are shows of a time when tv seems to have become more and more premisey, like a premise is indispensible (maybe it always has been, in some way, for most tv). (less so before, maybe, where say a show like 'er' could get by on realism alone.)

BUT. by trying to trade in nu-master-narrative theorizing about the nu-wave of nu-tv, the author is really kind of mashing a different mode of premised-narrative-interpretation up with some cases where the premising is very explicit (and thus seems to call for a different approach, rather than just being read as straight-up convenience for show creators seeking a satisfying way to re-tell the underlying master narrative). and it's a psychological narrative - what would in other circles be recognized as mytho-poetic itself. 'ok, here's the idea - it's about this guy. let's call him hugh mann. and everywhere he goes, he meets people and, like, for some reason, i don't know why, we can have a voiceover during the credits that explains it, every time he meets someone he's afraid they're going to leave him!'

Walking Dead is pretty much a western, as was Deadwood ... there are a lot of examples of "nu golden age tv" that don't fit his theory.

And "these narratives are due to the high divorce rate of their creators' generation" is pretty bogus -- that is some gladwellian bullshit

how is that not a thread title on ILAFL

oh yeah i assume any nu-tv malarkey is

i just like excuses to theorize about tv

No Rome, no Deadwood, fuck this shit

I like theorizing about tv too, it's just that a lot of this guy's theorizing is shit

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